Chapman’s death.

[Michael W Richards]

The evidence shows us that it’s overwhelmingly likely that Chapman was killed around 5.25/5.30. That should be where the debate ends.

It is where the logical debate ends Herlock, but when youve got Baron egging on Fisherman, its malevolent mayhem for the forseeable future. The nice thing about particpating in a Forum like this is that it makes no difference whether you get a consensus, there are Barons and Pierres all over the Internet boards that will make that impossible. All you need to do is be sure of the facts and legitimately interested in figuring out the problem, people that are just farting around will eventually just fade against the facts. The facts in this case are very clear...Annie wasnt there at 4:50ish, someone was there at 5:15ish, and Annie was found just before 6am on that same spot. The rest is just BS.

[JeffHamm]

This is from Shivpoojan K. (2018). Time since Death from Rigor Mortis: Forensic Prospective. J Forensic Sci & Criminal Inves 2018; 9(5): 555771. DOI: 10.19080/JFSCI.2018.09.555771.

The introduction summarizes a lot of literature, which of course will contradict each other in the specifics (it was oriiginally believed that rigor mortis started in the head and progressed downwards, but this turns out not to be true, it's just more easily detected in smaller muscles which are more prevalent in the face, all muscles start developing rigor at the same time. Some researchers say it starts 1-2 hours following death, others present different times, and so forth. Some of these conflicts will have to do with how the onset is determined or if they are talking about the time for rigor to be complete. I suggest that anyone who chooses to read this not get too excited when they come across a particular sentence that "works for them" as you go through the introduction. What you'll find will be as many sentences that don't (this reflects the variability of rigor mortis in the first place, hence it's not a very precise indicator of ToD).

However, they do a nice summary of all the literature they cover, and this is what we should be concerning ourselves with (not cherry picking from individual studies, but looking at what comes from the totality of the evidence). I've pasted this below, and highlighted a few that I think should be considered with regards to Chapman:

Basic back ground of rigor mortis Influencing Conditions:

On onset and duration of rigor mortis

a. Condition of Body: Rigor mortis sets in quickly in thin built emaciated subject and its duration is also shorter in such cases. The more muscular and healthier the subject, rigor mortis will be more late to set in and long to continue.

b. Age of Deceased: In case of foetus, rigor mortis is both earlier to appear and also to disappear. Its duration is short in case of the stillborn. It is said that rigor mortis does not occur in foetus less than 7 months. It is early to set in the bodies of newly born infants and may last for some hours. Rigor is early to appear in early youth and old age and its duration is also shorter.

c. Cause Of Death: Rigor will be earlier to set in but shorter in duration in case of death due to tetanus, strychnine poisoning, in death preceded by violent spasms and convulsions as in status epilepticus, electrocution, lightening or in case of death of soldiers after many hours of violent exertion in the battle fields, and in cut throat and firearm injures. It is early to set in death due to cholera , typhoid , T.B ,uremia , plague, cancer and nephritis .It is late in onset of death from pneumonia ,apoplexy, asphyxia especially hanging , carbon monoxide and dioxide poisoning ,arsenic or mercuric chloride poisoning ,nervous disease producing the paralysis of muscles.

d. Environmental Factor: The onset of rigor will be rapid and duration will be short in case bodies exposed to warm and moist climatic conditions. The factors such as movements of cold air, presence of wearing apparels will indirectly influence the onset and progress of rigor by their effects on the body temperature. In cold, rigor will be delayed in onset and its duration will be prolonged. Temperature below 5°C will retard the onset of rigor indefinitely, but when temperature is raised, rigor sets in the usual manner. Body if exposed to temperature of 75 °C or little above, the rigidity becomes more pronounced due to coagulation of all muscles proteins and the body will show the rigidity in the form of heat stiffening .

I'm not sure a really applies. Annie was not well fed, but she wouldn't be considered emaciated. I've highlighted it only because this has been mentioned at times.

The other two points, though, work in opposition. We have, specifically stated, that cut throat deaths have more rapid onset of rigor mortis, but cold works to delay it. In fact, below 5C it doesn't set in at all. According to https://www.casebook.org/victorian_london/weather.html the daily low for Annie's death was 46.3F (about 8C), so we're getting close to the point where rigor wouldn't set in at all until the body is warmed up.

