Casebook Examiner No. 2 (June 2010)

[Tom_Wescott]

And to be clear, I never accused you of "screwing with the evidence". I said you hung your hat on it. And as you have just said the exact same thing: "it's true that my suspicion settled on Le Grand through the Stride murder", you have basically confirmed what I said.

Look who's moving the goal post. You explicity stated that I push Stride up as a Ripper victim to bolster my Le Grand theory, which most certainly would be manipulating the evidence if what you said was true. Now you say you didn't say it, but then say that by disagreeing with you I was confirming what you said. I'd say I'm the only one here not manipulating the evidence.

Here's your words: I have always wondered at Tom's fierce devotion to the idea that Stride had to have been a Ripper victim, and it has now with this essay become clear as to why that would be. It is the one victim where he can place his chief suspect in the relative vicinity and the only witness description that comes close to matching. He has hung his hat, so to speak, on this one victim's evidence and he must therefore include her, lest his case as a whole fall apart.

One can take Stride out, quite easily, if one is of the mindset to do so. There are more than enough discrepancies in her murder that a person can, upon viewing the evidence, decide she was not a Ripper victim.

And as I illustrated in my previous essay, the only authors who have excluded Stride have done so based not on facts, but on myths and misunderstandings. This is virtually without exception. The one significant discrepancy is that she was not mutilated below the neck.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[robhouse]

Tom,

I thought your article was very good. Clearly Le Grand was a criminal, and apparently a sociopath (although not likely insane.) In my opinion, one of the strongest arguments in favor of Le Grand as a suspect would be that he seems to have impersonated a policeman (detective), and injected himself into the investigation. This is consistent with serial killer behavior in some cases. My main objection to Le Grand as a suspect is that (like others here) his criminal persona seems to be of a different type than the lust murderer one would expect of JTR... I too tend to see the Riper as probably a loner, Dahmer type as opposed to the overt aggression and manipulation (often for money) Le Grand seems to have engaged in. In general he seems to have been a manipulative and aggressive pimp/ extortionist.

Also, although I applaud Debra's discovery of the October 10 Batty Street "lodger" article, I disagree with your conclusions here. I don't think it is accurate to say that "researcher Gavin Bromley expertly proved beyonddoubt that the Batty Street Lodger had never existed and had largely been nothing more than the press making a mountain out of a molehill." I do not think this was Gavin's conclusion. In any case, I think that a reading of the press accounts shows that the police were aware of the incident before October 10... it seems that the Police learned of the bloody shirt incident around October 1 or 2, as a result of house-to-house inquiries. Therefore, it seems to me that Le Grand simply did a little of his own investigating (in his role as private detective) after learning of the incident which was clearly public knowledge in the neighborhood prior to October 9 or 10. I.e. a neighbor heard about it from Mrs. Kuer, so it is likely that word of the "bloody shirt" was on the street etc.

But in any case, it was a very good article, and I applaud all your work and research into this figure, who is clearly deserving of a closer look.

Rob H

[Ally]

You need to go back and read what I wrote. Or read the definition of explicit. I might have implicitly stated it, but that would be the exact opposite of explicit. Which I didn't either. I said: I have always wondered at your dogged insistence that Stride was a ripper victim when there is a good argument to be made for her not being the Ripper's work. Now that I have read your essay and realized that it is the sole murder that the witness statements match, and you make a point of your suspect being in the general area, your dogged determination that Stride is a victim makes sense. And you have admitted that your pursuit of Le Grand was started from the Stride murder-which is what I said--your Le Grand hat is hung on the Stride murder.

No where in my post did I accuse you of "manipulating evidence". That is flat out bullsh!t.
Either that or you don't understand what an accusation of evidence manipulation is. I do know how flustered you get when you are irked and you are prone to lapses in reason, so possibly this is yet another example of your temper getting in the way of your good sense, but if I had accused you of "evidence manipulation" I would have said you faked something, you lied about something or you distorted the truth to further your theory. I did not say anything of the sort. I said, you need to believe Stride was a victim, because it makes up a large portion of your theory.

