Chapman’s death.

[Fisherman]

On the "qualifying" business, how common is it that doctors give THREE times in one sentence? Supposedly, Phillips established the time he REALLY believed in ("probably MORE than two hours") and TWO minimums ("at least two hours" and the open option, allowing for anything at all).

Nope. Doesn't happen. Any doctor can in retrospect say "I said at least two hours but probably more than so, but since I have now considered the factor X, I am willing to concede that it could have been less than two hours." NO doctor will bake all three times into one sentence.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is this the same Codosch that was also standing two feet away on the top step of his back door entrance when he heard the ''NO''[ which by the way he couldn't be sure which side it came from] AT 5.20AM . Lets not forget that Codosch, on four occasions was at least two feet away from the killer ripping into Chapman in the daylight while 17 people were getting ready to start their day.ALSO HE WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY VISIBLE TO THE KILLER FROM THE HEIGHT ON HIS STEP WHICH AT FIVE FOOT SIX WOULD HAVE MADE HIM STAND OUT LIKE THE PROVERBIAL DOGS BALLS. ITS TRULY REMARKABLE TO THINK THAT CHAPMANS MURDER WAS COMMITTED WHILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON .


ILL GO WITH THIS VERSION ANY DAY OF THE WEEK , 1 PHILLIPS WAS CORRECT AND CHAPMAN WAS DEAD IN THE YARD A 3.30 TO 4.30 2 CODOSCH WAS MISTAKEN IN WHERE HE HEARD THE ''NO'' COME FROM, AND THE THUD COULD HAVE BEEN ANY THING, NOT NECESSARILY OF HUMAN ORIGIN. 3 LONG WAS FLAT OUT WRONG IN IDENTIFYING CHAPMAN AND THE RIPPER.[ remember for long to be right ,codosch is totally irreverent ] 4 AND FINALLY RICHARDSON IN MY OPINION LIED, AS HIS FIRST STATEMENT HE GAVE TO INSPECTOR CHANDLER MADE NO REF TO SITTING ON THE STEP TO CUT HIS BOOT STRAP . GAME OVER FOR YOU HERLOCK , MOVE ON.

Couldn’t you at least drip-feed the nonsense without flooding me with it?

For you and other it appears necessary to accuse everyone connected with the case of idiocy, apart from the infallible Dr P of course, in your attempt to shoehorn your theory into place? You are now suggesting that the ripper, a man than remained at liberty, was such an unutterable buffoon that he’d have murdered Annie Chapman in full view of someone standing at the other side of a fence! The suggestion is preposterous! Of course he would have remained out of site. It’s lunacy that you would even suggest such a thing.

That the thud could have been anything is just pathetic I’m afraid. What? According to Phillips there was an horrifically mutilated corpse lying there! So it couldn’t have been a person for very obvious, at least to most of us, reasons. As I’ve said earlier, was it an overweight and very clumsy cat who wasn’t squeamish? There was a noise in a yard where a murder took place just 30 minutes after a man had said that the yard was empty and we have a high level of confidence that no one else had entered that yard in the meantime.

This 17 people comment is a smokescreen. No matter where the killer had chosen to kill that morning there would have been people getting up for work. They weren’t getting ready in the yard. Chapman was a prostitute desperate for cash. She would have assured the killer that they were safe and wouldn’t be disturbed. Turned out she was correct.

Long was flat out wrong. Congratulations on this display of your psychic powers.

The fact that Richardson didn’t at first mention sitting on the step is irrelevant. In his likely brief conversation with Chandler all that Chandler need to know was what time he was there and that there wasn’t a body was there. He didn’t lie he just didn’t go into detail. How do we know that the conversation wasn’t incredibly brief? How do we know that Chandler was called by a Constable so he told Richardson that he could go because he had all that he needed from him? You are deliberately reading something sinister into this. His testimony under oath at the Inquest is the important one.

Your arguments reek of desperation Fish. Because you are desperate for Phillips to have been correct.