Anyway, there's also Table 1 on page 3, that lists the number of cases where rigor was complete, after various hours (2 were complete by 2 hours)

Number of cases postmortem at which rigor was complete (hrs)
	Cases	Hours
	2	2
	14	3
	31	4
	14	5
	20	6
	11	7
	7	8
	4	9
	7	10
	1	11
	1	12
	2	13

So as we can see, while rigor is, on average, complete around 5.7 hours, the variation is quite large and to apply that average to a specific case without considering the margin of error, would be unwise. The standard deviation (average amount by which an individual case differs from the mean) is over 2 hours for this data (2.36), Which means, 95% of cases will have reached full rigor between 1 and 10 hours after death. (well, not quite as the data isn't normally distributed, but even accounting for the skew we're talking 95% show full rigor between 3 and 12 hours. So if Dr. Phillips recorded the time when full rigor was reached, the ToD would be estimated to be between 3 and 12 hours earlier, which I rather suspect will include the witnesses time window.

- Jeff

https://juniperpublishers.com/jfsci/pdf/JFSCI.MS.ID.555771.pdf

[etenguy]

Well I choose to keep all my options open until something can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and in this case that's never going to happen if we sit here and argue for ever and a day. As they say you pays your money and you takes your choice, each unto their own. Life is to short to sit here day after day arguing the same points over and over again

I agree we are unlikely in the extreme to establish the TOD of poor Annie Chapman beyond a reasonable doubt.

However, I do not believe we are left helpless in establishing a reasonable approximation of her TOD based on the information we have. It will necessitate theories substantiated by the evidence we have and people to challenge those theories to destruction until we satisfy ourselves of a TOD on the balance of probabilities. We may never reach total agreement, but I would expect a significant consensus by the end of the process. I think we are close to a significant consensus now.

[Herlock Sholmes]

How can this poster freely attack others like this ?!

I have reported his post.


The Baron

I’ve been advised by quite a few posters to ignore your posts but it’s quite difficult as you appear to follow me across the Forum only posting on threads that I post on and always taking the opposing view to myself leading you to make endless mocking comments. You rarely post any thoughts of your own though. All you tend to do is to jump in and cheer on anyone that disagrees with me. This is not contributing...we all know the word for this and other posters have stated this too.

My post said that it was an idiotic post. Which it was. You make them regularly. They are in black and white. You appear incapable or unwilling to discuss any aspects of this case in a sensible and adult way. I’d actually question if you have any real interest in the case or is this just a pastime where you fixate on someone (me) and simply attempt to annoy them?

You should consider yourself very fortunate that I or the other posters who feel the same haven’t reported you before now Baron. I have no interest in anything that you have to say and I suspect that no one else on here does either.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Having been caught out in a lie - claiming that "all" experts say that accelerated cooling and accelerated rigor is a "freak event", without being able to name a single one - Fisherman has now run away. Consequently, I'm not going to waste my time responding to all of his recent posts. He's simply repeated fabricated nonsense that I've already disproved time after time in any case.

I'm just going to make a few posts addressing a few issues that have arisen.

The first is Fish's admission in respect of surface body temperature that "in that context anything that is 25 degrees plus is on the warm side' (#1343).

If one consults the 1880 study by Dr. J.W. Burma, entitled 'On the Rate of Cooling of the Human Body after Death', one finds that none of the dead bodies Dr Burman tested (using surface temperature measurements taken with a thermometer) had cooled to 25 degrees Centigrade (or 77 degrees Fahrenheit) prior to 16 hours after death. In fact, Burman only recorded temperatures that low for one individual whose temperature reached 77 degrees a full 19 hours after death. For all others he stopped recording before the thermometer fell below 80 deg F.

Fish keeps telling us that a body will be "stone cold" after 4-6 hours. Dr Phillips appears to have believed that a body would feel cold around 2-3 hours after death. So I can only imagine that Fish would say that a dead body lying in the open whose surface body temperature has fallen to 25 deg C or 77 deg F will FEEL cold to a medic.

And there in a nutshell is the issue I was trying to get across. An objectively warm body such as one at 25 deg C, which is, as Fish says, 'on the warm side' can easily feel cold to the human touch. The same will be true of body temperatures in the range of 30 to 35 deg centigrade. They are objectively warm temperatures which can feel subjectively cold. Chapman's surface body temperature on 8 September could easily have fallen to well below 35 deg centigrade one hour after death. We have no idea what it was when she was alive. Hence, no sensible conclusions can be drawn from the fact that her body felt cold at the surface at 6.30am.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I've seen many examples of doctors noting that a living person was 'cold'. Here's just one example from the Daily Telegraph 27 November 1857 regarding the death of Mary Ann Bowcam:


‘Mr Robert Menzies said that he was a surgeon in practice and resided at No. 86, Upper Stamford-street, Lambeth. On Tuesday last he was sent for to see the deceased, and on arrival found her on a bed of the house of the last witness. ..The deceased was then in a comatose state, and he supposed her to be suffering from hysteria. He ordered cold applications to her head and warm water to her feet; but he must confess that he had not the least apprehension of her death at that time. The surface of the body was cold and the pulse irregular....He sent for a lancet and tried to bleed her, but no blood flowed, and she ceased to exist.'



