Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

They are both plausible suspects.

Why couldn’t the man long saw be koz and also the ripper?

Firstly, because Kosminski was 22 years old, about half the age of Long's estimate of the man she saw.

Secondly, because one can reasonably assume that Kosminski would have been attending synagogue that morning, as it was the holiest Sabbath in the Jewish calendar.

Why would he have selected the holiest Sabbath of the year on which to commit the only murder he committed on a Sabbath?

Thirdly, because Anderson's witness is supposed to have seen something incriminating.

What would a Jewish witness be doing in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street?

[Abby Normal]

It was not my intention 'to take the thread in the direction of general debate on the subject of Anderson's suspect' nor to debate with you 'the whole issue of Anderson's suspect' nor to debate whether what Anderson wrote is believable.

New Waterloo suggested that Long's suspect was a plausible suspect and you then suggested that he was plausible as Anderson's suspect.

My main point is that he is not.

They are both plausible suspects. Why couldn’t the man long saw be koz and also the ripper?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

My mention of Anderson's suspect was in passing in regards to the point NW made that people may not like the descriptions they have. It was no mentioned to take the thread in the direction of general debate on the subject of Anderson's suspect , such would I believe be Off Topic.

Of course we disagree on The whole issue of Anderson's suspect, and I have decided not to debate it with yourself as I consider neither of us are likely to change our views.

Steve

It was not my intention 'to take the thread in the direction of general debate on the subject of Anderson's suspect' nor to debate with you 'the whole issue of Anderson's suspect' nor to debate whether what Anderson wrote is believable.

New Waterloo suggested that Long's suspect was a plausible suspect and you then suggested that he was plausible as Anderson's suspect.

My main point is that he is not.

[Elamarna]

The only named persons I have so far seen suggested as Anderson's suspect are Aaron Kosminski, who was 22 when the series of murders began, and David Cohen, who was about 23, both of whom were about half the estimated age of Long's suspect.

It may be difficult for a witness to judge a person's age, but mistaking a person of 23 for a person in his 40s seems far-fetched.

Sagar's fictional 'smartly-dressed man of Jewish appearance' can hardly be Anderson's 'low-class Polish Jew' who was not of Jewish appearance.

Harry Cox's Jewish suspect, who was 'about five feet six inches in height, with short, black, curly hair' and 'occupied several shops in the East End' does not seem to have been a 'low-class Polish Jew' who was not of Jewish appearance, either.

The fact that Long did not have 'a good view of the murderer,' as well as the fact that she was not Jewish, rule her out as Anderson's witness.

There really seems to be nothing to connect Long's suspect with Anderson's suspect, if the latter even existed.

My mention of Anderson's suspect was in passing in regards to the point NW made that people may not like the descriptions they have. It was no mentioned to take the thread in the direction of general debate on the subject of Anderson's suspect , such would I believe be Off Topic.

Of course we disagree on The whole issue of Anderson's suspect, and I have decided not to debate it with yourself as I consider neither of us are likely to change our views.

Steve

[A P Tomlinson]

I am not sure that I agree with this. Do I think it's POSSIBLE that he made up the memory of that morning or confabbed an entire event from memory scraps. Sure. But I think it's more likely that he was unwilling to testify that he was running late for work or simply didn't know exactly what time it was and didn't figure it mattered one way or the other. While some amount of time from the morning yard events to his learning of what had transpired would obviously have passed, I don't know that enough would have passed to thoroughly re-write his memory of that morning. At most we're talking about 10-12 hours? And while noises from the yard next door might have been normal, a woman saying "No" is going to be ear-catching if only from a gossip/interest point of view. It's possible of course, but I would lean more towards he just didn't know or didn't care to testify as to what time he was passing that clock and went with his usual "concept" of when he was passing or would have been on any other day.

Just so I'm clear, I don't agree with it either.
If there is vaguery from him, I'm more in the camp of him not wanting to have to elaborate too much in public about his... medical issues... and that he related a more typical time scale for his daily travels, which amounts to the same thing you are saying about tardiness. (But I can't prove that so... in this discussion, it has to fall in at an equal level of probablity to auditory hallucinations brought on by being told that a murder had happened...)

I think that unless you have sound and sensible grounds to suggest otherwise, and if Occams Razor is cutting a clean line in one direction, then the most obvious solution is the one you start from.
Applying a largey baseless series of, "Ah, but what IF..." and "Maybe this, that or the other happend and that caused... X, Y, Z..." conditions without any genuine grounds beyond, "well, there is a slight possibility..." makes it a tentative theory at best, and complete make-believe at worst.
I don't want to relitigate Cross/Lechmere on this thread, but that is all that THAT theory is. A story, dressed up in supposition, baseless extrapolation and a drive to squeeze the evidence into a predetermined shape.

