Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[Fleetwood Mac]

So far:

1) Research by qualified people tells us that memory is malleable and subject to external influences and internal bias. The process of storing and recollecting events is not what the layman assumes.

2) This isn't 'pseudo science'. Organisations such as the United States Department for Justice incorporate this research into their law enforcement guidance.

3) Remembering sounds is more problematic than remembering the visual.

4) Research tells us that we forget a significant amount of that which we experience within less than an hour.

5) Research tells us that we fill the gaps with information garnered after the event.

6) People who are merely going about their every day business, with no reason to take notice of what is going on around them, are more susceptible to erroneously recollecting an event.

7) Albert's witness statement amounted to an innocuous hearing of two sounds.

8) Albert was simply going about his every day business.

9) Albert was subject to various forms of information after the event.

I'd say that's not a bad case for questioning the recollection versus the event.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the strength of the testimony of three witnesses, none of whom saw Chapman or her murderer enter or leave the premises where she was murdered?

Yes, three very good witnesses. None of whom had reason to lie. Richardson cannot be doubted. He’s solid. Chapman wasn’t there at 4.45. This can be taken to the bank as he couldn’t possibly have missed her. The chances of Cadosch being wrong twice are minute. Not worth mentioning. He heard two things neither of which can be explained ‘innocently.’ What he heard was undoubtedly Annie and her killer. Therefore, considering those two, the chances of Long seeing a couple that weren’t Annie and her killer at that time and location are also minute.

Annie Chapman was killed at around 5.25/5.30. The evidence points overwhelmingly in favour of this. It’s about as clear as can be.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So far:

1) Research by qualified people tells us that memory is malleable and subject to external influences and internal bias. The process of storing and recollecting events is not what the layman assumes.

Applicable to every witness. Still doesn’t prove error

2) This isn't 'pseudo science'. Organisations such as the United States Department for Justice incorporate this research into their law enforcement guidance.

It’s still a generality though.

3) Remembering sounds is more problematic than remembering the visual.

Rubbish. Hearing a sound so close? A sound of something hitting against an object 5 or 6 feet away? Pull the other one.

4) Research tells us that we forget a significant amount of that which we experience within less than an hour.

Like two things?

5) Research tells us that we fill the gaps with information garnered after the event.

Applicable to every witness. Still doesn’t prove error.

6) People who are merely going about their every day business, with no reason to take notice of what is going on around them, are more susceptible to erroneously recollecting an event.

That’s not applicable to Cadosch. He wasn’t identifying something. He heard a word then a noise from a fence a very few feet from him. Could he have been mistaken about the fence noise? No.

7) Albert's witness statement amounted to an innocuous hearing of two sounds.

So what? He heard them. They couldn’t have been anything other that Annie and her killer.

8) Albert was simply going about his every day business.

So what? Applicable to every witness.

9) Albert was subject to various forms of information after the event.

Prove it. Did they have the radio on at work? Was it on Sky news?

I'd say that's not a bad case for questioning the recollection versus the event.

All this talk about looking at something in a ‘new’ and ‘honest’ way is nonsense.Everything is revealed in that final line above. This whole exercise was a feebly disguised attempt at discrediting Cadosch by the side door. It couldn’t be done on the evidence of course so we get a slippery side-step into the theoretical. A dishonest, phoney, pointless thread.

The evidence tells us that Annie Chapman was killed at around 5.25/5.30. All else is biased nonsense.

[JeffHamm]

Another interesting article in relation to Albert:

Our memory for sounds is significantly worse than our memory for visual or tactile things | ScienceDaily

Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that when it comes to memory, we don't remember things we hear nearly as well as things we see or touch.

Although students' memory declined across the board when time delays grew longer, the decline was much greater for sounds, and began as early as four to eight seconds after being exposed to them.

In a second experiment, Bigelow and Poremba tested participants' memory using things they might encounter on an everyday basis. Students listened to audio recordings of dogs barking, watched silent videos of a basketball game, and, touched and held common objects blocked from view, such as a coffee mug. The researchers found that between an hour and a week later, students were worse at remembering the sounds they had heard, but their memory for visual scenes and tactile objects was about the same.

Yah, but no.

I've just had a look at the study itself. It's not the same thing. See, the memory test is a recognition test, where you hear a bunch of sounds (like a dog barking, bowling pins, etc) during a study phase of the experiment.

