Casebook Examiner No. 3 (August 2010)

[caz]

Caz, when Le Grand planted the grapestalk on October 1, 1888 (for which we have enough evidence that he did), he would have NOT yet known for a fact that there were no grapes found at the murder scene. There was a rumour, started with Diemshitz et al, that grapes were found in Stride's hand, which was not corroborated as false but several days later.

Precisely my point, Maria. Le Grand picked up on the rumour first, planted the grapestalk so the story would bear a little fruit, then encouraged Packer to have a little whine -- about the coppers not asking him if anyone suspicious had bought his grapes.

But if Le Grand (Tom's Pipe Man) killed Stride himself, after witnessing BS man shoving her to the ground and shoving off, would he really have been fooled by a false rumour that she had been holding grapes at the time? And yet his cunning plan to invent a grape-buying suspect for the police to go looking for would have depended on those grapes being found with the victim, so it just doesn't make sense unless he assumed that was the case. So why would he have bothered planting a grapestalk near the scene? In short, grapes present, no stalk required; grapes absent, no point inventing suspect.

Love,

Caz
X

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Caz. I don't know that Stride's killer would have known for sure what, if anything, she was holding in her hand. Had the Ripper read that she was holding grapes, how are you certain he would have yelled 'No she was not!' instead of 'Oh, really? I didn't notice.' No, with Chapman and Eddowes, the Ripper would have known, but we don't see Le Grand planting grapes at those crime scenes, do we?

So, in short Jack the Ripper (Le Grand, for our purposes here) reads that Stride held grapes and cachous. He goes to the nearest grape salesman (next door to Dutfield's Yard) and asks if he sold grapes to Stride. He says no, but they hit it off. So, he does what he's done for years, and pays Packer to lie to say that he did, still working under the assumption that the POLICE BELIEVE Stride had grapes (and why should he think otherwise?). He pays Packer to offer up a fake suspect, and pays the sisters to lie about the bloody grapestalk. The plan WOULD have been damn good if Stride had indeed been holding grapes. And it still did quite well since your boy Yost put out a book trying to argue for Packer's veracity (a waste of time), and many other movies and books include the grapes as though Packer was telling the truth. The police apparently took the grape angle seriously enough to have this inquired into at the inquest.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Hi Caz, I hope you're having a nicer day than I! (Pots of ugly job-related stress for me today.)
Caz, when Le Grand planted the grapestalk on October 1, 1888 (for which we have enough evidence that he did), he would have NOT yet known for a fact that there were no grapes found at the murder scene. There was a rumour, started with Diemshitz et al, that grapes were found in Stride's hand, which was not corroborated as false but several days later.

Caz wrote:
Stride’s killer, who would have been in the best position to know if the grapes - and therefore Packer’s customer - were mythical and, crucially, to know that the police must have known it too.
I'm not necessarily convinced that Le Grand was Stride's killer, although at this point I'm considering him as a viable suspect. (Not “THE MAIN suspect“!) In addition to this, Le Grand was clearly cunning, but essentially very much a dumbshit, as many of his actions illustrate.
In my opinion, “disinformation frenzy“ and “conjuring up the Packer suspect“ are a very accurate description.
Caz wrote:
What possible advantage was there for the killer to risk getting Packer to tell a story like that, if it was going to be obvious to the police that it was based on a rumour they already knew was untrue?
Among else, the ‘advantage‘ that even today we are still considering, or at least discussing the lodger suspect.

[caz]

Caz,
but you know that Le Grand planted a grapestalk/pretended he'd found a grapestalk close to the scene in his "capacity" as a member of the VC.

Hi Maria,

Apologies for the delay in responding to you!

Yes, I understood that was what Le Grand did and I can see why, if he merely saw an opportunity for a newspaper story that would make the police look incompetent and in need of the recently formed VC to do the job for them.

But it doesn’t address why he would have done so in the capacity of Stride’s killer, who would have been in the best position to know if the grapes - and therefore Packer’s customer - were mythical and, crucially, to know that the police must have known it too.

When I asked Tom - again - about Le Grand’s motivation, as the murderer, for provoking a story that the police would immediately recognise as false, he assured me:

That's fully explored and explained in my article, which everyone is encouraged to read by obtaining issue #2 of Casebook Examiner.

Hi Tom,

I had read your article most carefully so this came as a surprise. I have now had time to go back and see if I could find your full exploration and explanation of Le Grand’s reasoning, but all I came up with was this, from page 23:

With much to lose and nothing
apparent to gain, it appears that Le
Grand’s sole motive in orchestrating the
Berner Street conspiracy was to present
the world with a phantom suspect; one
who never existed, and therefore could
never be found, and one who, it must be
said, looked nothing like himself.

