John Richardson

[Herlock Sholmes]

The issue is: Richardson didn't say that. You, and a few others, have plucked that out of thin air, i.e. bent his words to suit your ill-conceived theory.

He stated he cut his boot with his knife: "cut off a piece of leather five inches long". He was told to fetch his knife. He fetched his knife. He then stated it wasn't sharp enough and so he had to borrow one. And, that's it, that is what he stated. By all means, make it up as you go along, be my guest; but it will not change the fact that you're simply pulling rabbits out of a hat.

Remind me again, did Richardson at any point say “the knife wasn’t sharp enough to cut a piece of leather from my boot?”

Ill help you…..the answer is no.

The fact that the coroner or his jury saw nothing strange or suspicious or duplicitous in what he said when combined with the fact that John Richardson would have had to have been certifiable to have said - well I cut a piece of leather from my boot with my knife but I couldn’t cut a piece of leather from my boot with it - and we have the obvious conclusion. That Richardson just cut a piece of leather from his boot but he couldn’t do a good enough job so he used the knife at the market to complete the job.

And is it possible that someone like Richardson could have tried and failed to repair a boot sufficiently? Yup, because he tried the day before.

Your attempt to discredit Richardson is a joke. Almost as bad as your attempt to give Gandalf Phillips magical powers. Don’t worry. You might get something right one day.

[Herlock Sholmes]

[Coroner] Did you go into the yard? - No, the yard door was shut. I opened it and sat on the doorstep, and cut a piece of leather off my boot with an old table-knife, about five inches long. I kept the knife upstairs at John-street. I had been feeding a rabbit with a carrot that I had cut up, and I put the knife in my pocket. I do not usually carry it there. After cutting the leather off my boot I tied my boot up, and went out of the house into the market.

produced the knife - a much-worn dessert knife - with which he had cut his boot. He added that as it was not sharp enough he had borrowed another one at the market.

so he did a first repair, not enough, does a second repair at the market with a better knife. i genuinely don't know what your issue is

It’s a case of him trying to claim that what Richardson was actually saying to the coroner was - well I cut a piece of leather from my boot with my knife but I couldn’t cut a piece of leather from my boot with my knife - not only would this have been obvious gibberish but worse, it would have been obvious gibberish that the coroner and the jurors all missed. Perhaps they’d all nodded off? You couldn’t make it up Wulf. Oh yeah…..he does.

[Fleetwood Mac]

so he did a first repair, not enough, does a second repair at the market with a better knife. i genuinely don't know what your issue is

As said, you're making this up as you go along. Richardson did not state anything like that.

[Aethelwulf]

As said, you're making this up as you go along. Richardson did not state anything like that.

ha ha - remember this piece of fantasy from you in #1854: On the one hand we have: Richardson who misled the coroner and as such compromised his entire statement

[Aethelwulf]

It’s a case of him trying to claim that what Richardson was actually saying to the coroner was - well I cut a piece of leather from my boot with my knife but I couldn’t cut a piece of leather from my boot with my knife - not only would this have been obvious gibberish but worse, it would have been obvious gibberish that the coroner and the jurors all missed. Perhaps they’d all nodded off? You couldn’t make it up Wulf. Oh yeah…..he does.

yeah i know i just like annoying him

[Herlock Sholmes]

As said, you're making this up as you go along. Richardson did not state anything like that.

And I’ll ask again…

Where and when did John Richardson say: “the knife wasn’t sharp enough to cut a piece of leather from my boot?”

[Trevor Marriott]

Following all the posts on this my opinion hasn't changed:

• Phillips, with all his experience offers a best estimate of at least two hours, probably more (? - 4.30 am)
• he offers a caveat to encompass uncertainty about some specific considerations that mean it could be less
• this window of opportunity overlaps with reasonable accounts that:
  • the body wasn't there
  • a potential sighting at about 5.30
  • noises that whilst not uncommon could have been the murder taking place and the murderer moving about
• modern data of rigor developing fully in as little as 1-2 hours offers an entirely plausible reinterpretation of Phillips' account
• murder in daylight may explain the apparent skill that was commented on - i.e., he could see what he was doing.

The skill factor would not be an issue if the killer did not remove the organs but simply murdered and mutilated Chapman, and not forgetting the time factor Phillips said it would have taken him a min of 15 mins to carry out all that was suggested the killer did. can we really believe that the killer would spend that length of time with a victim at that time of the morning when people were moving about.

and if we are talking about an earlier time of death and the suggestion that the killer removed the organs then i have to ask how was the killer able to see feel, touch, grip. and remove organs from a blood filled abdomen in total darkness?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Herlock Sholmes]

The skill factor would not be an issue if the killer did not remove the organs but simply murdered and mutilated Chapman, and not forgetting the time factor Phillips said it would have taken him a min of 15 mins to carry out all that was suggested the killer did. can we really believe that the killer would spend that length of time with a victim at that time of the morning when people were moving about.