The point of this thread was, allegedly, to test Albert Cadosche's reliability as a witness against a series of psychological studies that cast doubt on witness memory. None of the markers, indicators, triggers or inciting effects described in the scientific reports linked can be (or at least so far have been) ascribed to Albert without some series Cirque du Soleil levels of contortionism going on to stretch the limits of the conditions described, in order to apply them to a man who said that he heard something bump into his fence when he was getting ready to go to work that morning.
In doing so, it has followed the path of every other witness discussion on Chapmans murder... the reliability of Victorian pathologists, Long's ability to recognise faces, and veered inevitably toward the purpose of discredting three particular witnesses whose testimony puts her death at later in the morning than some theories woudl like.
Thankfully we've not got bogged down in Richardson.

I keep saying this but I end up dragging myself back in, but until someone starts applying the science to the subject, and saying why any of the specific aspects of the "Misinformation Effect" or any of the other linked studies apply to Cadosche, beyond "Well.. they might apply to anyone, and you can't prove they didn't" I'm done.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I think everyone knows my position on the killer, and to a degree Long's description supports that view; yet for many years I dismissed her description, and undervalued her statement, not because it was NOT the description I wanted, but because it was just too much what I wanted( ignoring age. Which is I suggest very hard to judge, and only applies to some of those covered by the generic Anderson's suspect anyway).

The only named persons I have so far seen suggested as Anderson's suspect are Aaron Kosminski, who was 22 when the series of murders began, and David Cohen, who was about 23, both of whom were about half the estimated age of Long's suspect.

It may be difficult for a witness to judge a person's age, but mistaking a person of 23 for a person in his 40s seems far-fetched.

Sagar's fictional 'smartly-dressed man of Jewish appearance' can hardly be Anderson's 'low-class Polish Jew' who was not of Jewish appearance.

Harry Cox's Jewish suspect, who was 'about five feet six inches in height, with short, black, curly hair' and 'occupied several shops in the East End' does not seem to have been a 'low-class Polish Jew' who was not of Jewish appearance, either.

The fact that Long did not have 'a good view of the murderer,' as well as the fact that she was not Jewish, rule her out as Anderson's witness.

There really seems to be nothing to connect Long's suspect with Anderson's suspect, if the latter even existed.

[New Waterloo]

Very good comments from all and yes its true I don't read all the comments, sometimes just skim through so fair point AP that perhaps I am not considering everything. I suppose I am trying to move things along. If we accept the evidence of Long and Cadosch then we can start to look at the description of the offender and whether he fits in with any individuals we know of etc etc.

If we consider Long and Cadosch as unreliable then where do we go. I suppose losing Cadosch as a witness doesn't make much difference as we know Chapman was murdered in the yard near the fence. Nothing new there.

Losing Long is far more serious as if her evidence is believed then she is a very important part in the jigsaw and establishing the identity of JTR.

NW

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

No because Chapman lies bleeding in the yard and her killer either still in the yard or climbing fences to make good his escape. Surely it must have been Chapman and her murderer seen by Long otherwise we have two couples hanging around number 29 looking for somewhere discreet to go. The evidence just seems so strong.

So who was the murderer? We have a description. It may not be the description we want but that's how it works in real life.

NW

In real life, the police asked Lawende, who had seen a fair man aged about about 30 and with the appearance of a sailor, to try and identify, in turn, two men who were themselves sailors.

They did not ask Long to try to identify a dark man in his 40s.

[Ally]

Hi Ally,

ICadosch didn't see anything.

True, I realize Cad was an earwitness and therefore shouldn't have included "saw", but my head is trying to murder me this week and I am beyond sloppy. Thanks for keeping the facts straight. Facts are life.

I'm just not seeing this testimony as being from a man confident of his recollections. JMO.

Cheers, George

Agreed. However....

Ah, I'm not sure you've read all the posts NW.
I agree with that completely, but... DID Albert actually hear ANYTHING that morning?

An argument has been made, along with many links to psychological studies that mainly talk about how easy it is for police/prosecutors to deliberately manipulate a witness into giving favourable testimony... (though less vociferously now than at first,) that Albert heard NOTHING untoward that morning, but upon returning home from work and discovering that there had been a murder next door, his subconscious created for him a scenario where he conflated memories from past days when he had heard bumps and voices, and convinced himself that they had occured that very morning.
Because at the time, his mind wasn't focused on the fence, and he was more concerned about getting to work... his memory played tricks on him.