Then, after a delay period (say a week), you get presented with a bunch of sound clips again, and you have to decide if that sound clip was one you heard before or a new one (so an "old/new" decision).

Albert wasn't claiming that a sound produced at the inquest was the same sound he heard (which is what this type of study is testing), but rather he was claiming he had a memory "THAT" a sound occurred. Now, if the study asked people "Did you hear sounds last time?" and a large number of them forgot that sounds were presented, well, that would be relevant. This, however, is tangential at best.

Bringing in research is to be applauded, but at the same time, one has to ensure that the real-world situation is actually related to the research methods. In this case, the research is addressing a very different question than the one we are interested in here. So while it is good research, it is not research that is good for our purposes.

- Jeff

[GBinOz]

I daresay that Abby will appreciate this quote.

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” by Edgar Allan Poe:
“You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see".

I heard this quote in my school years, and it has stuck in my mind ever since.

Cheers, George

[GBinOz]

Albert wasn't claiming that a sound produced at the inquest was the same sound he heard (which is what this type of study is testing), but rather he was claiming he had a memory "THAT" a sound occurred.
- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I would just like to suggest that the coroner may have had a similar thought when asked the question:

[Coroner] It is not usual to hear thumps against the palings? - They are packing-case makers, and now and then there is a great case goes up against the palings. I was thinking about my work, and not that there was anything the matter, otherwise most likely I would have been curious enough to look over.

So Albert had heard the sound before, and on those occasions it was unrelated to the murder case. Was Albert also unconsciously influenced by the statement in the Star on the day of the murder?
For several hours past the occupants of the adjoining house have been charging an admission fee of one penny to people anxious to view the spot where the body was found. Several hundreds of people have availed themselves of this opportunity, though all that can be seen are a couple of packing cases from beneath which is the stain of a blood track.

How sure could Albert have been of his testimony when he is offering the coroner an answer that the noise could have been caused by a packing case bumping the fence, which he had heard before, and was coincidentally mentioned in a news report on the day.

What exactly did Albert see? - nothing!

What did he testify that he heard? - a voice say "no" while he was in the doorway, with his back to an amphitheatre of echoes, and the door closing behind him. (Have you ironed my shirt yet? - No!)

Did he hear a conversation when he was at the bottom of the yard, or sounds of a scuffle - No!

Did he testify that he heard a body fall against the fence, or some one in the yard bump against the fence? - No! This is later day speculation. Albert actually testified that it could have been a packing case!

I'm just not seeing that Albert added anything of substance to the actual evidence in the case.

Best regards, George

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

I would just like to suggest that the coroner may have had a similar thought when asked the question:

[Coroner] It is not usual to hear thumps against the palings? - They are packing-case makers, and now and then there is a great case goes up against the palings. I was thinking about my work, and not that there was anything the matter, otherwise most likely I would have been curious enough to look over.

So Albert had heard the sound before, and on those occasions it was unrelated to the murder case. Was Albert also unconsciously influenced by the statement in the Star on the day of the murder?
For several hours past the occupants of the adjoining house have been charging an admission fee of one penny to people anxious to view the spot where the body was found. Several hundreds of people have availed themselves of this opportunity, though all that can be seen are a couple of packing cases from beneath which is the stain of a blood track.

How sure could Albert have been of his testimony when he is offering the coroner an answer that the noise could have been caused by a packing case bumping the fence, which he had heard before, and was coincidentally mentioned in a news report on the day.

What exactly did Albert see? - nothing!

What did he testify that he heard? - a voice say "no" while he was in the doorway, with his back to an amphitheatre of echoes, and the door closing behind him. (Have you ironed my shirt yet? - No!)

Did he hear a conversation when he was at the bottom of the yard, or sounds of a scuffle - No!

Did he testify that he heard a body fall against the fence, or some one in the yard bump against the fence? - No! This is later day speculation. Albert actually testified that it could have been a packing case!

I'm just not seeing that Albert added anything of substance to the actual evidence in the case.