Yes, because the evidence points to it very strongly.

And how certain can we be that it would have taken 15 minutes (apart from Phillips infallibility of course)

and if we are talking about an earlier time of death and the suggestion that the killer removed the organs then i have to ask how was the killer able to see feel, touch, grip. and remove organs from a blood filled abdomen in total darkness?

The same way that he did when he killed Catherine Eddowes and removed her kidney and most of her uterus in Mitre Square.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Your trying to have your cake and eat it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So to sum up before bed….

We know for an absolute fact that Phillips TOD was unreliable and doesn’t help us in any way.

We know that John Richardson had absolutely no reason (real or imagined) for having lied about sitting on the step.

We know that nothing that he said was in any shape, way or form indicative of lying, or was incriminating or suspicious.

We know that he was 100% certain that he couldn’t have missed a body had it been there (which it clearly wasn’t)

We know that there was enough light.

We know that there was more chance of Dr. Phillips arriving at the scene completely naked and with his a**e painted green than there was of Richardson missing an horrendously mutilated corpse less than a foot from his own left foot.

We know that there is no serial killer’s handbook or serial killer’s timetable

Glaringly obvious conclusion……Chapman killed around 5.20/5.25

[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s a pity that we have no police record of any interview with the residents. Only a few of them ‘might’ have gone out that morning (it could have been as little as 3 or 4 possibles but we have no way of getting an accurate figure) If the police had questioned and eliminated them then we would have the door being left open after Richardson left and before he arrived.

Does anyone know if the inhabitants have been researched more closely to see who might have been too old or too young to have been ‘possibles’ for leaving the door open?

Wouldn’t a non-resident have been more likely to have done that?

[FISHY1118]

So to sum up before bed….

We know for an absolute fact that Phillips TOD was unreliable and doesn’t help us in any way.

We know that John Richardson had absolutely no reason (real or imagined) for having lied about sitting on the step.

We know that nothing that he said was in any shape, way or form indicative of lying, or was incriminating or suspicious.

We know that he was 100% certain that he couldn’t have missed a body had it been there (which it clearly wasn’t)

We know that there was enough light.

We know that there was more chance of Dr. Phillips arriving at the scene completely naked and with his a**e painted green than there was of Richardson missing an horrendously mutilated corpse less than a foot from his own left foot.

We know that there is no serial killer’s handbook or serial killer’s timetable

Glaringly obvious conclusion……Chapman killed around 5.20/5.25

Cmon herlock, these are simply your facts not ""the"" facts .
your not convincing anyone with this type of approach . 1900 post on the subject tell us for a fact there just as easily could be other alternatives regarding an earlier t.o.d .
By all means have your say ,be pro active, but i gotta say this type of condescending attitude only alienates fellow posters. Poor taste indeed..

[GBinOz]

Hello George,

How certain can we be that the killer would have had blood on his hands though? We could be straying into a tangent here but what do you (or anyone else) think about the possibility of the ripper taking precautions against getting blood on him to at least some extent? After all, he could never have relied on access to clean up facilities. Yes, walking through the streets in the dark would have helped with his hands but there were still street lights and Constable’s on patrol and the possibility of being seen by anyone that lived in the same building when he returned. And what if he’d got blood on the front of his clothes or on his sleeves? Strangulation first would help by eliminating spray of course but there was still a risk of getting an amount of blood on him.

Could the killer have worn gloves? I can’t see anything of a stretch of the imagination in this suggestion. My next one might raise eyebrows but could he also have worn a longish coat? If he first strangled his victim it would have taken him all of three seconds to have taken off a coat and dropping it on the floor. He then mutilates, potentially getting blood on his clothing, slips the coat back on in 5 seconds and off he goes.

I’ll stress that I’m not trying to say that this is certainly what happened but, although we know that there were unavoidable risks involved and the killer would have been fully aware of them; and to some extent accepting of them, why would it be so strange for our killer to have taken a couple of simple precautions?

Hi Herlock,

A red letter day, we agree. His M.O. avoided arterial spray and a pair of gloves and an overcoat (or overalls) would hide any blood on his clothes. I don't see anything wrong with your suggestion.