I am not sure that I agree with this. Do I think it's POSSIBLE that he made up the memory of that morning or confabbed an entire event from memory scraps. Sure. But I think it's more likely that he was unwilling to testify that he was running late for work or simply didn't know exactly what time it was and didn't figure it mattered one way or the other. While some amount of time from the morning yard events to his learning of what had transpired would obviously have passed, I don't know that enough would have passed to thoroughly re-write his memory of that morning. At most we're talking about 10-12 hours? And while noises from the yard next door might have been normal, a woman saying "No" is going to be ear-catching if only from a gossip/interest point of view. It's possible of course, but I would lean more towards he just didn't know or didn't care to testify as to what time he was passing that clock and went with his usual "concept" of when he was passing or would have been on any other day.


But as with anything people will take the facts as we know them, shuffle them to come up with the stack that best fits their theory of the events. We are dealing with possibilities and probabilities when it comes to accepting a witness statement as true. I was watching a sentencing hearing yesterday for a juvenile murder offender and the forensic psychologist who was arguing for clemency was doing a quite fascinating (And utterly lost on the knobs watching the trial whose brain capacity extends solely to keeping track of football scores) lecture on developmental psychology and how there was a low risk, virtually minuscule chance of re-offense past maturity. And while I love the science, and I agree with the science, the fact is, if there is ANY probability, no matter how low, that's not ZERO probability and do you risk making the wrong choice? Of course in this case, we have the benefit of not having serious consequences for making a wrong choice, there's low stakes in going with the balance of probabilities.

There's not a zero probability that Cadoche conflated memories. There's not a zero probability that he wasn't just lying to be a part of the drama. Same with Long. In the end, we just don't know. I would tend to go with the balance of probabilities that they were just wrong about the times. But that doesn't mean I'm right. And in the end that's why, this case is still being argued 135 years on. People can shuffle and discard any fact that suits them, because in the end, the probabilities allow for an endless variety of cherry-picking and supposition.

[Herlock Sholmes]

A very interesting point NW.

Let me offer an alternative.

I think everyone knows my position on the killer, and to a degree Long's description supports that view; yet for many years I dismissed her description, and undervalued her statement, not because it was NOT the description I wanted, but because it was just too much what I wanted( ignoring age. Which is I suggest very hard to judge, and only applies to some of those covered by the generic Anderson's suspect anyway).
It was late last year, when a very good friend, asked pointedly why I always placed her statement under that of Richardson and Cadosch that I actually realised why I rejected her.

In short, I found her statement, too good to be true.

Your original point, that we often reject stuff because it does not fit the picture we have of the kill is very true.

Steve

Hi Steve,

A while ago I attempted to assess Long and Lawende as witnesses using the police ADVOKATE method for assessing witnesses. Now of course this was only my own assessment and perhaps someone else might come up with a different interpretation, but my final result had Long as a slightly more reliable witness. Points in favour were the fact that she saw her couple in daylight and that she was much closer to them. And yet I think that Ripperology as a whole (if there ever is a ‘whole’) assumes Lawende to have been a more trustworthy witness. A witness who appears rarely, if ever, to be questioned.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When we look at any witness it’s right that we should accept the possibility of human error. In the case of Elizabeth Long it’s absolutely possible that the couple that she saw wasn’t Annie and her killer as we have no way of further assessing her reliability as a witness or of checking the accuracy of clocks or of gauging how accurate Cadosch’s estimates of periods of time was, for example. In the absence of unimpeachable evidence we are usually left with a range of possibilities then we attempt to make an assessment on likelihoods if we can. Often we don’t even have solid reasons to move likelihoods one way or another.

I think we can all accept that even today with our advanced technology and our easy and instant access to accurate times, that errors and discrepancies still regularly occur, so it goes without saying that these would also have occurred in 1888 and even to a greater degree. We also still make errors when we estimate periods of time, especially when thinking back, so it also goes without saying that this fallibility would have been in evidence in 1888.

If any of us take an unknown (a stated or estimated time or an estimated period of time) and try to narrow it down without actual evidence for this we are in danger of possibly eliminating something that might have been the truth. Alternately we would be in danger of making something appear more likely than it actually might have been. It’s important that we don’t feel reticent in saying “we just don’t know.”

Basically we have all been guilty of prolonging a discussion about some things which were obvious from the beginning. We don’t know if Elizabeth Long saw Annie and her killer….she might have done but she might not have done. We know that we have to make reasonable allowances for clock error, poor synchronisation and inaccurate estimations. And that we can all have an opinion on the reliability of Long’s identification but we can’t dismiss her on the grounds of a minor time discrepancy.

