Follow the Ripper Murders as the happened…

[John Bennett]

What was it he sung, that Irishman...Johnny Logan; "What´s another year?"

Thanks for your interest anyhow, John!

All the best,
Fisherman

Just so you know, Charles Cross / Lechmere is now in the 'Suspects' category.

I'll have to leave to somebody else who has more time to kill to fill in the rest!

[Fisherman]

Just so you know, Charles Cross / Lechmere is now in the 'Suspects' category.

I'll have to leave to somebody else who has more time to kill to fill in the rest!

Thanks for that, John!

The best,
Fisherman

[Robert]

I don't see him.

[Fisherman]

I don't see him.

It´s in the Jack the Ripper wiki, Robert. One step at the time ...

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

I don't see him.

Come to think of it, that actually goes for a good many people out here. Or so they say ...

The best,
Fisherman

[Robert]

Thanks Fish, found it.

It's one small step for Cross, but it's a giant leap for Lechmere.

[Lechmere]

On day someone will say:
'We have discovered proof that Jack the Ripper was Charles Lechmere.'
And a 'Ripperologist' will say:
'Who's he?'

[Lechmere]

Stewart P Evans
I don’t think it’s very amazing that various self-appointed experts, amateur experts, arm chair experts, grumpy old timer experts, ex-police experts, and the totally clueless on 'serial killers' are thrown up by these boards, as after all… this is a forum devoted to discussing a presumed serial killer.

Regarding Charles Lechmere, you state that he left home at 3.20 and the body was found at 3.40.
Other reports state he left home at 3.30 and the body was found at 3.45 – but let’s go with your timing.
I take it that your remark ‘Plenty of time to fit a murder in then’ implies that Charles Lechmere couldn’t have killed Nichols due to the time restrains.
I am not sure how long you think it took to kill Nichols.
However from Charles Lechmere’s house to the murder scene is about a 7 minute brisk walk. By your reckoning he had another 13 minutes to hang around. Plenty of time to fit a murder in – plenty.

Swanson was still referring to Charles Lechmere as Charles Cross in his report dated 19th October 1888 which rather implies that the man had not been properly ‘checked out’.
We know the police failed to interview most of the residents in Buck’s Row – which ‘naturally’ they really should have.
So why should we assume – with no substantiation at all – that the police checked Charles Lechmere in any sort of thorough manner?

There was a glaring inconsistency between what PC Mizen testified Charles Lechmere had said to him and what Charles Lechmere testified he had said to Mizen. Is this suspicious?

In the initial phase of the investigation (which I’m taking to be prior to the Double Event, after which the enquires spiralled into other directions) during which Charles Lechmere would plausibly (or naturally) have been enquired into, we have a fairly clear view (largely from internal reports) of who the police we looking at and the type of suspect they were focussing on:
A High Rip type gang.
The butchers in Winthrop Street.
Lodging house dwellers in general.
Three insane medical students from the London Hospital.
Puckeridge – an ex asylum inmate.
A man living in a Brothel with blood on him.
Pigott of Gravesend (there were question marks as to his mental state)
Charles Ludwig – a German
Robert Paul
Someone called Edward Mckenna
Pizer
Isenschmid
This list probably isn’t exhaustive.
Pizer and Isenschmid were taken much more seriously than the rest – a Jew and a mad foreigner.

We know Edward Stanley and John Richardson were interrogated.
No mention of Cross, whose real identity remained unknown.

Lechmere had handed himself in. He gave an address and a workplace – he was a family man with a secure job and a permanent home. I would suggest he did not fit the criminal profile that the police worked to and that he was accordingly able to flit in and out of the case – virtually noticed.
Dew in his memoirs cannot remember his name. He was a bland nobody.

Generations of Ripperologists have not noticed him – even inventing the oft repeated exonerating tale that Lechmere was going to scavenge a tarpaulin.
No one noticed that Mizen claimed he had lied to him (see above).
No one noticed the time discrepancy from when he left home to the discovery of the body (this is still the case – see above).
No one noticed that he was found by the body before he had raised the alarm.
No one noticed that the abdominal wounds being covered indicated that the killer may have been disturbed.
No one noticed that he and Paul walked past the pending Chapman murder scene immediately that same morning.
No one noticed that Lechmere was about the only witness to turn up to the inquest in his work clothes, accessorised with apron.
And so on.
He was a faceless nobody who called himself Charles Lechmere with monotonous regularity in every conceivable record you could hope to find – apart from one.
But none of this is suspicious.
He isn’t exciting or flamboyant like some suspects.

‘In talking of suspects I prefer to refer to those under suspicion in 1888 (be they named or not), viable persons, or those with at least some credible reason for being considered.’
Viable persons?
Those with a credible reason for being considered?
In who’s eyes? Who is the arbiter?

Anderson actually asked Dr Bond (who obviously wasn’t a policeman) for ‘guidance as to the amount of surgical skill and anatomical knowledge probably possessed by the murderer or murderers.’
Bond greatly exceeded this brief and gave his opinions as to the type of man who he thought they should be looking for. Does this tell us who the police were looking at?

The list of people investigated that Swanson supplied for Home Office consumption (again on 19th October 1888) gives no indication of the weight attached – and in any case was of the nature of a self-justificatory (given the intended recipient) ‘look, we are leaving no stone unturned’ missive.
Actually this is all a bit like the Bible where a passage can be found to justify any contradictory contention.

Should we really have faith in the police’s ability in 1888 – or in subsequent years – to correctly gauge who is and who isn’t a likely suspect in a serial killing spree or even any sort of murder where the motive is not obvious or where the killer has no connection to the victim?
These are difficult crimes to solve but the evidence seems to suggest that the police are not that good at it now let alone in 1888.
I am reminded of the Christie case and the terrible mistakes made during the botched Timothy Evans investigation.
I am reminded of the Rachel Manning murder where her ex-boyfriend Barri White was recently released without a word of apology from the police after another man was convicted of the murder.
I am reminded that in 2012 it took police a week to find Tia Sharp’s body in the attic where she had last been seen – after four failed searches of the same house.
These are not isolated cases.

So you can guess, theorise and suppose that the police in 1888 would, naturally, have thoroughly checked Charles Lechmere out – but what evidence we have of his involvement suggests they did not and we have viable reasons why they did not.

[Stephen Thomas]

I find no pleasure in seeing clever people 'losing it'.

This seems to be happening more and more often these days.

[Jenni Shelden]

I don't really Twitter but am curious if this is still going?