The kidney removal of Catherine Eddowes.

[The Rookie Detective]

One thing we can learn from the evidential circumstances surrounding Eddowes murder; I.e...

minimal timing
poor lighting
relative silence
advanced mutilation...

of a victim...in an open space...with at least 2 policeman within close proximity...is that the killer needed to have been someone who had not only done it all before, but who had some considerable ability and awareness in applying his skills with a long sharp knife.

It is therefore fair to say that a man who was used to cutting things up, is far more likely to have been the killer.

A local butcher, slaughterman, or surgeon would be someone with the necessary skills to carry out the kinds of wounds inflicted on Eddowes, especially when we factor in all of the other parameters that act as supporting evidence.

We aren't talking about some transparent crazed lunatic with a penknife, we are talking about a relatively quiet and unassuming man, with the ability to mask his intentions and charm his way into being trusted by his would be victim, to then suddenly initiate a frenzied blitz attack on his unsuspecting prey, in a matter of seconds.

The Ripper was a professional charmer, manipulator, and killer, whose awareness in dispatching his victim within such restrictive parameters, suggests a man who was meticulous in his application.

A killer suffering a psychotic episode would not have been able to display that much control in retaining a level of continued awareness whilst silently evicerating a victim with such ferocity.

The amount of rage displayed in Eddowes murder is startling, but mainly due to the fact the killer remained silent and aware of his surroundings.

I believe it's almost certian that Pc Harvey was unknowingly looking directly at the Ripper as the killer was in the process of mutilating Eddowes.

The location of the street lamp in relation to Harvey's approximate position, would have made it virtually impossible for Harvey to have seen anyone in the corner of Mitre Square where Eddowes was murdered.

Harvey's eventual dismissal from the police may suggest something about his overall character.

Unless of course, Harvey was the witness who saw the Ripper, and his dismissal was a ruse to protect him as a key witness.
That would apply certainly if the killer was also a police officer.

Pure conjecture of course.

In terms of the kidney removal itself; is that simply a means for the killer to authenticate his intentions laid out in an alleged Ripper correspondence?

The kidney (Eddowes)
The one who "squealed a bit" (Stride)
The double event

It all ties in to the intentions and context of a certain Ripper letter.


Perhaps the kidney was an intended necessity for the killer, rather than a matter of randomly taking organs.

The primary focus of the Ripper was the uterus, and yet with Eddowes he takes a kidney.

It sounds to me like a man bragging about his ability and skills with a knife.

A showman to say the least.

[Doctored Whatsit]

When it comes to the expression of doubts about the ability of JtR to do the deeds in the amount of light and time available, I keep quoting the words of someone who knew - R.Hull, a butcher/slaughterer.

"There has been nothing done yet to these poor women that an expert butcher could not do almost in the dark. ... And as to the time taken by the murderer to do the most difficult deed done as yet, I think it would be reduced to about one third of the time stated by them if done by a practical man."

He went on to explain that an experienced butcher/slaughterer would have no blood or very little on his person, and when he describes the modus opperandi of the slaughterer, it corresponds with that of JtR, except for the probability of strangulation or partial strangulation first. The weapon used as described by the police surgeons corresponds to the slaughterer's sticking knife - very sharp, 6 - 8 inches long and pointed.

There is no problem with time and light - an experienced man says so.

[Patrick Differ]

I do not believe any of the organs from any of the victims would have been harvested in any mortuary or anywhere else. Ripper victims would have had some additional attention and the risk of Police, detectives, inspectors and Doctors coming to see these victims would be unpredictable. Tampering with evidence with these particular women would have not been worth the penalty. No way.

Timing with Eddowes is explainable but it has a gap.

1:28 am Harvey is on Aldgate having passed Church passag
1:30 am Watkins enters Mitre Square and sees nothing.
1:30 am to 1:35 am Eddowes and killer are at passage.
( where Eddowes and her killer were from 1 to 1:35 is unknown but safe to say close to the passage area- a gap)
1:35 am. 3 witnesses see Eddowes and killer
1:44 am. Watkins funds Eddowes mutilated

Dr Brown thought this kill could have been done in 5 minutes or more. He thought it was done in haste. He also thought whoever took the kidney knew what he was about.

