Chapman’s death.

[Fisherman]

I notice that you’ve ignored the comment about your bit of editing? And you have the nerve to accuse me of cheating! I also notice that you’ve failed to provide the quotes to support your fatuous assertion that early onset rigor was dependant on tropical climates? Or perhaps you might provide some back up for your assertion that early onset only occurred in freak cases! Perhaps you don’t understand what an average means?

Of course you won’t give it up. You and your cheerleader both need an earlier TOD.

The evidence provided is clear. Phillips could definitely have been wrong and it certainly wouldn’t have been afreak occurrence.

Chapman, in all likelihood, died between 5.20 and 5.25.

I have the nerve to point out any poster who is economic with the truth. You are no exception.

I actually never even noticed the throat cutting part, I only cut out the part that seemingly verified your suggestion that tuberculosis led on a shortened rigor when it was the cause of death. At any rate, I think it is hard to make out the logic of a cut throat shortening the time and severe bloodloss stretching it. I find that an impossible equation.

At the end of the day, I also think that it is lunacy to throw "that will shorten the time!" and "that will lengthen the time" suggestions. There are parameters for and against in the Chapman case, and so they must take each other out. Violent death for asphyxiation, cut throat for alcoholism and so on. That will never get us anywhere.

The ambient temperature WILL get us somewhere though, since all experts agree on how higher temperatures lead to swifter rigor whereas lower temperatures lead to a slower one. Whether we choose to call the temperatures tropical or not does not have any impact on that.

Phillips checked two variables (in fact, he will have checked liver mortis and a few other things too) and he found that they were in line with each other and also in line with the normal cooling off and rigor onset times. You can post a million posts and that will never change. It means that either Phillips was totally and remarkably wrong on the temperature PLUS Chapman went in to rigor way ahead of the normal schedule, or she WAS cold and she DID answer to the normal rigor schedule.

It is business as usual and we land at a TOD that is consistent with the other murders.

Or we have two faulty parameters arriving at the same time (also known as a freak coincidence) and we land at a TOD that deviates from all the other murders.

You want to believe the freak scenario that makes Chapman unique in how she would have been killed at dawn.

I opt for the medical information being correct and Chapman dying at the time we should expect, given what we know of the other murders.

Let's settle for that and move on.

[Fisherman]

My apologies for being logical. If he wasn’t lying (and there’s no evidence that he was of course) then what other explanation could there have been? Maybe it was someone tripping over a corpse?

If you had been logical, you would quickly have arrived at the conclusion that Cadosh was telling porkies. And there is VERY clear evidence that he probably DID do just that.

[Herlock Sholmes]

In addition.....

It’s worth mentioning that you don’t seem to understand what the Kori paper actually is. It’s a review of the scientific literature on rigor mortis so the opinions quoted are not his own. So when he says “in death from disease causing great exhaustion..” he’s actually summarising the view of K.S. Narayan Reddy. Elsewhere we have “ in wasting diseases like cancer, pthisis, rigor mortis will appear early.” That’s also not Kori, it’s W.G. Aitcheson Robertson. And he does not say that it must be death from pthisis that causes this. This is because this is what happens to someone suffering from a wasting disease (like Annie Chapman) at the time of their death. All that you’ve done is to quote a single expert out of context.

Equally, it should be now apparent to you that Kori is not my "hero". He is not, as far as I am aware a renowned forensic pathologist nor as far as I can tell a professor of forensic medicine. In fact, he appears to be an assistant professor and from his photograph he is very young. https://www.galgotiasuniversity.edu....oojan-kori.asp All he did was compile all the views of people who ARE renowed forensic pathologists. So when we compare his conclusion to the clear conclusions of the standard work on forensics in this country, Simpson on Forensics, co-authored by Jason Payne James, which makes clear that rigor must NEVER be relied on to estimate time of death, who do you think we should regard as more reliable? Seriously, please tell me.

As for the childish website, yes I know it was Gareth who first mentioned it but you leapt on it and adopted it as if it was speaking the words of the Lord Almighty. But clearly its figures were derived from an study carried out in India (as referred to by Kori) and must therefore have been relying on second-hand and inaccurate information by saying that the average time for onset of rigor in a temperate climate is 3-6 hours. Even you don't be believe that because you keep telling us it is 2-4 hours. So the Indian report is already wrong. And we have a long list of experienced forensic pathologists from temperate climates who tell us without qualification that rigor can appear within one hour.

You thank me for telling you about the difference between a "sudden" and "severe" hemorraghe (and you are welcome) but you don't seem to understand the diference. Clearly the experts who tell us that cut throat and sudden hemorraghe accelerate the onset of rigor aren't wrong are they? That's madness. I'm just explaining to you why a severe hemorrage, such as severe internal bleeding, can be totally different from a cut throat. Just look up postpartum hemorrage. That's heavy bleeding after giving birth. So in such instances (i.e. a severe but not necessarily sudden hemorraghe) rigor will be delayed. It's a completely different physical and biological mechanism from having your throat cut.