P.S My reply was to Tom's post before he edited his own but the basics still stand.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Rob House, thanks for that thoughtful post. I'm going to wait and see if Debs would like to repond to your points regarding the Batty Street Lodger, but let me say that Gavin Bromley did provide ample data to conclude that there was no 'lodger' involved in the Batty Street Lodger story and he did an excellent job of disposing of that particular myth once and for all.

As for the idea that the Ripper was some nondescript loner, you are certainly not alone in that perception, but it is a perception that does not appear to be suggested by the evidence, but moreso by the 'profiling' boom of the 90's.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Natalie Severn]

The point you make,Tom, about the "profiling boom" as you put it,is so important.The case of Robert Napper ,serial killer now in Broadmoor, demonstrated how profiling can in fact mislead and cause untold damage even leading people away from the killer rather than towards him or her.

[Debra A]

In any case, I think that a reading of the press accounts shows that the police were aware of the incident before October 10... it seems that the Police learned of the bloody shirt incident around October 1 or 2, as a result of house-to-house inquiries. Therefore, it seems to me that Le Grand simply did a little of his own investigating (in his role as private detective) after learning of the incident which was clearly public knowledge in the neighborhood prior to October 9 or 10. I.e. a neighbor heard about it from Mrs. Kuer, so it is likely that word of the "bloody shirt" was on the street etc.

But in any case, it was a very good article, and I applaud all your work and research into this figure, who is clearly deserving of a closer look.

Rob H

Rob,
The press and police were obviously aware of the shirt incident before the story broke and had managed to keep it under wraps, it seems until 16th October, by then it had become the story of a lodger who had left a bloodstained shirt with his landlady.

The story was later dismissed again in other papers after the 16th and it was reported that there was no lodger , just a bloodstained shirt left with a laundress. It has been suggested in the past in message board discussions that this was a diluted version of the original lodger story, used by police to cover up the true details by downgrading it so to speak. There has also been some discussion that the press had got details of laundry incident in the Gray's Inn road mixed up with the Batty Street lodger story.

To me, this earler mention, 10th October, shows that perhaps the lodger story wasn't actually 'watered down' by police to cover anything up concerning a lodger at all, but maybe it did in fact start life that way. And given Le Grand's involvement in the grapestalk incident along with Packer and the report on the 10th that he was also 'investigating'the bloodstained shirt left in Batty Street with a laundress, it seems reasonable to assume that Le Grand himself, again along with Packer's help again , elevated the laundress story to one of a mysterious lodger in Batty Street.

[Rob Clack]

I have always wondered at Tom's fierce devotion to the idea that Stride had to have been a Ripper victim, and it has now with this essay become clear as to why that would be. It is the one victim where he can place his chief suspect in the relative vicinity and the only witness description that comes close to matching. He has hung his hat, so to speak, on this one victim's evidence and he must therefore include her, lest his case as a whole fall apart.

There is no evidence that Le Grand was anywhere near Berner Street that night. 74 Mile End Road was at least a mile away from Berner Street, so if Le Grand left there after midnight he could have gone anywhere.

Rob

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Nats. I don't want to derail the conversation, but profiling doesn't catch serial killers, except in the movies. John Douglas, the father of profiling, put the wrong man behind bars in Atlanta and kept Gary Ridgway free for 20 years. Profiling seems to work great for robberies and burglaries, where there's sufficient data, but not for serial killers. Yet all the worn-out cliches, like 'nondescript loner' and 'organized and disorganized' are still brought up constantly in the Ripper crimes, where none of it really applies, because even amongst serial killers, the Ripper case is an anomaly.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

There is no evidence that Le Grand was anywhere near Berner Street that night. 74 Mile End Road was at least a mile away from Berner Street, so if Le Grand left there after midnight he could have gone anywhere.