When a person feels cold when they are alive, what are they going to feel like an hour after death? Cold probably! And that would mislead anyone who thinks that it takes 2 to 3 hours to become cold after death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fish gave me a good laugh when he said "As I have pointed out many times now, if this was the case, then many people with cold skin would run the risk of being proclaimed dead on their yearly health check-ups." (#1343)

People are not proclaimed dead because their skin feels cold. Most doctors to my knowledge will think to check for a pulse! I'm sure we are all aware of the difficulties of pronouncing death, even for a qualified medic. One trick is to put a mirror under a person's nose to see if is affected by breath. There are still plenty of stories of people being pronounced dead only to come back to life.

The point is not so much whether a doctor can tell the difference between a living person who feels cold and a dead one from the skin temperature but whether a doctor can really tell whether a person who feels "cold" is really and objectively cold at the surface.

Fish's argument fails at this hurdle.

But even if medics could accurately feel "cold" in a dead body what can they draw from that? Where are the experts or the studies which state that a person will not feel cold after one hour? I don't see them. All I see are pathologists from as early as the 1860s through to 2019 who tell us that it's useless to use perceived warmth to indicate or estimate time of death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm not going to go over all the arguments we've already had about rigor. This discussion actually started with rigor around 20 August and then, after Fish lost that one, moved to body cooling about a week later. The experts are quite perfectly clear that rigor can commence within half an hour and can be accelerated by a cut throat or sudden hemorrhage and by a wasting disease, both of which apply to Chapman. Trevor's expert has speculated that rigor "may" take longer in a malnourished body but has said nothing about a victim with a cut throat and/or wasting disease which makes it of little value in applying to Chapman.

I remind everyone that Trevor's expert also stated: "How long rigor mortis takes to develop varies greatly from person to person, and perhaps more importantly the assessment of how stiff someone is also varies from person to person!" He also said, "there are circumstances in which rigor mortis can be observed sooner after death. If somebody has an illness or fever, this can speed up the rate of onset by exhausting the cellular supply of energy more quickly than usual, for example. Specifically within the context of “trauma”, if there has been a period of extreme exertion immediately prior to death (e.g. running / fighting for your life) then you can see how cellular energy stores may have been depleted prior to death, resulting in more rapid onset of rigor mortis".

So it's no good some people cherry picking bits they like from Dr Biggs while ignoring those bits they don't like.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The torturous logic that enables one to adamantly agree with the fact the technique is so unreliable as to be unsafe and then adamantly claim that it does not follow that the result should not be relied upon beggars belief.



And again, in the first sentence there's agreement the technique cannot be used to provide ToD (the issue) is acknowledge, but then followed by an irrelevancy. Smoke and mirrors.



Well, technically it means his estimate is no better than random guessing, which of course has some probability of accidentally getting the right time, but it means that in light of any evidence pointing to a different time, his guesstimate should not factor in as counter-evidence.



Which is so far from the mark of what is necessary to make a ToD estimate that it's irrelevant to the current topic. Nobody disputes that people can detect differences in temperature. Rather, it's the fact that surface temperature of the body is not a measure that can give you ToD, even if Dr. Phillips had used a thermometer to measure the surface skin temperature it would be equally useless for current purposes. And without having measured a number of other external factors (the temperature in the yard; the amount of wind, which affects cooling rates, body mass, the influence of blood loss, opening the gut cavity, removal of the organs and intestines, etc), even the core body temperature would have been useless. Trying to get anything like an accurate estimate of ToD based upon body temperature readings is far more complicated than simply touching the skin and going "brrrrr".

- Jeff

The torturous logic that enables one to adamantly agree with the fact the technique is so unreliable as to be unsafe and then adamantly claim that it does not follow that the result should not be relied upon beggars belief.

Yes, it does beggar belief Jeff but it is also fascinating to analyze. How does Fish manage to conclude that a technique which he openly accepts is unreliable, unsafe and useless is not, in fact, always unreliable, unsafe and useless?

It's a very simple two-step process of magic tricks.


