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Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes
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If your model for how the journalists (it is more than one, and therefore the risk of them getting things wrong in the same manner and with the same general wording is minuscule) is true, then Albert Cadosch has been hard done by and treated unfairly.
If we knew that this was so, if it was something that was part of our confirmed knowledge (not that it could happen, but that it DID happen), then Albert Cadosch should be treated as a good and truthful witness.
But even if we suspect that this was what happened (as an aside, I donīt suspect it for a minute, but IF...), Albert Cadoschīs testimony is nevertheless to be regarded as unreliable, for the simple reason that we do not KNOW that Albert was hijacked and used by two or more sensation-lusting journalists.
Itīs much like standing on a five meter trampoline by a pool filled with black water, and having somebody telling you to jump in, head first. The water CAN be four meter deep as that somebody tells you, but the problem is that somebody else is also there, telling you that it is only five inches deep.
Would you jump? Yes, going by how you treat Cadoschīs testimony, I dare say you would.
Of course I will answer your witness question, but maybe not in the fashion youīd expect me too, Herlock. Iīll begin by saying that witness psychology tells us that just about all witnesses are unsafe bets, because human memory is not as safe to rely on as has formerly been believed. In that sense, we must always keep the door ajar for witnesses having gotten things wrong, even if what they say is logical and stated with great composure and certainty.
If we turn this around and look at it from the other angle, of course witnesses may be of great use too, and it is not as if they always get things wrong. Certainly, there are witnesses who remember long and complex sequences in great detail and get things completely right.
That is the combined backdrop we must use when we look at witness testimony, and when we do, there is one thing that is of relevance both on a general level but also very spcifically for our case. And that is the fact that once we have a witness saying that he saw a bankrobber fleeing in a Ford Edsel, we should always keep in mind that he or she can be mistaken - but if we have TWO witnesses saying that they saw a Ford Edsel, then the suggestion of such a vehicle having been used becomes an extremely good one.
This is one of the most useful things there are in the world of witness testimony - intercorroborative material.
And what it is we have in the Chapman case? Well, we have not two, but THREE witnesses testifying to the effect that Annie Chapman was not dead at 4.45 and she was seemingly up and about at 5.30 too!
That is one hell of a firewall to try and tear down! It is not something that should be taken lightly. And it is quite understandable that many people cannot see their way through to even thinking about questioning it.
There is also the fact that once somebody steps in and tells those who believe in this triumvirate that one of the pillars must go, it makes for great distress. They are all links in the same chain, how can one link be removed? They all corroborate each other!
This, I suspect, is what lies behind your unwillingness to accept the removal of Cadosch. It is not just a question of you thinking his testimony is perfectly shipshape, because we can all see it is not. It is also, and to a decisive degree, the result of you reasoning that the three links all come from the same chain.
To start dissolving that picture, we must first ask ourselves whether or not an attention-seeker can only creep into an investigation as a witness if he testifies about something he or she is the only person to testify about. Putting it differently, if Cadosch was an attention-seeker, then why would he NOT choose to come forward in the Chapman case? He would in all probability not be aware of the other two witnesses as he approached the police, and so he would feel at ease to suggest any scenario he wanted to.
In such a case, it would only become obvious to him that his story was challenged by other witnesses later in the process, when he was made aware of Phillipsī, Richardsons and Longs claims.
What I want to point to here is not how the claims differed but instead that there was nothing that stopped an attention-seeker to approach the police in the Chapman case, and therefore it may well be that one or more of the three witnesses were of this character. Certainly, the change of heart Cadosch had if he was fairly represented in his two early interviews lends itself remarkably well to speculate that he only backpedalled when he knew the game was up.
What indications do we have that all three witnesses were wrong? That, as you know, is Phillipsī verdict. And we now have the E L O, that tell us in no uncertain terms that Phillips was very clear on how two hours was a minimum and NOT his professionally guided suggestion, which instead stipulated that Chapman died between 3 and 4 AM. And what was the outcome of his certainty? Exactly: it was pointed out that in the E L O that nobody believed in the "groundless story" about Chapman having been spotted drinking in a pub at 5 AM of the murder morning. It was an impossibility, because she was long dead at that stage.
The problem then becomes another one: If she was long dead at 5 AM, and if the mere suggestion that she was spotted in a pub at that stage was immediately written off as groundless, then how could she still be talking to a stranger outside 29 Hanbury Street HALF AN HOUR LATER?
And this is where we should note that Longs and Cadoschīs stories are mutually excluding each other. The timings are wayward, and thatīs not just the groundless suggestion that she could still live at 5.30, but also the suggestion from Cadosch that he heard the murder go down at 5.15-5.20, a long time before when Long supposedly saw Chapman outside the premises, still waiting to walk into the backyard and get knackered.
All the kind of stuff you want to find if you suspect that these two witnesses were mistaken or lying is there, served on a silver plate. Before we can start believing in the witnesses, we must make medical adjustments that are extremely weird and wonderful and we must give the clocks and watches all over the East End a thorough shakedown. Unless we decide that Long and Cadosch, who both pressed the point that they could not have been wrong on the timings, were mistaken about that nevertheless.
And all of this becasue we say that these two witnesses corroborate each other, are links in the same chain - while all the time they do and are no such thing. They instead gainsay each other, and none of them have observed the same things. One says she has seen Chapman, one infers that he has heard her being killed. But there is no instance of truly corroborative stuff like for example the flower Stride was seen to wear by multiple witnesses.
For me, it is an easy enough task to throw these two groundless stories out, as regards the idea that they had anything to do with Chapman. The minutiae of the stories, however, can have true elements; there could have been a couple outside 29 Hanbury Street at 5.30, and Long can have seen them there and she can have thought that the woman looked like the dead woman she was shown four days later in the morgue. But it was NOT Chapman and here killer (or any other gentleman), just as Cadosch can have mnade his loo trips and hear somebody saying "No" from somewhere, and he may have heard - or thought he heard - a sound against the fence. But once again, it cannot have been Chapman.
And this is where we return to your question - are there any "good" witnesses in the case? I think there are, but for the reasons above, I donīt think that Long and Cadosch fit the bill. They must be deemed unreliable for factual reasons.
It is only of you do not have such factual reasons speaking against you as a witness that you may be looked upon as a probably good witness, although there can be no guarantees; witness testimony is, as I pointed out in the beginning of my Gettisburg address, notoriuosly unreliable.
Letīs stick with the Chapman case when trying to list witnesses:
John Davis - seems a good witness to me. There is nothing gainsaying his observations, although we should keep in m ind that he was very upset by what he saw and so that may have affected his testimony to some degree.
Tim Donovan is interesting - he seems to be a truthful witness, but then again, he was the one Donald Rumbelow picked as a possible Ripper! Apart from that, though, he seems good enough.
James Kent - nothing odd about him, his story seems to pan out.
Amnelia Richardson - well, although she says nothing that seems out of the order, it must be remembered that she was the mother of a witness who seems dodgy in many ways, and so that link may have tainted her testimony.
... and so on. I donīt know if you are planning to say "There you are, if we are to look at witnesses like that, we may just as well rule then all out!". If this is so, it would not be good, because it would bundle all witnesses up together, and we should not bundle people who we cannot fault and who made logical statements up with people we CAN fault and who made illogical statements. Not should we bundle up witnesses who never changed their stories with the ones who did. And so on. it is a weighing process, and much as we will use different scales at times, that does not mean that we should disregard all witnesses. Quite the contrary - they are very important to understand the cases we look at although it carries risks, they are the sources we use to piece together what happened on the murder nights.
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