Ripperology: Questioning the Dogma

[Jeff Leahy]

U cool. Sounds like a tough day.

Pirate

[DarkPassenger]

Funnily enough it's been a great day - on the surface of it. You know those days where you have good things happen but feel like crap? That's me today.

[Fisherman]

Dark Passenger writes:
"How can anyone reasonably question the fact that Jack was a serial killer, that the conditions of 19th Century slum London was going to produce violent and sexual criminals just like serialists, and that Jack killed and mutliated his victims for anything other than a sexual thrill (or something along those lines)?"

Since I am one of those who won´t accept your suggestions as facts, I think you may be aiming at me here, DP?
Well, to begin with, you may have noticed that this whole thread carries the name "Questioning the dogma", and I really believe that we must do just that. That, however, does not mean that I don´t agree that the killings would have had a sexual element to them or that eighteenth century Whitechapel made up a suitable growing ground for a serial killer. Much points to this being the case.
But as long as we don´t KNOW these things for sure, we are obliged to look into all possible paths of exploration. And that, I think, has very little to do with inventing the wheel all over again. Besides, unless you´ve already noticed, the wheel you suggest we employ, is the same wheel that has been suggested by most people for the last 120 years. So far, it has not rolled...

The best, DarkPassenger!
Fisherman

[perrymason]

Hello all,

Since I do not ascribe to the comparison of any modern serial murderer data to these cases of 5 murdered women as a means of determining their killer (s), the rant might have been directed at me as well, and I can only add that the Canonical Group is a formed opinion of whom a single killer nicknamed Jack the Ripper killed, and it was fairly uniformly agreed upon by most of the contemporary investigators. Though not all as rigidly as "only these five women", many included Martha Tabram on their own list.

The point is, that the five women have not been linked definitively to a single killer, there is no evidence really to link any crime to anyone...certainly not any that points to any one individual, and their deaths are among some 13 or 14 women that were murdered or attacked over that "active" case period, many with similar if not remarkably similar characteristics to Ripper attributed deaths.

Historically, the deaths that started this whole episode were in early 1888, and as the death toll mounted, the "Whitechapel Murderer" was being assumed as the killer of those women as well. Including Martha. Only after a few deaths occurred that showed a specific pattern.....that of Mary Ann then Annie, was the death toll modified to exclude some earlier victims. At that point he became "Leather Apron". Even so, monthly reports on the crimes included updates on Martha Tabram's murder well into that fall. Point being.....they were all investigated as a "series" at the beginning.

The investigators were investigating many murders at a time when the immediate area was in turmoil, a Fenian assassination attempt was being foiled, there was ill feelings from the locals, likely reciprocated by the police, and the Police themselves were being run like a military institution...courtesy of Warren. They had a lot going on,...not just Jack to worry about.....and those peripheral issues may have some relevance to the murders themselves.

This is not a proven case of serial murder we investigate, it is a group of murders that many believed, and still believe, were committed by one man. So what ever we now know about serial murder, although an interesting area of study to a criminologist and hobbyist alike, (and very relevant data when analyzing a known serial killer), it may have nothing at all to do with some of the Canonical victims. When you look at any individual murder within the series, and then look at all 5....you are still only seeing 5 individual murders suspected of being linked.

So I disagree with Bond and Macnaughten on whom should be included......I think that 3 Canonicals may well be linked,...and since they and I share a similar background in the study of serial murderers,....which is virtually none, ... I think thats reasonable.

Best regards.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Sam

Are you suggesting that he cut off her breast and somehow it accidentally fell behind her head?

Not at all Jeff - but it's possible that the part-severed head rolled over and covered the organ, for one thing. For another, propping a head up with bits doesn't imply any "patterned" distribution, neither does stuffing organs under it for some other reason now unfathomable. It's not as if there was any symmetry involved, as witnessed by the distribution of other organs and flesh elsewhere.

