Was Charles Lechmere Jack the Ripper? w/ Edward Stow

No historical true crime case is more hotly debated around the world than the one involving the near-mythical serial killer “Jack the Ripper”. My guest, Edward Stow, believes the killer was a man named Charles Lechmere, a local East End resident who murdered in the early morning hours while on his way to his work. 

Stow, creator and host of the YouTube series “The House of Lechmere”, shares evidence that he believes implicates Lechmere in not only the murders of the Canonical Five, but of other women in 1880s London as well. 

Podcast Transcript:

Erik: Welcome everyone, to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast. I’m Erik Rivenes. Thank you for joining me. It’s so great to have as my guest today, Edward Stow. He is a Jack the Ripper expert. He was the main advisor on the documentary, Jack The Ripper: the New Evidence, and he is the host of a YouTube channel called The House of Lechmere.

Great to have you here with me today.

Edward: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. The, the documentary is also known as Jack the Ripper: the Missing Evidence depend. They, they rebrand it and call it different things, but yeah. Jack the Ripper: The New Evidence or Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence.

Erik: Okay. Good to clarify. So when did you first become a student of this case?

Edward: Well, in depth about 10 years ago. I’ve, I’ve had an interest in it, more superficial interest in it since I was a child, but I really got into it properly about 10, 10 years ago in, in detail, which was actually a consequence of my partner being interested in in her family, her family history, and always Googling her families, her different families, her uncle, you know, different names in her family. And one of them is her mother’s maiden name. Her mother’s maiden name is Lechmere.

Erik: Oh, wow.

Edward: And that’s how I got into it. Basically. She looked, she, she, the, the connection of this character called Charles Lechmere to Jack the Ripper. In the Jack the Ripper story he’s known as Charles Cross because that’s the name he gave. He features in the murderer of Polly Nichols, the first of the five canonical, generally accepted murders. He was one, he, he, he is one of the first characters that we meet in the story of the murder of Polly Nichols, but under the name Charles Cross.

And it was only discovered that his real name was actually Charles Lechmere about I don’t know, 10 years ago ish. And maybe a little bit more, maybe a few years, more than 10 years ago by people doing genealogical research and looking, because things like Ancestry, I dunno. Do you have Ancestry in America? Is that an American thing as well?

Erik: Ancestry? Yes. Yes, we sure do.

Edward: Okay. It’s probably a worldwide thing, isn’t it, I guess. And people, people have more access to who people were than they, than the police did at the time. Because you can look at all that from the comfort of your home and find interconnections and where people are, where they moved, and all sorts of through electoral roles being digitized through birth, death, marriage records, censuses.

You can track people down more efficiently now, where people were living in 1888 or that period than, than, than people could at the time. So someone tracked down and found that this person, Charles, this witness, or this character, this personality, In the murder of Polly Nichols wasn’t actually called Charles Cross. His name is Charles Lechmere, and that happens to be her mother’s maiden name as well. She’s actually a descendant of his.

Erik: Interesting. So you have a very personal connection to all of this…

Edward: Yeah. I’m a bit of a skeptic whenever she comes to me and says, oh, I found this out, and if she tells me anything, my immediate reaction I shouldn’t really perhaps say this. My immediate reaction is, that’s probably gonna be a little well rubbish. And but I looked into the case of this person. Well, I’ll give you another example. In her family history, her, her family are from the East End, the east end of London. And, and lots of East End families have family oral traditions about have you heard of the Krays, the gang gangland family called the Krays?

Erik: I have not.

Edward: Okay. Well, in British terms, you, you’ve got the mafia and stuff, haven’t you? And the Bonnie and Clyde and stuff like that. Al Capone. In British gangster terms, the Krays are the biggest name. They’re the most famous gangland name of a criminal family in Britain. But I guess it doesn’t transfer over the Atlantic cause they’re fairly small beer compared to , some of your, your gangsters.

And so that’s probably why you haven’t heard them. But in our terms, they are so most, and they were from the East End, so most families or people from the East End would have a Kray story. Anyway, but because they’re, they’re in the folklore, they’re in the folklore of the East End, and everyone would have a Kray story.

Everyone would have a story about the blitz. You know, in the war when the Germans bomb the East End quite heavily there. There’s, there’s certain stories where the docks, the docks of London were based in the East End. Everyone have a docks stories about stealing stuff from the docks and stuff like that.

The East End’s full of mythology and stories and Jack the Ripper’s from the East End. So people, if there’s any possible connection to Jack the Ripper, people say, well, my family used to live in the East End. They used to reckon they know did it and all this sort of stuff. People live in the East End are full of these sorts of stories.

It’s a sort of, that’s the sort of place it was. But they had, they knew nothing about their family’s connection to Jack the Ripper. But one of their stories, for example, they had an officer, a captain who’s, who was with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, that’s one of the family traditions. And at the time I thought, this doesn’t sound realistic, cuz they’re, they’re, they’re quite a poor family living in the East end to be a, you know, a hundred years before having a captain at, in the Battle of Trafalgar seems, seems a big drop in social standing sort of thing.

But I looked it up and there was, there was a, a Captain Lechmere, but he wasn’t at Trafalgar. He, he missed the battle cause he had to go to a court martial for another officer and someone else, his second in command took him was in charge of his ship at the Battle of Trafalgar. But he was, there was a Captain Lemi in, that was in Nelson’s fleet. So their, their family traditions are fairly well established, but they knew, they knew nothing about the fact that their great-grandfather was one of the main witnesses in the Jack the Ripper case.

Erik: So I’ve done two episodes on Jack The Ripper before, but just in case there are people out there who haven’t heard them, don’t remember, don’t know who Jack the Ripper is or who, just would like a quick refresher. Could you summarize the case for us briefly?

Edward: Was that with Tom Wescott both times or did you do one with Tom Wescott?

Erik: One with Tom Wescott and one with Donald Rumbelow.

Edward: Oh, that’s right. Okay. You did tell me actually. Yeah, well, the Jack the Ripper case, it’s in 1888 in Victorian London in the east end of London, which is was a sort of poor district. Very overcrowded, very dirty area. Dark and gloomy streets, poorly lit streets. They were middle class pockets as well, but they, they, it had the largest concentration of lodging houses, which is where people would sleep when they didn’t have a proper accommodation for themselves. Individual, and, you know, many multiple people per a few pence per night is where you would stay if you had like an itinerant laborer or something like that, or you know, basically a doss or even a beggar who manage to beg a few pence.