Best regards, George

Hi George,

Sure, but as we've discussed earlier, it does appear that when he spoke to the police initially, his statement seems to be more definate about the location of the conversation, and he appears to have initially been more confident the fence noise was more of a "scuffle" (or at least human movement I suppose). And as we also know the police would likely be of the belief that Annie was already dead, there is a good reason to consider the possibility they questioned him as they did with Schwartz, and we know that resulted in Schwartz losing confidence in his initial memory - which would happen if as a result of the questioning by police his memory for the events alters. If the same has happened with Cadosche, we're back to picking the explanation that gets us where we want to go.

I do, however, suspect that the sound of a packing crate would be fundamentally different from the sound of a human bumping the fence (if I had to speculate, I would suspect Annie is dead at that point, the mutilations are completed, and it is JtR shifting position to be closer to the fence to avoid being seen). Also, if it sounded like a human bumping the fence, that could explain why he initially may have described it as a "scuffle", which he later backs away from because he didn't hear the sounds of, say feet shuffling about on the ground, or the rustle of clothing, or "grunts" and other noises one might associate with two people in a tussle. Perhaps that is why Baxter explicitly asked about the clothing, knowing the police had already questioned him on those specifically due to his use of "scuffle", and he wanted that detail (or lack of that detail) on record. It would also explain why Cadosche no longer includes that in his testimony. Also, given that questioning has already resulted in Cadosche backtracking, he could become prone to agreeing to any alternative presented to him - sort of in defeat mode if you will.

There are lots of options to explore where the real situation can be painted as completely unlike what he describes. However, there is also the possibility that what he describes is pretty close to the real situation. That he did indeed hear a conversation in the yard next door, though the only word he now recalls was a "No". And he did hear a sound against the fence. Maybe it was a packing case, but how did it move? Was it because JtR shifted, bumped the case against the fence? It does seem pretty coincidental that a case would suddenly shift just at the time he's again in the back yard, after having mislocated a voice to that yard as well.

I suppose it could happen, but relying on such coincidences when really, they aren't needed because what he testifies to, and the obvious implications of what his testimony would mean, doesn't actually conflict with anything from the other sources of information we have. It seem to me there's a lot of effort to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

- Jeff

[A P Tomlinson]

Hi Jeff,

I would just like to suggest that the coroner may have had a similar thought when asked the question:

[Coroner] It is not usual to hear thumps against the palings? - They are packing-case makers, and now and then there is a great case goes up against the palings. I was thinking about my work, and not that there was anything the matter, otherwise most likely I would have been curious enough to look over.

So Albert had heard the sound before, and on those occasions it was unrelated to the murder case. Was Albert also unconsciously influenced by the statement in the Star on the day of the murder?
For several hours past the occupants of the adjoining house have been charging an admission fee of one penny to people anxious to view the spot where the body was found. Several hundreds of people have availed themselves of this opportunity, though all that can be seen are a couple of packing cases from beneath which is the stain of a blood track.

How sure could Albert have been of his testimony when he is offering the coroner an answer that the noise could have been caused by a packing case bumping the fence, which he had heard before, and was coincidentally mentioned in a news report on the day.

What exactly did Albert see? - nothing!

What did he testify that he heard? - a voice say "no" while he was in the doorway, with his back to an amphitheatre of echoes, and the door closing behind him. (Have you ironed my shirt yet? - No!)

Did he hear a conversation when he was at the bottom of the yard, or sounds of a scuffle - No!

Did he testify that he heard a body fall against the fence, or some one in the yard bump against the fence? - No! This is later day speculation. Albert actually testified that it could have been a packing case!

I'm just not seeing that Albert added anything of substance to the actual evidence in the case.

Best regards, George

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what relevence the packing cases have beyond an attempt to push the theory that, and correct me if I'm wrong... Albert read/heard about the murder, and immediately retroactively hallucinated a sound of people discussing something then moving a packing case to where the body had been/was/hadn't yet appeared? And everybody assumed it was a body, that his subconscious had fabricated for him. When in reality nothing happened, and he heard no packing case OR body?

Or do you think he heard a packing case and everyone has just assumed it was the body since no packing case was found there... but a body was. In which case who was moving packing cases round at that time in the morning and why is there no evidence for it happening beyond Albert mishearing it? In which case Albert's memory is fine, apart from his memory being the cause of the usual amount of minor discrpenacies in newspaper interview reporting when measured against the reports of the actual inquest.