[Fisherman]

Your arguments reek of desperation Fish. Because you are desperate for Phillips to have been correct.

Can't you see that you sound totally desperate yourself? For Phillips to have been wrong? (And I know that I am not the "Fish" you refer to this time, but really; can you not see that you seem every bit as desperate to be correct as anybody else out here? Or do you beleive that you sound cool, calm and collected, only making balanced and well thought over posts, where those who disagree with you are desperate and hysterical?

Because, you see, I think many out here regard us all as a band of lunatics by now. You too.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And that is the problem! A lot of speculation and mistakes and freakish things must be in place to make Phillips wrong. She must have taken a second meal while out on the streets looking for customers, although we know she had eaten already. Possible? Yes, but unlikely. And Phillips must have mistaken warm for cold! Possible? No. Unless Chapman had grown cold quicker than anybody else in medical history. Possible? Maybe if she was stuck in a freezer before placed in the backyard. Plus she would have developed a very quick rigor. Possible? Yes, but not very likely.

The other way around, if she died 3.30, the meal she had was in the shape it should be, the body temperature was where it should be and the rigor was where it should be. Plus the murder was committed at a time consistent with the others.

It really is a no-brainer.

I’ll answer this one before I head out. Obviously this is nonsense.

After having gorged herself on the sumptuous feast of a potato the poorly nourished Annie would obviously have been too bloated to have taken an more food of course!!! Not unlikely in the slightest Fish. You are shoehorning. If Annie was killed at around 5.25 (which is overwhelmingly likely of course) then she had ample time to eat again. And sadly, like a wld animal, Annie didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. And so if a friend offered her food, or she had earned a few pence she might easily have eaten.

The digestion defence is a non-starter unless you can say that it was either definite or unlikely in the extreme that Annie ate again.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Can't you see that you sound totally desperate yourself? For Phillips to have been wrong?

Fish, I’ve always said that it’s not impossible that he could have been correct and all the witnesses were lying or mistaken. I think that my position is entirely calm and reasoned. It’s a fact that the 2 methods were unreliable. It’s a fact that the criteria that might have affected the results were present. We know that it didn’t have to be freak circumstances. And we have three witnesses that flat out contradict the doctor.

And so in conclusion I think it likelier that Chapman died after 5am. There is nothing desperate about this Fish. The desperation comes into play when you keep trying to portray Phillips a having knowledge and skills that a Victorian Doctor couldn’t have.

You yourself have said that the pro’s and con’s virtually cancel each other out. This means that Phillips results are unreliable. Pure and simple. We can make no proper judgment from them.

And so.....we have to go to the witnesses.

Im off.

[Fisherman]

I’ll answer this one before I head out. Obviously this is nonsense.

After having gorged herself on the sumptuous feast of a potato the poorly nourished Annie would obviously have been too bloated to have taken an more food of course!!! Not unlikely in the slightest Fish. You are shoehorning. If Annie was killed at around 5.25 (which is overwhelmingly likely of course) then she had ample time to eat again. And sadly, like a wld animal, Annie didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. And so if a friend offered her food, or she had earned a few pence she might easily have eaten.

The digestion defence is a non-starter unless you can say that it was either definite or unlikely in the extreme that Annie ate again.

If we rule out the hysterical stuff, we can see that we have Chapman with no economical means heading out in the dead of night to find customers, after having taken her meal in the doss house, a baked potato. The likely thing is that she thereafter concentrated on finding a punter or two, and not that she ate. When she was examined, she had partly digested - guess what? - potatoes in her stomach.

To you it is nonsense to suggest that the potato found inside her was likely the one she had in the doss house. To me, it is our best guess.

Besides, Annie Chapman was not killed around 5.25, she was killed around 3.30 or thereabouts. That is why her body had grown just about all cold at 6.30 and why she had onsetting rigor. But I take it this is "nonsense" too? That Chapman would have followed the general pattern?

And you are absolutely certain that it is I, Fishy and the Baron who are "desperate"?

Squeeze another potato meal in, make her grow cold in an hour only and start up the rigor during that same time period. Surely, that does not sound desperate in the slightest to anybody? OF COURSE, she will have been a medical freak and a total anomaly, otherwise we cannot put your witnesses on the stand. You know, the woman who never saw the couple she spoke of good enough to allow for her to identify them, the man who could not say wherefrom the conversation in the back yards came and who never heard a sound but for the thud and the man who cut leather from his boot, laced it up after he had cut leather from it, and who then suddenly remembered that he had NOT cut leather from his boot at all. The man who MUST have been right because he SAID that he would not have missed the body, whereas Phillips, who DID see the body and examined it, MUST have been wrong.

Reason for Richardsons certainty to be right: he said so.

Reason for Phillips certainty to be wrong: he said something that did not accord with what Richardson said.

Good going there, Herlock - this is coming on nicely!

[Fisherman]

Fish, I’ve always said that it’s not impossible that he could have been correct and all the witnesses were lying or mistaken. I think that my position is entirely calm and reasoned. It’s a fact that the 2 methods were unreliable. It’s a fact that the criteria that might have affected the results were present. We know that it didn’t have to be freak circumstances. And we have three witnesses that flat out contradict the doctor.

And so in conclusion I think it likelier that Chapman died after 5am. There is nothing desperate about this Fish. The desperation comes into play when you keep trying to portray Phillips a having knowledge and skills that a Victorian Doctor couldn’t have.

You yourself have said that the pro’s and con’s virtually cancel each other out. This means that Phillips results are unreliable. Pure and simple. We can make no proper judgment from them.

And so.....we have to go to the witnesses.

Im off.

That's not what I asked about. I asked you whether you can see that you are coming across as every bit as desperate and more as anybody else out here. Do you really think you are coming across as "calm and reasoned"? If so, I must disappoint you sorely. You are coming across as somebody who shouts out from the rooftops that your opponents are nonsensical and desperate. And that's on a good day, on a bad day you get worse.

Get a mirror, and prepare to be disappointed.

PS. I have not said that the pros and cons cancel each other out, have I? No, I have said the pros and cons cancel each other out when it comes to parameters quickening or slowing rigor down, nothing else. And accordingly, we don't start but assuming a rigor onset less than an hour after TOD, we assume one of at least two hours. 2-4 is the normal span, and when we have canceled out the pros and cons, we start from a normal stance.
In the overall errand, the pros in favour of Phillips being right swept the cons off their unexacting feet many posts ago. A fair judging begins with ruling Long and Cadosch out in my meaning, so do not get me wrong - it may "reek of desperation" as you put things.

You at least get the last part right - you are off. Way off.

[Fisherman]

You need to envisage a post mortem room with ten bodies lying inside it, Herlock. Body one died at 3.00, body two at 3.30, body three at 4.00, body four at 4.30, body five at 5.00, body six at 5.30, body seven at 6.00, body eight at 6.30, body nine at 7.00 and body ten at 7.30.

The uncertainty that adhered to the victorian method of feeling for warmth would have meant that it would be hard to say whether body seven died before body eight, for example - had an hour is something that would be hard to recognize and the latter the examination takes place, the harder it will be to tell the real order. If a medico was to examine these two bodies at, say 9.00, 2,5 to 3 hours would have passed and things would be a lot harder than if one to one and a half hour only had passed. It would nevertheless be a procedure that could go wrong.
But take the extremes! Let a doctor look at bodies two and seven at 7.00! In that case, body seven will have one hour only to have cooled off and would likely not have cooled at all, since the postmortem temperature plateau will have kept the temperature up. Body two, however, will have had three and a half hours to cool off, and will likely feel just about all cold to the touch (you may remember Seddon-Smith, who tells us that the body will grow totally cold in 4-6 hours? And Phillips who says "just about all cold, but for a certain remaining heat under the intestines"?).
Would a doctor mistake THOSE two bodies? Is he even remotely likely to say that body seven is all cold? Is he even remotely likely to say that body two is totally warm?

