Same motive = same killer

[Abby Normal]

If I am wrong, it is overdramatizing. If I am right, it is nothing of the sort.

Yes, people have always dumped body parts in rivers. But we must realize that the typical dumping is that of carrying the riverbank and throwing them in, no ceremonies added whatsoever. We can safely rely on many or the parts being weighted down, and it is easy enough to understand why - the dumper do not want them found.

But the Torso killer didn´t do it like that, did he?

He did NOT weight the parts down, meaning that they WOULD float on the surface, fully visible.

He did not throw the parts in as they were - he wrapped them in cloth, giving floated body parts a special look, easily recognizable to anybody.

When he dumped Jakcksons uterus, the cord, the placenta and the abdominal flaps, he used the latter ones as a further wrapping, tying these pieces together. Can you answer this question: Why did he not simply throw the pieces in one by one? Why did he make a package of it? What practical purpose can you see?
I am not a great fan of Trows book, but he got this correct:
"...the torso killer was not weighing his body parts down; he was placing them in packages he knew would float. This was an important clue, whether the police at the time recognized it or not. Dismemberment was not to conceal and ´lose´body parts - it was to taunt and terrify."
Moving on, this killer did not dump all the parts from a body from the same spot - he chose numerous spots, making sure that the packages would visit as many twists and bends of the river as possible, making the finding of them more likely.
He also dumped them at different times, ensuring even further that this would be the case.
Amazingly, it seems that the police did NOT draw the rather obvious conclusions this called for. Even today, we have posters out here claiming that this was a "discreet" killer! Ouch!!

You have a way with words - and a "sushi conveyor belt" is exactly what the killer produced. His packages, trademark wrapped in cloth, floated by central London for all too see.

Exactly. Seems he was looking for maximum exposure for the parts he didn’t keep. Might help explain why he took to killing on the streets.

[Fisherman]

Joshua Rogan: In no case where parts were recovered, perhaps. Maybe the parts not recovered were weighed down successfully? Or came loose at a later stage and floated out to sea unnoticed.

If he did weigh them down unsuccesfully, only to have them come afloat later, he did a crap job in 1873, since 12 out of the 13 parts must have done so. Furthermore, since the view was that the victim probably was killed on the 5:th of September and since every part but for the right foot were found that very day and the ensuing few days, the killer must have been extremely useless in the discipline of weighing parts down.
To me, the only really reasonable conclusion is that they were never weighted down at all.

I suspect the wrapping was a practical measure for transport convenience, so that blood and the products of putrefaction wouldn't seep out all over the place, and also so that undue attention wouldn't be drawn to them if casually observed.

But the killer must have learnt over time that a bundle in cloth was a signal that a body part had been found. Otherwise, you make a possible point.

The bear paw that was initially thought to be an arm was also wrapped up. Does that mean they were intended to be discovered?

That is a good question which I cannot answer. We don´t know who dumped it and why, and so there can be no telling. Why do people dump bears in the Thames anyway?

Perhaps once the parts were deposited, the dumper simply didn't care whether they were discovered or not.

Perhaps. But the fact that he placed parts on land in places like the New Scotland Yard and the Percy Shelley garden and in the Battersea park tells another story altogether.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It was certainly obscure, arguably implying some local knowledge as to its location, or even of its very existence.

Hi Sam,

Yes this one is more problematical. This wasn't a matter of dropping a package into the Thames or over a fence this required serious effort. It speaks of someone who has a reason to specifically want to dump the parts here. Many of us will have at least visited a building site (but not a pre-health&safety Victorian one) and will know that they are basically 'assault courses.' He therefore has to get over a fence, negotiate the obstacles, possibly descend a ladder, negotiate more obstacles, in the dark (how many of us would fancy entering this tomb-like site at night?). This would involve a very serious risk of injury.
The other dumping sites were pretty random (yes, you could state that Pinchin Street was Ripper territory and that it was chose for shock value). Whitehall wasn't. For me, had a reason for chooosing that site. There also has to be at least a possibility that he actually worked there.

[Fisherman]

RockySullivan: I didn't say the killer wanted to weigh the bodies down you were the one who brought it up.

I didn´t bring up any idea that the killer would have wanted to weigh the bodies down, no. I am of the diametrically opoosed view - he did NOT weigh them doen, because he wanted them found. I spoke of weighing down as what dismemberers will normally do. The torso killer differed. That´s the significance.

