Cadosch: Dismissed For Being Cautious?

[Fisherman]

...no one at the time jumped on this issue.

As per the Star, the police did not trust Richardson, so claiming that no one jumped on the issue is not something we can do: "Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of John Richardson, who stated that he was almost on the exact spot where the body was found at a quarter to five on Saturday morning, and no signs of the murder were then apparent. It is now beginning to be believed that the woman was brought to the backyard in Hanbury-street some time earlier."

Richardson was distrusted, therefore, and since we cannot say the exact reason, it may be that the discrepancies in his testimony caused it.

On the Chandler/Richardson issue, Iīd say that we canīt know for certain that Chandler was right, but he was a professional who made a living out of getting these things right. Overall, I think it is a wise strategy to believe professional witnesses over amateur ones. And one must say that it would be very unlucky if three journalists exagerrated what Cadosch said in the exact same kind of terms (scuffle, female saying "No!" and the heavy fall against the fence) and that Chandler was told about the middle step and the cutting of the leather by Richardson and either misheard it for something entirely different or simply forgot about it. Donīt you agree?

Why is it that you see "nothing suspicious" about a witness who is recorded as having changed his testimony? Isnīt that the best reason there is to become suspicious? Itīs okay to say "Chandler COULD have been the one who was wrong", but it is not okey to say "Chandler MUST have been the one who was wrong", and so some suspicion of having changed his testimony for whatever reason surely must attach to Richardson?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

You can’t really believe this?

It's a question of relevancy.
Amelia had already mentioned what time she had gone to bed...

I went to bed at about half-past nine.

This is relevant because she is about to explain how alert she was in the hours leading up to the murder...

I am a very wakeful woman, and am awake half of the night. I think I was awake half Friday night. I am sure that I woke at three, and only dozed afterwards. I heard no noise during the night.

Then she tells us when she was wide awake and talking to other residents...

On Saturday morning I called Mr. Thomson at ten minutes or a quarter to four o'clock. I heard him come down, and I said "Good morning, Thomson," as he passed my room about four o'clock.

All this is relevant to what she may have heard just prior to the murder, whenever that was.

However, in the middle of all this she throws in...

In the back parlour I was cooking on Friday night. I locked it up at half-past nine and took the key up with me. It was still locked when I came down in the morning.

I have a theory that whenever a witness provides seemingly irrelevant details, those details are not in fact, irrelevant.
Sort of like a verbal equivalent of what professional body language readers call a 'tell'.

The details regarding the back parlour have nothing to do with the purposes of the inquest - or so it would seem.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

There’s nothing mysterious about this. He was just checking on his way to work. You might as well say of John McCarthy “why did he send Bowyer to collect rent money from Kelly when he was quite capable of doing it himself?

No, that's my argument; why didn't John delegate the cellar door checking to Thomas, not unlike John delegating the rent arrears collecting to Thomas.

Added to the fact that she was so far in arrears that it might have required a threat of eviction from himself.

In that case, the visit to Room 13 would no longer be a semi-routine one, whereas the padlock checking always was.
So the later is actually a better candidate for delegation than the case with Kelly.

This must have meant that he’d known that Kelly was dead?”

What?

How do you know that it was Richardson that got it wrong? Maybe he had mentioned sitting on the step but Chandler got it wrong?

We know Richardson was more likely to have been wrong, because he admitted to cutting his boot properly at work, with a decent knife, after stating that the table knife had done the job.

By the way, why do I have to provide 100% certainty, but not you?

I see nothing suspicious about Richardson. The knife story makes little sense but I see nothing sinister and suspect that we’re simply missing a piece of explanatory information as no one at the time jumped on this issue.

The Coroner was very severe on him over the story of the knife with which he had cut a piece of leather off his boot before five o'clock on Friday morning, on the stone steps near which the body was found. He wanted to know why he had the knife, why he should put a table knife in his pocket, and altogether made the witness look very uneasy and very uncomfortable. His discomfort was increased when, at the suggestion of the Coroner, he was sent off in charge of Inspector Chandler to find the knife with which he had cut the leather off his boot.

