Same motive = same killer

[Herlock Sholmes]

. But as usual, it seems it does not matter how much I press the point that we don´t know to what degree the similarities were true or false similarities, I am nevertheless misquoted.

You will have to excuse my confusion Fish but how do you square the above statement with your obviously high level of certainty that these murders were all committed by the same man and that anyone who cant that it is either ignorant or biased?

[Fisherman]

That's because the similarities are not even there or, if they are, they're either exaggerated or of no significance.

That is a very, very bad post.

The similarities have been listed, around a dozen of them. They ARE there, so the mere idea that they are not is useless.

Are they exacggerated? We don´t know. Before we know the exact appearance of the similarities, how can we possibly say that they are exaggerated? We cannot, simple as that. To claim otherwise is to lie.

Are they significant or not? Same thing - we do not know. I pointed out earlier that it was claimed out here, by you not least, that they were "superficial". To claim that as a fact is also to lie.

The similarities are either true or false similarities, and we don´t know either way.

Your post is propaganda, pure and simple. It has nothing to do in a serious exchange.

[Sam Flynn]

It is instead the basic fact that flaps - or sections, or whatever we choose to call them - WERE cut out of all three womens abdominal walls, the fact that the uteri WERE extracted in all three cases

But none of this is true for the majority of the torso victims. That's one of the big problems with your argument, Fish: The 100% certain, objective dissimilarities outnumber the superficial similarities, but it's the latter that count!

that Kelly and Jackson both DID have their hearts taken out

Jackson had her entire thorax emptied, so it's quite probable that heart and lungs came out together; this isn't quite the same as just having had her heart removed, which is what happened to Kelly (torn piece of one lung excepted).

that Jacksons and Chapmans rings WERE missing

Were any of the others actually wearing rings when their bodies/torsos were found? Genuine question. We can't read any significance into missing rings if there wasn't a ring to go missing in the first place.

[harry]

A theory is basically a suggestion based to a smaller or lesser extent,on the facts.
What are the suggestions regarding the two series being connected.That rings were taken from fingers,and flaps cut from the torsos were similar.The smaller or lesser aspect of fact, is that the suggestions derived from opinions given by medical people.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? A jury of 12 imbeciles would have trouble in accepting that evidence.

[Fisherman]

A theory is basically a suggestion based to a smaller or lesser extent,on the facts.
What are the suggestions regarding the two series being connected.That rings were taken from fingers,and flaps cut from the torsos were similar.The smaller or lesser aspect of fact, is that the suggestions derived from opinions given by medical people.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? A jury of 12 imbeciles would have trouble in accepting that evidence.

A jury of imbeciles would have trouble accepting any evidence, Harry - I am quite aware of that.

[Fisherman]

But none of this is true for the majority of the torso victims. That's one of the big problems with your argument, Fish: The 100% certain, objective dissimilarities outnumber the superficial similarities, but it's the latter that count!

It was never a question of numbers. If the similarities are so odd and specific as they are in this case, then a thousand dissimilarities cannot dissolve that, unless one or more of the dissimilarities are impossible to fit in with a one killer perspective. Unfair as it may sound, that isn´t how it works and I have given a thousand exxampls of it. The example with the Preston and the London murder will be the perhaps most clear one. Once we have a very strange and specific similarity, stacking dissimilarities upon each other will never make that similarity go away.
I´ll try again.
Two murder victims.
Dissimiliarities:
One killed in France, one in Britain.
One killed by strangulation, the other shot and dismembered.
Similarity: Both have a perfect, round one-inch hole through the tongue.

Believe me, you can add a hundred dissimilarities, and the perfect, round one-inch hole through the tonge will nevertheless have the police saying that there is a connection. According to me, logic rules that they are right.

How do you reason in such a case?