1. He pretends that, in the case of Chapman, Dr Phillips was not estimating the time of death.

2. He pretends that a "cold" body cannot be mistaken for a "warm" body by an experienced medic, and that a body can't feel "cold" to an experienced medic until at least two hours after death.


What he's saying, in effect, is that there is an exception to the rule that the technique is useless. For Fish, where a body feels "cold" to a medic, that medic CAN draw one entirely reliable, safe and useful conclusion, namely that the body has been dead for at least two hours. He's worked it all out by himself with no need for expert assistance or source material.

There is of course a complex third limb to the argument whereby a medic has to be assigned magic powers to detect the underlying core warmth of a dead body and is, therefore, able to overcome the impossible hurdle of being able to distinguish between a "cold" and "warm" body by touch or, to use his new word, palpation.

That's how he does it. The deep and fundamental flaws in his argument, however, must be obvious to everyone by now.

[FISHY1118]

Disproven nonsense.

Idiotic post.

What a waste of space.

jealous nasty sore loser , well done baron, about time too

[Herlock Sholmes]

jealous nasty sore loser , well done baron, about time too

This comment coming from someone that called me an idiot in a previous post?! Luckily I did not report you because I’m not a baby or a Troll.

What planet are you living on Fishy? Does your eyesight fail whenever you see posts that you don’t like?

Phillips can now very safely be dismissed. The evidence that he simply could not have accurately predicted the TOD is so overwhelming as to not require further discussion. Even Trevor accepts this fact.

So it’s difficult to see where you get loser from when all posters apart from you, Fish, The Baron and PS, agree with me. And three of that 4 have a definite need for an earlier TOD and are biased. So I’d say that’s a pretty resounding defeat for you and your pals.

Try sticking to facts and evidence without resorting to childishness.

It’s noticeable to all that you have, for the fourth time, typically avoided an inconvenient question so I’ll ask it again:

Why is it that, despite all of the evidence, you are convinced of Phillips superhuman power to do something that he couldn’t possibly have done, I.e. accurately predict Chapman’s TOD? And yet when it comes to the much simpler task of looking around a deciding that she was definitely killed where she was found, then Phillips becomes incompetent? Can you explain this convenient piece of cherry-picking Fishy??

[JeffHamm]

The torturous logic that enables one to adamantly agree with the fact the technique is so unreliable as to be unsafe and then adamantly claim that it does not follow that the result should not be relied upon beggars belief.

Yes, it does beggar belief Jeff but it is also fascinating to analyze. How does Fish manage to conclude that a technique which he openly accepts is unreliable, unsafe and useless is not, in fact, always unreliable, unsafe and useless?

It's a very simple two-step process of magic tricks.


1. He pretends that, in the case of Chapman, Dr Phillips was not estimating the time of death.

2. He pretends that a "cold" body cannot be mistaken for a "warm" body by an experienced medic, and that a body can't feel "cold" to an experienced medic until at least two hours after death.


What he's saying, in effect, is that there is an exception to the rule that the technique is useless. For Fish, where a body feels "cold" to a medic, that medic CAN draw one entirely reliable, safe and useful conclusion, namely that the body has been dead for at least two hours. He's worked it all out by himself with no need for expert assistance or source material.

There is of course a complex third limb to the argument whereby a medic has to be assigned magic powers to detect the underlying core warmth of a dead body and is, therefore, able to overcome the impossible hurdle of being able to distinguish between a "cold" and "warm" body by touch or, to use his new word, palpation.

That's how he does it. The deep and fundamental flaws in his argument, however, must be obvious to everyone by now.

Hi Herlock,

With Fisherman the theory drives the data, though he doesn't acknowledge that, it is evident from his behaviour. Unfortunately, the impact is the other way round, the evidence drives the theory. In many ways, Fisherman's "Cross/Lechmere" theory has some good points. He's looking at someone who is known to have been in the vicinity of one of the victims (Nichols), and is local so would have a good idea of the area, and so forth, and is also someone who, as far as we know, received relatively little attention from the police (which could explain why he was never caught). He's noted that Chapman's murder site is on a route he might take on his way to work, so that was interesting. And all of that's actually a good starting point for the hypothesis that "Might Cross/Lechmere have been JtR?" Once the evidence is looked at to test that hypothesis, though, it conflicts with it at every turn (I'm not going to rehash all the arguments people have put forth again, they can be found in various threads). Rather than conclude the research was successful (in that it a) came up with a plausible hypothesis, b) put that hypothesis to the test by examining the data and c) produced a well supported conclusion that Cross/Lechmere was not JtR, Fisherman continues to discard the evidence, or distort it, because he does not view it as a hypothesis to be tested, it is truth. And since it is true, the data/evidence must therefore be wrong. This is, unfortunately, a common error in reasoning, not only with respect to JtR but a lot of other issues in everyday life.

