Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I find this response to be a very strange interpretation of Swanson's report. It is also incomplete, and ignores a part which contradicts your point about Mrs Long.

It is Wolf Vanderlinden's interpretation.

I quote from his dissertation 'Considerable Doubt' and the Death of Annie Chapman:


The police were obviously depending upon Dr. Phillips' opinions and his standing as a reliable medical expert when directing the course of their investigations. To the detectives working on the Chapman murder, Dr. Phillips' estimated time of death made Long and Cadosch irrelevant.

This sentiment is also expressed in Swanson's report.

hence the evidence of Mrs. Long which appeared to be so important to the Coroner, must be looked upon with some amount of doubt, which is to be regretted.

This "doubt" apparently soon became the conviction that Mrs. Long's testimony was worthless.

It is now time to look at Dr. Phillips' opinions about the time of death of Annie Chapman, opinions that were supported by Scotland Yard.

[Doctored Whatsit]

If the evidence of Dr. Phillips is correct as to time of death, it is difficult to understand how it was that Richardson did not see the body when he went into the yard at 4:45 a.m. but as his clothes were examined, the house searched and his statement taken in which there was not a shred of evidence, suspicion could not rest upon him, although police specially directed their attention to him...

Up to the present the combined result of those inquiries did not supply the police with the slightest clue to the murderer...

[Dr Phillips] gives it as his opinion that death occurred about two hours earlier, viz: 4:20 a.m. hence the evidence of Mrs. Long which appeared to be so important to the Coroner, must be looked upon with some amount of doubt, which is to be regretted.

(SWANSON)


Swanson, so greatly admired and respected by so many posters, evidently was not impressed by the evidence of either Richardson or Long.

Neither am I.

I find this response to be a very strange interpretation of Swanson's report. It is also incomplete, and ignores a part which contradicts your point about Mrs Long.

Firstly, please note that Swanson wrote "If the evidence of Dr Phillips is correct", so he is considering this as a possibility, not a fact. He then continues that he cannot understand how Richardson could have failed to see the body if it was there, and then says that despite their best efforts and thorough checks, they could not fault his story. That reads to me more like an acceptance of Richardson's story, or at worst, an admission that there are no grounds for rejecting it. It is not an expression of his lack of acceptance for the story.

As for Long, I wonder why you excluded from your note above that Swanson also wrote, "if the evidence of Mrs Long is correct ... then the evidence of Dr Phillips as to the probable time of death is incorrect". In other words, Swanson was looking at both sides of the story, and demonstrating the contradiction, without expressing any firm conclusion. He considered that if either one of them was correct the other must be incorrect, without concluding that the police favoured one side of the argument.

[JeffHamm]

Hi George,

Yes, not being seen is also consistent with her being killed earlier, which I should have said. In my defense, I was focusing more on how it is not evidence of that, but nevertheless I should have acknowledged that more overtly. My baf, as they say.

- Jeff

[GBinOz]

Again, given we don't know her activities, all I can offer are such speculative type ideas. I'm sure there are many alternative ideas that would account for her not being seen by someone she knew.
- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

An alternative idea that would account for her not being seen by anyone would be that she was lying dead in the backyard of #29. The area she emerged into from the doss house was the geographic profiling hot spot, so it was not altogether unlikely that Jack may have picked her up there immediately after she left the doss house. All the victims lived in this vicinity, so she/they may have known him as a fellow drinker at a local pub such as The Ten Bells or Ringers. This would fit with the Scotland yard memo to the police stations. I am wary of building scenarios based on a preconceived conclusion in the way that Sugden built his argument by commencing with the presumption of a 5:30 murder.

Best regards, George

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Isn't that what Elizabeth Long did?

Given that Annie was well known in the area, is it more likely that someone that knew her, and saw her that night, would, after hearing of her murder report the sighting, more so than someone who didn't know Annie presuming someone she saw was the victim.

Best regards, George

Ooops, just realised I forgot to mention the "someone that knew her" bit.

Yes, that makes sense. However, if Annie was looking for trade more towards Whitechapel Road for much of the night (as per Nicoles and Eddowes), combined with the probability that most people who knew her probably already had their bed for the night, that means for most of the hours the people that knew Annie were probably asleep, or at least away from the area she was looking for customers. If she was returning to the doss house when she meets up with JtR, then the amount of time she's in the vicinity where she might be known becomes relatively short, making it less of a mystery (even less of one if we presume that most doss house residence are either not particularly early risers, or would have been up and gone looking for day work well before that - I think they went to places like the docks to seek day jobs long before 5 am).