I know very, very well that the similarities were not present in all cases. And that is why I say that what we need to do is to acknowledge that the triumvirate Chapman-Kelly-Jackson WERE all killed by the same hand, because within that triumvirate, the similarities I speak of ARE present.
And once we accept that ELizabeth Jacksons killer was the same as Chapmans and Kellys killer, the rest will be obvious - the Ripper series and the Torso series have the same originator, and the cases that can be knit to this man are the ones that are so similar in style to the Chapman-Kelly-Jackson cases that they must be regarded as having the same originator. It is up to anybody to include and exclude as they want to, but the triumvirate has the same originator.

That is how it must be weighed.

Jackson had her entire thorax emptied, so it's quite probable that heart and lungs came out together; this isn't quite the same as just having had her heart removed, which is what happened to Kelly (torn piece of one lung excepted).

No, but "this" as you call it is your interpretation. Once again. "It´s quite probable that..."
See what I mean? it is not until you start to interpret things (the heart and the lungs came out together, Jacksons flaps were very different, her killer targetted the foetus, the victims were procured in different parts of London, the Torso man lived in the West end and so on and on and on and on....) that the similarities take on the shape of "false" similarities. Which is why I keep banging on about how we should NOT work from the interpreted versin of affairs but instead the uninterpreted one. The facts. What we know instead of what we don´t know or are willing to assume.
Could we please keep to that simple rule?

Were any of the others actually wearing rings when their bodies/torsos were found? Genuine question. We can't read any significance into missing rings if there wasn't a ring to go missing in the first place.

Did I just read that? Really? The potential significance of how rings were missing from women in both series is dissolved if the rest of the victims had no rings to take from them?
So a man who steals underwear in two burglaries out of five cannot be said to have a flair for stealing underwear - if the other cases were ones where there was no underwear to steal...? That means that the significance of the two occasions of underwear theft goes away?

Am I missing out on something? I think you are going to have to help me out, Gareth, because I am genuinely baffled by now. How are you thinking here?

[Fisherman]

You will have to excuse my confusion Fish but how do you square the above statement with your obviously high level of certainty that these murders were all committed by the same man and that anyone who cant that it is either ignorant or biased?

I don´t understand the question. I think you may have either misread or misunderstood. It is not about the same thing at all to begin with.

[Fisherman]

Frank!

A few comments:

You bring up the old division of organized and disorganized killing and you obviously put the two killers you perceive in one division each. I don´t think there is enough to go on to make that division. If the combined killer had access to a bolthole on some occasions and not on others, then that in itself explains the matter.
Likewise, if the combined killer prioritized different matters on different killing days, the same thing happens; if he wanted to have all the time in the world to do his thing, he could kill in privacy, and if he preferred a thrill kill, he could do it in the streets. An arrogant narcissist could well want to take his murderous business one step closer to the crowds. Or so I reason, at least. You say it would be unexpected. I agree - but I find the evidence is in line with one killer only, and so I accept that. We don´t have all the parameters, and the explanation may be logical enough once we get to see it.

You speak of the dark fantasy that drove the Ripper and you say that it would have been shaped over years. Perhaps so, yes - but what WAS that dark fantasy? It was apparently not evisceration only, it was not mutilation only, it was not sadism (unless it was necrosadism). You acknowledge this, but say that what came first was apparently the attack on the sexual organs - but in Eddowes case, that seemingly did not come first. The face did.
On the whole, though, I agree that the reproduction area seems to have been a prioritized thing. But it was not the only thing he took interest in - not by far.
You seemingly predispose that all Ripper victims would look like Kelly if the time had been there. I am not at all sure about that other than in a roundabout way - I think that he was perhaps more fulfilled by what he did to Kelly than by what he did to the others, but I don´t think he was disturbed in all the other cases and had to flee. And if he was not, then we must accept that what he did in these other cases was enough for him. He did what he came for.

You say that he would have had very few minutes only on his hands. It´s not a big thing, but I think that he could have had more than so. The streets surrounding Bucks Row were deserted as Neil made his round, he saw nobody, and Lechmere said the same himself, there was nobody to be seen. I don´t exclude that a hope of a quarter of an hour or even more would be realistic. But as I say, it´s not any important matter on the whole, since there was always the risk of somebody coming along at any time.