Would the killer have learned from mutilating Nichols and Chapman ? Of course.

It takes roughly 10 seconds to render a human unconscious by choking. A powerful man with a weak woman would have no problem at all. These were impoverished women.

This killer knew how to cut a throat and bleed the victim out . So choking, getting the woman on the ground, kneeling next to her and cutting her throat would take all of 1 minute.

Cutting the abdomen open and taking the organs out would have taken the most time. So 3 or 4 minutes. Face mutilation about 30 seconds. +/-

Since PC Harvey had been past Church passage around 1:15 to 1:20 and was at Aldgate by 1:28 am it seems likely that Eddowes and the killer, on the Church passage side , may have watched him pass. The killer would have noted it. Being local he may have already known Watkins beat timing.

The timing here is incredible. But possible. He knew what he wanted and Chapman taught him how fast he could perform it.

Just a thought. Seconds mattered in the case of Eddowes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So, now that we have reviewed the timeline we can now state some things with certainty.


- The body was removed to the mortuary at around 3am with doctors Brown and Sequiera observing it being loaded onto the ambulance.

- A Lloyd’s reporter, after speaking to Dr Brown, left the mortuary at 5.20 with Brown (and I assume Sequiera) still there. Therefore it’s unthinkable that these two doctors would simply have stood around for 2 hours after the body had been stripped with examining the body. And yet Trevor claims that the body wasn’t examined until the post mortem at 2.30.

- The only mortuary official that we know was there was Mr John Davis, the mortuary keeper. Is it at all likely that he would have been in on any organ stealing business? What we do know is that he would have known that the body had been examined and he would have been fully aware of the possibility that they might have seen the uterus still in place.

- We know that Dr. Brown, while in Mitre Square, requested the presence of Dr Phillips due to his knowledge of the Chapman murder.

- We know that PC Long handed the apron piece directly to Dr Phillips at Leman Street Station.

- We also know, from the Lloyd’s reporter who left the mortuary at 5.20 that Dr Brown was expecting Dr Phillips arrival. So Phillips would have arrived at the mortuary after 5.20, given the apron to Brown, and checked the injuries/mutilations as per Brown’s request. So we have another Doctor checking the wounds and who, with an open abdomen, might easily have noted the presence of the uterus. This is despite Trevor claiming that he wouldn’t have seen the body until the post mortem.


To suggest that organ thieves would have risked stealing organs after these events and before a post mortem cannot and should not be taken seriously. Organ thieves would only have taken organs after a post mortem had been carried out and never before. So why in this case would they have been in such a desperate rush that they would have risked their entire operation being exposed? The only answer is that they clearly wouldn’t have. We don’t have to prove that Phillips, Brown and Sequiera had become aware of the uterus being in place. All that we need to know is that organ thieves couldn’t possibly have known that they hadn’t seen the uterus in place.

……

Trevor often quotes the ‘infallible’ Inspector Reid as if his memory is proof that Kelly’s heart wasn’t missing. So was his memory all that is claimed by Trevor. I re-read an article on Reid in Ripperologist #147 by Nick Connell. He quotes from an interview with the News of the World (April 12th, 1896) that Reid gave.

He was asked: “So you never obtained a description of the man from anyone?”

He replied:

“Never. Indeed that the murderer was a man, is only an inference from the fact that no one but a person believed by the women themselves to be a man could have been taken by them to the secret haunts in which the murders were all committed.”


> So he couldn’t remember Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy, Harry Harris, Israel Schwartz, Elizabeth Long, George Hutchinson or Mary Ann Cox? Not one of them? What a memory!


Reid began by talking about the first murder, Smith:

“The first Ripper murder was one which is not generally associated with the series. This was the Brick-lane murder, committed on a bank holiday in 1888. A woman named Smith was met by a man in Brick-lane who carried a walking stick, and committed a most terrible outrage upon her.”