So they had a very large concentration of, of these places. It was sort of commonly called doss houses. It had a large concentration of prostitutes, street prostitutes as well. So it was quite a poor crime infested area. And during that period, it’s called the Autumn of Terror. From August the 31st, up to November the ninth, there were five murders, which are commonly attributed to Jack the Ripper, five prostitutes killed in a very gruesome and bloody way, carved up with kni with a knife or knives even.

And they’re, they’re known as the Jack the Ripper murders, the name Jack the Ripper itself only appeared halfway through that sequence when a letter was received by the, a news agency signed Jack the Ripper and claiming responsibility for the crimes. And there’s been controversy ever since, whether it was a hoax, perhaps even written by a, a newspaper man to help cuz these, these murders became a sensation and sold newspapers.

It was the beginning. It’s often regarded as the beginning of the sensationalization of newspaper stories to sell. With the newspapers competing with each other for a more and more sensationalized headline, but they’d also have news boys selling the newspaper by shouting out whatever the gory title would be. “Latest Murder in Whitechapel”, to sell papers. And, and so there’s a theory that that it was made up by a newspaper man. The name was made up by a new-. It’s quite catchy, isn’t it, Jack The Ripper to sell papers. But there’s other theories that it was a genuine letter. I, I tend to think it was probably, there’s a good, good argument that it was a genuine letter and was from the culprit.

But there’s, there’s different schools of thought on that. So there’s five official murders. Polly Nichols was the first one. The next one was Annie Chapman. Eight days later. The next, there’s two on one night Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes. That’s called the Double Event cause there’s two on the same day. And that’s roughly when the letter was received. And then the last one’s called Mary Kelly in November. And that’s the five. But there are other murders. The, the police had a file called the Whitechapel murder file, which had all these murders in it. They had a separate file on each murder, but the overall file was called the Whitechapel Murder file.

And there’s other murders in there, some of which are, you know, different people think are, or aren’t part of -attributable to Jack the Ripper. And different policemen thought different ones were. The only reason the five are regarded as a group is because a policeman, some years later called Melville Macnaghten wrote a memorandum in which he, he he said there was just those five and the others weren’t part of the sequence, but other policemen who were, he wasn’t actually even working at Scotland Yard at the time of the murders, but he had access to the files. So he said there was the five, but other policemen equally senior and some more involved in -junior, but more involved on the ground in the case thought there was, you know, others should have been added to the tally cuz there were others. There was, for example there, one called by Emma Smith is the first one in the file. That was in April of 1888. Then you’ve got one called Martha Tabram, the beginning of August, 1888. And then there was another one called, a woman called Rose Mylett killed in December, 1888.

Then you’ve got into the next year, 1889. There were more. There was one: Alice McKenzie. Then there was thing called the Pinchin Street Torso, which was found in, in the White Chapel area. And then the last one was Francis Coles, a few years later. So there, there’s, there’s quite a few that you can add or subtract to the, to the tally.

And also concurrently I mentioned the Pinchin Street Torso. There were a series of torso murders going on in London at the time where body parts were found. From 1887 there was four torsos. Pinchin Street Torso is one of them between 1887 and 1889. Which you, some people think, I think were part of, you know, the same guy did it.

But so the Jack the Ripper murders were those five. Most people accept the five that I mentioned to start with, but there are others you can add or subtract, depending. Often it depends on who your suspect is. You can’t have, you can’t attribute these murders to your suspect if your suspect was locked up at the time when one of the later ones was committed, you know, or perhaps wasn’t even in the country at the right time or something like that.

So often the number of murders that different people think were committed by Jack the Ripper often depends on their suspect and whether that suspect could have done them or not. Rather than subjectively looking to see whether it’s likely that the murder would’ve been committed by the same person.

Erik: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So when did Charles Lechmere become a suspect? Who, who put the pieces together? How did it happen?

Edward: A couple of researchers sort of halfheartedly, looked at him a bit about 15 years ago and made the connection through genealogical research. Because the character Charles Cross from the, he, he appeared at the inquest of Polly Nichols.

So, and he’s in a couple of police reports, so the bare bones of the information we know about him, his address, for example, is known from, from the police report. And one newspaper, there’s one newspaper had his address which was called Doveton Street. And that appears in a police report as well.

So you’ve got that bit of information. Charles Cross 22, Doveton Street. And he was a car man as well. That’s the other piece of information. A car man is someone who is like a, a van driver now, a delivery person who, who used a horse and cart to make deliveries, parcels and stuff or goods. Could be beer, could be anything really.

Packages could be anything from shop to shops or whatever, like a van driver, which is actually the most common occupation for a serial killer nowadays. But he was a car man, but the newspaper stories at the time had his name down confusingly as different things. Some had him down as George Cross. The common name was Cross cuz he gave his name in a in a court, in an inquest where obviously it was noisy.

He may have not said the words very clearly, may have muttered or mumbled. And so the different newspapers there, the, there was about 10 or 12 different journalists. We- the inquest of Polly Nichols. We know that because there’s been an analysis done of the different accounts in the different newspapers to find the unique, uniquely different aspects and the different ones and how they’ve worded, worded and phrased it.

There’s about 12 and only one got his address. Some called him -for example, you get early books on the Jack the Ripper thing, call him George Cross. Cause I believe, I can’t remember off the top of my head. I think the Times, which is usually regarded as a paper of record. Their journalists happen to get his name wrong and call him George Cross. So lots of early books called him George Cross and that some gave his middle name, which was Allen. Some gave it wrongly as Andrew. So there’s all these different combinations between Charles Cross, Charles Andrew Cross, Charles Allen Cross, or George Cross. And, but the police report did have his name properly as Charles Allen Cross, 22 Doveton Street.

And from that, and we know it was a car man, so they looked it up and found that there was someone at 22 Doveton Street who was a car man called Charles Allen Lechmere. So that pretty much told you that it was the right guy. And the final nail in the coffin, actually it was the, this is the penultimate nail in the coffin.

The penultimate nail in the coffin is that he had a stepfather, his father abandoned him when he was, or abandoned the family when he was about one or something. And he was brought up just by his mother until he was about eight or something, like about eight. When she remarried. Actually, bigamously because she had, her husband was still alive. She bigamously married a, a policeman called Thomas Cross and lived with him. And then he, he died a few years later. And the interesting thing is Thomas Cross was about 10 years younger than his mother. So his mother had two kids, she had younger sister, so she had two kids. And she, and she was in her thirties and she married a policeman in his early twenties, 10 years younger than her.

Most of the victims of Jack the Ripper were in her situation. They, they were abandoned women who had kids and stuff and turned to drink and then turned to prostitution. Whereas Lechmere’s mother actually managed to marry a policeman, which is pretty secure occupation to have for a husband. He, he, this policeman Thomas Cross took on a woman 10 years older than himself, plus with two kids in tow.

So it’s a bit of a strange situation. Anyway, in the 1861 census, Charles actually was about 11. Thomas Cross filled or told the census enumerator that the children were called- he was told Charles Cross. So on the 1861 census, he’s down as Charles Cross, it’s the only time in his life he’s down as Charles Cross, and so that told you that was, I say that was the penultimate nail in the coffin to show that Charles Cross and Charles Lechmere were the same people because of the 1861 census. When this stepfather who died a few years later, he’d been dead 18 years by the time of the Jack the Ripper murders. 19 years.

And Lechmere had always called himself Lechmere, subsequently in every record since then. But he turns up at the inquest and called himself Cross, which was named after his long dead stepfather. His mother had also remarried again by this stage. But he he borrowed his long dead stepfather’s name to call himself Charles Cross.

Erik: So, Charles Lemere, what connection does he have to the case?

Edward: Well, I’ll just tell you quickly, the, the, the final nail in the coffin, which was the thing that I found was that he had moved for, he always lived near his mother in a, a slightly different part of the East End, about a mile away. But he moved away in June, 1888.

He moved to Doveton Street, so that put his route to work. He, he, he worked at Pickfords, which is a removal firm now. Then it was like a haulier -that’s why he was a car man. They were a business working at a station called Broad Street Station, which was a big good station. So lots of goods was brought down from the rest of the country to London to, for the London shops and the economy in London.

All the trains turned up at a Broad Street station full of all different goods that need to be transported onwards to shops and businesses in London. And his job was a car man delivering those goods. His route to work from his new place in Doveton Street where he just moved to, took him down Bucks Road, which is the road where, where Polly Nichols was murdered.

So what happened was, in the early hours in the morning, on the 31st of August, 1888, Polly Nichols, who was a street prostitute, basically, not to sugarcoat it, she was drunk. She’d been drinking pretty much all day. She had been earning money through prostitution and spending it on drink. And come the end of the night she’d spent it all and didn’t have a room for one of these lodging houses I mentioned earlier, one of these doss houses where itinerant people like that would stay in, in lodging houses or doss houses. But she had, she had spent all her money on drink and was drunk. So she went to the Doss house and the person in charge – the deputy, or the the second in command of it, actually not the person who’s in charge of it, threw her out and said, look, you can’t, unless you got your money, you can’t stay here.

So she said she made some sort of, this is quite a famous thing, that she’d be back because she’d she’d earned her money four times over and she’d go out and she’d earn it again. This was like at one o’clock in the morning. So she was confident of being able to go off, total off down the street, half drunk in the middle of the night, and earn her money again and come back and she staggered off down the road. Actually met the actual deputy, the actual per, sorry, the actual person in charge who was a woman of the lodging house who had befriended her and knew her and who tried to persuade her to come back with her to the lodging house and would let her sleep there for free. But she was probably too proud or something, and she refused it and said, no, she’d go and go off and earn her money. Totaled off down the street. And about an hour and a half later was found dead in a back street about three quarters of a mile away. And I described how she was found, a man called Robert Paul, who lived nearby. This is in Bucks Road, which is a, a road around the back of where White Chapel Station is now. It’s not called Bucks Road now, it’s called Durward Street. It’s one of the… a number of the streets associated with the Jack The Ripper crimes were renamed. Partly due to local pressure. People didn’t want the notoriety associated with, with its, with it being called Bucks Road. So it’s now called Durward Street. It’s still there. It’s been remodeled, but it’s still there.

So this guy called Robert Paul was walking down the road, dark street on his way to work and he sees in -he was a car man as well, actually – he sees in front of him about 40 yards, 30 or 40 yards in front of him, someone standing in the middle of the road and he carries on walking. This man then turns and walks towards him, and as the man approaches him, Robert Paul thinks the man’s gonna attack him. And as he swerves around him, the man taps him on the shoulder and says, oh, come and have a look at this over here. So they went over and there is Polly Nichols laying dead on the floor. And Robert Paul said that the man was standing where the body was. He didn’t realize that initially, but once he came up, said he realized that this guy had been standing right by the body. And that guy was Charles Lechmere, Charles Cross. So they had a look at the body, touched it, her dress was up to just below her, her waist, just below her waist. So Robert Paul tried to put it down so her legs were covered, but could only bring it down to her knees. It was like, cool. And he suggested propping her up cause they didn’t, he didn’t appreciate it. Robert, Paul didn’t appreciate that she was dead. He thought she might be like fainted or something like that. And he suggested propping her up against the wall so she wasn’t laying flat and Lechmere refused. He said, no, I’m not gonna do that. And then they went, then they both said, oh, we’re both late for work. And they left the body. They left it there. This is the only victim who had abdominal wounds where they were covered. She had abdominal wounds, but then they were, the dress as say, was up to just below her waist. So the stomach, which it was cut open, was not on display.

All the other Jack the Ripper victims, the, the culprit left the victims on display, almost certainly to shock and awe, whoever found them first, usually with their legs, sort of akimbo. And everything’s showing, everything’s showing -the guts cut open and everything. That was obviously part of his thing. But this is the only one where they weren’t, where the, where there was abdominal wounds and they weren’t left on display.

Now the contention is that Robert Paul actually interrupted him in the act and that’s why they’re not on display. Cause he, he pulled the dress down over the abdominal wings to cover them up. And this is the only instance where someone was seen standing by the victim before they’d raised the alarm.

