Lawende was silenced

[Wickerman]

I thought the reason for limiting Lawende's public description of the suspect was well understood by everybody.

[David Orsam]

I thought the reason for limiting Lawende's public description of the suspect was well understood by everybody.

See the OP for contradiction of that assumption.

[Fisherman]

Time to say our farewells, David!

I notice that there is not much huffin´and puffin´left in you, and that´s as it should be. When we have very little to say, it is best expressed in a low tone.

I will make a few parting points. Beginning with this:

"Right, so he lied which means he took a risk of getting caught lying by the police. But if he was going to lie about his name it was a weak form of deception because he would have been identified by his address."

What you are saying here sounds very useful - on the surface. If you give somebody a wrong name in order to deceive them, it would be stupid to give the correct address.
But of course, you are sidestepping the fact that I have told you, over and over again, that the one/s I think he wanted to deceive were supposed NOT to get both the name and the address. I am reasoning that the carman ommitted to read out his address to the inquest, thus trying to prevent it to end up in the papers. Accordingly, the game changes totally, and we have a man who gave a false name and NO address, deviating totally from the scenario you call a weak deception.

I have told you this so many times that I would have hoped it stuck. But no - you are ignoring it, since you will otherwise have to admit that I am correct. So I will ask you again: If he wanted to keep his identity from the public while at the same time he wanted NOT to annoy the police by lying to them, how on earth could he do better than he did?
It was a very clever deception, in contrast to your suggestion, and if the Star had not been diligent enough to seek his address out from the witness list (in all probability) it would have been as good a deception that was possible.

The rest of your last posts is of little interest. And de facto, you have not managed to accomplish anything at all.

The official documents have the carmans signature on them as well as his name signed by other people. I would not have it any other way, since that tells us that not only did he sign himself Lechmere, he was in no shape or form given to answer "Cross" when he was asked about his name.
There are many entries that are of the same type, but I would not have that any other way either, since this tells us that he was consistent in his choice of name. He did not call himself Cross on the documents that lie close in time to him having had Thomas Cross as a stepfather. He was baptised Lechmere a year after his mother married the policeman, and he kept that name as his, by his own choice, year in and year out.

Much ado about nothing, thus.

As for the fact that he was found with the body, this is something that is not shaken, stirred or even ever so lightly touched by your very odd assertion that touching distance is the demand to create a "withship".

That is utter nonsense and completely untrue. Maybe not to you, but what we are discussing here is actually not something that must fit your personal take to be true.

There is one point that needs addressing here before we move on, and that is the point that it has not been established that the carman was NOT within touching distance! Not that it matters, since the distinction is ridiculous from beginning to end, but it is nevertheless interesting that you are working from a position where you regard it as proven that the carman was out of touching distance from the body.

Let´s examine this! To begin with, Lechmere was standing up and Nichols laying down. So how do we define touching distance? Should Lechmere be able to touch the body by crouching down beside it and using his hand, or are we speaking of a possibility to touch her with his foot? Or are we speaking of Normal reach? I have a reach of 193 centimeters, defined in boxing terms.

Anyway, since this is a grey area, we must move on and take in the sources. There are two sources when it comes to the position Lechmere was found in:
1. The paper interview, where Paul said that Lechmere stood "where the body was".
2. The inquest material, where it is said that Lechmere stood in "the middle of the street".
Let´s work from the assumption that Lechmere was in height with the body. If that was the case, then a weighing of the two statements places him between the middle of the road and the place where the body lay. If the street was 25 feet from wall to wall, and the pavement was 4 feet, then the centre point between the middle of the road and the position of the body would be in the middle of 2 and 12,5 feet from the wall, that is to say 7,25 out from the wall. That would mean that Lechmere was 5,25 feet from the centre of the body. And if the body covered two feet in width, then Lechmere was 4,25 feet from the edge of it. And if Nichols´ right arm was stretched out a little bit, we may need to add half a foot more, taking the distance from Lechmere to the outer point of the body, if you will, down to 3.75 feet.
After that, we need to weigh in the fact that Lechmere too had body and mass, so his outer body frame point would be a foot closer to the pavement than his body centre. We therefore end up at a distance of 2,75 feet from where he would need to reach out, that is to say much less than a meter from which to bend forwards and reach his arm out.