Or are we going with "Whichever memory fault seems most believeable in the moment, rather than show a memory fault actually DID happen by presenting it's actual cause"?

He either mis-heard at the time, coincidenatlly had auditory hallucinations of a conversation & something hitting a fence three quarters of an hour after a doctor said that a a woman was murdered and body hit that same fence, or his subconscious made it up in the evening when he heard about the murder?
Which is it?
And just out of interest, can you show us anything to support any of those?
I was going to make a joke about how the amphitheatre of echoes may have caused the sounds of the murder to bounce around for 45 minutes, but worry that people desperate to dismiss Cadosh might just consider that as a genuine scientific possibility.

Beyond links to studies that only briefly, tangentially touch on the idea of someone in his situation having any difficulty hearing a noise on the other side of his fence and remembering it later in the day, and then after reporting it to the police and making a statement, also remembering it 4 days later.

We keep seeing studies, and theories and reports that establish a science based study of the fallibility of memory.
Great.
But nowhere is anyone saying anything even approaching "And THESE specific elements of that science can be demonstrated to have done THIS to Albert Cadosch and therefore he is unreliable" beyond wild reaching, grasping, speculation.

At the moment it really does feel like throwing the proverbial against a wall and seeing what comes closest to sticking in order to create the tiniest hint of a chance of him having an episode that in normal everyday life doesn't happen without a reason and that other witnesses aren't approached with.

It's up there with Christer and Ed's "We know Lechmere did, it, now we have to come with a bunch of vaguelly tangentially related science to discount the established evidence, and show that it MIGHT have been theoretically possible, and make damned sure that common sense is not allowed to enter the process. As long as we keep it vague, and say You can't disprove any of this... we don't need to prove it."

[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s worth pointing out that Cadosch wasn’t saying that he’d heard the same noise previously. Only that he knew that his neighbours made packing cases and that he’d previous heard them making noises when going about their work. He was explaining why, at the time, he didn’t find it in any way unusual to hear sounds from number 29. So basically Cadosch thought that one of his neighbours was in the yard doing something. It confirms that he was 100% certain where the noise came from, which was probably no more than 5 or 6 feet from his left ear.

If Dr Phillips was correct with his 4.30 base time (and he clearly wasn’t of course) then we have only two explanations. That Cadosch made this up or that he heard Annie’s killer. This is a man with no reason to lie. The way that he treated the ‘no,’ clearly demonstrates a man who isn’t trying to impress with some ‘15 minutes of fame’ fairy tale.

And by the time that he spoke to the police wouldn’t they have put pressure on him in order to test what he claimed? The police would have been used to taking a Doctor’s estimate without question but here they were talking to a second man who was pointing to a different ToD. Wouldn’t that have sown any seeds of doubt with Cadosch? Wouldn’t he have wanted to have avoided looking foolish or worse a liar? No sign of him hedging his bets though with a “well, it could have come from elsewhere I suppose.”

Like Richardson he was confident in his evidence. Like Richardson he gained nothing from lying (in fact they both stood to look like liars if they were wrong.) Neither of their tasks: looking into a yard and hearing 2 sounds a very short distance away, were difficult or fraught with the possibilities of error. Both stood in front of a Coroner (no doubt in a nerve-wracking situation for men of their class) and swore on oath as to what they’d seen and heard despite the fact that they might have known that they were contradicting an experienced and well-respected Doctor. Both men would no doubt have been wary of getting into any kind of trouble with the police (like giving false evidence) Yet both stood absolutely firm. And they stood firm because they were clearly telling the truth and the chances of even one of them being wrong was slim to say the least. Two together…..vanishingly small. Add Long and it should have been game over years ago on this point.

ToD 5.25/5.30.

[A P Tomlinson]

I daresay that Abby will appreciate this quote.

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” by Edgar Allan Poe:
“You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see".

I heard this quote in my school years, and it has stuck in my mind ever since.

Cheers, George

If I were a bipolar, narcotic dependent, alcoholic with chronic depression suffering all those things in a time when none were understood enough to be treatable, I'd probably share his philiosophy.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Chapman wasn’t there at 4.45.

What he [Cadoche] heard was undoubtedly Annie and her killer.

Therefore, considering those two, the chances of Long seeing a couple that weren’t Annie and her killer at that time and location are also minute.

Annie Chapman was killed at around 5.25/5.30.

Such categorical statements of fact do not follow from the evidence.

Your argument that Long must have seen the murderer on the strength of Richardson's and Cadoche's testimonies is unsound.

It implies that there is a minute chance that the clocks in question were synchronised to such an extent that Cadoche's and Long's testimonies could not be reconciled.

We cannot know that.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Such categorical statements of fact do not follow from the evidence.

Your argument that Long must have seen the murderer on the strength of Richardson's and Cadoche's testimonies is unsound.

It implies that there is a minute chance that the clocks in question were synchronised to such an extent that Cadoche's and Long's testimonies could not be reconciled.

We cannot know that.

But you are making it sound as if times have to be ‘adjusted.’ There is nothing remotely unlikely about it. 5 or 6 minutes here or there is absolutely nothing.

All that I’m saying about Long is this….using the ADVOKATE system we see that she’s more reliable that Lawende and he’s almost never doubted. This doesn’t make her right of course but I think that, in the past, she’s been dismissed under the ‘witnesses can be mistaken’ heading. But witnesses can be correct too. So she might have seen Annie and her killer and unless we are accusing her of lying then this would mean that she saw a woman (who looked like Chapman) talking to a man at just the right spot and at just the right time.

Lawende is considered solid purely because we know when Eddowes was killed to within a small gap of time. But Long saw her couple to within an even smaller gap of time. Yet we still have to ask, why is Lawende trustworthy and solid and yet Long was ‘probably mistaken.’ She’s only ‘probably mistaken’ if we assume an earlier ToD.

We have only three ‘non professional’ witnesses that are relevant to Annie’s ToD. So at the very least we have to ask ourselves what are the chances of three entirely unconnected people, none of whom are witnessing the same thing, none of whom have any real reason to have lied, and they all point to a later ToD? This is why I can never understand why some say that the evidence points to an earlier ToD. There is no evidence for an earlier ToD apart from Phillips and he himself, in black and white, accepted that he could have been wrong. So to me, it can’t get much clearer,

[New Waterloo]

Hello Herlock. You are talking a great deal of sense to me. The evidence points to Long seeing Chapman and JTR and Cadoche hearing sounds from the yard related to the murder. We may not like that but that is the evidence. OK so the times don't fit. So I have a suggestion;

Follow the trail and see where it takes us. Believing all the witnesses, ignoring the time issues.

Take Longs evidence out and see with this trail leads us

Take Cadoche evidence out and see where this trail leads us.

In other words try all the different combinations and see the outcomes. But not adding in our thoughts or opinions just based on the evidence

If we believe all the witnesses in the case of Chapman this may be our greatest chance of getting somewhere. Otherwise we are just creating our own dead ends.

NW

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

But you are making it sound as if times have to be ‘adjusted.’ There is nothing remotely unlikely about it. 5 or 6 minutes here or there is absolutely nothing.

So she might have seen Annie and her killer and unless we are accusing her of lying then this would mean that she saw a woman (who looked like Chapman) talking to a man at just the right spot and at just the right time.

Yet we still have to ask, why is Lawende trustworthy and solid and yet Long was ‘probably mistaken.’ She’s only ‘probably mistaken’ if we assume an earlier ToD.

Clocks being wrong by five or six minutes is not nothing, Herlock.

In the Mitre Square murder, there are far more timings and yet there is no conflict among any of them.

It is not correct to imply that there is a minute chance of the clocks having been about right in the case of the Hanbury Street murder.

Nor is it correct to say that unless Long was lying, then she must have seen what she reported to have seen at just the right spot and at just the right time.

We cannot be sure even that it was the same day, but we can be sure that according to her evidence, she did not see the couple at just the right spot and, furthermore, we cannot be sure that it was at just the right time in order for her to have seen Chapman before she was murdered and before Cadoche heard her being murdered.

The reasons Lawende's evidence is more credible are that there were two witnesses to confirm his evidence that he saw the couple at the time he said he saw them, and there is no doubt that the murder took place shortly after that sighting.

In Long's case, there are no such witnesses and there is conflicting evidence about the time of death.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The evidence points to Long seeing Chapman and JTR

You really think that the murderer was a dark man who looked (but apparently did not sound) like a foreigner, and was in his forties?