More About Charles Allen Letchmere - Jack the Ripper Suspect
Picking up on more of what is revealed in Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence.
When Christer Holmgren checked the records for 22 Doveton Street, he discovered that nobody was listed there by the name of Charles Allen Cross. There was, however, a Charles Allen Letchmere.
Holmgren then discovered a piece of research carried out in 2005 that showed that in an 1861 census record, Charles Allen Letchmere was recorded with the surname Cross. He was then a 12-year-old boy who had been listed with the surname of his stepfather, Thomas Cross.
In all, there are 120 official documents relating to the man who called himself Cross at the inquest. In 119, his name is Charles Allen Letchmere. He lied to the inquest about his name.
Why would a man who was late for work waste time in Buck’s Row?
Christer Holmgren and Andy Griffiths then checked on the time he claimed to have arrived at the murder site.
Different newspapers give different times about the time he left home. Some say he claimed he left home at 3:20, and some say 3:30, and he arrived at the murder site at 3:40.
What doesn’t seem to have been noted by any investigators then or now is that it was a 40-minute brisk walk from 22 Doveton Street to Pickford’s on Broad Street.
He began work at 4 am. 19th-century employers could be choosey. Twenty men were waiting for every job. If you wanted to keep your job, you needed to be punctual.
So the explanation given for the different times that he left home is that he usually left home at 3:20, but on this occasion, he left 10 minutes late. This meant he had 30 minutes to get to work. If that were so, he would need to move very quickly.
Why stop to look at someone lying in a gateway?
First of all, thousands slept in doorways, stairways, and just about anywhere else every night in London. It wasn’t an uncommon sight.
Why would a man who was late for work waste his time stopping and stooping over her? And then wait for another man to join him? It wasn’t as though he would be able to give any CPR or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“I was behind time myself.”
Remember, if he left home at 22 Doveton Street at 3:30, he needed to get a move on, and indeed, he said as much at the inquest. He told the coroner, “I was behind time myself.”
So is the other more probable explanation for the different times reported that he always left at 3:20 but then realised that any police officers familiar with the area would be asking why it took him until 3:40 to get to the murder site. That is 20 minutes.
When Christer Holmgren and Andy Griffiths did the same walk, it only took them 7 minutes.
I did the walk. I walked - as he claimed he was doing - as if I was late for work, and it took me just 6 minutes.
The murder and mutilation of Polly Nichols did not take longer than a couple of minutes.
In the documentary, forensic physician Dr Payne-James estimated that the murder and mutilation of Polly Nichols did not take longer than a couple of minutes. He also believed there would be much blood, if any, on the killer.
So even if we accept that he left home at 3:30, even by taking the 7 minutes, he would have had time to commit the murder and mutilation before Robert Paul came along and found Letchmere stooping over the body at 3:40 am.
Nine years before Christer Holmgren was tracking down Charles Allen Letchmere, Michael Connor wrote an article on casebook.org in 2005. It says:
“Walking time between Doveton Street and the Buck’s Row murder site today is approximately six minutes—it would have been quicker in 1888. Even on the basis of this modern timing, if he left home on that morning at about 3.30, then he would have been in Buck’s Row at about 3.36.”
And ex-superintendent Andy Griffiths, with the benefit of years of studying crime scenes, says in the documentary that given the extent of Polly’s injuries, they had to have been inflicted while Letchmere was with her.
So, having presented evidence that showed that Letchmere might have been the murderer of Polly Nichols, the documentary turned to the other Jack the Ripper murders.
By studying the other Jack the Ripper crime locations, they hoped to show that Letchmere was the unknown serial killer who has been the focus of so many Jack the Ripper guided walks.
They wanted to prove that Charles Allen Letchmere was the serial killer featured in every Whitechapel true crime tour.
Criminologist Dr Gareth Norris discovered clues in Letchmere’s early life that match many known serial killers.
Letchmere never knew his biological father and had several step-fathers.
Serial killers often come from broken homes.
They also tend to have been moved around often.
As a child, Letchmere moved home many times.