So there you are, David. Your protests were all in vain, and even by your somewhat exotic standards it is quite possible that he was with the body.

Maybe I should not have offered this example, since it makes it look as if I accepted the idea that one must be within touching distance to be with a body. I don´t, however.

Charles Lechmere lied about his passage through Bucks Row. He did not come from the East, passing through to the West, as he saw Nichols. He instead killed her, and stepped out into the street as Paul arrived. That´s how I read the evidence.
But if we were to accept that he spoke the truth, then it applies that the only reason he stopped in his stride, was that he had seen something lying on the opposite pavement. When he saw that something, he stepped into the street, and approached the shape on the pavement, and when he came closer, he saw that it was the body of a woman. At that moment, he was standing in the road with the woman. He went out in the road and positioned himself with the woman.
And what was it Paul suggested? He suggested that since he was late, he would walk on and find a PC. Until that stage, he expected Lechmere to stay.... Yes? To stay.... come on now! To stay ... say it out loud for Christs´ sake! To stay...WITH THE WOMAN!

Now, would staying with the woman comprise never being out of touching distance with the body? I think emphatically not.

When that PC arrived, if Lechmere was standing six feet from the woman, would the police not be entitled to say that he found Lechmere with the woman? In spite of how it was in a public street? Oh yes, he would be VERY much entitled to say so.

No silly comparisons with rifles and guns will change that. Once we look at the REAL picture instead of any suggested comparison with guns, rifles or trebuchets, we are faced with the fact that once Lechmere stopped on account of seeing the body and approached it in the darkness, he also positioned himself with the body in that street.

Case closed, game over and you may return to other things than trying to rewrite history, David. The best of luck with your next effort - win a few, loose a few. That´s life.

Goodbye and many thanks for the exchange.

[Elamarna]

Hi All

Just a couple of comments:

This view of win or lose I find very strange; surely its not about point scoring, but being right or wrong on a subject.
In reality there is often no right or wrong just degrees of probability.

Also I find the definition of win or lose as used, not just on this thread, but on other too recently as undefined, certainly contrary to the normal accepted definition..
Most of the time the exchanges appear to be gaining and losing ground at the same time, no clear result!

It reminds me of the time in cricket when England drew with Zimbabwe, and the England coach proclaimed "we murdered them".

Its ignoring the actual result and seeing what you want.


Steve

[Fisherman]

Hi All

Just a couple of comments:

This view of win or lose I find very strange; surely its not about point scoring, but being right or wrong on a subject.
In reality there is often no right or wrong just degrees of probability.

Also I find the definition of win or lose as used, not just on this thread, but on other too recently as undefined, certainly contrary to the normal accepted definition..
Most of the time the exchanges appear to be gaining and losing ground at the same time, no clear result!

It reminds me of the time in cricket when England drew with Zimbabwe, and the England coach proclaimed "we murdered them".

Its ignoring the actual result and seeing what you want.


Steve

Well, call it what you want, but when you say "Yes!" only to be met by a "No!", you know that somebody´s gotta give.

Much as there are things that cannot be yes´or no´s, there are other matters that can.

[Elamarna]

Well, call it what you want, but when you say "Yes!" only to be met by a "No!", you know that somebody´s gotta give.

Much as there are things that cannot be yes´or no´s, there are other matters that can.

Fisherman,

True, but I don't see that anyone has given ground overall, up on some points, down on others.

best wishes

Steve

[Fisherman]

Fisherman,

True, but I don't see that anyone has given ground overall, up on some points, down on others.

best wishes

Steve

I can say, Steve, that once I am being acused of deception, I am quite, quite unlikely to give any ground at all. It is not a fertile ground to grow understanding in.
That said, I am the first one to admit that I gave David very little reason to take an overwhelming shine to me. That owes to earlier exchanges we have had, and I leave it up to anybody to judge for themselves whether I was in my right to do so or not.
The discussion has come to an end now, and the future will show what debating climate there will be between us fortwith.

[Garry Wroe]

What you are saying here sounds very useful - on the surface. If you give somebody a wrong name in order to deceive them, it would be stupid to give the correct address.
But of course, you are sidestepping the fact that I have told you, over and over again, that the one/s I think he wanted to deceive were supposed NOT to get both the name and the address. I am reasoning that the carman ommitted to read out his address to the inquest, thus trying to prevent it to end up in the papers. Accordingly, the game changes totally, and we have a man who gave a false name and NO address, deviating totally from the scenario you call a weak deception.