I said everyone knows that's not how you dump a body. And then you posted an article about a killer who had attempted to weigh down body parts and in doing so led the police to the entire remains.

Eh ... no. He did not lead the police at all. He dumped the parts, weighed down, and the police had all sorts of trouble finding them. It was only a massive effort that yielded the parts in the end. And the killer was certainly not involved in that effort, so there was no leading at all on his behalf.

The killer wanted to spread the parts around. Sounds like he was smart not to anchor them down. Distributing the body parts the way he did only lead to the discovery in one case. Why would the killer think flesh sinks?

Why are some people less knowledgeable than others? Does a banana sink when thrown in water? Do you know? Do all people know these matters? I think not. However, I am not suggesting that this killer thought that flesh sinks.

You brought up the body parts not being weighed down as proof that the killer wanted them found but what about the logistics of using weights?

I brought it up not as proof but as an indication.

Just because they weren't weighed down doesn't mean he wanted them found.

No, but the simultaneous placing of other parts in New Scotland Yard, Battersea Park, the Shelley estate, Pinchin Street etcetera, indicated that he DID want those parts found. And that raises the question why he would not want the floated parts found if he wanted the ones placed on dry land found. There is logical flaw in such a proposition.

He didn't have a way to hide them where they wouldn't be found.

A shovel would solve that problem. A sack and a few stones would solve that problem. A bonfire would solve that problem. And even if he was not ingenuous enough to realize this, from where did he get the idea that it could be useful to place a torso i the vaults of New Scotland Yard? "Dear me, I don´t know how to get rid of this torso. No, wait..."?

Pinchin seems almost desperate to me like he once the body starts to smell he has to get rid of it.

I agree totally. I think it was the beginning decomposition and smell that forced the dumping. But given that the other dumpings on dry land seems to have had a meaning, it may be wise to reason that Pinchin Street did too. Incidentally, the Pinchin Street torso was dumped ten yards or so from across the street where young Charles Lechmere was raised. Just saying. I know it may be just another coincidence - if you can run into a freshly killed Ripper victim on your way to work, then why could you not have a torso victim placed literally on your childhood doorstep a year after that? Nothing at all strange about that.

Neighbors, family or what have you. I think the body was probably cut up in a basement similar to Richardson's. If it's in Whitechapel a girl like Annie Chapman could come into your backyard and go down there. The police didn't even search the basement.

I have no idea in what kind of room it was cut up. But for sure, mother Lechmere, who was a horse flesh dealer in 1891 and who may have been so already in 1888, lived in 147 Cable Street, maybe storing saws and knifes there (maybe!), and that was a stones throw away from the dumping site.
That has to go down as another coincidence.

[RockySullivan]

5:th of September
But the killer must have learnt over time that a bundle in cloth was a signal that a body part had been found. Otherwise, you make a possible point.

Clearly there is something about that weekend. Maybe the killer's family or his boss goes away.

A bundle of cloth was a signal that a body was found? What he's saying is you could easily carry a bundle of cloth through the city. And there were also old hams wrapped up in jackets all over.

[Joshua Rogan]

Henry Lee Lucas once dumped a body outside the gate of a prison. There may well have been reasons for the killer to search out the deepest foundations of theo building, there is no telling. Otherwise, just as you say, he could have thrown the torso over the hoarding, like he did on the Shelley estate. To me, the reasonable conclusion is that there was a meaning behind what he did.

Perhaps. But the meaning need be nothing more than that he meant to bury the remains but ran out of time. Maybe the missing parts were successfully buried elsewhere?

I would very much like to see a plan of the vaults; I know I have seen something along those lines, but a comprehensive plan allowing us all to see how the vaults were constructed would be nice.

The only plan I've seen was in a Ripperologist article a few months ago, but it was sadly lacking in detail. I seem to be unable to access the index so am unable to say which issue.

As for finding his way out, I cannot find my way out of anything myself.

But of course, if you were the killer you would want us to think that!

[Sam Flynn]

Hi sam
Yeah but when they do scatter they make clear attempts to hide. The Shelley estate victim I think pretty much finishes the dumping in the river just to get rid of theory.

