Lechmere Continuation Thread

[harry]

Damaso Marte,
What rules then would you choose we use,or should it be open slather?
It was a case of murder,surely we should use the laws that apply to murder.
In my last post it is clear I used the comments of officers of the period,not laws or rules.

Fisherman,
"he is someone who seems to be acting in a way,behaving in a way,that is suspicious". Where is the evidence or proof in that sentence ,that he cut a woman's throat and mutila ted her body.. "Seems to be".Not very convincing.What sort of behaviour,and w hy suspicious?Not very descriptive.
So we've looked at what he(Scobie)said.Does it amount to enough to convince a magistrate that a prima facia case of murder exists.
When I stop laughing,i'll tell you.

[Fisherman]

Trevor Marriott:

Its always us that are wrong, never you is it?

Generally speaking, yes, comparing you and me. Or do you think you are correct half of the times you suggest that Lechmere is a "non-starter"?

You think you have all the answers but you are so misguided in your belief, and your whole obsessive approach to this issue is there for all to see.

You are not exactly invisible yourself.

You keep comparing modern day serial killers with this killer, there really is no proper comparison because everything was so different 127 years ago. How many murder victims die in this day and age through having their throats cut? Very few. But it is a fact that more do die from being stabbed.

128 years ago, Trevor.

I do not wish to engage further with you and I would urge the others who you constantly argue the same issues over and over again to do the same, because you are not going to accept or even consider any argument or any major points, and there have been many posted here to negate this theory.

Urge away.

[Fisherman]

It is quite apparent that posters arguing against me do not know the difference between evidence and information.They do not know the law.Fisherman has admitted it.They are accusing Cross on se veral accounts,none of which is supported by evidence.That he was a vicious serial killer,that he lied under oath. That he is suspect,but suspect of what? The best rebuttal to their claims of course,is not myself ,but the investigating officers of that time,several who are recorded as reporting there were no suspects,and no evidence pointing to the ripper murderer.If arrogance will allow them that.
In a nswer to what I would do if I was the investigating officer of that time is simple.I would say what they said,which in fact,if they read my posts properly,is what I have been doing.But then Ivé never been a police officer.Have they?

So Fisherman "has admitted" that he does not know the law? I do not practice law, and I do not know as much about it as those who DO practice law, that is all I have said.

Then again, James Scobie DOES practice law, so let´s look at what HE says about Lechmere:

He is somebody who seems to be acting in a way, behaving in a way, that is suspicious.

You, Harry, seem to be the one who cannot tell the difference between evidence and proof, and who does not realize what suspicion is. Now that a REAL expert has established this, the discussion is over.

No need to thank me for helping you out...

[Damaso Marte]

If harry were to apply his standards for discussing Lechmere as a suspect to Ripperology generally, he would soon be forced to conclude that we cannot discuss any suspects at all.

As evidence-poor as the case against Lechmere is, the case against everyone else is just as poor or poorer. At least Lechmere can be placed at a murder scene, unlike say Kozminski (who most people would say is a stronger suspect than Lechmere, but for whom there is no known evidence).

If we're going by courtroom rules, we might as well shut down all of Casebook as an abomination against due process.

[harry]

It is quite apparent that posters arguing against me do not know the difference between evidence and information.They do not know the law.Fisherman has admitted it.They are accusing Cross on se veral accounts,none of which is supported by evidence.That he was a vicious serial killer,that he lied under oath. That he is suspect,but suspect of what? The best rebuttal to their claims of course,is not myself ,but the investigating officers of that time,several who are recorded as reporting there were no suspects,and no evidence pointing to the ripper murderer.If arrogance will allow them that.
In a nswer to what I would do if I was the investigating officer of that time is simple.I would say what they said,which in fact,if they read my posts properly,is what I have been doing.But then Ivé never been a police officer.Have they?

[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor Marriott: If only murder investigations were as simple as that. You have been watching to many murder programs where they solve them in 50 mins.

Mmmm - and I have spent thirty years plus looking into the Ripper case. For the record, I am not saying that they solve cases in fifty minutes. In the Black case, it was painstaking and time consuming enough, that´s for certain. But once they felt they had their man, it WAS easy enough to check his petrol bills. Black saved them to get money back from the company where he worked.
So you are wrong once more, Trevor.