> So he forgot that she was assaulted by a gang rather than by a single man with a walking stick (although where he recalled a walking stick from I can’t say)


Hopefully his ‘infallible’ memory is slightly better on events in Bucks Row?

“This was the notorious Buck’s-row murder. In this case the woman was believed to have been murdered about one o’clock in the morning.”

And,

“The mutilation in the Buck’srow case was exactly of the same nature as that inflicted upon the woman who died in the hospital”


> Apparently not. Still, he’s only two hours and forty minutes out. None of us were there but how many of us would claim that Nichols injuries were exactly the same as Smith’s?


Perhaps Reid had better recall of the Tabram murder?


“Her throat was cut and she had been stabbed in 39 places.”


> No, he didn’t.


Let’s try Chapman shall we?

“A resident in one of these houses in Hanbury-street went down at five o’clock in the morning into a yard at the rear of the place and found the body of a woman lying between some stone steps and a wall adjoining the side of the house.”

And,

“No one had seen her, no one had heard a person shout.‘


> Only an hour out this time. It was a fence not a wall. He forgets Elizabeth Long possibly saw her and that Albert Cadosch probably heard the victim and the killer.


We can now have a short celebration in that his short version of the Stride murder passes muster (apart from a mispronunciation of Diemschitz but I’ll happily give that a free pass)


What about Eddowes?


“This woman’s nose and ears had been cut off, and her face slashed. This murder was committed in September 1889 or 90. I forget for the moment which year.”


> Her nose and ears weren’t cut off and he couldn’t remember which of two incorrect years was the correct incorrect one!


Apparently, according to Reid, the chalked message said: “The Jews shall not be blamed for this.“

He continues “..and this was rubbed off before it could be photographed, contrary to my wishes and much to my regret.”


> I can’t find any mention of Reid being in Goulston Street. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have been there but I can see no mention of his presence by anyone.


Reid’s general description of the circumstances of Kelly murder is pretty accurate. But..


“I ought to tell you that the stories of portions of the body having been taken away by the murderer were all untrue. In every instance the body was complete. The mania of the murderer was exclusively for horrible mutilation.”


> We can see clearly from this quote that it was clearly Reid’s opinion, based on memory, that there were no body parts missing from any of the victims. Trevor makes the claim that he was only talking about Kelly but anyone can see that this wasn’t the case. He believed mutilation was all that the killer was interested in with all of the victims. That Reid should have ‘forgotten’ about the missing parts from Chapman and Eddowes should, once and for all, put paid to any claim attributed to his memory about Kelly’s heart not being missing. This was a man who misremembered that body parts had been taken from Chapman and Eddowes. No weight can be placed on Reid on this matter.

Reid also stated that McCarthy became ‘a perfect madman’ after the murder who used to regularly ‘knock up’ Reid to tell him that they had the ripper doesn’t speak of a particularly reliable man. Perhaps a better storyteller that a relater of facts. McCarthy was interviewed by The Times after the murder and testified without issue at the inquest so he wasn’t the gibbering wreck that Reid claimed him to have been.

There are more mistakes made by Reid which could be quoted but I won’t bother going through all of them but it has to be accepted that this man was very fallible and made many errors some memory; some of which would have to be described as real howlers. He certainly got some things right so we can’t state that his memory was uniformly terrible but it certainly wasn’t reliable as Trevor claims. Somewhat ironic from a man who regularly calls people (like Macnaghten as an example for getting a couple of facts wrong) and even objects (the marginalia for eg) ‘unreliable.’ He often accuses people of basing opinions on testimony that is ‘unsafe to rely on,’ and yet here he is relying on someone who is provably unsafe to rely on. Reid got more things wrong that Macnaghten so why is Mac ‘unsafe’ while Reid is ‘safe’?

When we combine the above with the fact that Bond listed all of the body parts found around the room but made no mention of finding the heart we can say that we are on pretty safe ground to say that it had been taken away.