[A P Tomlinson]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Cadosch did not hear a noise of something hitting the fence. Correct me if I am wrong. I think we can accept that he heard something. Any suggestion that this is a noise made by packing case makers at that specific time in the morning doesn't hold water. Where is the evidence of a packing case maker bumping into the fence at that time. No where. There was nobody in the Hanbury Street back yard at that time to make that noise. Or if I am incorrect and one of the occupants of the house can be shown to be in the yard at that time well, then perhaps it was them. Otherwise it strongly suggests it was Chapman or her murderer and importantly when Cadosch leaves the house there are no signs of the couple that Long has just seen.

No because Chapman lies bleeding in the yard and her killer either still in the yard or climbing fences to make good his escape. Surely it must have been Chapman and her murderer seen by Long otherwise we have two couples hanging around number 29 looking for somewhere discreet to go. The evidence just seems so strong.

So who was the murderer? We have a description. It may not be the description we want but that's how it works in real life.

NW

Ah, I'm not sure you've read all the posts NW.
I agree with that completely, but... DID Albert actually hear ANYTHING that morning?

An argument has been made, along with many links to psychological studies that mainly talk about how easy it is for police/prosecutors to deliberately manipulate a witness into giving favourable testimony... (though less vociferously now than at first,) that Albert heard NOTHING untoward that morning, but upon returning home from work and discovering that there had been a murder next door, his subconscious created for him a scenario where he conflated memories from past days when he had heard bumps and voices, and convinced himself that they had occured that very morning.
Because at the time, his mind wasn't focused on the fence, and he was more concerned about getting to work... his memory played tricks on him.

And because of their atomic clock like levels of time keeping ability, the differences in Long and Cadosh's times, means that they could not have heard/seen what the claimed to have heard/seen, because their memories of those events are far more likely to have been made up by some psychological event than them simply being a bit out by a few minutes on their estimates of what time these things occured. (A link says that Public Clocks were all accurate to GMT by 1885 apparently...)

That seems to be the crux of the proposition.

(Though even if the times were absolutely accurate down to the minute, and synchronised to GMT by satellites and WiFi, it would only mean that ONE of them was wrong...)

[Elamarna]

So who was the murderer? We have a description. It may not be the description we want but that's how it works in real life.

NW

A very interesting point NW.

Let me offer an alternative.

I think everyone knows my position on the killer, and to a degree Long's description supports that view; yet for many years I dismissed her description, and undervalued her statement, not because it was NOT the description I wanted, but because it was just too much what I wanted( ignoring age. Which is I suggest very hard to judge, and only applies to some of those covered by the generic Anderson's suspect anyway).
It was late last year, when a very good friend, asked pointedly why I always placed her statement under that of Richardson and Cadosch that I actually realised why I rejected her.

In short, I found her statement, too good to be true.

Your original point, that we often reject stuff because it does not fit the picture we have of the kill is very true.

Steve

[New Waterloo]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Cadosch did not hear a noise of something hitting the fence. Correct me if I am wrong. I think we can accept that he heard something. Any suggestion that this is a noise made by packing case makers at that specific time in the morning doesn't hold water. Where is the evidence of a packing case maker bumping into the fence at that time. No where. There was nobody in the Hanbury Street back yard at that time to make that noise. Or if I am incorrect and one of the occupants of the house can be shown to be in the yard at that time well, then perhaps it was them. Otherwise it strongly suggests it was Chapman or her murderer and importantly when Cadosch leaves the house there are no signs of the couple that Long has just seen.

No because Chapman lies bleeding in the yard and her killer either still in the yard or climbing fences to make good his escape. Surely it must have been Chapman and her murderer seen by Long otherwise we have two couples hanging around number 29 looking for somewhere discreet to go. The evidence just seems so strong.

So who was the murderer? We have a description. It may not be the description we want but that's how it works in real life.

NW

[Pcdunn]

Re "spats" vs. "gaiters" I looked them up, as I thought Scrooge McDuck wore the more formal spats, not gaiters, which suggest outdoorsmen such as hunters or gamekeepers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spats_(footwear)

Wikipedia does state that "spats" (from the original name "spatterguards") cover the ankle and instep of shoes, to keep the upper shoe and lower part of the trouser clean and dry.
It states spats aren't the same as gaiters, which go above the shoe or boot and cover the lower leg and more of the trousers. (I don't know if "gaiter" and "legging" are different names for the same thing, but the area covered would seem to be similiar.)

This is a minor distinction, of course, and has no impact on the discussion of the "spring". I am inclined to think it was just random trash found in the yard, and not related to the murder.