You say that the Ripper and the Torso man followed different patterns of dissasembly of their victims. But what if there was the large scheme of things? I believe the damage done in both series fit in with a wider scope of disassembly, tied to something that I am not yet ready to name. The gist of it all is nevertheless that we can see that there are overlapping areas - they both open abdomens, they both cut necks and throats, they both take out colon parts, they both take out hearts, they both take out uteri, they both take away the abdominal wall, they both have rings gone from their victims fingers, they both damage faces. It´s way too much to accept as a coincidence. The mere placing of two serialists in Victorian London in overlapping time periods is a suggestion that makes for rather a hard and large pill to swallow. Once we add that they both dabbled in the same mutilation and evisceration business and both cut away abdominal walls in large sections, I really think we are on very safe ground laughing the suggestion of two killers off. It just isn´t within the realms of possibilities other than as a very freakish, off the charts minimal chance.

I note that you see curiosity in the killer of the Ripper victims, and I salute that. You also see a blind hatred for women in it. I am less sure that is correct. There are a few examples of killers who have no emotions, love or hatred, for their victims - but a curiosity that will not be denied. We had such a guy here in Sweden some years back, who opened up his victim and plucked parts out, all of it due to curiosity. No hard feelings whatsoever involved. Remember Sean Vincent Gillis: "I wanted to see her femur". It´s a totally odd thing, but these killers are out there.
I for my part am willing to accept both things - he may or may not have disliked women. But I am pretty certain that whatever applies in that department, the killer had a genuine fascination with the anatomical aspects of the female body.
The killer. Not the killers.

[Sam Flynn]

But I am pretty certain that ... the killer had a genuine fascination with the anatomical aspects of the female body.

Is that why he contented himself with merely chopping the arms, legs and heads off most of his torso victims, leaving the rest of their anatomy largely intact? Is that why, even when disembowelling the torso victims, he left most of the abdominal organs in place and removed the thoracic organs (not just the heart) from only one of them?

Not much of a fascination if you ask me.

[harry]

Fisherman,
But it's not any evidence to accept.Just rings on fingers, flaps of flesh,and opinions of medical people.The first cannot be proven,the second is evidence of similarity,the third is opinion.Not enough for those police you keep mentioning ,to consider a connection.None did,did they?

[Sam Flynn]

It was never a question of numbers.

It jolly well should be, if you're intent on pursuing a statistical argument.

this" as you call it is your interpretation. Once again. "It´s quite probable that...[the heart and lungs were removed together]"

It's not my interpretation - I'm just pointing out a possibility, albeit a strong one, but I'm not claiming that this is what happened. That said, Jackson's thorax was split down the middle, so it is very probable that the entire contents of the thorax were removed in one go. It would be faintly ridiculous if the perpetrator had gone to the trouble of cutting down the sternum, then deliberately excised her heart separately from between the lungs, only to go ahead and remove the lungs anyway afterwards.

And, another thing, Jackson didn't just have her heart taken; she had her heart AND lungs taken out - completely. Which is more than can be said for Kelly, or any of the umpteen other victims in either series.

Did I just read that? Really? The potential significance of how rings were missing from women in both series is dissolved if the rest of the victims had no rings to take from them?

Yes, because if the others had no rings to take, we're dealing with ONE isolated instance in both series where (a) rings were present; and (b) they were missing from the bodies when found. That's a laughably small sample size from which to draw any significance.

[Fisherman]

It jolly well should be, if you're intent on pursuing a statistical argument.

The statistical argument I am following is that there was never any two series of murders with as many similarities inbetween them and two killers present. The statistics also involve how the things that were done to the victims in the series are very rare.
Predisposing that all victims must suffer the same damage before it becomes significant is not a good idea. Jackson and Chapman had more in common than Chapman and Nichols, remember?