According to Colin Roberts, it was roughly one mile away - a little less or a little more depending on the route. While one mile (a 15-20 min walk) might be a world away to you, to some of us it's not insignificant that a police suspect can be placed within a mile of a murder in the same hour it was committed. I never said that I can place Le Grand in Berner Street at the time of the murder, although I can place someone who looked very much like Le Grand there - Pipeman.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Debra A]

There is no evidence that Le Grand was anywhere near Berner Street that night. 74 Mile End Road was at least a mile away from Berner Street, so if Le Grand left there after midnight he could have gone anywhere.

Rob

Hi Rob, But how many miles closer is that than any of the other suspects though?

[robhouse]

Hi Debra,

Thanks for your reply. I do not really agree with most of the ideas that have been presented re: this Batty Street story (including Gavin's interpretation.) The one thing I do agree with is that it was not a lodger who dropped off the shirts. However, I do not think that Gavin concluded that the story had "largely been nothing more than the press making a mountain out of a molehill."

It is really necessary to look at all the press accounts as a whole, and then interpret them. Of course, this is a minefield since we are relying on press accounts. However, it seems to me that several accounts seem to agree on certain things, and it seems likely (if not clear perhaps) that the police learned of the bloody laundry from a neighbor of Mrs. kuer's around October 1. They then contacted Mrs. kuer. The neighbor probably misinterpreted Mrs. Kuer's story (possibly because she hardly spoke English), and assumed that the person who dropped off the shirts was the lodger Carl Noun, who was at the time out of town on business. By October 9, the story was quite possibly being talked about in the neighborhood when Le Grand learned of it. Mrs Kuer herself was probably instructed by the police not to talk to the press, and the police were apparently maintaining surveillance in the house. As a result of all this, it seems that at least one, but probably two people were arrested, then released.

I do not think that the press was particularly interested in keeping the affair quiet, although the police certainly were. I do not agree with the suggestion that the police tried to divert attention from the true "lodger" story by inventing a story about a person who was not a lodger. It seems to me much more likely that the whole reason there was a "logder" at all is that the early press reports (starting on October 15) used Kuer's neighbors as the main source. We all know how stories can "evolve" when they are reported second or third hand.

In short, I do not see that there is any evidence that Le Grand invented any part of the story, although he was quite possibly responsible for bringing the story to the attention of the press, when the police were trying to keep it quiet.

RH

[GregBaron]

Profiling............

Tom makes a good point about profiling. We can't get too caught up
in what we think JtR should be. 122 years of experience nonwithstanding
profiling is still largely guesswork. What we do know is the prostitutes
were apparently not threatened by the Ripper and he escaped as if a phantom...
leaving carnage in his wake...............
this is all we have to go on for personality traits....


Greg

[Rob Clack]

According to Colin Roberts, it was roughly one mile away - a little less or a little more depending on the route. While one mile (a 15-20 min walk) might be a world away to you, to some of us it's not insignificant that a police suspect can be placed within a mile of a murder in the same hour it was committed. I never said that I can place Le Grand in Berner Street at the time of the murder, although I can place someone who looked very much like Le Grand there - Pipeman.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Well Tom you said.

This means that we can accurately place Le Grand in the very neighborhood in which Stride was murdered at the very hour of her murder.

When in fact you can't.

Rob

[Rob Clack]

Hi Rob, But how many miles closer is that than any of the other suspects though?

Well he's probably further out then Kosminski

Druitt may have been as close

Rob

[Tom_Wescott]

However, I do not think that Gavin concluded that the story had "largely been nothing more than the press making a mountain out of a molehill."

Gavin chose to be wishy-washy in his conclusions, but the evidence he presented, which included a letter written a REAL lodger of 22 Batty Street, conclusively showed there was no lodger. There was a laundress and a bloody shirt.

Well Tom you said.

This means that we can accurately place Le Grand in the very neighborhood in which Stride was murdered at the very hour of her murder.

When in fact you can't.

One mile? That's the same neighborhood, Rob. At least here in the states. If you can walk any place within 30 minutes from your house, it's in your neighborhood. But I will remember and not use the word 'neighborhood' in future writings. However, one mile is indeed a 'short distance'.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott