A colorized photograph from the 1910s always gives me the creeps — it shows an elderly Charles Allen Lechmere. A suspect of the Jack the Ripper crimes. He was spotted at the crime scene by another man, standing over the body of one of the victims, her wounds so fresh blood had not yet begun to show. When he walked towards the other bystander, Robert Paul, Paul was frightened and felt he was about to be attacked, himself.
He didn’t attack Paul — instead, he told him to “go and find a policeman” which they did. Lechmere gave his name only as “Charles Cross”. Thus lying, giving a false name. It is only in the year 2000, 112 years later, that researchers discovered Cross and Lechmere are one and the same. Turns out Lechmere was a delivery man whose route took him exactly past all the known crime scenes of the five confirmed Jack the Ripper victims. Did the Ripper get caught in the act, only to quickly think on his feet and talk his way out of trouble? We’ll never know… one interesting tidbit: Lechmere delivered meat. So he’d have reason to have some smears of blood on him from time to time. A perfect alibi.
The photograph of Charles Allen Lechmere nonetheless rather haunts me. You could very well be looking at the face of a man who committed some of history’s most infamous murder sprees, and lived to ripe old age. At the very least, these are the eyes that last saw one of the Ripper victims alive, and for some unknown reason, lied about his identity to police. Continue reading
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