Why not just throw the whole lot on the floor or out the way on the other side of the room?

Too much effort involved in that, perhaps, and - if anything - as clear an indicator as we have that he had no real desire to "arrange" much anyway.

Instead of which, he leaves the spleen near where it was cut out; shoves the liver well out of the way - plopped it idly down between the feet - leaving room to burrow into the thorax; heaves the intestines up over the right side of the body onto the mattress, just like rolling a tarpaulin out of the way; he notes that there was a handy table just to his right, and piles some flesh onto that - better than letting it slop onto the floor for him to slip on.

Uterus, kidneys and one breast apart, the distribution seems to have been a simple case of logistics, shoving parts out of the way, by mere inches in many cases, so that he could continue his "work". It made little sense to have left the detached viscera in situ, hampering him like sand trickling back into a hole. Jack was a very practical joker after all, or so it may seem.

[Roy Corduroy]

Hello DarkPassenger,

Congratulations on your degree and continuing studies. I wish you the best as I know everyone here does.

In the cramped, deprived and depraved conditions of 19th Century slums, a serial killer targeting prostitutes was inevitable.
For a good explaination to that question, Varqm, I suggest you read A Plague of Murder by Colin Wilson, and The Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman. It is a mammoth answer.

I've read neither of those books by Mr. Wilson, so I cannot comment on them. But in an essay in The Mammoth Book of JtR by Jakubowski and Braund (named JtR Comprehensive A-Z in the U.S.) 2005, Colin Wilson states that he believes James Maybrick was the killer.

Roy

[Jeff Leahy]

Not at all Jeff - but it's possible that the part-severed head rolled over and covered the organ, for one thing. For another, propping a head up with bits doesn't imply any "patterned" distribution, neither does stuffing organs under it for some other reason now unfathomable. It's not as if there was any symmetry involved, as witnessed by the distribution of other organs and flesh elsewhere. Too much effort involved in that, perhaps, and - if anything - as clear an indicator as we have that he had no real desire to "arrange" much anyway.

Instead of which, he leaves the spleen near where it was cut out; shoves the liver well out of the way - plopped it idly down between the feet - leaving room to burrow into the thorax; heaves the intestines up over the right side of the body onto the mattress, just like rolling a tarpaulin out of the way; he notes that there was a handy table just to his right, and piles some flesh onto that - better than letting it slop onto the floor for him to slip on.

Uterus, kidneys and one breast apart, the distribution seems to have been a simple case of logistics, shoving parts out of the way, by mere inches in many cases, so that he could continue his "work". It made little sense to have left the detached viscera in situ, hampering him like sand trickling back into a hole. Jack was a very practical joker after all, or so it may seem.

Ah’ So, we draw Swords at last! Twas inevitable it would end as such. Advance ye lubber and prepare to meet ye doom!

Only kidding..

Come on Sam, please, part of the severed head rolled over and cover the breast, please, now who is heading into fantasyland?

MJK was positioned. I.e. her body was moved and left in a specific….’Pose’?

Insidently that position is similar to the other victims. Legs bent apart, face turned to left. Arms bent.

Trying to argue accident in the other murders is OK. But you really are asking us to take a leap of faith if you think the positioning of the organs at MJK bedroom required no thought or considered placing.

Bond says under the head. It’s that simple. And Kelly had probably been moved from where she was originally murdered.

IT DID NOT GET THERE BY ACCIDENT

Of course it might NOT seem like a ‘logical’ distribution. But that is my whole point.

We are dealing with a mind that viewed the world differently from you or I..

Or at least you or I without mushrooms and LSD…

Pattern in that world (schizophrenia) takes on its own meanings.