It’s worth adding of course that we are by no means reliant on Kelly’s heart being absent. Trevor always suggests that if the killer was ‘harvesting’ organs why didn’t he take the heart? But ‘harvesting’ is a convenient phrase used by Trevor to manipulate a theory. We cannot claim that the killer was ‘harvesting.’ Who else makes this claim? It’s a suggestion and nothing more. You can’t state a positive by using a posdible. He may have taken organs for shock value and realising what he had time to do in Miller’s Court he knew that he needed no further ‘shock value’ so he didn’t bother with the risk of walking away carry a body part. If he was taking parts as souvenirs to relive his fantasy over again (as we know that some serial killers do) how do we know that he didn’t just take a piece of random flesh. There’s no way that the Doctors would have accounted for every singly inch of flesh. The phrase “If he was harvesting…” carries no weight in this discussion.


Every theory deserves to be looked into thoroughly and this one has. We cannot state, as Trevor repeatedly does, that the killer didn’t have time in Mitre Square to do what is claimed because a) we don’t know how long these actions would have taken, and b) we don’t know exactly how long he had available to him. It really is that simple. We have shown that organ thieves wouldn’t have taken organs away before a post mortem. And we know that no one at the time even suggested, implied or hinted at organs being removed in the mortuary. And we’ve seen from the poll that no one accepts this theory. A glance over on JTRForums reminds us that the theory got the same reception over there from people like Paul Begg, Chris Phillips, Debra Arif, Howard Brown, Gary Barnett etc.


It really is time to place this theory on the ‘refuted’ pile. I know that Trevor will never accept this and there’s nothing that anyone can do about that but this one is dead.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If they had have done it would have been documented

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Why would it?

[Trevor Marriott]

They could have discovered missing organs at the mortuary but before the post mortem.

If they had have done it would have been documented

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Herlock Sholmes]

They could have discovered missing organs at the mortuary but before the post mortem.

[Trevor Marriott]

2. After phillips postem mortem

I totally agree that there is no way the doctors at the crime scenes could have carried out a detailed examination whereby they could have found organs missing

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[seanr]

What kind of man had the ability and capability to carry out those wounds inflicted on each of the known victims, within a relatively small time frame, in near darkness, in virtual silence, and then escape the scene without being heard or seen?

This may not actually have been achieved. Repeatedly in major investigations witnesses have not come forward for their own reasons. For example, the Yorkshire Ripper case it was assumed people did not come forward because they'd have to admit to the authorities to using sex workers and in the Bible John case, people were cheating on their partners and so did not come forward.
It's a recognised behaviour in a dangerous neighbourhood and the East End in this era was certainly a place where a witness would be intimidate by the friends of a defendant.

There must be something that we are all missing that would go some way to explain how the Ripper managed to achieve what he did.

Butchers Row.

[DJA]

Nobody at the scene,especially Brown would have shoved his arm up Eddowes body to check for kidneys,let alone her lady parts.

The descending colon had been excised and was laid beside her.

Majority of one

[FISHY1118]

2. After phillips postem mortem

''Phillips appeared at the inquest after the post mortem, and is discussing what he found at the post mortem.''





Why did the coroner ask this question ?, [Coroner] Was there any anatomical knowledge displayed? if he ''knew'' phillips was describing what the had already seen and examined at the post mortem.

Who would have performed all the things described by phillips other than another Dr , Baxter would have surely known this but he asked a pretty dumb question dont you think ?





[Coroner] You do not think they could have been lost accidentally in the transit of the body to the mortuary? - I was not present at the transit. I carefully closed up the clothes of the woman. Some portions had been excised.




''I carefully closed up the clothes of the woman. Some portions had been excised''. This was at the crime scene , there can be no mistake , we know this because


Coroner] It had not the appearance of having been tied on afterwards? - No. Sarah Simonds, a resident nurse at the Whitechapel Infirmary, stated that, in company of the senior nurse, she went to the mortuary on Saturday, and found the body of the deceased on the ambulance in the yard. It was afterwards taken into the shed, and placed on the table. She was directed by Inspector Chandler to undress it, and she placed the clothes in a corner. She left the handkerchief round the neck. She was sure of this.