The best explanation to my mind is that Lechmere was afraid of any potential retribution at the hands of the local extortion gang(s) which had killed Emma Smith and was being linked by newspapers to the Nichols murder. Hence he provided the authorities with his correct address but used the name Cross when in the presence of journalists. I seem to recall a similar incident at about the time of the Ripper murders when a juror in an unrelated case protested to the coroner when his address was about to be read out in open court. After some argument the coroner relented and the address was withheld. This man was not a murderer. He merely wished to preserve his privacy. Perhaps this simple and mundane motivation also applied to Lechmere.

[Robert St Devil]

Hello Fish.

I know that Lechmere is your suspect. Do you think that he inadvertently made himself an inquest witness? Would he have had the foresight or awareness that he would have been called to the inquest when he first gives the name "Cross"?

[Fisherman]

The best explanation to my mind is that Lechmere was afraid of any potential retribution at the hands of the local extortion gang(s) which had killed Emma Smith and was being linked by newspapers to the Nichols murder. Hence he provided the authorities with his correct address but used the name Cross when in the presence of journalists. I seem to recall a similar incident at about the time of the Ripper murders when a juror in an unrelated case protested to the coroner when his address was about to be read out in open court. After some argument the coroner relented and the address was withheld. This man was not a murderer. He merely wished to preserve his privacy. Perhaps this simple and mundane motivation also applied to Lechmere.

Well, Gary, if he feared retribution (for whatever inecplicable reason - he did nothing tht could any any gang, did he?), and if he, as you suggest, gave the wrong name but the correct address: would that not be utterly stupid?

[David Orsam]

That said, I am the first one to admit that I gave David very little reason to take an overwhelming shine to me.

You know what, I only have interest in your arguments and the way you make them. Previous discussions between us are irrelevant to what happens in the next one.

The only thing I will say about the discussion in this thread is that I've been amazed at the number of times you have either misunderstood or misrepresented me, especially given your complaints about Trevor, so you know how frustrating it is to respond to someone who just isn't reading your posts properly. I know you are far from being stupid so it's been a bit of puzzle.

[David Orsam]

I can say, Steve, that once I am being acused of deception, I am quite, quite unlikely to give any ground at all. It is not a fertile ground to grow understanding in.

If you don't want to be accused of deceptive methods then really, Fisherman, don't make claims about something and then refuse to give any further information while, at the same time, saying that someone else's analysis "may well be wrong" in circumstances where you actually know whether that analysis is right or wrong.

[David Orsam]

But of course, you are sidestepping the fact that I have told you, over and over again, that the one/s I think he wanted to deceive were supposed NOT to get both the name and the address. I am reasoning that the carman ommitted to read out his address to the inquest, thus trying to prevent it to end up in the papers. Accordingly, the game changes totally, and we have a man who gave a false name and NO address, deviating totally from the scenario you call a weak deception.

I've already told you that over and over again that you must be wrong.

The argument about Cross not giving his address to the inquest only popped up late in the debate and makes no sense. Every other witness was required to give their address to the inquest, and did so, and there is no reason why Cross would have been an exception. The Star report confirms that he gave his address! Your argument smacks of serious desperation and is unsupported by facts or reason.

[David Orsam]

So I will ask you again: If he wanted to keep his identity from the public while at the same time he wanted NOT to annoy the police by lying to them, how on earth could he do better than he did?

Another classic.

"he wanted NOT to annoy the police by lying to them."

You've already told me that he gave the police a false name, therefore, in your version, he DID lie to them. Not wanting to "annoy the police" cannot be his motive, according to you.

Having lied to them once, giving them a false name, it would have been sensible to have given them a false address too. Giving only a false name was a weak form of deception.

Why you can't just accept this and say "yes, but he only needed a weak form of deception for his purposes" baffles me.

[David Orsam]

and if the Star had not been diligent enough to seek his address out from the witness list (in all probability) it would have been as good a deception that was possible.

Funny how the Star reporter went to so much trouble to get his address then didn't even bother to report his full name, calling him "Carman Cross".