Again we’re disappearing down a rabbit-hole of nitpicking caused by the varying versions that we have left to us. We can’t deduce at what point in the proceedings that morning that Richardson saw the body from a neighbouring garden but this in itself isn’t suspicious of course. Chandler said that he first spoke to Richardson at around 6.45 so 15 minutes after Phillips arrived so is it likely that he would have allowed Richardson into the yard whilst Phillips was at work? If he was concerned about his mother, which would have been entirely natural of course, it has to be possible that the police already knew that Mrs Richardson was alive and well and could have told him so. They could even have told him to stay where he was until an officer went inside and checked for him (before Chandler was ready to speak to him.) Then after his short conversation with Chandler he went to a neighbours yard for a look before the body was removed to the mortuary (at sometime around 7.00) Nothing about this is remotely suspicious unless we start imagining things.
Likewise the knife. It was clearly an old knife but why is this suspicious? We appear to be going down the “well if it was me I’d have….” road which is fraught with the potential for making erroneous assumptions. Richardson used it in the yard purely because it was the knife that he had on him at the time. Why are we reading so much into this entirely banal event. Richardson gave an entirely plausible explanation for why he had it and we don’t have any reason to dispute it. As we have seen, when we take a breath and stand back, John Richardson had absolutely no reason to lie. What kind of mind-boggling dimwit would have used this story just to prove that the body wasn’t there when he could have said “I stood on the step and pushed the door all the way back to the fence.” Game over. Or the other childishly obvious things that he could have said. But no, it’s being suggested that he made up the story about cutting up carrots, absent-mindedly putting the knife in his pocket, previously attempting to repair his boot and then making a second attempt on the steps. It beats me how anyone can make this claim. I’m sorry but it’s simply a case of getting carried away in an attempt to prove that a Victorian Doctors had medical skills that didn’t exist in 1888!
Richardson was transparently telling the truth and it’s absolutely certain that he couldn’t have missed a mutilate corpse had it been there. Look at the photo that Fishy posted recently. How can anyone, looking at that, try and claim that he could have missed a corpse? It’s a triumph of wish-thinking over reason, evidence and common sense.
Likewise the knife. It was clearly an old knife but why is this suspicious? We appear to be going down the “well if it was me I’d have….” road which is fraught with the potential for making erroneous assumptions. Richardson used it in the yard purely because it was the knife that he had on him at the time. Why are we reading so much into this entirely banal event. Richardson gave an entirely plausible explanation for why he had it and we don’t have any reason to dispute it. As we have seen, when we take a breath and stand back, John Richardson had absolutely no reason to lie. What kind of mind-boggling dimwit would have used this story just to prove that the body wasn’t there when he could have said “I stood on the step and pushed the door all the way back to the fence.” Game over. Or the other childishly obvious things that he could have said. But no, it’s being suggested that he made up the story about cutting up carrots, absent-mindedly putting the knife in his pocket, previously attempting to repair his boot and then making a second attempt on the steps. It beats me how anyone can make this claim. I’m sorry but it’s simply a case of getting carried away in an attempt to prove that a Victorian Doctors had medical skills that didn’t exist in 1888!
Richardson was transparently telling the truth and it’s absolutely certain that he couldn’t have missed a mutilate corpse had it been there. Look at the photo that Fishy posted recently. How can anyone, looking at that, try and claim that he could have missed a corpse? It’s a triumph of wish-thinking over reason, evidence and common sense.
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