But if Cross didnt agree with the police evidence it was his right to say so was it not, and for someone else within the higher echelons of the police to question the officers to try to establish the truth. Those issues should not be held against Cross after all he may have been telling the truth!

This is so poorly worded I cannot make heads or tails of it. But I do know that it has notbing to do with the geography issue, so I am predisposing that you are changing the goalposts.

Any geographical profiling goes out the window if the killer didnt live in an around Whitechapel but simply came into the area from outside to kill and then exited thereafter.

And it stays well inside the window in Lechmere´s case, since he lived in Doveton Street. And it him and his routes that are scrutinized here.

But other men presumably would take that route to work within the time parameters. What about if Paul had come along first and found the body before Cross arrived would you still be saying he was the killer. You are doing nothing but clutching at straws. You have no perception of evidence or its interpretation or how to evaluate it.

You cannot prove an accurate time of death

So your odds are slashed by half. then out of the remaining half, you have the thousands of males all crammed into Whitechapel all perhaps likely to have been the killer.

Yawn. How many of them were in Bucks Row at 3.45? How many of them were found with the freshly slain body of Nichols? How many of them disagreed with the police?
To quote Griffiths: Before Lechmere can be cleared, there is no need to look any further. Noone else in the district is under suspicion on factual, caserelated grounds. End of. Lechmere IS. End of.

What about before he can be a suspect there has to be some evidence. The statement indicates that there is evidence again misleading is it not. Where is the factual evidence to make him a suspect? I still stand by my previous statements that Griffiths and Scobie were not provided with the full facts relating to both sides of the argument that we are now having

Remember someone has to find the body. Would you still be pursing the same line if the body had been found by Fanny Arbuckle on her way to the factory. or one of the many homeless street urchins ?|

[B]Yes, I would work with the exact same methodology. I would check the surrounding circumstances, I would check the geography, I would do all I could to look into the particulars. And I would try to stay unprejudiced.[B]

You couldnt stay unprejudiced if you life depended on it !

So you are wrong again.

Its always us that are wrong, never you is it? You think you have all the answers but you are so misguided in your belief, and your whole obsessive approach to this issue is there for all to see.

You keep comparing modern day serial killers with this killer, there really is no proper comparison because everything was so different 127 years ago. How many murder victims die in this day and age through having their throats cut? Very few. But it is a fact that more do die from being stabbed.

I do not wish to engage further with you and I would urge the others who you constantly argue the same issues over and over again to do the same, because you are not going to accept or even consider any argument or any major points, and there have been many posted here to negate this theory.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

"The evidence never lies, but it doesn't always tell the truth"

[Fisherman]

Hi Pierre,

A word to the wise.

Quit whilst you're behind.

Regards,

Simon

[Fisherman]

Pierre:

Yes, it is actually only a condition that the individual is close to what you call "murder spots" to be relevant at all. I think you are using the word "close" since that is what you think, and what I think, Lechmere was.

But then the problems start to mount up. It is not enough for an individual to be at one murder site. You have to find evidence saying that he was at the other murder sites as well.

That will to a large degree be ruled by the rarity of the kiling method, and the Ripper was a very rare beast. So making the assumption that finding the killer of Nichols is equivalent to having found the Ripper and the VERY probable killer of the other "ripped" victims from 1888, is a very sound thing to do.
As such, I dont care much that it may be a wrongful assumption - 99 per cent of the ones with an interest in the murders will agree nevertheless. And rightly so.
We are not discussing legal applications - we are discussing likelihoods attaching to serial killers. Keep that in mind.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Pierre,

A word to the wise.

Quit whilst you're behind.

Regards,

Simon

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Fisherman;389128]

That is the importance of the geography issue. It serves as a litmus paper when there is suspicion against anybody. If it can be confirmed that such a suspected individual has been close to (not necessarily at) the murder spots at the relevant hours, then the corroboration looked for will be at hand.

Yes, it is actually only a condition that the individual is close to what you call "murder spots" to be relevant at all. I think you are using the word "close" since that is what you think, and what I think, Lechmere was.