As I thought, this explains nothing. Presenting ‘the world’ with a phantom suspect is no earthly good to a killer who knows the police are not going to be similarly fooled.

On page 63 you describe Le Grand going on a ‘disinformation frenzy’ following publication of Schwartz’s story, which included ‘conjuring up the Packer suspect’, that ‘successfully put the police and public’ on false scents.

Once again, while this mischief maker may have hoped his disinformation would give the press more fuel against his enemies, the boys in blue, or gain brownie points for private detectives and the VC, it could not possibly have put the police on a false scent if they knew from the start that no grapes were found on Stride to lead them to any grape-buying suspect.

Only if Le Grand was not the killer could he have hoped to send the cops off on a wild grape chase, with no consequences to his own neck if they found out he was behind it. What possible advantage was there for the killer to risk getting Packer to tell a story like that, if it was going to be obvious to the police that it was based on a rumour they already knew was untrue?

Love,

Caz
X

[Tom_Wescott]

I'm getting a chance to get caught up on my Examiner reading, and wanted to congratulate Rob Clack on another fantastic piece. I look his photo layouts with accompanying write-up. Another feature I can see becoming of much value as time goes on is 'Casebook Archive', where a particular topic is isolated (this issue is Frances Coles) and links and descriptions are provided of various resources throughout the labirynthian Casebook. This series should not be overlooked by writers (or readers!). Great stuff. Aside from Went and Malcolm, this is all I've read so far, but I'm catching up.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

It's valuable to the field to have a source like these other writers, such as myself, can refer to and source.

I don't know why it came out this way, what I meant to say is that It's valuable to the field to have a source like this that other writers, such as myself, can refer to and source.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Adam Went]

"And let me congratulate you on your awesome and detailed Princess Alice article. It's valuable to the field to have a source like these other writers, such as myself, can refer to and source." - Tom



Cheers,
Adam.

[Stephen Thomas]

It was the "Marchioness" disaster. She was run down by the dredger "Bowbelle" in the early hours of the 20th of August 1989. 51 people were drowned.

Yes, this happened directly below my workplace back then and I was on duty at the time. Thanks to the wonder of double glazing I never heard a thing and my attention was only alerted when I noticed that the bridges all the way to Westminster were suddenly lit up. It was an astonishing response by the London emergency services who were in place 10 or 15 minutes after the event. They were shining lights into the Thames looking for bodies or survivors, but most of the dead had drowned immediately having been below deck drinking and dancing and socialising. The next day I witnessed the boat being winched out of the water from my workplace balcony.

[Tom_Wescott]

Don is like the Hugh Hefner of Ripperology.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Supe]

Tom,

Considering Don has been cranking out issues well in excess of 100 pages

Let me again make it clear that Casebook Examiner is very much a team effort and the success it has had would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of Jennifer Shelden, David Pegg, Caroline Morris, those who labor behind the scenes and all our regular columinists and contributors. Me? i'm just along for the ride.

And Adam, keep the contributions coming. Indeed, anyone out there who has a bright idea for an article is more than welcome to write us at Examiner@casebook.org.

Don Souden,
Executive editor.

[Tom_Wescott]

Yes, and I noticed that there's more to come from you in Casebook Examiner #4, Tom....shall have to rename the magazine "Casebook Examiner; Or, Wescott's Words Of Wisdom" soon.

Considering Don has been cranking out issues well in excess of 100 pages, with numerous contributors, I am only one among many. And let me congratulate you on your awesome and detailed Princess Alice article. It's valuable to the field to have a source like these other writers, such as myself, can refer to and source.

Regarding John Malcolm's piece, what can I say that hasn't been said. He insulted just about every Ripperologist in the field and did it with glee. I cannot at all agree with his estimation of Stewart Evans, who I feel has long been the voice of reason when it comes to Anderson, but I do think Malcolm succeeded in proving his point that Sugden did a very poor job in offering a fair analysis of Kosminski. I think Malcolm would have been more successful in his agenda had he not chosen to come off so angry and personal.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Supe]

Tom,

Don paid me twice what he paid everyone else,

True, true, true . . . and next issue you'll get four times as much. But since that still comes out to zero you might put on hold those plans for a Maserati.

Don.

[Adam Went]

Yes, and I noticed that there's more to come from you in Casebook Examiner #4, Tom....shall have to rename the magazine "Casebook Examiner; Or, Wescott's Words Of Wisdom" soon.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi CD. If Caz wants to wine and dine me, that's great, but then I doubt we'd be talking much. As for 'giving it up', I already did that when I published a massive essay in the ridiculously cheap (almost free) Casebook Examiner. Granted, Don paid me twice what he paid everyone else, but that's just because I'm more popular and because he's scared of me.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[c.d.]

Hi Tom,

I see that you need to wined and dined first before you give it up. Why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free? Smart. Very smart.

c.d.