The simple answer is no, he is not remotely likely to do that. And so the much spoken about uncertainty flies out the window in cases where we are comparing extremes. Whooooosh! Watch them go! We are NOT establishing any exact time of death, mind you, we are telling cold from warm. And no doctor would mix them up, end of. Least of all a medico who had examined thousands of corpses, in all likelihood.

Find me such a case, where an experienced medico mistakes one extreme for the other, and cannot tell cold from warm! (And please, no examples from outdoor bodies in wintertime Siberia!)

Chapman? Nope.

[Harry D]

Herlock affirms that Dr Phillips' estimate was not an exact science, and gives more weight to the three independent witnesses whose testimony, although incongruous in timings, would appear to put the TOD around 5.30am at the earliest.

Fisherman, on the other hand, puts more stock in Dr Phillips' expertise when assessing the rigor & body temp of the victim which puts her murder around two hours earlier, and discredits the reliability of the three witnesses, who were either mistaken or attention-seeking.

That's the gist of it, yes?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock affirms that Dr Phillips' estimate was not an exact science, and gives more weight to the three independent witnesses whose testimony, although incongruous in timings, would appear to put the TOD around 5.30am at the earliest.

Fisherman, on the other hand, puts more stock in Dr Phillips' expertise when assessing the rigor & body temp of the victim which puts her murder around two hours earlier, and discredits the reliability of the three witnesses, who were either mistaken or attention-seeking.

That's the gist of it, yes?

Basically Harry the experts tell us that neither methods are reliable. The criteria can occur that affect the outcomes. Those criteria existed at the time so it is quite reasonable to suggest that Phillips could have got it wrong. Fish is trying to give everyone the impression that these things could only have occurred in freak circumstances. This simply isn’t the case. I’ve asked Fish more than once to provide evidence for accuracy of the word freak. He has failed to do so because freak circumstances aren’t required. In any case throat cutting and horrific mutilation are hardly normal. Renowned authorities tell us that these methods are not to be relied upon. The proper way for a Doctor to use temperature as a guide is for him to use a thermometer and to check rectally (and even then it’s not totally accurate) but Phillips just used touch. Fish is almost implying some magical level of skill for Phillips. He was a Victorian Doctor using unreliable methods. He could have been wrong, he could have been right. We can get no further than this. And so for me the balance is tipped by three witnesses that all contradict Phillips and point to Chapman dying after 5.00am.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That's not what I asked about. I asked you whether you can see that you are coming across as every bit as desperate and more as anybody else out here. Do you really think you are coming across as "calm and reasoned"? If so, I must disappoint you sorely. You are coming across as somebody who shouts out from the rooftops that your opponents are nonsensical and desperate. And that's on a good day, on a bad day you get worse.

Get a mirror, and prepare to be disappointed.

PS. I have not said that the pros and cons cancel each other out, have I? No, I have said the pros and cons cancel each other out when it comes to parameters quickening or slowing rigor down, nothing else. And accordingly, we don't start but assuming a rigor onset less than an hour after TOD, we assume one of at least two hours. 2-4 is the normal span, and when we have canceled out the pros and cons, we start from a normal stance.
In the overall errand, the pros in favour of Phillips being right swept the cons off their unexacting feet many posts ago. A fair judging begins with ruling Long and Cadosch out in my meaning, so do not get me wrong - it may "reek of desperation" as you put things.

You at least get the last part right - you are off. Way off.

Please don’t persist in trying to give the impression that you are the saint and I’m the devil. I do try and remain calm and yes I don’t always succeed. And yes, I’ll quite happily apologise for this. But apart from our disagreements and the lack of logic I get from Fishy I also have a stalker to contend with. A poster who doesn’t join in any other debates on Casebook but just surfaces occasionally always on threads that I’m on and only to post mocking comments directly to me.

On your second point.

This is nonsense Fish and you know it. It is you that keeps insisting that we fall back on the 2-4 hours by default. As I’ve put it before it’s simply not logical to say that, for example

if x occurs 70% of the time and y occurs 30% of the time but we don’t know which of the two is correct then we should assume x.

This is inaccurate.

We should look to other ways.

I.e. the witnesses.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, I accept what he is saying.

But he is not saying what you claim he is saying.

You stated that he says that "some" people's skin will grow cold in 10-20 minutes. Thereby, you believed that he supported your take that Chapman could have been one of these "some" people, and that this supported your take that Phillips could have mistaken her for a long dead woman.

What Seddon-Smith instead says is that ALL people's skin will grow cold in 10-20 minutes, on account of how it is insulated from the warm body core. And that means that Chapman will not have been an isolated example in this regard - she, Eddowes, Stride, Kelly, Nichols, Tabram, you, me, Obama, Pink, Jay Leno, the milkman and bush-women from African tribes will ALL have our skin grow cold in 10-20 minutes when we die.

So why is it that not all people who had been dead for more than 20 minutes were pronounced cold and dead for hours? As I have tried to explain: because you can feel the body core warmth THROUGH the skin. And this was what Phillips felt fore, but there WAS no warmth. It had all gone away.

And to boot, there is such a thing like the plateau I mentioned - the temperature will NOT start to drop immediately after death, but instead we will retain out body temperature for between half an hour and an hour before the dropping process sets in. So arguably, Chapman would have been ALL WARM or very close to all warm one hour after her death, just as Eddowes was found to be. Both women SKIN would at that stage have been cold, though, which is what Seddon-Smith speaks about - the cooling of the SKIN, not of the BODY.

I hope you can see how this works now, Herlock!

You said:


"Yes, I accept what he is saying.

But he is not saying what you claim he is saying."

My response:

What happened is that on 24^th August in #354 I posted the entire answer by Dr, Seddon Smith to the question "How long does it take your body to get cold after death?" without any comment from me.



You then went into full panic mode at the sight of "10-20 minutes" and, in #363, after calling me "Baghdad Bob" said to me the next day, having had plenty of time to think about it, "You google as much as you can, you don't check the reliability of your sources…and you come up with useless information." So you were calling Seddon-Smith's information "useless" but now today, for the first time, three days later, you tell me that you accept everything that Dr Seddon-Smith said!!!! It's both hilarious and sad at the same time and shows that you do not debate in good faith but throw up false obstacles to factual information.

But in your panic you noticed that Seddon-Smith had stated that after 4-6 hours a dead body will feel "stone cold" so you suddenly, out of nowhere, invented the notion that Dr Phillips found Chapman to be "stone cold", apparently being unaware that he expressly stated that he found internal warmth around the area of the (exposed) intestines.

You now claim that I misunderstood and misrepresented Seddon-Smith but I did no such thing. It was you who misunderstood and misrepresented him! Thus, in #363 you stated categorically:


"Seddon-Smith tells us that the body will feel totally cold 10-20 minutes after death"


But nowhere does Seddon-Smith use the expression "totally cold". As usual, you invent words and phrases which you insert into the evidence in order to discredit it. The amazing thing is that if you truly believe that Seddon-Smith said that the body will feel totally cold 10-20 minutes after death and you fully accept everything that Seddon-Smith said, as you now admit, where does that leave your argument? In tatters I would say.


But of course Seddon-Smith didn't say that the body will feel "totally cold". That was just you misreading him and misunderstanding him, throwing the debate off-kilter as usual and forcing me to waste time rebutting your nonsense.

The only reason you have brought Seddon-Smith up again is because I caught you out getting it wrong about the Chapman post-mortem evidence and you had to admit you had made a mistake but rather than just admit it you then desperately had to try and find a mistake I had made, so you pretended that I had got Seddon-Smith "backwards". It's quite pathetic.


Furthermore....

You said:


"You stated that he says that "some" people's skin will grow cold in 10-20 minutes. Thereby, you believed that he supported your take that Chapman could have been one of these "some" people, and that this supported your take that Phillips could have mistaken her for a long dead woman."

My response:


Today is the latest fiction that you have created when you say to me in #487: "You stated that he says that "some" people's skin will grow cold in 10-20 minutes." It's amazing that you wrap quotation marks around the word "some" as if you are quoting me but I never said that!


What happened was that I said to you in #380


"You challenge the use of Seddon-Smith , but, while discarding his claim that a dead body can feel cold after 10-20minutes, you ACCEPT the claim that it will be "stone cold" after 4-6 hours. So that's cherry picking right there."

You then quibbled with my use of the words "can feel cold" but it should be obvious to you if a body will be cold after 10-20 minutes it can potentially feel cold after 10-20 minutes. Whether it does, in fact, feel cold will depend on a number of factors but Seddon-Smith tells us that it will be cold after 10-20 minutes and you have accepted this.


What Seddon-Smith also tells us very clearly is that the temperature of the skin and the temperature of the core after death will be different. He tells us that "the skin is insulated from the core and cools very rapidly once circulation ceases". As circulation ceases at death, this means that the skin cools "very rapidly" after death. Consequently, as Seddon-Smith says, "the body feels cold quite quickly".


All Dr Phillips did is feel, with his hands, the temperature of the skin. He noted that the body of Chapman (on the left hand side) was cold. He couldn't assess the temperature of the core without a thermometer. I don't think he stuck his finger up Chapman's anus. As I keep telling you, he could not accurately estimate the time of death by doing what he did. The fact that the body was "cold" gets us nowhere because it could be cold after an hour. I keep asking you to find me a source which says that a dead body will only feel cold from a period of 2 hours after death. You obviously can't find one, other than Dr Phillips!! You need to give this nonsense up.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You said:

"because you can feel the body core warmth THROUGH the skin"

My response:


No, Fisherman, look at Seddon-Smith. The skin is "insulated" from the core and cools "very rapidly" once circulation ceases.

You said:

And to boot, there is such a thing like the plateau I mentioned - the temperature will NOT start to drop immediately after death, but instead we will retain out body temperature for between half an hour and an hour before the dropping process sets in. So arguably, Chapman would have been ALL WARM or very close to all warm one hour after her death, just as Eddowes was found to be. Both women SKIN would at that stage have been cold, though, which is what Seddon-Smith speaks about - the cooling of the SKIN, not of the BODY.

My response:

Once again you have confused yourself from misunderstanding a source. The body temperature that is retained for between 30-60 minutes, or, to be more precise, 45 minutes, as mentioned in the paper I provided, is the temperature in the rectum (or the core). It's not the temperature of the skin. The skin is insulated from the core. You are just getting it all wrong time and time again because you are not reading stuff properly. Your attempt to distinguish between "the skin" and "the body" is ridiculous. Absent the use of a thermometer, the only way Phillips could have told whether the left side of Chapman's body was or was not cold was by feeling her skin. That's evidently all he did.


And Seddon Smith was answering the question "How long does it take for your body to get cold after death?". So he WAS speaking of the body but distinguishing between the external surface of the body (i.e. the skin) and the internal core of the body. For the former, you just touch to check the temperature (which is what Dr Phillips did). For the latter you need a thermometer. If you want to challenge this, provide some expert opinion not your own waffle about plastic bags.

[Herlock Sholmes]

There was no qualification, other than towards the two hour minimum. Doctors don't disqualify themselves. Its not a hobby they have.
But coroners can get things wrong, especially if they strive to.

You said:

There was no qualification, other than towards the two hour minimum. Doctors don't disqualify themselves.

My response:

It's amazing that you don't seem to understand that "qualify" and "disqualify" are two completely different things. Clearly you don't understand what it means when an expert qualifies his opinion. It doesn't mean he disqualifies it Fisherman. I'd like to say that this misunderstanding is because you are not a native English speaker but I don't think that's what is going on here.