The "dump to get rid of" approach applies to non-river locations as well. Dump it in a vault on a building site, stuff it in a railway arch, chuck it in the Thames... it all amounts to the same thing.

Either is a world removed from "kill her in a public place, slash her open, remove her organs and leave her there".

[Fisherman]

Hi Sam,

Yes this one is more problematical. This wasn't a matter of dropping a package into the Thames or over a fence this required serious effort. It speaks of someone who has a reason to specifically want to dump the parts here. Many of us will have at least visited a building site (but not a pre-health&safety Victorian one) and will know that they are basically 'assault courses.' He therefore has to get over a fence, negotiate the obstacles, possibly descend a ladder, negotiate more obstacles, in the dark (how many of us would fancy entering this tomb-like site at night?). This would involve a very serious risk of injury.
The other dumping sites were pretty random (yes, you could state that Pinchin Street was Ripper territory and that it was chose for shock value). Whitehall wasn't. For me, had a reason for chooosing that site. There also has to be at least a possibility that he actually worked there.

Yes, it seems very obvious that the killer was intent on placing the torso in the deepest foundations of the New Scotland Yard, and that this had some sort of symbolic meaning to him. Traditionally, we will read in a taunting of the police into the matter, and that seems quite reasonable and plausible to me.
What does seem out of the question totally is that such a thing is compatible with a "discreet" killer, or that the place was randomly picked.

The idea that he worked there - or delivered goods to the place - cannot be ruled out, but I think much of the trouble people are having is connected to an idea that the kiler actively sought out the vault where he placed the torso, and had prior knowledge of it´s existence. That does not need to be the case at all.

[Sam Flynn]

Yes this one is more problematical. This wasn't a matter of dropping a package into the Thames or over a fence this required serious effort. It speaks of someone who has a reason to specifically want to dump the parts here.

Indeed, but it's still a case of taking a body from somewhere and dumping it somewhere else. Or part of a body, at least; where did the other bits go?

For me, had a reason for chooosing that site. There also has to be at least a possibility that he actually worked there.

Quite feasible. Alternatively, he may have lived/worked reasonably locally and got to know of the site that way.

[Fisherman]

Clearly there is something about that weekend. Maybe the killer's family or his boss goes away.

A bundle of cloth was a signal that a body was found? What he's saying is you could easily carry a bundle of cloth through the city. And there were also old hams wrapped up in jackets all over.

The simple fact is that there were many, many finds of body parts wrapped in cloth in combination with the torso killers actions. How could that NOT lead to the idea that a parcel floating in the Thames in the late 1880:s and wrapped in cloth would contain a body part? Whether it was the killers intention or not?

[Fisherman]

Joshua Rogan: Perhaps. But the meaning need be nothing more than that he meant to bury the remains but ran out of time. Maybe the missing parts were successfully buried elsewhere?

If they were, they were exceptions to the rule.

The only plan I've seen was in a Ripperologist article a few months ago, but it was sadly lacking in detail. I seem to be unable to access the index so am unable to say which issue.

That´s too bad - anything would help to make the picture clearer.

But of course, if you were the killer you would want us to think that!

True!

[Sam Flynn]

The idea that he worked there - or delivered goods to the place - cannot be ruled out.

He delivered goods? To a building-site?

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: The "dump to get rid of" approach applies to non-river locations as well. Dump it in a vault on a building site, stuff it in a railway arch, chuck it in the Thames... it all amounts to the same thing.

Yes, a parting from the flesh and bones. But that parting can be designed to obscure what had happened or to focus everybody´s attention to it. And when it is done in the cellar vaults of the New Scotland Yard...

Either is a world removed from "kill her in a public place, slash her open, remove her organs and leave her there".

But not from kill her, open her up, take out organs and part with the body.

[Fisherman]

He delivered goods? To a building-site?

Unless the building was erected from thin air (and there are admittedly a lot of things being built out of thin air these days), I think we must assume that building material was transported to the site.

[Sam Flynn]

If you want to out it beyond doubt that the Ripper could not possibly have been the man who placed the Whitehall torso in that vault, this is not any avenue that will work.

It's a more feasible avenue than trying to crowbar an open-air East End eviscerator into someone who topped and tailed victims and scattered their dismembered parts comparatively discreetly - yes, and I mean that - in buildings, canals and fast-flowing rivers, overwhelmingly in the West.