He was 39 years old at the time of the murders, married, and had fathered 12 children. Yet he always lived with or close to his mother.
Gareth Norris believes that it is significant that two months before the murders began, Letchmere moved out of his mother’s home, leaving the eldest daughter to remain with the mother.
Norris believes there may have been some traumatic event that precipitated this.
22 Doveton Street was a 20-minute walk from each of the Jack the Ripper murder sites.
Martha Tabram was murdered in a stairwell in the George Yard Building on Gunthorpe Street, just yards from Old Montague Street, one of the most direct routes to work for Letchmere.
In the documentary, it is pointed out that the third of the Jack the Ripper crime locations after Guntorpe Street and Buck’s Row was the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, where Annie Chapman was murdered.
Hanbury Street was also on a direct route from Doveton Street to Letchmere’s place of work on Broad Street.
The night of Jack the Ripper’s double event.
Then, the murders of Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were both on the same night. The night that has become known as the night of the ‘double event’ of September 30th.
Norris points out these were in a different geographical area he had moved south.
Liz Stride was murdered in Berners Street, now Henriques Street.
Kate Eddowes was murdered in Mitre Square in the City of London.
Norris says the murder of Liz Stride took place at the centre of the cluster of houses in which Letchmere grew up.
And, says Norris, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were killed on Saturday night.
Well, sort of; they were murdered on Sunday at one in the morning.
Letchmere didn’t work on Saturday. Also, Letchmere might have been visiting his mother, and his little Whitechapel walk from his home to her home would have taken him close to the site of Liz Stride’s murder.
Was Jack the Ripper a serial killer or a spree killer?
Gareth Norris suggests that it might be worth considering Letchmere less as a serial killer and more as a spree killer.
So what’s the difference?
A spree murder is two or more murders committed with no cooling-off period. A serial murder is one where there is a period of time between killings.
They suggest that he was disturbed before he could begin the mutilation of Liz Stride and so ran to where he was sure he could find another victim.
Forty minutes later, he murdered Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square.
Then came the final murder. The murder of Mary Jane Kelly on November the 9th, 1888.
Christer Holmgren believes beyond reasonable doubt that Charles Allen Letchmere was Jack the Ripper.
The documentary claims that new evidence from this brutal murder completes the case against Charles Allen Letchmere, Jack the Ripper.
The new evidence is the discovery by historian Arthur Ingram that Charles Alan Letchmere was a delivery driver who delivered meat. This, they say, explains a mystery.
Mary Jane Kelly was subjected to the worst of all the mutilations.
The documentary says:
“It has always been a mystery how the killer could have left Kelly’s room unnoticed when he must have been covered in blood. But there is one more tantalising fact that could explain that mystery.”
The tantalising fact is that being a delivery driver who delivers meat, “his clothes would be dirty and he maybe be soiled”.
The documentary then says:
“Arriving at the Broad Street depot with an apron smeared with blood would barely have raised an eyebrow”.
True. But how is that new evidence that explains the “mystery of how the killer could have left Kelly’s room”?
Christer says, “Once you find out the true background of the carman Charles Allen Letchmere, it all fits. Every single bit of it.”
Did Charles Allen Letchmere kill Polly Nichols? The evidence is very strong.
Did he kill the other victims?
The only evidence is that he would have passed by the murder sites in the course of his daily activities. But so would thousands of others.
Unless we can establish that he was at those murder sites at the time the murder took place, the evidence is weak.
Christer says:
“If he wasn’t the killer, then he was the unluckiest person in the world because he suddenly developed some sort of a habit of always passing by as somebody was killed in those streets”.
The evidence presented shows that he would have passed by the murder sites as he went about his life like thousands of others.
The evidence presented does not, as Christer claims, show that he was “passing by as somebody was killed in those streets.”
That is true in the murder of Polly Nichols in Bucks but not in the other murders.
We don’t know where he was when Martha Tabram, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly were brutally murdered.
The documentary ends by saying Christer Holmgren believes beyond reasonable doubt that Charles Allen Letchmere was Jack the Ripper.
You will have your own opinion.
Thank you for checking out this post.