It's also why he sees a link between a study that measures ability to detect differences in temperature as being relevant at all. First, knowing that A is warmer than B doesn't tell you either the temperature of A nor B, nor does it even tell you how many degrees apart A and B are, it only gives you a relative ranking. Let's say, for example, You touch A then B and conclude A was the warmer. (and let's say that they were 4 degrees between them). Now you touch C and D, and note that D was warmer than C. And they may differ by 4 degrees as well. And if I asked which pair differed by the most, if A and B were 28 and 24 degrees, but C and D were 10 and 14, people are most likely going to say that the 2nd pair had the greater temperature difference (our perceptions of differences tend to be non-linear - though I don't know for sure about perceived warmth so I'm going out on a limb here, but a fairly safe one. Other than length, I can't think of anything we perceive that follows a strictly linear relationship).

Of course, all of that is a distraction, because if one wants to have any hope of estimating ToD based upon temperature readings it has to be a core reading, and it has to include exact numbers with respect to air termperature, body mass, and so forth, none of which Dr. Phillips had. So even if he had a device that gave him the exact skin temperature, it would still be just as useless with respect to making a ToD estimation. He won't acknowledge that, though, because he needs the ToD to be before 4:00, because Cross/Lechmere's work required him to be at work by 4:00. And while he could hypothesize that Cross/Lechmere had the day off, he then is left without an explanation for why he appears to have been heading to work (since that's part of his evidence - Chapman is enroute to work, etc), which means he has to modify it to "well, he was familiar with that area because he normally went to work that way", which is far less convincing, and again, the threads unravel, and the sewing kit must come out. Stitch over the hole created by the witness testimonies, and his theory is safe to wear another day.

Nothing will get him to admit that he's wrong because, in his mind, he knows the truth. I have no idea what the truth is, but I do know what the evidence seems to suggest. I also know the evidence we have is not without error, hence I think at best we can draw tentative conclusions. What I look for, basically, is after we draw those tentative conclusions for each of the murders, which ones seem consistently to be drawn? Those ones, are probably the ones as close to the truth as we are likely to get based upon the current evidence set we have to work with.

- Jeff

[John G]

I'm not going to go over all the arguments we've already had about rigor. This discussion actually started with rigor around 20 August and then, after Fish lost that one, moved to body cooling about a week later. The experts are quite perfectly clear that rigor can commence within half an hour and can be accelerated by a cut throat or sudden hemorrhage and by a wasting disease, both of which apply to Chapman. Trevor's expert has speculated that rigor "may" take longer in a malnourished body but has said nothing about a victim with a cut throat and/or wasting disease which makes it of little value in applying to Chapman.

I remind everyone that Trevor's expert also stated: "How long rigor mortis takes to develop varies greatly from person to person, and perhaps more importantly the assessment of how stiff someone is also varies from person to person!" He also said, "there are circumstances in which rigor mortis can be observed sooner after death. If somebody has an illness or fever, this can speed up the rate of onset by exhausting the cellular supply of energy more quickly than usual, for example. Specifically within the context of “trauma”, if there has been a period of extreme exertion immediately prior to death (e.g. running / fighting for your life) then you can see how cellular energy stores may have been depleted prior to death, resulting in more rapid onset of rigor mortis".

So it's no good some people cherry picking bits they like from Dr Biggs while ignoring those bits they don't like.

I agree, Herlock. The 1.5-4 hour period for the onset of rigor is the average, so I assume plenty of patients fall outside this average.

Here's an example of extremely accelerated rigor mortis in a patient, in account of having suffered too much weight loss (she weighed only 41kg). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5721493/

[Trevor Marriott]

I agree, Herlock. The 1.5-4 hour period for the onset of rigor is the average, so I assume plenty of patients fall outside this average.

Here's an example of extremely accelerated rigor mortis in a patient, in account of having suffered too much weight loss (she weighed only 41kg). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5721493/

No two patients/Victims are the same, the conditions of the bodies, will vary, as will the locations, and the climate etc, so many difference so there is no point in posters keep posting examples of the onset of rigor mortis to compare with Chapman.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[FISHY1118]

T

his comment coming from someone that called me an idiot in a previous post?! Luckily I did not report you because I’m not a baby or a Troll.

i didnt call you an idiot, it was a moron .