In all the other cases, someone finds a body, they go off and find a policeman straight away or something like that. And also, as I said, Robert Paul thought that Lechmere, when he came up to him, his first thought was he was gonna be attacked probably because there was, you know, he had had a slightly fierce look in his face or something like that cause he just murdered someone, you know. So the meet and greet between the two is odd. It’s the only case where someone’s been seen alone by victim before raising the alarm. And then what what happened is they went off, it’s the only case where, where a body was abandoned, there was all strip houses there, there was about 200 yards up, or even a hundred yards up, there was a policeman on a, in a, in a box guarding a, a train depot, a coal depot for a train, train, marshalling yards, maybe 150 yards away. They could have knocked him up and said, look, something down there. They didn’t, they walked off. Left the body some way around the corner. They, but they did bump into a policeman I’ll come onto that in a second.

But while they were away, another policeman found the body a policeman called PC Neil. He found the body and in all the newspaper reports for three days after that PC Neil was regarded as the first finder. The, it’s the only case where the, the initial narrative of how the body was found had to be changed three days later because Lechmere didn’t come forward for three days to say what had happened.

And they had to change the narrative and say, have you had any of the newspaper reports in the initial period? It’s all PC Neil found the body, blah, blah, blah. Then it’s only changed. Oh no. Actually, this other guy found the body, Lechmere, not Lechmere. They called him Cross at the time. So while PC Neil finds the body for the second time, so it’s any time when the body’s been found, any of the bodies has been found twice, Lechmere in the guise of Cross, and Robert Paul walk around the corner, eventually bump into this policeman, he’s called PC Meison, who’s patrolling there around the corner. And the conversation between Lechmere and Meison is a big, is is also in dispute because according to PC Meison, he says that Lechmere said to him, or, or the man, he didn’t get his name. He didn’t get his name Cross or Lechmere. He says that, that a man who was a car man came up to him. It was dressed like a car man. They had a sort, these, these trades had a a look about them so he could tell the guy looked like a car man. And they usually wore big aprons and stuff and probably smelt of horses I suppose. But he could tell he was a car man and he said you’re wanted by another policeman around the corner, there’s a woman laying on the floor. That’s all he said. So wanted by a policeman that, that if, that, if what Meison, that was Meison’s account of what Lechmere told him. That means Lechmere lied to him saying he is wanted by a policeman cuz there wasn’t a policeman there, there happened to be PC Neil, but Lechmere didn’t know that.

That’s the fluke. So that means that Meison, according to Meison, Lechmere lied to him to tell him he was wanted by a policeman around the corner. That meant, that suggested that Lechmere was a messenger on behalf of a policeman running an errand for a policeman, telling another policeman that he is, wanted to go and help another officer, which is why PC Meison didn’t bother getting his name. And that’s also because he didn’t tell him that the woman was dead or, or seriously injured, just said she was laying on the floor. So that was like a less serious incidence as well. Now, Lechmere, this is at the inquest, Lechmere at the inquest said that he, he said to Meison, can you go around and help someone around the corner?

There’s a woman there. She might be dead. I’m not sure if she’s dead or she’s possibly drunk. Nothing about another being wanted by another policeman and with a definite possibility that the woman wasn’t just laying on the floor, but that she was dead, which put makes it negligent and Meison not taking his name and probably really should have made sure he went back with him to the scene of the incident. But instead, he let Lechmere and Paul go on, on their own without even taking their names. So there’s this, there’s on top of the, what I’ve already described to you, the strange scenario of when Robert Paul met Lechmere at the crime scene. Immediately afterwards, there’s a strange scenario between Lechmere and, and the policeman they met around the corner about who said what to who, with PC Meison disputing in some crucial elements of what Lechmere supposed to have said to him.

Now, you might be wondering why Lechmere turned up at the inquest. Okay, so Lechmere and Paul had walked past Meison without so much as giving their name or address or anything much. So why did they turn up? Either of them turn up at the inquest? The murder happened at the early hours of the Friday morning. The inquest where they turned up or where, where Lechmere turned up was on the Monday. And in, in that in between period, as I said, it was always PC Neil. This, the policeman who came upon the crime scene while they were walking down the road was regarded as the first finder. Now, on the Sunday, there was a Sunday newspaper called Lloyd’s Weekly News, and they had a newspaper, a story, a scoop in their newspaper.

As I was mentioning to you earlier, that these newspapers were competing with each other for unique stories. And although this was at the outset of the Ripper cry, as the story progressed with the other murders, they were all trying to scoop each other, all trying to get special insights into the murder, looking at different aspects to try and get a new angle to get new readers. But this was even happening at the outset. So, Lloyd’s Weekly News is a Sunday newspaper. They’d sent a journalist down to hover around Bucks Row as all the newspapers did to try and find some extra story. There was quite a few other stories. Tom Wescott actually in his book has covered some of these other stories about blood stains here or this there, and the police were fending off all, all sorts of cuz the newspapers were trying to run their own parallel investigations to the murder, which was sort of hampering the police cause the police were sort of being distracted or perhaps we should be looking at this cause the newspaper said that, but we were, but the police officers investigate them, just discounted it.

But, and it was causing all sorts of problems for him. This sort of thing happens nowadays as well. So Lloyd sent a reporter down to Bucks Road and they bumped into Robert Paul. Robert Paul was coming home from work on the night of the murder down Bucks Road and somehow, The Lloyd’s journalist collared him and got a story out of him and found out that actually they had found the body first, but Lloyd sat on this story because they didn’t publish until Sunday.

So they didn’t, they didn’t go to the police and helpfully tell the police the, this extra information they had. They sat on their own story until they could publish on Sunday with this sort of exclusive little story about Robert Paul walking down the road, seeing someone standing in front of him, going up to him, the bloke coming towards him and being a bit frightened, thinking attacked, trying to avoid him. The bloke tapping on the shoulder, that whole story was featured in this newspaper story, and then they go and find a piece you around the corner and go on to work. Now, Paul maximized his role in the story and, and attacked the police. For being negligent and all that sort of stuff. Paul comes across as quite an anti-police people.

There was a lot of anti-police feeling in the East End amongst normal people. It was just one of those areas where there was a bit of a conflict between the population and the police. Let’s say. It’s one of those sort of areas of the, of the world. It used to be -arguably still is. So Paul comes across in his different testimony as being quite anti-police.

So he, this story appeared in, in this newspaper on the Sunday. Sunday evening, late on Sunday evening, the police issued a big statement debunking all these misleading stories about blood -that was in different newspapers -about trails of blood being here and there -about someone doing this, someone doing that.