You said:

If it was about rectal temperature, how is it that any doctor at all could feel any warmth at all in any body at all after the 20 minutes that Seddon-Smith points out as the latest point of the skin having grown cold? Do you believe that the warmth only resides in the rectum after death?

My response:

No, I said there are other places where you could take the temperature with a thermometer but the rectum is the most accurate. Every single forensic pathologist, including Payne James, will tell you this. It is undisputed.

You said:


Of course the material in the paper measures the exact temperatures using a rectal thermometer, but that does not mean that the temperature can only be noticed by that implement. As has been the case since the first human being, body warmth can be felt through the skin too.

My response:


But the point Seddon-Smith makes, which you accept, is that the skin cools "very rapidly" after death and, furthermore, that "the skin is insulated from the core". You understand what the word "insulated" means right? This why the body feels cold "quite quickly". In the case of Chapman, we have a woman in poor health who lost a lot of blood whose body was lying in the open air on a cool night. So, big deal, her body felt cold to Dr Phillips when he touched it. There is no expert today who will say that this rules out death within an hour. And every expert will say that the use of a thermometer is essential. Dr Phillips was using a method to estimate time of death that doesn't give reliable results and his conclusion was an impossible one. He even qualified his opinion himself! The coroner, who had loads of experience, found as a fact that Chapman could only have been dead for one hour when examined at 6.30. What is it about all this that you are not understanding?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I left out the parts where I have already corrected you, mainly on the Seddon-Smith matter, where I hope you have understood the problems with your reasoning.

You said:

You said that Phillips only felt the left side for warmth, and that the right side was left unchecked.

My response:

I didn't say anything about the right side being "left unchecked" but it was the evidence of Phillips himself, according to the Morning Advertiser, that the left side of Chapman's body was cold. I can't do anything about that because it's the evidence. It means he didn't check the entire body for warmth doesn't it? That's what it factually means, right? But what I never said is that the right side was warm while the left side was cold which is what you originally accused me of saying. Clearly, having checked, you now realize that I didn't say it and you were, indeed, hallucinating.


You said:

No. Fill a plastic bag with warm water and feel the plastic. Is it the warmth of the plastic or the water you feel?

I am AMAZED to have to tell you these things. Amazed! You only need a thermometer to establish the EXACT temperature, not to know that there IS warmth in the core!


My response:

I'm AMAZED that you think a plastic bag is comparable to a human body after death. There is no comparison. Why not stick to reading what the experts say about estimating time of death? The experts tell us that the skin temperature will be different to the core temperature. They tell us that, to perform a scientific calculation to estimate the time of death, you need to insert a thermometer into the rectum of a corpse and take a reading. Even that is not entirely reliable but it has to be done. You cannot do it from touching the skin because the skin will cool far more rapidly than the core temperature. What I'm saying is that after an hour a dead body can feel sufficiently cold so that you can't distinguish between death having occurred an hour, two hours or three hours beforehand. If you want to challenge that please provide some source material. I have quoted expert after expert, including Payne James, and you have come back with absolutely nothing.

You said:

A body that feels all cold will have been dead for numerous hours. A body that feels all cold will have been dead for numerous hours. The two hour minimum given by Phillips rested on the fact that there was some remaining heat under the intestines in combination with the rigor, that will normally set in after two hours at the earliest. If the body had been all cold, we would be working with times from 4-6 hours and upwards.

My response:


This is another example of you inserting in a word of your own invention. Where do you get the expression "all cold" from? You say that if the body had been "all cold" we would be working with a time of 4-6 hours. But that's not what Dr Seddon-Smith said. He used the expression "stone cold". Why have you changed it?


More importantly, where is the expert source material which backs up what you say? I have asked to provide it but you have failed. Basically you are just making it all up based on what Dr Phillips said. But forensic science has come a long way since 1888. So please can you provide some evidence that a body that feels cold cannot have died an hour earlier?