However to suggest that the MJK murder scene was hapless ‘Accident’ is the largest stretch of the imagination I have heard for a long time…

So I say pooh…..and twice Pooh

Pirate

Ps Thrice pooh? It happens again and I will get Franky Howard

PS PS go back and look at the photo

[Sam Flynn]

Come on Sam, please, part of the severed head rolled over and cover the breast

I only suggested a possible mechanism, Jeff. Besides, the little bouquet garni of organs under the head was considerably outnumbered by numbles dotted elsewhere about the corpse, the bed and the table beside it.

MJK was positioned. I.e. her body was moved and left in a specific….’Pose’?

Not at all - how else was he to get at Kelly's genital area, but by parting the legs? And, having parted them, what did it avail him to "pose" them in any other configuration? Job done - leave the legs exactly where he last left them. Ditto her upper body - pull it across the bed towards him, all the better to remove her breasts and cut between the ribs. Having done that, why move the upper body into any other position?

Insidently that position is similar to the other victims. Legs bent apart

How else would you expect a stiff to look after having had its throat hacked back to the spine, its belly and genitalia cut away and its abdomen excavated?

face turned to left. Arms bent.

Chapman - face turned to right; Eddowes - arms straight and at an angle to the body.

Bond says under the head. It’s that simple

Now, all that remains is for us to simply explain why all the other organs and bits of flesh ended up dumped on the bed, with no discernable rhyme or reason behind their placement.

We are dealing with a mind that viewed the world differently from you or I.

Ah, the Ripperologist's favourite trump-card! I don't buy that, myself, Jeff. The broken body on the bed looks exactly like a broken body on a bed should look, whether a schizophrenic did it or not.

However to suggest that the MJK murder scene was hapless ‘Accident’...

I'm not suggesting that at all. It happened because a sicko hacked Kelly to bits, and most of those bits ended up in a perfectly practical location - put there, perhaps thrown there, but not deliberately placed so as to conform to a preconceived, or even an improvised, design. To facilitate this carnage, her legs were parted and her body twisted to accommodate the killer's manoeuvres, after which the corpse remained as he left it.

[Jeff Leahy]

In the Morrow

[perrymason]

Sam,

I do admire your practical no-nonsense approach to problem solving, but it is unreasonable to suggest that the body on the bed shed organs in various places about itself, including under other body parts, it is highly unlikely that Mary herself placed her left arm back over an empty abdomen, and Marys ruined face just happens to be facing the windows, so she is facing anyone that comes into the room, a possibly contrived "pose".

I agree with your analysis on the legs being spread...I believe only Liz's werent. I do however think that was unneccesary for someone who is interested in taking a heart. And I think its perfectly ok to see the flesh flaps and other viscera placed to the side as a similar type move....a utilitarian gesture. Like the intestines over the shoulders and away from his work area. However, a breast under the head is not. Nor is re-positioning an extremity across a recently emptied carcass.

I think there is ample evidence in that room that not only was the killer engaged in activities he had no intention of completing or seeing to fruition,...like the partial thigh stripping, .....and making wounds on the body that were in no way needed to facilitate the removal of the organ he takes,...both Annie and Kate needed to be cut in the abdomen to get to the organs taken...Marys face slashing didnt help him get her heart....placing her organs about didnt either...he didnt need to remove any of the organs he did prior to the heart to remove it,...and there is undeniable evidence that he took time while in the process of cutting a woman to pieces, to place objects about her..not toss, or simply move them out of the way, like intestines.

There is little doubt that the killer created a scene while there with those placements, for himself or others is unclear, but that mess was a killer playing in his bloody sandbox. There is no other Canonical murder in which there is so obviously self-entertainment going on. 3 of the priors were straight "to business" almost exclusively....Kate being the only other real case where peripheral wounds are unrelated to killing, or accessing organs.

Best regards Sam.

[Fisherman]

On the topic of the bodyparts underneath Kellys head, the easiest conclusion to the question of how they ended up there is of course to accept that the killer propped the head up, using the parts as some kind of weird pillow. That would involve lifting her head, putting the parts in place, and then lowering the head again. A "the body parts go under the head" sort of solution.