And one of the things they debunked was the story that anyone other than PC Neil had discovered the body. As late as Fri, sorry, Sunday evening they were still happy with the, with what they regarded as the fact that PC Neil discovered the body first, no one else. So they discounted, in other words, Robert Paul’s story of them finding the body first, him and this unnamed person who he saw standing in the street, which was Charles Cross, Charles Lechmere.

So the next day is the Monday, and that’s the, the inquest started on the Saturday. So the murders on the Friday, the inquest opened on the Saturday. They, they used to work very quickly in those days and then it was adjourned for a day cuz they didn’t sit on Sunday. And then it reconvened on the Monday and Meison gives his his evidence and he says, oh yeah, someone come up to me and tell me about the murder. You’re wanted by another officer around the corner because there’s a woman laying in the street and they brought someone in who had been, who was waiting in the corridor, and they said, is that the person who said that to you? And he said, look, yeah, that’s the guy. And it was Cross or Lechmere. And the next witness to testify at the inquest was Lechmere. So why did he turn up? I would say the reason he turned up was because he would’ve read the Lloyd’s story the day before, in which Paul indicated that someone was standing in the middle of the street by the body and he was worried that the police would put out a drag net to find him, cuz Paul and Meisen would’ve been able to identify him.

And it was on his route to work from his house in Doveton Street to Pickfords in, in Broad Street. And so you want to avoid a dragnet and being found unaware, he brought himself forward and turned up the inquest to give his version of events to, to spin the story his way. And that’s essentially what he did. But he appeared as Charles Cross and not as Charles Lechmere. Yeah. So that, that, that’s the main body of evidence. That’s, that’s a lot of what’s in that documentary actually. What’s it called? The other one, not the Missing Link, the Missing Evidence…

Erik: Jack The Ripper: the New Evidence…

Edward: Or the Missing Evidence. Yeah, the two, there’s two different names for it.

Erik: Yeah. So he would’ve had a, a weapon, a murder weapon. I, I’m sure it’s, it’s, it’s speculation. But what do you think he did with it and speaking of blood, if he stabbed her, wouldn’t he have had blood splatter on him?

Edward: Okay. The murder weapon. The other, sorry, the other interest, interesting thing, I’ll just throw this other thing in. When he appeared at the inquest, he also appeared wearing his apron. Because car men wore aprons and it’s this incongruous detail. One of the newspaper reports describes how he was attired and he, he turned up in his work clothes at the, you know, at the inquest.

And it is just a bit incongruous. Why would you wear an apron? Why wouldn’t you at least take the apron off? And it was like he was trying to prove that he was this innocent car man wearing his apron onto, into the witness stand. It’s it’s just slightly strange. But anyway, he probably was wearing an apron when he was walking down the road and he probably just slipped it into a little pocket or something. In his, in his, the weapon, the murder weapon. My presumption is he had an apron and, and he just stuck it in a, in a pocket in there or something. The blood, well there’s, there’s arguments that there wouldn’t have been necessarily a lot of blood. Whoever was the culprit would’ve potentially had problems getting blood on them and then walking away, getting away with blood on them, whoever they might have been.

But there’s also a presumption that most of ’em are actually strangled first, which either if they weren’t strangled to death, they would’ve been strangled to virtually death, where their heart beats was so feeble that there was hardly any, gonna be hardly any arterial flow coming out when, when, when any arteries, main arteries are cut, and the blood would’ve virtually just oozed out rather than shot out in a, in, in this, an uncontrollable way because there is no, the, the murder scene, there’s only real evidence of arterial flow in the murder of Annie Chapman cause there’s a splash on a wall on her fence next to where she was, which must have come out certainly out of her neck when the, when the main arteries were cut in her neck, but most of them not. And there was very little blood at the scene of the of the Polly Nichols murder.

The doctor who came to the murder scene said there was only as much as you get in half a half a glass of wine. If you drop half a glass of wine on your kitchen floor, you’ll make quite a lot of mess actually. And you’ll think there’s quite a lot of wine and if you spread over the floor, but there’s not a lot when it’s on a pavement.

And that was all that really came out of her out though, when it was sort of oozing out, merely was sort of through gravity rather than splashing everywhere. So she’d had been strangled first, which would avert, probably didn’t totally kill her and, but almost, and then, the doctor that is called Dr. Llywelyn believes that the abdominal wounds, the ones that were covered, were done first. Now, my belief, my, my sort of view is that he stood over her head after strangling her, and she was on the floor, pulled her dress up, and then cut the stomach with the dress pulled up in front. So standing sort of, or crouching over her head, putting the dress up so it’s like a shield between him and the, any blood that might splash and then dropped it down, which is why they were covered. And I think he did the, the neck wounds as a sort of final coupe de grace when he heard the footsteps, which happened to be Paul coming up behind him. That’s what the sequence of events, which I, which matches what Dr. Llywelyn thinks with the, with the stomach wounds being first. And explains how he avoided getting blood on him. There was very little blood on the scene when -if Paul and Lechmere touched the body quite a lot while they were, you know, you know, I said that, that Paul pulled her dress down and suggested propping her up. Paul also touched her breast and felt he detected a slight murmur like a shudder, which was probably her last sort of death shudder of the body when it was -either, the bodies can sometimes give us all involuntary shudder for a while after death. Not for a very long after death, but quite immediately after death they can give a sort of involuntary shudder, and it was probably that, that he felt, which is another indication that the body might have just been killed. If Lechmere was innocent or Paul was innocent, but neither them got any blood. None of one said, oh yeah, I could tell I’ve got blood cause I got blood on my hands afterwards.

They were touching, they were kneeling right close to the body while they were doing this. So there was no blood that had oozed out at that stage. None of this half pint of half cup of glass of wine, quantity of blood oozed out while they were there cuz they didn’t get any blood traces, they certainly didn’t tread it.

There was no footprints away of bloody footprints or anything. They, there’s no reporting of them saying, Hey, I had blood on my hands afterwards, after when I got to work, I noticed had blood on my hands or anything like that. So they clearly didn’t get blood on them because there wasn’t that much coming out.

Whoever did it, did it quite cleanly as far as blood is concerned. I’ll come back to the blood in a second, but the, I haven’t mentioned, I sort of keeping this back a little bit, Pickfords at Broad Street, one of the goods that came into London from these other places like Birmingham and other towns in, in Britain. One of the main goods that they dealt with in deliveries was meat carcasses for the London meat market. And so his apron probably had blood traces on anyway, so heaving up and lifting up these size of meat in his normal occupation. So he probably had sort of pinkish traces on his apron anyway, as a matter of course, because of the nature of his job.