Cheers, George

[JeffHamm]

Hi all,

I found an interesting article (Muggenthaler, Sinicina, Hubig, and Mall (2012). Database of post-mortem rectal cooling cases under strictly controlled conditions: a useful tool in death time estimation, International Journal of Legal Medicine, 126, 79-87. DOI: 10.1007/S00414-011-0573-6)

They present internal body temperature plots over time, showing the relationship between the PMI and body temperature. I've extracted the data from their figures because I wanted to try fitting a simple physics equation that models cooling over time (provided there's no breeze, etc, to introduce convection cooling, etc).

Basically, for a substance, the temperature at any given time can be calculated by the following equation:

eq1) Temperature = Environmental Temperature + (Object Starting Temperature - Environmental Temperature) e^(-kt)

in the superscript at the end, t is time, and k is a constant for that substance (a "rate of cooling" constant, the bigger the value of k the faster it cools over time).

It is possible to rearrange that equation to determine how long something has been cooling, provided you know the temperature of the environment and the temperature of the object at time 0 (when it started to cool) and the value for k:

eq2) Cooling Time = LN((Object Temp-Environmental Temp)/(Object Starting Temp - Environmental Temp))/-k

This is simple physics, it's not an opinion.

But, human bodies are not simple objects. Unlike a piece of iron, for example, bodies have ongoing chemical reactions, even when they are dead, and these produce heat. It would be surprising if bodies follow this exponential cooling curve exactly, but I was curious as to how close this sort of model would work. And, given the "rule of thumb" is for 1.5F lost per hour is a simple linear function, that does not take into account the environmental temperature, I was wondering if that was used because human bodies cooling profile is so different from simple stuff that this linear and not influenced by the environment "rule of thumb" implies.

In their article they provide 6 cases to illustrate things. They present their measurements in C and time in hours, which I've converted to F and minutes. The faint blue circles are the data I've extracted from their figures, and the red lines are the equations I've been able to fit. Now, to get those equations, I needed to get estimates for the 3 parameters, basically, the environment temperature, the body temperature at the time of death, and the value of k (the cooling rate constant). Presumably each body would have its own "k", which would reflect body mass, and so forth. I was wondering, though, if the k value for human bodies might not vary too much and perhaps there's a common value one could use to represent cases where one doesn't have so many temperature readings, and also doesn't know the actual ToD.

Anyway, I basically use a set of routines that keep adjusting the values for the environmental temperature (eTemp), the initial body Temperature (iBodyT), and k, and using eq2, I estimate the cooling time based upon the observed temperature reading and compare it to the actual cooling time (the PMI). The difference is the error of the estimate, and I square that. I total up all those squared errors for the data series. And I keep adjusting my 3 parameters (eTemp, iBodyT, and k) until that total is minimized (this is pretty standard stuff, you want the equation that minimizes these squared errors).

Having done that, I could compare my estimate for the environmental temperature with the actual environmental temperature (because they recorded and reported that). You can see in the top table the actual environmental temperature (in F), and the value I estimated it to be. On the whole, not too bad, and within a couple of degrees, with some out by 5 to 10 degrees F type thing.

Given that was encouraging, I then used the actual environmental temperature, so that I only had to estimate the initial body temperature and and cooling constant k, which are the values in the lower 2 tables.



Now, you will note, that in all cases it suggests that at the time of death every one of these cases was running a pretty severe fever! Well, that's because in the early period post mortem it is possible for the internal temperature to rise before it starts to fall (not always though, and in other reports I've seen that occurs somewhere around 10-18% of the time; for example, the first temperature reading for case 6, taken at 107 minutes PM, was 100F). The other issue is, I think, that the chemical reactions of the body that generate heat take some time to cease, and so that initial period isn't well captured by this simple exponential cooling formula (see Case 4 where that is clearly illustrated). It may be possible to divide the data up, to fit two equations, one to cover the early time period and one for the latter, but I've not tried that yet.

The other clear point is that the rule of thumb is clearly garbage, primarily because it doesn't take into account the environmental temperature. Compare the internal body temperatures at a PMI of 500 minutes. They range from mid90s (Case6) to mid 70s (Case2); that's a 20 degree spread, which would translate into 20/1.5 = 13 hours and 20 minutes difference in the estimation of the PMI! Moreover, at 1.5F per hour, starting at 98.6, after 500 minutes means the temperature should be 86.1, so the rule of thumb is going to grossly underestimate the ToD for Case6 while grossly overestimate the ToD for Case 2.




Fitting the exponential functions, and including the critical information, provides for much better fits, but even then these equations will overestimate the PMI over the first 200-500 minutes (where the red line is higher than the data the PMI will be overestimated; in Cases 2-6 the early period is overestimated by 50 minutes to close to 200 minutes, but for Case1 the early period is underestimated - by around 24 minutes). This tends to be followed by a period of underestimations, and then it returns to a tendency to overestimate at much longer intervals. This reflects the fact that even this physics based model is a bit simplistic when being applied to human bodies and how they cool post-mortem (which, to be honest, doesn't entirely surprise me). The range of over/under estimations I found were in the order of +-150 minutes, so just inside of +-3 hours, which I've seen before.