[Joshua Rogan]

It's a question of relevancy.
Amelia had already mentioned what time she had gone to bed...

I went to bed at about half-past nine.

This is relevant because she is about to explain how alert she was in the hours leading up to the murder...

I am a very wakeful woman, and am awake half of the night. I think I was awake half Friday night. I am sure that I woke at three, and only dozed afterwards. I heard no noise during the night.

Then she tells us when she was wide awake and talking to other residents...

On Saturday morning I called Mr. Thomson at ten minutes or a quarter to four o'clock. I heard him come down, and I said "Good morning, Thomson," as he passed my room about four o'clock.

All this is relevant to what she may have heard just prior to the murder, whenever that was.

However, in the middle of all this she throws in...

In the back parlour I was cooking on Friday night. I locked it up at half-past nine and took the key up with me. It was still locked when I came down in the morning.

I have a theory that whenever a witness provides seemingly irrelevant details, those details are not in fact, irrelevant.
Sort of like a verbal equivalent of what professional body language readers call a 'tell'.

The details regarding the back parlour have nothing to do with the purposes of the inquest - or so it would seem.

Nothing to do with the coroner's question about the ground floor rooms, then?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Nothing to do with the coroner's question about the ground floor rooms, then?

Outlining who lives in each room would be fine - and she does that - but here she is assuring the coroner that the parlour was not only locked up during the night, but that no one could have entered it after she locked it at 9:30, because she had the key with her in her upstairs room.

I think this is extraneous detail, and therefore - as the theory goes - it isn't.

[Herlock Sholmes]

As per the Star, the police did not trust Richardson, so claiming that no one jumped on the issue is not something we can do: "Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of John Richardson, who stated that he was almost on the exact spot where the body was found at a quarter to five on Saturday morning, and no signs of the murder were then apparent. It is now beginning to be believed that the woman was brought to the backyard in Hanbury-street some time earlier.

Richardson was distrusted, therefore, and since we cannot say the exact reason, it may be that the discrepancies in his testimony caused it.

As the quote mentions that he was “...almost on the exact spot,” this strongly points to the fact that they distrusted him because, according to Phillips, Annie was lying dead almost at his feet. Surely this is confirmed by the suggestion that her body might have been brought to the yard as, if true, this would have allowed both Phillips and Richardson to have been correct.

[Fisherman]

As per the Star, the police did not trust Richardson, so claiming that no one jumped on the issue is not something we can do: "Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of John Richardson, who stated that he was almost on the exact spot where the body was found at a quarter to five on Saturday morning, and no signs of the murder were then apparent. It is now beginning to be believed that the woman was brought to the backyard in Hanbury-street some time earlier.

Richardson was distrusted, therefore, and since we cannot say the exact reason, it may be that the discrepancies in his testimony caused it.

As the quote mentions that he was “...almost on the exact spot,” this strongly points to the fact that they distrusted him because, according to Phillips, Annie was lying dead almost at his feet. Surely this is confirmed by the suggestion that her body might have been brought to the yard as, if true, this would have allowed both Phillips and Richardson to have been correct.

Whether or not you personally think that what had Richardson distrusted was that Phillips said that Chapman was dead at 4.45, it remains that we cannot specify what it was that caused the distrust, and so my point about how it could have been the discrepancy inbetween Richardsons and Chandlers claims stands. Itīs not that I think you are wrong; quite the contrary. But we cannot establish even the best and brightest of ideas as facts.

And as has been pointed out, you can be two inches away from a dead body and still not see it - if those two inches are made up of a doorblade. So being "almost on the exact spot" carries different implications when a door is added to the mix.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Some of the reason for the distrust is right there in the quote...

Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of John Richardson, who stated that he was almost on the exact spot where the body was found at a quarter to five on Saturday morning, and no signs of the murder were then apparent. It is now beginning to be believed that the woman was brought to the backyard in Hanbury-street some time earlier.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My phones not letting me quote properly! The quotes within quotation marks and the emboldened ones are my comments the rest are from NBFN


“There’s nothing mysterious about this. He was just checking on his way to work. You might as well say of John McCarthy “why did he send Bowyer to collect rent money from Kelly when he was quite capable of doing it himself?”

No, that's my argument; why didn't John delegate the cellar door checking to Thomas, not unlike John delegating the rent arrears collecting to Thomas.

“Added to the fact that she was so far in arrears that it might have required a threat of eviction from himself.
In that case, the visit to Room 13 would no longer be a semi-routine one, whereas the padlock checking always was.”

So the later is actually a better candidate for delegation than the case with Kelly.

But these are simply personal choices. Some people prefer to do things themselves rather than delegate. Perhaps he thought that if the task had been assigned as a regular duty of Thomas’s he might not have done it properly?

“This must have meant that he’d known that Kelly was dead?”

What?

I was simply saying that if your assuming a sinister motive for McCarthy delegating the task to Bowyer I can only think that you would be assuming that he’d known that Kelly was dead.

“How do you know that it was Richardson that got it wrong? Maybe he had mentioned sitting on the step but Chandler got it wrong?”

We know Richardson was more likely to have been wrong, because he admitted to cutting his boot properly at work, with a decent knife, after stating that the table knife had done the job.

I don’t agree. That discrepancy was so obvious and apparently never resolved. No one appeared to flag this up at the time which suggests to me that an explanation might been made at the time but didn’t make it into print.

By the way, why do I have to provide 100% certainty, but not you?

Im not claiming anything 100%

[Joshua Rogan]

Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of NotBlamedForNothing

[Herlock Sholmes]

Whether or not you personally think that what had Richardson distrusted was that Phillips said that Chapman was dead at 4.45, it remains that we cannot specify what it was that caused the distrust, and so my point about how it could have been the discrepancy inbetween Richardsons and Chandlers claims stands. Itīs not that I think you are wrong; quite the contrary. But we cannot establish even the best and brightest of ideas as facts.

Accepted.

And as has been pointed out, you can be two inches away from a dead body and still not see it - if those two inches are made up of a doorblade. So being "almost on the exact spot" carries different implications when a door is added to the mix.

Yes but later on, given the facts, a person of even low intelligence would have realised this possibility and been able to make a judgment on whether it could have been there or not. Richardson, facts to hand, made that judgment without room for doubt.

I still don’t think he missed a body Fish.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of NotBlamedForNothing

In that case, I won't tell you about my massage table in the back parlour theory.
It's a gem of a story, but unfortunately there's no happy ending.

[Herlock Sholmes]

In that case, I won't tell you about my massage table in the back parlour theory.
It's a gem of a story, but unfortunately there's no happy ending.

[Kattrup]

As per the Star, the police did not trust Richardson, so claiming that no one jumped on the issue is not something we can do: "Considerable doubt is being thrown on the evidence of John Richardson, who stated that he was almost on the exact spot where the body was found at a quarter to five on Saturday morning, and no signs of the murder were then apparent. It is now beginning to be believed that the woman was brought to the backyard in Hanbury-street some time earlier.

Richardson was distrusted, therefore, and since we cannot say the exact reason, it may be that the discrepancies in his testimony caused it.

As the quote mentions that he was “...almost on the exact spot,” this strongly points to the fact that they distrusted him because, according to Phillips, Annie was lying dead almost at his feet. Surely this is confirmed by the suggestion that her body might have been brought to the yard as, if true, this would have allowed both Phillips and Richardson to have been correct.

Where in the quote is it mentioned that the police doubted or mistrusted Richardson?

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

In that case, I won't tell you about my massage table in the back parlour theory.
It's a gem of a story, but unfortunately there's no happy ending.

Oh, please do.