But to come back to other aspects of the the blood evidence, the blood evidence, in my opinion, this is one of these moments of controversy, the fact that they didn’t – when subsequent witnesses came, such as Dr. Llywelyn and the policeman, they, so they saw more, more blood. More blood became evident. The fact that that more blood became evident as time progressed before Polly Nichols’ body was taken to the mortuary. Is indicative that it was slowly oozing and flowing out of her body through sort of gravity primarily. Cause she was dead by then, which again suggests that when Lechmere and Paul were at the body, she was just very freshly killed.

And Dr. Llywelyn, although times, times given by doctors in that era don’t totally stand up to modern scrutiny because modern doctors are much more cautious over ascribing time of death and so forth. Then they were going much more on a medium time, the most likely time, which doesn’t, you know, they’re outlying cases when rigor mortis or different features, the clotting of blood and so forth or the, the, the, the, the rate at which a body cools, depend on many factors, but there’s a median range of of factors of, of times. And they used to go, they used to put more credence on that in, in that era than they do now. But Dr. Llywelyn, the first doctor there thought that she’d been killed about half an hour before, when he saw the body, which was more or less exactly at the time when, when Lechmere was there.

He must, you know, he must have unknowingly disturbed the killer moments before he got there by all these, all these different aspects of evidence would point towards that conclusion. And given the fact he had this strange meet and greet with Paul, given the fact that he gave a false name to the inquest, given the fact they had a dispute with PC Meison and almost made it straight after, given the fact that he only came forward as a result of Paul’s newspaper story. You know, you’ve gotta think that he’s a pretty good suspect there straight away for the, the case.

Erik: So obviously he’s intimately connected to the Polly Nichols murder, but what about the other victims? The, the rest of the Canonical Five?

Edward: I’ll just say one thing before I go onto that. The police at the time thought, well, at the time of the, by the time he came forward several days later, the police already had a suspect. Number one, this guy called you may or may not heard a song called Leather Apron. Have you ever heard of this?

Erik: Yes. Yes, I have heard the name.

Edward: Pizer was his real name. They, they had this guy, they had him in their sights. He didn’t do it. He was cleared, he had an alibi, but they had like a, a suspect.

Number one, the police often, and you probably come across this in other cases you’ve investigated, they can develop one track minds on things, so they think they’ve got a suspect in the frame. That’s the one they want, and they don’t look elsewhere. They, they, they, they get tunnel vision. I think they had tunnel vision at the time for Pizer. And the other thing is with serial crime, the police are quite poor.

And I think this goes for this in England and America, they don’t have a great track record in solving serial crime, Or psychopath type killers because they’ve got a very good track record at catching normal murderers because they’re like, normally they’re and they did, then they did in the Victorian time, cuz nearly always, it’s a member of the family, isn’t it? Or someone you know. And there’s bodies of evidence they can get and track down to find out who did it. But if it’s an unknown random psychopath type, serial killer, they, they, they’re, they’re quite poor at solving those type cases. Nearly always because they employ traditional, normal evidence based …what’s the motive? Psychopaths don’t have motives. Their motive is they wanna kill someone. There’s not a motive like they wanna rob them or, or defraud them of something or get an inheritance or, or, or they’re jealous or something like that. Those aren’t the motivations of, of psychopathic and serial killers. Or the police think that the, that the, the culprit would be a madman, a total lunatic because to commit this sort of crime, they have an assumption that it’d have to be some sort of monster in human form.

And, and obviously so, so they thought that you’d have to be a mad man and mad people don’t do serial crimes. They can’t get away, they can’t get away with committing these sorts of crimes repeatedly. Cause you’ve gotta have a strategy and tactics. They’re cunning people. So they thought it would be a madman or they thought it’d be a foreigner because there was a lot of prejudice obviously at the time, and they didn’t think a sort of normal Englishman would do such a thing.

So they thought it might be someone who’s Jewish or foreign in some way. So those are the sorts of culprits that the police at the time we’re looking at. So this car man, who’s and his inquest testimony is, yes sir. No sir. Three bags full. Sir. I’m ever so humble. I’m just an average guy going to work.

I’ve got a wife and kids at home. You know, they, they just didn’t think that sort of per, didn’t fit their, their preconceptions at all. The, one of the haunting things about serial killers is they’re usually very banal, normal people that you wouldn’t have thought of it of them. That’s one of the sort of rather disturbing things about this type of crime actually, that, that, that is the, the culprit is invariably, some bloke you wouldn’t look twice at, rather than, you know, a monster in human form. So, to go back to your other question that was about where the, where the other, the other crimes. Now, when the next murder I mentioned was, was Annie Chapman. On, on the eighth, it was only sorry, eight days later. Eight days later, it’s the one when there’s the shortest timescale between the two murders, between Paul Nichols and Annie Chapman.

Now, when Robert Paul and Lechmere left PC Meison ,and Robert Paul didn’t talk to PC Meison, he hollowed out of the way, I think he was anti-police. There’s a couple of different testimonies he give where it’s very clear that he didn’t like the police and he hovered, in my opinion, he hovered the arm’s length away from, well, Lechmere was talking to PC Meison because he didn’t wanna get involved with this policeman. He didn’t like the police and that’s why he didn’t really know what was said in the conversation between the two. Now they walked away together. Now interestingly at the junction where they met PC Meisen, there was two different routes that Lechmere could have taken to go to his work, and he chose the slightly longer route to go.

And that was the same route that Robert Paul walked. Now I think he walked with Robert Paul to find out where Robert Paul was going, and to probably to bend his ear, know, to talk to him along the way and give him reassurance that he was innocent and it was nothing to do with him anyway. So they walked down the road. Have you ever been to the East End, by the way, at least to London?

Erik: No, I, I have not. Only vicariously through your YouTube series. . .

Edward: Okay. They, they walk off down the road. And after about 500 yards, Robert Paul goes off to side turning where he works. Lechmere carries on to where he works. Now, the next murder, Annie Chapman, was about a hundred yards from where Paul works.

It was, they walked past the murder scene, so they walked on their way. After leaving policing Meison, Robert Paul and Lechmere walked past the next murder scene, which would happen eight days later. Now, that’s a bit of a coincidence for a start. of all the streets in all the East End, that’s where the next murder happened eight days later.

