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2 types of knives = 2 people?

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  • 2 types of knives = 2 people?

    So we have a bayonett wound to her sternum and wounds elsewhere done with a pen knife.

    So what is more likely? Either it was one person who switched instruments or two individuals with two different knives?

    I believe the latter is what a jury would aim for. That an 'accomplice' is being omitted if we just go with it being one murderer's hand.

    However I would like to try and push this a little more leftfield, that there was a second attacker, but it was not an 'accomplice', but an opportunity attack done post-mortem after the original murderer left the scene.

    Consider a "Peeping Tom" active in a place where the density of crime per square meter is unreal, i.e - Whitechapel, London, late 1880s. Criminals who joined in on a mugging or do a post-mugging of someone knocked out cold by another person where probability innumerable. Theft and blitz attacks are part of JtRs MO.

    If JtR in his early days had the opportunity to rip up a body he had not killed, would he still do it? I think yes.

    If the opportunity to have a go at a near dead body or that of a semi-unconscious drunk prostitute arose before Jack I think he would attempt his MO.

    This may give some allowence for Schwartz seeing a completely different person man-handling Stride to the one that killed her. However I doubt this as Stride wasn't mutilated which means the killer had an opportunity but then had to flee from someone else's murder, which doesn't make any sense.

    However if other whitechapel murders have 'gang' related elements, I don't think this excludes JtR at all. He may have gone off on his own when the gang wasn't actively doing anything to satisfy his fantasy.

    Anyway, 2 knives, 2 people, 1 Jack?

    Any comments
    Bona fide canonical and then some.

  • #2
    Personally, and it’s only an opinion, I don’t necessarily trust late Victorian forensic science enough to truly accept that 2 different knives were used. I think that the same knife used at a slightly different angle or with more or less pressure or with reinsertion could give the impression of a different weapon being used.

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    • #3
      One person owning two knives and taking both of them when going out ripping is not, to me, within the realm of the absurd.

      Errata, another poster on this site, has recently argued that two different knives were used on Chapman and Eddowes - one for the throat, one for the abdominal mutilations.

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      • #4
        IF two knives were used, then I go with One killer, Two knives. I think its not unreasonable that a throat cutting, mutilating, organ removing serial killer would carry more than one knife.

        And if we go back to earlier possible ripper victims millwood and Wilson, both who were stabbed with smaller type knives (a clasp knife is I believe how they were described) and survived, then the ripper may have come to realize he needed something more to do the trick. and started carrying a larger knife in addition.
        "Is all that we see or seem
        but a dream within a dream?"

        -Edgar Allan Poe


        "...the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn
        quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him."

        -Frederick G. Abberline

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        • #5
          No I agree its not absurd, very very unlikely, but not absurd. And yeah I am sure there are posters who say 2 knives were used in every murder. But then there are posters who say Van Gogh was the ripper, saying it doesn't make them right.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Matty View Post
            No I agree its not absurd, very very unlikely, but not absurd. And yeah I am sure there are posters who say 2 knives were used in every murder. But then there are posters who say Van Gogh was the ripper, saying it doesn't make them right.
            Well, the Van Gogh guy doesn't have physics on his side, but I'm fine with it being a fringe theory Although you might try reading the argument before dismissing it. There is a reason it was proposed. And not because I'm going to write a book about it or anything.

            There are any number of scenarios that are ridiculous. Can't possibly be true. But if they were true they would explain a lot. So there is sort of an Occam's Razor thing going on. Two knives, even three knives answers a lot of questions. Nobody really sees this guy as calculating enough to bring several knives with him. That's more a murder kit thing, and this is not a murder kit kind of killer. Except it would explain the variances in the wounds and some of the physics problems we have. Multiple knives also speeds up the process quite a bit. And this guy was fast.