It's not my interpretation - I'm just pointing out a possibility, albeit a strong one, but I'm not claiming that this is what happened. That said, Jackson's thorax was split down the middle, so it is very probable that the entire contents of the thorax were removed in one go. It would be faintly ridiculous if the perpetrator had gone to the trouble of cutting down the sternum, then deliberately excised her heart separately from between the lungs, only to go ahead and remove the lungs anyway afterwards.

Whether it is your interpretation or not is not very interesting. It is nevertheless an intrepretation. And regardless if the lungs were taken simultaneously, it may well have been a question of the same driving force behind the removal of the hearts in both cases. The fact that the lungs also were taken out does not have any impact on that at all.
Work with the facts only, and do not add interpretations, regardless who´s they are.

And, another thing, Jackson didn't just have her heart taken; she had her heart AND lungs taken out - completely. Which is more than can be said for Kelly, or any of the umpteen other victims in either series.

"I want to take the heart out!"

"I want to take the heart out! And I want to take the lungs out too!"

Is that the voices of two materially dissimilar killers?

Yes, because if the others had no rings to take, we're dealing with ONE isolated instance in both series where (a) rings were present; and (b) they were missing from the bodies when found. That's a laughably small sample size from which to draw any significance.

Remember the two victims with holes in their tongues? Is that a laughably small sample from which to draw any significance too? Do you really think that the police would say that in either case? If the others had no rings, would they not say that the killer seemingly takes the rings if there are any? Instead of going "Statistics are against this killer being a ring-taker!"
Maybe that´s just my kind of logic, though.

[Fisherman]

Fisherman,
But it's not any evidence to accept.Just rings on fingers, flaps of flesh,and opinions of medical people.The first cannot be proven,the second is evidence of similarity,the third is opinion.Not enough for those police you keep mentioning ,to consider a connection.None did,did they?

You have a little catching up to do, Harry.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don´t understand the question. I think you may have either misread or misunderstood. It is not about the same thing at all to begin with.

Seems simple enough to me Fish.

As for the similarities I do not say that they are "so exact as to be beyond doubt". But as usual, it seems it does not matter how much I press the point that we don´t know to what degree the similarities were true or false similarities, I am nevertheless misquoted. Maybe that shows, more than anything else, how my stance is not fully grasped.

1) You are not saying that the similarities are “so exact as to be beyond doubt.”

2) Or that we dont know “ to what degree the similarities were true or false similarities.”

These two statements dont even sound like you talking Fish!

1) You have said that the similarities are so fantastically rare its almost impossible for them to have been committed by different men.

2) And now you appear to be saying that the similarities ‘might’ be misleading?

None of this squares with the near certainty which you have shown throughout these debates. So certain in fact that you feel justified in saying that anyone that doesnt arrive at the same conclusion is either ‘biased or ignorant.’

[Elamarna]

I´ll try again.
Two murder victims.
Dissimiliarities:
One killed in France, one in Britain.
One killed by strangulation, the other shot and dismembered.
Similarity: Both have a perfect, round one-inch hole through the tongue.

And there Christer is the problem demonstrated by your own example.

That similarity is specific, a perfect round one-inch hile through the tongue.

And thats what you dont have in the torso/ripper cases.

You try throat/neck being cut, but there is no suriving evidence to show the actual cuts or technique used are alike or comparable.

You use flaps as if it has some specific meaning, but again it is such a general term it could mean things very diffent, not just in shape but in method of production.

You say 2 hearts were taken, however there is nothing to show the heart of Jackson was specifically targeted as with Kelly. And the method of removal does not appear to suggest a common perpetrator.

The rings are closer, but again it may just be robbery.

What you have not so far been able to demonstrate is a very specific example of a similarity like that in your example above.
That is the issue many of us have with your theory, if you could show a specific similarity people may start to consider the theory again.
But of course thats the point, you don't present anything that specific , because such does not exist.


Steve