So we have a woman with a wasting disease, having had her throat cut, in circumstances where there is nothing whatsoever unusual in rigor appearing within an hour, as the experts unanimously tell us can occur. A TOD of 5.30 is, therefore, not only plausible but, bearing in mind the witness evidence, likely.



Like I said Fisherman, you are in checkmate and there is no escape.

[Fisherman]

As an aside and if you were not aware: after death, body temperature will drop by 1,5 degrees Celsius per hour until it takes on ambient temperature. So Chapman should have been perfectly warm to the touch at 6.30 if she died at, say 5.40. And indeed, we DO know that Eddowes, who was examined 45 minutes after her death WAS perfectly warm.

That is the kind of hill you have to climb on the temperature issue, Herlock. It is by far and away more likely that she had been dead four hours than 45 minutes. And frankly, if I am not allowed to use the word freakish in this context, I really don't know where it would be better suited.

[Fisherman]

Like I said Fisherman, you are in checkmate and there is no escape.

Well, when we cannot find factual grounds to stand on, that kind of moronic one-liner will do for many people.

For every reason for a quicker rigor in Chapman, I can give one for a slower one. Your reasoning therefore carries less weight than the proverbial bag of farts. The PROBABLE thing is that she commenced her rigor at the very earliest two hours after her death, and that is in total corroboration with the fact that she was cold. Its a case of 1 + 1 = 2, and - sadly - a case of you not being able to clear that mathematical hurdle.

Now go away, the final word has been said.

[Herlock Sholmes]

At any rate, I think it is hard to make out the logic of a cut throat shortening the time and severe bloodloss stretching it."

Just because you don’t understand it is no reason to disregard the experts Fish. The sudden shock and/or struggle and/or loss of blood obviously causes a chemical reaction leading to a more rapid onset of rigor. A haemorrhage of course be internal and very different from a cut throat. At the end of the day the experts tell us that a throat cutting can hasten the onset of rigor so who are we to contradict them?



"Violent death for asphyxiation, cut throat for alcoholism and so on. That will never get us anywhere."

I agree. That's the whole point. It's what Payne James & Co are saying. You cannot accurately estimate time of death based on rigor. There are too many variables. It's why he can't rely on an estimate of TOD at 4.30. It could just as easily have been 5.30.



"all experts agree on how higher temperatures lead to swifter rigor whereas lower temperatures lead to a slower one."

Temperature is only one variable. There were other variables at play. You can't just ignore them because you don’t like where they lead.



"Phillips checked two variables (in fact, he will have checked liver mortis and a few other things too) and he found that they were in line with each other and also in line with the normal cooling off and rigor onset times."

Phillips didn't estimate time of death based on rigor. That is perfectly clear from what he said to the coroner and the coroner's summing up in which he rejected Phillips' conclusions.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. Now go away, the final word has been said.

I was unaware that you had been endowed with the authority to dismiss other posters?

[Herlock Sholmes]

. For every reason for a quicker rigor in Chapman, I can give one for a slower one.

And this is why I’ve been saying for weeks that using rigor mortis is an unsafe way to measure TOD. The evidence to back this up has been provided and is irrefutable.

[Herlock Sholmes]

As an aside and if you were not aware: after death, body temperature will drop by 1,5 degrees Celsius per hour until it takes on ambient temperature. So Chapman should have been perfectly warm to the touch at 6.30 if she died at, say 5.40. And indeed, we DO know that Eddowes, who was examined 45 minutes after her death WAS perfectly warm.

That is the kind of hill you have to climb on the temperature issue, Herlock. It is by far and away more likely that she had been dead four hours than 45 minutes. And frankly, if I am not allowed to use the word freakish in this context, I really don't know where it would be better suited.

Isn’t it strange that you’ve previously described the temperature in that backyard as like a fridge (when it suited you to try and fit rigor) but now you are saying that she only appeared cold to Phillips due to the gradual drop in temperature due to Algor Mortis? In other words you now want her cold in a warmer atmosphere. You can’t have it both ways Fish. Also the extreme blood loss would have hastened her cooling. Even Phillips himself admitted that this could have caused the body to cool more rapidly than he thought and the Coroner practically said that he’d got it wrong due to those circumstances.

So how can you rely on temperature? It’s just as unreliable as Rigor.

You have pinned your case onto two methods of calculating TOD which are fraught with possibilities for error. Experts tell us this Fish. And so we have an opinion based on 2 extremely unreliable methods versus the evidence of a three witnesses. Two of them dovetail, but one doesn’t. Neither of the two are reliant on difficult and unreliable science. One only had to be competent to say that he’d seen enough of a yard to be certain that there was no mutilated corpse there. And the other only had to be correct about hearing something brush against a fence that he was little more than a couple of feet away from.