But then the problems start to mount up. It is not enough for an individual to be at one murder site. You have to find evidence saying that he was at the other murder sites as well. It is not sufficient to postulate that a serial killer is found by indicating that he did one murder in a series. One indication is far from enough. You need several indications and from several murder sites. When you have several indications, you can hypothesize that he was a serial killer, since you need a coherent time line on a micro level

You can not postulate one murder with just one indication and build a chain on that. It will be far to weak. Every link in the chain, i.e. every indication, builds the hypothesis about a serial killer. Without a link to every murder, at least that should be the principle, the hypothesis of a serial killer will be to weak.

In Lechmere´s case, we cannot say that we know that he was close to the murder sites at the relevant hours - but for one such spot, where we know that he was found alone with a freshly killed victim. But we CAN establish that it would be completely logical if he was at the other spots too, and that he had reason to pass these spots.

Logic is one part of philosophy with many internal conditions, which you can not apply on the social reality. So in this case it is useless to talk about "logic".

What you have is a presence at a murder site, a postulated but very problematic "lie", since there are other explanations that are better. There is nothing more to Lechmere. A mother who remarried, a cat meat´s woman, and him moving from the mother.

All of that is probably very common in the background of people in Whitechapel. And so is going to work through Buck´s Row an early morning in 1888.

Do you really want to find the killer? Or do you want to write books and make movies?

Best wishes, Pierre

[John G]

Of course, Cross was never an accused in a criminal trial, where the legal burden of proof is beyond all reasonable doubt.

There is no legal burden of proof for someone to be merely a suspect.

Slander and libel are civil offences, where the burden of proof is the balance of probabilities.

Statements made in the course of judicial proceedings are protected by absolute privilege, which is a complete defence in English law to a defamation action.

[David Orsam]

It is a generaly accepted principle that the onus is on the accuser.In this case Mizen.
In a trial the onus is on the prosecution to prove, with evidence.
Cross also gave evidence in a court,under oath.He is entitled to be considered innocent.That is the law.He cannot be suspect unless evidence proves otherwise.None did. I am not wrong on any count.

Please explain the rule that states,or infers that suspicion exists without evidence.Show examples. To protect innocent persons there are the laws of libel and slander.

Law enforcement officers,from my experience,do not accept that suspicion is warranted,unless some evidence of an offence exists.

1. Mizen never accused Cross of anything. He simply gave his evidence as to his recollection of what he heard.

2. By definition, suspicion can only be attached to someone who has not been proven guilty. If someone has been proved guilty there's no suspicion involved because you already have proof. The logical conclusion of your argument is that no-one can ever suspect anyone of anything.

3. There is evidence for suspicion against Cross. That is the evidence of Mizen.

4. Libel and slander has nothing to do with this. We are talking about whether there is any reason for suspicion against Cross. You seem to translate "suspicion of committing a murder" in your head into "accusation of committing a murder."

5. Police officers investigating a murder invariably suspect people who turn out to be innocent. That's what you have to do when you are a police officer.

6. I suppose if you were a police officer investigating a murder case you would not suspect anyone unless you had cast iron proof that they had committed the murder and even then they couldn’t be a suspect in your eyes because they are innocent until proven guilty.

[Fisherman]

Trevor Marriott: If only murder investigations were as simple as that. You have been watching to many murder programs where they solve them in 50 mins.

Mmmm - and I have spent thirty years plus looking into the Ripper case. For the record, I am not saying that they solve cases in fifty minutes. In the Black case, it was painstaking and time consuming enough, that´s for certain. But once they felt they had their man, it WAS easy enough to check his petrol bills. Black saved them to get money back from the company where he worked.
So you are wrong once more, Trevor.

But if Cross didnt agree with the police evidence it was his right to say so was it not, and for someone else within the higher echelons of the police to question the officers to try to establish the truth. Those issues should not be held against Cross after all he may have been telling the truth!

This is so poorly worded I cannot make heads or tails of it. But I do know that it has notbing to do with the geography issue, so I am predisposing that you are changing the goalposts.

