Schwartz VS Goldstein

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi all

Following on from the recent trend of a 'VS' topic, I'd like to try the same approach with arguably the 2 most elusive yet potentially significant 'witnesses' in the Stride murder.

Let's call this...

Schwartz VS Goldstein


My question is;

What are the key similarities and differences between them?

Their antecedents, their account of what happened, their physical movements on the night of the murder, their subsequent impact on the investigation, their physical appearance, their validity...you get the idea.


RD

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The best place to start would be to trace Leon Goldstein's route home, on Richard's JtR Map.
The next step is to reread the Schwartz section of Swanson's Oct 19 report:

12.45 a.m. 30th. Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen [sic - Ellen] Street, Backchurch Lane, stated that at this hour, on turning into Berner St. from Commercial Road & having got as far as the gateway where the murder was committed he saw a man stop & speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway. The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round & threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man standing lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road 'Lipski' & then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man he ran so far as the railway arch but the man did not follow so far. Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other. Upon being taken to the mortuary Schwartz identified the body as that of the woman he had seen & he thus describes the first man, who threw the woman down: age about 30 ht, 5 ft 5 in. comp. fair hair dark, small brown moustache, full face, broad shouldered, dress, dark jacket & trousers black cap with peak, had nothing in his hands.

Second man age 35 ht. 5 ft 11in. comp. fresh, hair light brown, moustache brown, dress dark overcoat, old black hard felt hat wide brim, had a clay pipe in his hand.

Where Schwartz is when he finds he is being followed by Pipeman is a bit vague, but we can get a better idea from Wess's comments to an Echo reporter, of ...

... a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer- being chased by another man along Fairclough-street, which runs across Berner-street close to the Club, and which is intersected on the right by Providence-street, Brunswick-street, and Christian-st., and on the left by Batty-street and Grove-street, the two latter running up into Commercial-road.

Had Schwartz run past Providence St and Brunswick St, then turned into Christian St, he would eventually reach a railway arch. He would then be a stone's throw from Goldstein's residence at number 22.

If you synthesize the path of Israel Schwartz into, along, and out of Berner St, along Fairclough St and into Christian St, then going as far as the railway arch, it becomes evident that, from the point Schwartz is about to turn into Berner St, the route is essentially identical to Leon Goldstein's route home.