Phillips would have to redress chapman after the postem mortem . Also, right after he says he carefully closed up the clothes of the women, he says some portions had been surgically removed [excised] Again crime scene no doubt.

The organs were removed from the crime scene according to the evidence as i see it , if people see if differently george thats entirely up to them. I know im in the majority on this one . cheers .

[GBinOz]

Ok let try this way .

Coroner] Was the whole of the body there?

Exactly ''where'' in your opinion is baxter referring to ? 1 . At The crime scene or 2. After phillips postem mortem

2. After phillips postem mortem

[FISHY1118]

Fishy,

Look at Phillip's on site report - it mentions the flaps and that is what I was pointing out.

Then look at Phillip's post mortem report - he is now talking about the organs. There is no mention of the organs in the on site notes.

Phillips appeared at the inquest after the post mortem, and is discussing what he found at the post mortem. Doctors attend the crime scene only to ascertain if any assistance can be rendered to the victim and, in conjunction with the police, to note all the external circumstances. They do not conduct a crime scene post mortem of the internal organs.

Cheer, George.

Ok let try this way .

Coroner] Was the whole of the body there?

Exactly ''where'' in your opinion is baxter referring to ? 1 . At The crime scene or 2. After phillips postem mortem

[GBinOz]

Hi George .

Thats right its not . The reason is, because baxter [at this point] is talking to Phillips not about the post mortem but about the crime scene . Which ive shown to be about Chapmans organs and not ''Two flaps of skin'' which you yourself suggested below, and i disagreed with .


''When Phillips spoke about "some portions had been excised" (not some organs), it can be seen in the "in situ" description that he was talking about the "2 flaps of skin from the lower abdomen" which were lying next to the body.''


Coroner] Was the whole of the body there? No; the absent portions being from the abdomen.

[Coroner] You do not think they could have been lost accidentally in the transit of the body to the mortuary?


Baxter could only be talking about the crime scene with theses two questions .

The'' absent portions'' phillips is taking about cant be the ''two flaps of skin'' if they were found next to the body they cant be absent ! .. I really do see how this could be misinterpreted to mean anything else other than missing organ parts from Chapmans abdoman .

Fishy,

Look at Phillip's on site report - it mentions the flaps and that is what I was pointing out.

Then look at Phillip's post mortem report - he is now talking about the organs. There is no mention of the organs in the on site notes.

Phillips appeared at the inquest after the post mortem, and is discussing what he found at the post mortem. Doctors attend the crime scene only to ascertain if any assistance can be rendered to the victim and, in conjunction with the police, to note all the external circumstances. They do not conduct a crime scene post mortem of the internal organs.

Cheer, George.

[FISHY1118]

Fishy,

1. None of the above conversation was about flaps.
2. All of the conversation was about the organs, which were discovered to be absent at the autopsy.
3. Phillips did not check whether internal organs were present at the crime scene. That took place at the mortuary.
4. Baxter wanted to know if the organs could have been present at the crime scene but were lost in transit. Phillips couldn't answer that question. If Phillips knew that the organs were missing at the crime scene he would have said so. Baxter posed the same question to Sgt Baugham.

Cheers, George

Hi George .

Thats right its not . The reason is, because baxter [at this point] is talking to Phillips not about the post mortem but about the crime scene . Which ive shown to be about Chapmans organs and not ''Two flaps of skin'' which you yourself suggested below, and i disagreed with .




''When Phillips spoke about "some portions had been excised" (not some organs), it can be seen in the "in situ" description that he was talking about the "2 flaps of skin from the lower abdomen" which were lying next to the body.''



Coroner] Was the whole of the body there? No; the absent portions being from the abdomen.

[Coroner] You do not think they could have been lost accidentally in the transit of the body to the mortuary?


Baxter could only be talking about the crime scene with theses two questions .

The'' absent portions'' phillips is taking about cant be the ''two flaps of skin'' if they were found next to the body they cant be absent ! .. I really do see how this could be misinterpreted to mean anything else other than missing organ parts from Chapmans abdoman .