What is also sadly apparent, is that that it looks unlikely that one could find a "common" value of k. While it may not look like a big range, given they are exponents in an exponential equation, trying to find a one size fits all value is going to either end up being a pointless search, or one has to accept even wider margins of error for PMI estimations.

With regards to Annie, or any of the JtR cases, we don't know the environmental temperature (though I did find the average low temperature for Sept. in 1900 London was 10C (the daily low would be the important value given the times of the murders), or 50F. If the comment that it was a cool morning means it was below average, then perhaps it was closer to 5C that morning, but as with so much, we don't know (unless someone has found a newspaper that reported the daily high/low for the days in question of course). We also don't know their individual values for k, their cooling constants, and without a fair number of temperature readings and times and known environment temperatures, there's no way to try and estimate that. We don't even have a single temperature reading being indicated it was taken, let alone actually recorded. All we really have is a statement based upon being cool to the touch, and that's not going to fit into an equation like this.

Anyway, I just thought I would share with you what I've found. It doesn't change anything, really, as we're still looking at wide margins of error, even when we have critically important information, like the environmental temperature, and large numbers of internal temperature readings. It also points to the fact that the initial period post mortem is the most difficult to get accurate, as there are many potential things that can happen (increase in body temperatures, etc). Also, these models won't apply if there was a breeze, as then we have convection cooling, which will result in a faster rate of cooling (sort of like making k larger), but by how much? Anybody's guess at the moment.

- Jeff

[GBinOz]

The skill factor would not be an issue if the killer did not remove the organs but simply murdered and mutilated Chapman, and not forgetting the time factor Phillips said it would have taken him a min of 15 mins to carry out all that was suggested the killer did. can we really believe that the killer would spend that length of time with a victim at that time of the morning when people were moving about.

and if we are talking about an earlier time of death and the suggestion that the killer removed the organs then i have to ask how was the killer able to see feel, touch, grip. and remove organs from a blood filled abdomen in total darkness?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Hi Trevor,

While you seem to have little peer support for your theory that the organs were removed at the mortuary, there are circumstances which do not rule it out. The coroner asked the PC that took the body to the mortuary shed if he was sure that he took all of the body, and he asked Phillips if body parts could have fallen out on the way. It was reported that the body was left locked in the shed, but when the nurses arrived they found it in the ambulance in the yard, so it does seem that there may have been a custody breach some where in Chapman's case. I haven't been able to find anything similar reported with Eddowes, only a series of questions regarding the demand for body parts.

I suppose the alternative is that JtR was someone used to dissection, or a butcher that has done the task so many times he could do it without looking (like typists).

Cheers, George

[GBinOz]

It’s a pity that we have no police record of any interview with the residents. Only a few of them ‘might’ have gone out that morning (it could have been as little as 3 or 4 possibles but we have no way of getting an accurate figure) If the police had questioned and eliminated them then we would have the door being left open after Richardson left and before he arrived.

Does anyone know if the inhabitants have been researched more closely to see who might have been too old or too young to have been ‘possibles’ for leaving the door open?

Wouldn’t a non-resident have been more likely to have done that?

Hi Herlock,

I don't know if the police did a head count, but Amelia Richardson testified at the inquest:
When I went down all the tenants were in the house except Mr. Thompson and Mr. Davies.

Amelia testified that she was awake, but for dozing, from 3 AM, and didn't hear anyone in the passage. She was very insistent that she would have heard anyone if they had been there, but she didn't mention John's visit. It is highly likely that James Hardiman called at his mother's shop to pick up supplies for his cat's meat street vendor business, but Amelia didn't mention him either. It is very improbable he would have sourced his cat's meat elsewhere, so he may have left the door open. She didn't hear Jack and Annie either but, while you disagree, they may have been there prior to 3AM when she was asleep.

It is clear that the passage and yard were used by many other than the residents. Just speculating, a vagrant may have opened the back door and involuntarily let out a "NO" at the sight he saw. Cadosch testified he was in his doorway when this occurred, so the door would have been closing on his back making the source of the word difficult to place. The vagrant takes a minute or to to recover his composure, and decides to rob the body, taking her rings and rifling her pockets, leaving what he didn't want at her feet. Cadosch returns and the vagrant moves over to the fence to avoid being seen and makes the bump noise, and is relieved when Cadosch doesn't look over the fence. After Cadosch goes inside for the second time the vagrant departs, leaving the front door open in his haste.

Cheers, George