            And honestly, the same is true for two killers. Which is another theory I've tossed out there. I don't believe it, but it explains a lot of things. Why there are two areas of equal importance to the killer, how it got done so fast, even how the victims were so overwhelmed initially that they did not even have a chance to struggle. Two killers makes sense. Serial killer partnerships are not unheard of, but we see our guy as a loner. And one killer would have to be dominant, so that creates a very complicated relationship that does not particularly lend itself to evading capture. And there has never been a partnership based on two people doing essentially the same thing. A rapist and a killer, a strangler and a ripper, a killer and a collector. But not two rippers.

            But the theories explain a lot.
            The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Matty View Post
              Personally, and it’s only an opinion, I don’t necessarily trust late Victorian forensic science enough to truly accept that 2 different knives were used. I think that the same knife used at a slightly different angle or with more or less pressure or with reinsertion could give the impression of a different weapon being used.
              My view of this is that by 1888 in a post-Darwin Europe biological science had made considerable headway especially in anatomy. If we doubt the autopsy report here then we need to doubt all the others too really.

              I'm inclined to think that biological science was much further ahead than other pure sciences at this time.

              Also I don't think bayonet wounds are something they hadn't seen before.
              Bona fide canonical and then some.

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              • #8
                I see no reason why JtR didn't escalate from group based attacks to doing the same in smaller numbers before finally going it alone. Is that not the pattern if one accepts all the Whitechapel murders as the work of JtR?
                Last edited by Batman; 11-26-2014, 11:09 AM.
                Bona fide canonical and then some.

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                • #9
                  My opinion, based only on personal interpretation, is a dagger pierced the sternum to reach the heart, killer leave the blade there while picquering the victime with the smaller blade while she's dying.

                  The dagger is removed afterward.
                  Is it progress when a cannibal uses a fork?
                  - Stanislaw Jerzy Lee

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                  • #10
                    I don't understand why it is considered "very, very unlikely" that the killer might carry two knives.

                    I'm not arguing for two knives in any particular murder - but it's something I think of and say "yeah, I guess that might be possible" and I want to understand why so many others think of it and instead say "no way".

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                    • #11
                      To Damaso Marte

                      I don't consider it very, very unlikely that the killer might carry two knives. I find it more likely that the killer carried two knives than there being two killers.

                      Cheers John

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Matty View Post
                        Personally, and it’s only an opinion, I don’t necessarily trust late Victorian forensic science enough to truly accept that 2 different knives were used. I think that the same knife used at a slightly different angle or with more or less pressure or with reinsertion could give the impression of a different weapon being used.
                        Would it really be that much different today? I don't know if it's the kind of thing that can be ascertained with 100% certainty.

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                        • #13
                          knives and apron

                          Hello Damaso, John. Although not EXACTLY related to Tabram, it was not impossible to carry two knives. After all, my lad carried two--and in an apron no less.

                          Cheers.
                          LC

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                          • #14
                            The problem I have with the 2 knives 1 murderer hypothesis is because it doesn't make sense.

                            A bayonet is designed for trench warfare to perform a quick kill. It is to be thrusted while attached to the gun, near the sternum. So basically trained soldiers puncture this way with it.

                            A bayonet though is not a million miles away from an amputation knife or a similar tool that JtR used. However a pen knife is as far away as you can get from an amputation knife.

                            What doesn't make sense is why someone trained to use a bayonet knife (the wound on Tabram is where a soldier is trained to make it) would then suddenly start performing Tabram's sexual mutilations with a pen knife when the bayonet is probably second choice to a surgical knife for this type of MO?

                            It's like a dentist doing a root canal perfectly and then suddenly using a shovel to do a basic filling on another tooth.
                            Bona fide canonical and then some.

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                            • #15
                              I think the ripper was an experienced criminal. I recently read Mann the mortuary attendant was part of a workhouse which you got put in for crimes right? He couldn't be jack but what if your looking for someone exactly like him. A petty criminal put in a workhouse for a time and learned the mortuary trade, released into society? Possible?

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