Again, given we don't know her activities, all I can offer are such speculative type ideas. I'm sure there are many alternative ideas that would account for her not being seen by someone she knew. We know she wasn't, but pow probable or improbable that is would require us to know a bit more information about the habits of the people she knew, and of course, what she was doing and where she was doing it during those missing hours. I can imagine things that make it probable she would have been seen and I can imagine things that make it improbable that she would be seen - in the end, I don't know which of those things were the reality.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

It would help if you could explain why it would take Chapman about three and a half hours to find a customer.

Chapman's last words as she left the lodging house are reported as: I shan't be long before I am in.

The last sighting of Nichols alive was at at 2:30 AM.

An hour later, she met her killer.

Stride was seen with a man at 12:35 AM, with another man at about 12:45 AM, and met her killer before 1:00AM.

Within half an hour of being released from the police station, Eddowes met her killer.

We know the Whitechapel murderer was on the prowl in the early hours of the morning.

We also know that Chapman was looking for a customer from 1.50 AM onwards.

Why would it have taken 3 1/2 hours for their paths to converge?

Ah, so either you don't have an explanation, or you're unwilling to share it. I've never found such one sided conversations to be very enlightening, so I'll keep my ideas to myself as well.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Isn't that what Elizabeth Long did?

Given that Annie was well known in the area, is it more likely that someone that knew her, and saw her that night, would, after hearing of her murder report the sighting, more so than someone who didn't know Annie presuming someone she saw was the victim.

Best regards, George

Hi George,

Yes, the difference, though, is that Long recalls seeing a man and woman outside of the crime scene that morning, at a time not long before the body was discovered. Hearing of that would result in her thinking she may have seen something related. However, hours earlier, and in all likelihood in locations well displaced from #29 Hanbury (see below for wild speculation), at which point there's nothing to connect seeing women with the crime. That's why I think it is rather improbable that for much of the missing time anyone who saw her probably also saw many other woman and men out and about, so there's no reason to connect any of those sightings to the crime. Long, as I say, saw a couple not long before the crime was discovered, outside the vicinity of the location of the crime. Hence, she came forward while others would have no reason to.

This is just following on from the "well displaced from #29" idea, I suppose one could contemplate the idea that Annie just stood there all night, but I find that improbable. Personally, given that both Nicoles and Eddowes appear to have headed towards Whitechapple Road, my guess would be that Annie went down that way looking for trade for much of the night and perhaps was on her way back to the doss house. If that idea were to be correct, it would suggest she probably met JtR after turning east on Hanbury from Commercial, and JtR was coming from the other direction - which I think fits with the direction of facing that Long describes as she saw the man from the back. I realise I'm running quite a bit with this idea, as there's nothing to prevent Annie and the man meeting when heading in exactly the opposite directions but change positions upon meeting - i.e. she's just passed him when he hails her? I'm completely speculating here, and already have objected to my thoughts! ha ha).

[GBinOz]

I am interested in hearing how you have come to the idea that it would be likely that someone who hears of a murder being discovered at 6 am, and who was themself walking around the night before, would have any particular reason to presume that one of the women they saw was the murder victim?

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Isn't that what Elizabeth Long did?

Given that Annie was well known in the area, is it more likely that someone that knew her, and saw her that night, would, after hearing of her murder report the sighting, more so than someone who didn't know Annie presuming someone she saw was the victim.

Best regards, George

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I would rather give you the opportunity to explain your reasoning first rather than hog the conversation. Please, I am interested in hearing how you have come to the idea that it would be likely that someone who hears of a murder being discovered at 6 am, and who was themself walking around the night before, would have any particular reason to presume that one of the women they saw was the murder victim?

- Jeff

It could be that someone who knew her by name saw her, or it could be that someone saw her soliciting in Hanbury Street.

If, as the wording of your question suggests, you consider it so unlikely that anyone would have seen her, then why do you think the police bothered to try to find someone who had?

[JeffHamm]

And would you say that it is not inherently unlikely that the murderer would look for a victim at about 5.30 a.m., and that he would fail to make use of tap water to clean his hands if he could see it?

I would rather give you the opportunity to explain your reasoning first rather than hog the conversation. Please, I am interested in hearing how you have come to the idea that it would be likely that someone who hears of a murder being discovered at 6 am, and who was themself walking around the night before, would have any particular reason to presume that one of the women they saw was the murder victim?

- Jeff

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

It would help if you could explain why you though it was unlikely ...

It would help if you could explain why it would take Chapman about three and a half hours to find a customer.

Chapman's last words as she left the lodging house are reported as: I shan't be long before I am in.

The last sighting of Nichols alive was at at 2:30 AM.

An hour later, she met her killer.

Stride was seen with a man at 12:35 AM, with another man at about 12:45 AM, and met her killer before 1:00AM.

Within half an hour of being released from the police station, Eddowes met her killer.

We know the Whitechapel murderer was on the prowl in the early hours of the morning.

We also know that Chapman was looking for a customer from 1.50 AM onwards.

Why would it have taken 3 1/2 hours for their paths to converge?

[JeffHamm]

An interesting article on processing and recollecting sound:

Echoic Memory: The Definitive Guide with Real-Life Examples! (magneticmemorymethod.com)

Echoic Memory is the distinct sensory memory that temporarily holds representations of sounds that we hear, queued for processing further into short term memory. This temporary storage process is completely automatic, and requires no conscious effort.

Most of the auditory information we receive into echoic memory fades away, because focused attention is required to process the auditory information into short- and long-term memory.

Echoic memory is constantly “on,” meaning that your brain automatically picks up sounds and stores them, albeit briefly. Of course, the critical step in processing sounds into short-term and long-term memory is your attention to those sounds, otherwise known as “active listening”.

Based on sensory memory duration studies, the consensus of behavioral scientists is that echoic memory lasts for approximately 2 to 4 seconds.

Throughout your life, your brain constantly queues up sounds around you and presents them in a non-stop stream of echoic memories. While most of these memories are discarded, echoic memory is integral in our navigation of our environment through verbal communications and other nonverbal stimuli.

Again, I'd say this article illustrates that memory does not work in the fashion the layman assumes. Broadly, the initial sound lasts for seconds, most of that sound is discarded from memory within seconds, and whether or not the sound makes into a short-term or long-term memory depends upon the attention paid to that sound.

'Very interesting and suggests: "a sound nearby, he must have recollected that sounds as it actually was", is not a foregone conclusion.

'Think I'll have a look for more articles on this.

Oh dear. Echoic memory is one of the early sensory memories (the visual version is called "iconic memory"; it fades even faster than echoic memory; in roughly 100ms or less, while echoic memory tends to last on the order of 2 - 3 seconds).

Echoic memory is even further removed from anything we need consider than recognition memory studies.

It's a simple temporary "buffer" system that holds onto sound information, allowing you to process one signal and then come back to a 2nd, simultaneously presented signal. Sort of like if two people speak a few words to you at the same time, you can decipher one person's speech and then sort of "rehear" the other person, so you can then respond to both of them. But if they are both talking for more than a few words, you lose the information and tell them to just stop and speak one at a time because the signals in the echoic memory buffer fade before you can deal with them.

You don't, however, forget that both people were speaking. You just didn't get the information out to hold on to and process in time (that's the attention part, moving the selected speech signal into a longer lasting memory system, called working memory - older term was short term memory).

Witness testimony is more based upon retrieval of information from one of the components of reference memory (older term was "long term memory"), specifically the component referred to as episodic memory (the memory for the events in our lives - semantic memory is the memory for facts and knowledge - so knowing that coffee comes from Columbia is part of semantic memory, but remembering when someone told you that coffee comes from Columbia would be an episodic memory). False memories tend to be a result of later episodic events getting conflated with earlier episodic events (i.e. the police providing you with information that suggested there was a broken headlight ends up getting conflated with the episodic memory of the event, where you didn't see a broken headlight but now you think you did).

Memory is a complex set of many different systems, and subsystems, broadly divided into the "sensory memory systems" (like iconic and echoic memory systems; these tend to have large capacity but short durations, and the information is tied to the sensory input - iconic memory only deals with visual input), working memory (which has various sub-components that deal with auditory and visual storage - like "talking to yourself" or "forming visual images" - we can convert vision to sound of course, which is why we can rehearse "in sound" words that we read "see"; and we can convert sound to images, as in if someone says things like imagine a dog, you can visually form an image of a dog, etc). Working memory tends to have a smaller capacity but one can continue to maintain information for as long as they choose to refresh it (keep saying the words over and over in your head; keep refreshing the visual image in your "mind's eye").
Reference memory has a huge, some say unlimited, capacity and stores semantic information, our life's events (episodic memory traces), our "skills" (procedural memory systems, like how to play an instrument, or how to write or type, etc), and such. There are debates about what gets stored, and how. Some experts will argue that everything we experience gets encoded into our reference memory, the issue is being able to find and retrieve it. Others argue that not everything gets encoded into reference memory, and while some times information will just "go straight in", the memory trace gets stronger the more we rehearse the information in working memory, and the more we "work with it", the more retrieval cues we can create, making it more likely we will retrieve it later. Sometimes, though, the views depend upon which memory system (semantic or episodic usually are under investigation), as episodic memory tends to be a "encode on the fly" system, while sematic memories tend to form over time, as we tie in new ideas and concepts to existing ones. I generally view semantic memories as sort of averaging over various episodic events - each time we experience a concept, we have that specific episodic memory for that specific event, but that event reactivates our semantic representations for various "concepts" which then "average in" the new information. By concepts, I don't only mean abstract ones as they could also be something quite concrete - like see a new breed of dog and our semantic representation for what a dog looks like will alter ever so slightly.