Any geographical profiling goes out the window if the killer didnt live in an around Whitechapel but simply came into the area from outside to kill and then exited thereafter.

And it stays well inside the window in Lechmere´s case, since he lived in Doveton Street. And it him and his routes that are scrutinized here.

So your odds are slashed by half. then out of the remaining half, you have the thousands of males all crammed into Whitechapel all perhaps likely to have been the killer.

Yawn. How many of them were in Bucks Row at 3.45? How many of them were found with the freshly slain body of Nichols? How many of them disagreed with the police?
To quote Griffiths: Before Lechmere can be cleared, there is no need to look any further. Noone else in the district is under suspicion on factual, caserelated grounds. End of. Lechmere IS. End of.

Remember someone has to find the body. Would you still be pursing the same line if the body had been found by Fanny Arbuckle on her way to the factory. or one of the many homeless street urchins ?|

Yes, I would work with the exact same methodology. I would check the surrounding circumstances, I would check the geography, I would do all I could to look into the particulars. And I would try to stay unprejudiced.
I would of course be aware that women knife killers are very much rarer than men, and I would weigh that in. As for "street urchins", I find it a sad classification, and a very unspecific one. Drifters, hobos, vagrants like Toole and Lucas have been serial killers, as has men like Fish and Rolling.


So you are wrong again.

[Trevor Marriott]

Yes, there was a very damning background, and Black freely spoke of having molested many young girls.
But he fervently denied having murdered anybody at all, and it is the duty of the law to protect anybody against lofty accusations. It matters not if you have a former record in the business when it comes to judging cases where there is no proof to convict. And there was not in the Black case.

So the gist of the matter is that the geographical ties formed by the petrol receipts were what got him convicted. Without them, he would have walked. And legally correct it would have been too.

It is a forceful reminder of the inportance of geographical ties, no matter if they exist in a large metropolis. And it forms a useful lesson for those who say that many men will have walked the Whitechapel Streets back in 1888. That is true - but just the one of them was found with a freshly killed victim, and just the one of them disagreed with the police over what had been said on the murder night.

That puts him under suspicion, and once we have somebody under suspicion, we go looking for geographical corroboration. If we find it, we have most likely found our killer. It is that simple.

If only murder investigations were as simple as that. You have been watching to many murder programs where they solve them in 50 mins.

But if Cross didnt agree with the police evidence it was his right to say so was it not, and for someone else within the higher echelons of the police to question the officers to try to establish the truth. Those issues should not be held against Cross after all he may have been telling the truth!

Any geographical profiling goes out the window if the killer didnt live in an around Whitechapel but simply came into the area from outside to kill and then exited thereafter. So your odds are slashed by half. then out of the remaining half, you have the thousands of males all crammed into Whitechapel all perhaps likely to have been the killer.

Remember someone has to find the body. Would you still be pursing the same line if the body had been found by Fanny Arbuckle on her way to the factory. or one of the many homeless street urchins ?|

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

"The evidence never lies, but it doesn't always tell the truth"

[Fisherman]

But of course he was arrested after having been seen at a location away from his home address to abduct a young girl and was found soon afterwards with the girl still alive in the back of his van. So the evidence was fairly strong to support the evidence of the petrol receipts and to show the court a course of conduct on his part !

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Yes, there was a very damning background, and Black freely spoke of having molested many young girls.
But he fervently denied having murdered anybody at all, and it is the duty of the law to protect anybody against lofty accusations. It matters not if you have a former record in the business when it comes to judging cases where there is no proof to convict. And there was not in the Black case.

So the gist of the matter is that the geographical ties formed by the petrol receipts were what got him convicted. Without them, he would have walked. And legally correct it would have been too.

It is a forceful reminder of the inportance of geographical ties, no matter if they exist in a large metropolis. And it forms a useful lesson for those who say that many men will have walked the Whitechapel Streets back in 1888. That is true - but just the one of them was found with a freshly killed victim, and just the one of them disagreed with the police over what had been said on the murder night.

That puts him under suspicion, and once we have somebody under suspicion, we go looking for geographical corroboration. If we find it, we have most likely found our killer. It is that simple.