Now, in my series I, I give the reason for this, and that is that in my opinion, Lechmere, he had been -Robert Paul’s newspaper story had forced Lechmere to come forward. It forced him to break cover. And Paul himself hadn’t come forward. This is the irony. Paul hadn’t come forward. He’d come forward and sold his, probably sold his story to the newspaper, which put Lechmere in a bad position, made him come forward.

And then Paul didn’t come forward himself. So I think Lechmere chose his next victim near where Paul worked -near where he knew Paul worked- to get Paul in trouble and divert attention away from himself. And I think that’s why it was quite soon after the, the two murders were quite soon after each other. Why it was in that location very close to where Robert Paul worked, which they’d walked past the, the week before. And Paul was, in fact, the police search for him, you know, from two different sources. The police searched for him and found him and made him turn up at the inquest many days later. So I think he obviously was cleared by the police, but he was interrogated by them. And one policeman who wrote his memoirs many years later said that he was under suspicion. So I think Lechmere killed Annie Chapman on, on that route where he’d walked past with Robert Paul to get Robert Paul in trouble, and again, to divert the investigation off into a sort of wild goose chase direction.

So that’s the connect, that’s the connection to the Annie Chapman murder. The next murder was Elizabeth Stride. This is the double event I referred to before. There was two murders in one day, a double event on the 30th of September, so a bit of a gap. And Elizabeth Stride’s murder is regarded by some people as being a bit of a, an exception because it was slightly off-center as far as the geography of the murders is concerned. It was south of two major trunk roads and slightly south of where all the other ones were. Still in the overall area of the East end, but slightly off from from the others. The others are in a much more tight cluster and it leads some people to think Stride wasn’t a, a Ripper victim and also because Stride, she only had her throat cut. She didn’t have any abdominal wounds. Annie Chapman, the one before I, I’ll just say she was left very brutally cut open and very much on display. You know, I mentioned about how the Ripper would’ve had, had this ritual where he wanted to leave- the body’s left blatantly on display as a, as a shock and awe sort of that was obviously part of the thing that, that motivates.

Stride only had her throat cut.. So the theory is that someone called Louis Diemschutz was coming into the yard where the body was found and disturbed the, the, the culprit who then who was unfulfilled. Ran off, found another victim who was Catherine Eddowes, and killed her, and then did fulfill the whole shock and awe, full display ritual. And that’s why it’s called the Double Event. And the theory is that he was unfulfilled with Liz Stride and went on to Catherine Eddowe s and killed her now. But some people think that they were two unconnected murders, which just doesn’t make sense to me. But anyway, Lechmere’s mother lived about 200 yards from where Liz Stride was killed. She was killed on a Saturday night. That would’ve been the only night. It was earlier than the other ones as well. It was about an hour and a half earlier than any other murders. And she was killed about 200 yards on Saturday night. Sunday was the only day off. In those days, people worked six day weeks.

So commonly most people had the Sunday off at no other day. So this was the only murder that preceded the double event, the only murders that preceded a normal day off. So whoever did it could have been out drinking and, and having a, a night off. So my presumption is that he went down to visit his mother. One of his daughters was brought up by his mother. He had several children, but one of them, for some reason or another was brought up by his mother. So his mother was living near the murder scene of Liz Stride with one of his daughters in an area where he’d only moved away from in June, cuz he lived around the corner as well.

So he had all sorts of connections to that area. So my presumption is he was going back to his old stamping ground on Saturday night, his night off, preceding his night off, going to see his mother or his daughter perhaps. And don’t forget, his mother was living with a second bigamist husband by this stage , a guy called Fosdyke. He came away, bumped into Liz Stride, killed her. Didn’t fulfill his whole ritual, so went off to find another victim. Now the other victim, Catherine Eddowes, was killed in an area that was an area that was well known for street prostitutes, but was also on his old route to work from when he used to live in that district near his mother, up until he moved in June. His old route to work from his old house, which was where called James Street to Pickford, Broad Street, would’ve taken him right past the site where Catherine Eddowes was murdered. So he would’ve been familiar with that area from his old route to work. So that is why I think he, he was unfulfilled.

He knew he’d find prostitutes there, so he went there, killed Catherine Eddowes. And then the next interesting thing, Is that part of Catherine Eddowes’ apron was found in a doorway along with some graffiti. And the graffiti. It’s quite famous this, it said The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. And it was on a, a doorway. And the location of this doorway where the graffiti was found and where the apron, which was cut away from Catherine Eddowes’s body, her apron, half of her apron, was cut away, covered in blood, and it matched the part of apron that was still attached to the body. So as unequivocably, this bit of apron belonged to Catherine Eddowes.

The victim was killed in this place called Mitre Square. Again, brutally butchered and left on display. This apron part was found in the stairwell underneath his graffiti. So clearly the, the ripper had left it there after killing Catherine Eddowes. If you go from Mitre Square where Catherine Eddowes was found to Goulston Street, which is where this doorway was, it’s in a direct line, a direct route back to Lechmere’s house, points directly to Lechmere lived. So this is what he had done. He would’ve killed Stride visiting his mother. Unfulfilled, went to where he knew he’d find prostitutes in the area, Aldgate, where he found Catherine Eddowes, killed her in Mitre Square Square for some obscure reason, cut away part of her apron, dumped it on his direct route back home.

So there’s a, there’s a neat, if you look at the map, it’s a neat little triangle of, of geography there. The last victim of the five is Mary Kelly that, again was on, on his direct route to work to Pickfords. In, in the early hours of the morning and, well, it would’ve been a work day, so it’d been walking past her on his way to work. If he didn’t do it, you know, he walked past her, her dead body while she was laying dead in her flat, in a little flat that she had. So you know, either, either walk past all these dead bodies or he did it himself. And the, it appears there was thousands of people around there. Thousands of people weren’t walking down the streets in the middle of the night because the reports are there just weren’t thousands, there wasn’t many people walking about in the middle of the night. And there is a connection between him and Mary Kelly as well that are found, cuz some people think that the culprit knew Mary Kelly for various reasons. But there is a sort of, the guy who lived with her, who was probably her pimp a few years before , Lechmere’s kids went to the same school as the guy who was almost certainly Mary Kelly’s pimp.