That sort of idea leads some to argue that episodic memories are often simply made up, where we have very little actual information stored and most of what we remember from the past is created by filling in bits from our semantic understanding of the world. While that cannot be wholly the case, often the failures in our recall of episodic events will substitute in semantically appropriate details (the idea that Long, for example, might misrecall the 5:15 chime as being the 5:30 chime follows this idea; she recalls hearing a chime, perhaps she usually passes that area closer to 5:30ish, so her recall of the events of that morning get contaminated by what she usually experiences; that sort of idea - it's a bit similar to how later interviews can "back contaminate" an episodic memory trace because the trace gets reactive and the current information gets "inserted" into it - there are some who argue that memories from our past that we haven't thought about much are the ones that are most likely to be stored over a long period of time without corruption simply because they haven't been reactivated in order for incorrect information to get inserted. However, we also know that memory traces do weaken over time (though they do not fade to zero according to most), and reactivation of memories is one way to reinvorgate the strength of them. Trying to reactivate a weak memory may result in more "filling in" by semantic memory because some parts and details simply don't reactivate well and episodic memory activation wants to create episodes that don't have missing bits, so it fills in stuff to make sense of it all.

Anyway, sorry for that, I sort of got carried away. Memory is a fascinating topic and it is quite incredible. It is not perfect, but for the most part it doesn't have to be. However, in criminal cases, it does have to be, which is why witness testimony has to be viewed with some caution. It is rarely all wrong, but it is also rarely all correct. Our job is to try and work out what details are likely to be closer to the truth and what details may be a bit off. A good rule of thumb is to start at the most specific end and ease back; from specific time - to a rough time range - or a specific colour car to a more general description (darker or lighter colour car) to just "car"; and the same with "car", as in "specific make and model" to "that brand of car" to "that general shape of car - i.e. station wagon or van or SUV etc) to maybe even just vehicle. Generally, witness statements will be correct for their statements at some point in that "easing back" as rarely do they entirely insert events. Can happen, of course, but then that witness will generally stand out as their description of the events will just not "work" with others. Even Long, if we "ease back" probably did see a man and woman just down from #29; her identification of Annie could be a mistake, but if we "ease back" and say "but she saw a woman", sure that's correct, but that's not good enough. However, her reported time of 5:30 could be slightly off and it was actually 5:15, and that wouldn't change her testimony substantially (it's only out by one set of chimes after all), it's the sort of detail that commonly does end up getting corrupted, and then her testimony slots in almost perfectly with Cadosche's timing. Given that, it is entirely reasonable to consider that may be what happened. It's just a theory, of course, but it is one that gets derived from the research into memory, how it works, and what sort of errors are commonly made.

- Jeff

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

No, it's not inherently unlikely.

And would you say that it is not inherently unlikely that the murderer would look for a victim at about 5.30 a.m., and that he would fail to make use of tap water to clean his hands if he could see it?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

If the evidence of Dr. Phillips is correct as to time of death, it is difficult to understand how it was that Richardson did not see the body when he went into the yard at 4:45 a.m. but as his clothes were examined, the house searched and his statement taken in which there was not a shred of evidence, suspicion could not rest upon him, although police specially directed their attention to him...

Up to the present the combined result of those inquiries did not supply the police with the slightest clue to the murderer...

[Dr Phillips] gives it as his opinion that death occurred about two hours earlier, viz: 4:20 a.m. hence the evidence of Mrs. Long which appeared to be so important to the Coroner, must be looked upon with some amount of doubt, which is to be regretted.

(SWANSON)


Swanson, so greatly admired and respected by so many posters, evidently was not impressed by the evidence of either Richardson or Long.

Neither am I.

[jmenges]

PI and Herlock:

I'm growing accustomed to, and a little annoyed by, several threads devolving into the two of you bickering about what constitutes an insult.
All the while not a single post is being reported for violating the rules.
This back and forth needs to stop now.
If Admin is forced to take it upon themselves, neither of you may like the result.

JM