But what if we are looking for a "the body goes onto the organs" solution instead?

If we assume that Sam is right, meaning that the different parts were simply dropped onto whatever surface offered itself as he went along, could it be that the same thing applied to the kidney, uterus and breast at a stage where the body was still lying closer to the partition wall then it did when it was found? We know that the initial cut to the throat seems to have been dealt there, and maybe he started out working on the body there too?

If part of the eviscerations were taken care of with the body in such a lie, then that may offer an explanation. Afterwards, when the breast, kidney and uterus were already in a small heap on the bed, he may have decided to lift the body some way further out from the wall, to facilitate his work somehow, and that may have been when the head ended up on the pile of organs.
Not the simplest explanation of course, and it admittedly does not explain why the arm was draped over the body. Perhaps a possibility, though?

The best,
Fisherman

[Jeff Leahy]

Good morning Guys

I see Michael has been hard at work. (Like a pixie in the night). But yes I would concur with most of his reasoning.

Just to add that Annie Chapman head may have turned to the right. But it was still turned away from the fence. As Kelly’s was away from the wall.

Of course I don’t disagree with Sam’s conclusion that much of the body position and inflicted wounds were of necessity and practicality. We have to see Jack as a whole. So to some extent I see it as a ‘chicken or egg’ question. His purpose was to attack the Uterus the legs are best apart. But surely his purpose and reasoning are as one?

However, we know that MJK body was moved. Organs put under her head. And her arm replaced.

As Michael states, ‘evidence of Jack playing in his sand box’ (if we’re using that analogy.)

Whether Jack intended us to see the result of his work, or whether it fulfils something for himself, or whether it fore filled some other external or internal requirement.

MJK body is as much a statement as any Damien Hurst at the Tate Modern..

Pirate

PS Fisherman. Surely for the kidney to be under the head most of the mutilation would have to have been done before the body was moved and there would have been some evidence for that?

[Fisherman]

Jeff writes:

"Surely for the kidney to be under the head most of the mutilation would have to have been done before the body was moved and there would have been some evidence for that?"

Most of the blood was in the top right corner of the bed, Jeff. That is consistent with my proposal. And with a killer rummaging about in the bed, I fail to see how any evidence would look that could prove that the body was moved somewhere in the midst of it all. Take the kidney out, lay it on the bed, move the body closer to you, and it may end up upon that kidney. It is all very simple,really.

The best,
Fisherman

[Jon Guy]

and most of those bits ended up in a perfectly practical location - put there, perhaps thrown there, but not deliberately placed so as to conform to a preconceived, or even an improvised, design.

But you must admit Sam, there is a certain pattern regarding the finished situation of the excised organs of Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly.

All these organs are found arranged around the body. Despite the speed at which he worked he wasn`t chucking things over his shoulder as he cut them out, he was always placing them neatly around the body, take Eddowes colon for example. Intestines, whether still detatched or not, always to the right of the body. In the instance of Miller s Court, apart from the blood under the bed all the organs are on the bed or table, if he really wanted to have some space to work in without kneeling on a liver or piece of lung he would have been tossing them into the corner in the room.

[Fisherman]

A thought that has crossed my mind, Jon, is that when somebody wants to empty an open suitcase in a quick fashion, digging away at the contents, the more probable thing to do would be to consistently throw the items in the same direction as you dig them out. To distribute them all around the suitcase in a form of circle would seem a tad strange.
Then again, emptying a suitcase would be a more monotonous excercise than evisceration a body, I guess, and maybe that can help to explain why the parts were spread the way they were.

My gut feeling - whatever that is worth - is that the theatrical elements of the Kelly murder site are a bit too many to easily swallow as random. That said, if he really wanted to ensure recognition in that department, I guess he could have been a lot more clear and explicit. And most of the time it is healthy not to read too much into things; our brains, always looking for some sort of pattern or logic, will easily play tricks on us ...

The best,
Fisherman