So they may have known each other, maybe he’d gone around and visited the guy, the kids or something, and may have known Mary Kelly conceivably. But that’s the only, I dunno, of any other suspects, whether you someone can establish a link between them and even a potential link between them and Mary Kelly.

So there are, there are ways I can connect him. Most of the Ripper suspects, you can’t provide any connection at all. I can actually provide sort of scenes of crime connections with Lechmere to all of the murders, including the ones, the other ones apart from the Five, like Martha Tabram for example, or even Rose Mylett or Alice McKenzie. And the Pinchin Street Torso, which I’ve mentioned earlier. The Pinchin Street Torso. Lechmere used to live on Pinchin Street. The, the road where the torso was found, you know, it’s like everywhere there’s a murder, Lechmere has got a direct connection to almost.

Erik: So there are some Ripperologists out there. And again, I’ve had Donald Rumbelow and Tom Wescott on his guests. They don’t believe that the identity of Jack the Ripper has been discovered yet. What are their arguments against Charles Lechmere as the killer and how would you counter those arguments?

Edward: Some people think that you wouldn’t kill on your way to work, for example, but you can point to ones you did. Ridgeway did. Some people would think when, when Robert Paul was coming up to him that he should have run away. But other people, I’ve had policeman look at the case. It’s in the, the new evidence documentary Murder Court Superintendent. He immediately thought that the initial reaction of a pyschopathic serial killer would be to turn and confront. It is the fight, fight or flight syndrome. What is your initial reaction to be to being confronted? Would you run away or would you turn and face your face the situation and take control of the situation by turning and facing and controlling the situation? By walking up to Robert Paul, he was doing fight and not flight, but that is what a, a psychopathic serial killer would do rather than run away. But a normal person would probably think that you should run away, but that’s because a normal person isn’t the psychopathic serial killer, and so they can’t put it into the mind of what they were doing. But that’s one of the objections that Lechmere should have run away. Other people refuse to believe that PC Meisen was right.

There’s lots of arguments over the Meisen conversation about whether you’re wanted by a policeman down the road, all that sort of thing. It’s, it’s argued over, these things are argued over in every single point. Every single point is argued over. I think it’s a compelling case because for him to be innocent he has to be cleared to every one of these points really.

And even almost one of them would make him guilty, but they, they would argue on every one of them. It, it is a very argued over case. The, the Lechmere case is very much argued over. Very bitterly argued over. In Ripperology there’s lots of very, very bitter arguments over all these sorts of things.

Erik: Right, right. Yeah that’s why I don’t want to wade too far into Ripperology myself. I think it would be way too overwhelming. Do you feel that sometimes that the number of suspects, theories, seem so vast?

Edward: Well, they can be quite with some people. They get, they get, they get very personal and very bitter about these things. But Tom, for example, Tom Wescott, he takes things in pretty good cheer to be fair to him. When you, when you discuss one of his theories, cuz the theories aren’t just about murder, some people have a theory about how the police investigates the case. So it’s not just a theory, necessarily a theory about a different suspect. There’s theories about all sorts of things which aren’t necessarily suspect related, if you saw what I mean. Like what sort of suspect should you be looking for rather than a specific suspect. You know, how the police investigated the case or, or things like that. And so the, so the theorizing isn’t restricted to suspects. That’s what I’m, that’s what I’m saying. And some people take criticism of their theory better than others, and some people are, are, are more open-minded to discussion and the cut and thrust of debate than others as they are on any topic. But it can, it is, it is a very bitchy, a very bitchy world. If you were to look at any, the, there’s a couple of forums I dunno if you’ve ever seen them. There’s a couple of chat forums which are very, tend to be very bitchy in, in the way the, the discourse is conducted.

Erik: I think here in the states that it might be similar to the JFK assassination case. There are so many conspiracy theories, so much debate out there still.

Edward: Yes, it is. And quite. And there’s the, there is a, a British sort of chapter of that if you like. And they, they’re always in the, obviously about the, the ins and outs of that case. Only Princess Diana, the death of Princess Diana. All these things, or the Twin Towers, you know, they all, all these things bring in people with different theories, don’t they?

Erik: Oh, absolutely. So tell us about House of Lechmere. Where can people find you?

Edward: Well, it’s on, it’s on YouTube. I’m just researching at the moment. I say the torsos. I, I haven’t done an episode for a couple of weeks because I’m doing one on the first of these torsos that I was telling you about, which requires quite a lot of extra research and visiting the locations where the bit different bits of the body parts cuz a torso, yeah, you’d get part the abdomen here, a thigh there, a leg there. And I want to go to all the different dumping grounds to find all the different exact spots where each bit was left. To film and show and it’s called the Rainham Torso. And that’s the one I’m working on at the moment. But that would be quite groundbreaking. So no one’s ever shown all the different places where the Rainham torso, different bits of the Rainham torso.

It’s always named after where the first bit was found. There’s a village called Rainham on, on further down the River Thames. And a bit, the first part was found near this village , but other bits were found elsewhere all, all over London actually. And so I’m doing research on that, but that, it’s called The House of Lechmere. It’s on YouTube, virtually everything I’ve told you with maps, cuz most people are unfamiliar with the geography of the area to show how close it all is. Hopefully I, I’ve done it in an intelligible way so you can follow the what happened and hopefully I’ve done it in a way that if you’re not an expert, you can follow it as well.

Erik: Yeah, I found the maps very, very helpful. Have having visuals, especially when talking about Lechmere’s routes, patterns, it it, it made it very clear.

Edward: Not necessarily a fan geographic profiling, but when you find a culprit that that’s been done like Bundy, a Bundy, an example, you could see how he drove about and went to different places and when he was at this town, there was murders there, different.

Now it it, when you know he’s the culprit and you can see where the murders are. It fits hand to a glove obviously, doesn’t it? You think, oh God, look at, that’s why there was a pattern of murders there. That’s why there was a pattern of murders there because of his movements. And when you know it and when, if you fit, let me say, it just fits like a glove, the whole, all these different murders. Not just the Jack the Ripper ones, but a whole range of other ones as well.

Erik: Well this has been excellent. Thank you so much for your time today.

Edward: That’s okay. Hope it wasn’t too, too detailed or going on and on too much.

Erik: Very helpful. Thanks again.

Edward: Okay, then.

Erik: Again, I have been speaking to Jack the Ripper expert, Edward Stow. His video series, the House of Lechmere, can be found on YouTube.