Again, the likelihood is that Phillips was mistaken. Richardson was correct when he said that Annie wasn’t there at 4.50. And Cadosch heard the killer in the yard of number 29 at around 5.20-5.25.

[John Wheat]

Are you being serious?

How could it possibly be something else? According to the infallible Dr Phillips there was a horribly mutilated corpse lying in the yard! I realise that you think that Richardson was too dumb to realise that a door might block his view but who would you nominate as capable of moving around in a back yard and missing seeing Annie?

Come on!

A blind man without a stick is the only person I can think of and even then he'd probably smell the body.

[Ginger]

A blind man without a stick is the only person I can think of and even then he'd probably smell the body.

I'm not wishing to start another pissing match, but I'm honestly curious. Do any of the accounts by witnesses, reporters, police, etc., mention the smell? I'd always thought the background smell in that yard (in that part of town, really) would be pretty pungent, to the point where blood and a pile of intestines might not attract attention, or even be noticed.

[Fisherman]

I'm not wishing to start another pissing match, but I'm honestly curious. Do any of the accounts by witnesses, reporters, police, etc., mention the smell? I'd always thought the background smell in that yard (in that part of town, really) would be pretty pungent, to the point where blood and a pile of intestines might not attract attention, or even be noticed.

None of the accounts mention any smell. One account, though, mentions that Richardson suffered from a cold.

[Fisherman]

Still here, Herlock? Okay, let's provide a little more flogging.

Phillips didn't estimate time of death based on rigor. That is perfectly clear from what he said to the coroner and the coroner's summing up in which he rejected Phillips' conclusions.

Of course he weighed in rigor in his decision. Its another matter that it is in no way any exact parameter, but weighed it in he did. Otherwise I feel pretty certain that he would not have mentioned it. Indeed, he would not even have checked for it if it was of no importance at all. It dovetailed with the temperature that implicated a TOD no less than two hours away and probably significantly more, and THAT makes it very important evidence. I can see why you wish to clear it away, but that won't happen.

I was unaware that you had been endowed with the authority to dismiss other posters?

Surely, one can wish?

And this is why I’ve been saying for weeks that using rigor mortis is an unsafe way to measure TOD. The evidence to back this up has been provided and is irrefutable.

Nobody in his right mind would use rigor to measure TOD. Nor am I suggesting it. What I am saying is that whenever you say that parameter X may have hastened the process, I can say that parameter Y may have slowed it down. Accordingly, it is beyond useless to make these claims. They will not move the rigor in either direction. Consequently, although we cannot rule out that the onset may not have followed the normal pattern, our best guess is that it did. And since people normally start the rigor process between 2-4 hours, we should reason that the likely thing is that Chapman also did so. Any suggestion to the contrary MAY be right, but is less LIKELY to be right, because it takes us into less normal territory. You know it and I know it and the rest of the world knows it. We either work from the normal perspective and acknowledge that freak things can happen, or we work from the freak perspective and acknowledge that normal things can happen. Which choice do you recommend?

Isn’t it strange that you’ve previously described the temperature in that backyard as like a fridge (when it suited you to try and fit rigor) but now you are saying that she only appeared cold to Phillips due to the gradual drop in temperature due to Algor Mortis? In other words you now want her cold in a warmer atmosphere. You can’t have it both ways Fish. Also the extreme blood loss would have hastened her cooling. Even Phillips himself admitted that this could have caused the body to cool more rapidly than he thought and the Coroner practically said that he’d got it wrong due to those circumstances.

I described the temperature in the yard as close to that of a fridge. A fridge will typically hold 4-8 degrees, the back yard was 9. So I am spot on (as always).

It is not about "suiting" rigor, it is a fact that cold temperatures slow rigor down. You either accept that or you prove the contrary. Have a try, if you wish!

Why do you say that I want her "cold in a warmer atmosphere"? The atmosphere was 9 degrees, end of. There is nothing I or you can do about that. What can be said is that any remaining warmth in the body should be easier to recognize in 9 degrees than in room temperature, because the difference between ambient temperature and body temperature would be greater. So why you suggest that I am trying to have something both ways, I don't understand. It´s probably about dribbling away the sound perspective once more.

In fact, YOU are the one wanting things both ways. You want the rigor to have set in quickly and that would require a warmer temperature, and you want the body to have grown cold quickly and that would require a colder temperature. Your suggestions therefore work against each other. Can you see how that works? No?

So how can you rely on temperature? It’s just as unreliable as Rigor.

Says the man who advices me not to think I am medically enough versed...

I will - slooooowly and ever so clearly - once again explain this to you in a very pedagogic way:

What a medico does when he tries to establish TOD by feeling body warmth is to put his hand on the body. He feels for any body temperature that remains.

Basically, if the body is all warm, the doctor will conclude that the person has not been dead for any longer time, and if the body is all cold, he will conclude that the person has been dead for a long period of time. Can we agree on that? No?

This all is based on how the temperature starts to drop after we die. The average time for that dropping process says that the temperature will fall by about 1,5 degrees Celsius per hour. There will be deviations, but not massive ones if the surrounding environmental factors are not extremely hot or cold. Do we agree on this too? Yes? No?

So what is this "unreliability" that is spoken of in combination with this process? Well, it has to do with how a hand is not a thermometer - a doctor cannot be expected to feel subtle differences, and he is quite likely to make errors if he tries to be exact. Telling who did first of two victims that have been dead for five and six hours, respectively, is a bit like trying to say whether a grey color is more white than black.

Then again, most people can tell white from black if the colors have NOT been mixed in any way. And this is what we are dealing with here - you are in fact telling us that it is uncertain whether a doctor can tell a quite warm body from a totally cold one. And THAT is not something that is "fraught with uncertainty".

Chapman had been dead for less than an hour (possibly around three quarters of an hour) when Phillips examined her. In that time, the body temperature will have dropped LESS than 1,5 degrees Celsius. Accordingly, Chapman would have been quite warm to the touch at that stage. The proof of the pudding is Eddowes, who was examined around three quarters of an hour after she died, and was found to be quite warm, although she died in COLDER conditions than Chapman did and laying a place where she was more exposed to the weather. She did not exhibit some little warmth, she was not half-warm, it was not a case of a spot under her intestines still retaining a little measure of warmth - she was QUITE WARM. And so Chapman would be - if she had indeed very recently died.

Telling one grey nuance from another: hard to do.

Telling jet black from shiny white: super easy to do.

So there CAN and WILL be uncertainty in establishing TOD by way of temperature feeling. But telling stone cold from quite warm is not an example of that field of uncertainty.

Your choice is to believe witnesses the police had very grave doubts about and who contradicted each other or gave different testimony at different times. To enable that choice, you use the experts very sound advice not to think that feeling for warmth is an exact method. But that relates to subtle differences, and not to the difference between a stone cold body and an all warm one! Therefore, the criticism that is soundly offered in relation to doubtful cases is NOT relevant here. the difficulties you want to exist are non-existent in the Chapman case. It is not possible to say if she had been dead for two and a half or three hours, but it is easy to say that she had NOT been dead for one hour only.

In effect, what you are suggesting is that Phillips mistook a temperature close to the extreme warm end of the specter for a temperature at the extreme cold end. Meaning that if you are to believed, the doctor would be likely to feel a sleeping woman for warmth and then pronounce her many hours dead! The mere suggestion is beyond ludicrous.

We should instead all put our hands to your thinking and suggestions and we will easily see that they grew stiff and stone cold the monument you uttered them.

Now, if there is nothing more...?

[Fisherman]

There are a few fields where a paradigm change can be expected and is already underway. The issue with Phillips versus the witnesses is one such matter, where the ball was originally set in motion by Wolf Vanderlindens ingenious work.

Other such fields is the question whether the rag was in place when Long first passed it or not and whether the ripper and the torso killer were one and the same.

In all these cases, the evidence has been suppressed in favour of personal "interpretations" that have grown to become the norm. Once we revisit these errands and reassess them, it becomes clear that Ripperology is more fraught with uncertainty than the method of establishing body temperature by hand.

A common denominator between these three matters is that once they are correctly interpreted, they all enhance Lechmere as a really good suspect. Hence, it will (naturally) be said that I only point to these matters because I am a Lechmere proponent. (It may even be said the I am hijacking this thread for Lechmere purposes).

That is the quality of mainstream ripperology these days.

[John Wheat]

There are a few fields where a paradigm change can be expected and is already underway. The issue with Phillips versus the witnesses is one such matter, where the ball was originally set in motion by Wolf Vanderlindens ingenious work.

Other such fields is the question whether the rag was in place when Long first passed it or not and whether the ripper and the torso killer were one and the same.

In all these cases, the evidence has been suppressed in favour of personal "interpretations" that have grown to become the norm. Once we revisit these errands and reassess them, it becomes clear that Ripperology is more fraught with uncertainty than the method of establishing body temperature by hand.

A common denominator between these three matters is that once they are correctly interpreted, they all enhance Lechmere as a really good suspect. Hence, it will (naturally) be said that I only point to these matters because I am a Lechmere proponent. (It may even be said the I am hijacking this thread for Lechmere purposes).

That is the quality of mainstream ripperology these days.

But Lechmere is a terrible suspect.