Slicing Mary's Leg: An Act of Rage?

[BLUE WIZZARD]

Hi Wizzard,

I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make here? Are you saying that the mutilations that were done to Mary show anger and rage but the previous murders did not?

c.d.

I'm not saying that Mary was the exception to the rule, but that Mary showed a lot of rage and anger to her face. It was not as though the killer were trying to hide her identity but that he had extreme hatred for her, as well as the killer had for the other victims who’s face was mutilated.
Attacking the face is really personal; it is the killer’s expression of hatred for the victim.

BW

[BillieHoliday]

I've always thought Jack intended to fully skin Mary. To take her down to the skeleton.

But he found the work laborious and exhausting, hence, why he'd go from breasts, to face, to legs, abdomen, maybe getting bored at each stage and so going to another part of the anatomy.

I think he tired himself out and sated himself with what he'd done.

[Christine]

Killing somebody is a pretty profound act of rage. Most murder victims are not someone the killer likes, and most of us could never bring ourselves to kill even someone we hated. All the ripper murders show rage. All the possible ripper murders, even ones like Emma Campbell that we have good reason to believe were not ripper murders, show rage. That's why people classed them as possible ripper murders--there's so much rage there, more than is necessary even to kill someone you loathe.

Saying that someone who disagrees with you is afraid of your position is not very helpful, especially if your position is weak. You claim that Jack enjoyed the thrill of almost getting caught. This is at least possible, but the person who killed Mary Kelly was almost caught by George Hutchinson, unless he was George Hutchinson, in which case he was almost caught by the police. You say Jack was an outdoorsman, which is a circular argument--the one indoor murder proves he had no problem working indoors, so you argue that the indoor killing was not his. You say the violence against Mary's face was a sign of personal hatred of Mary, but that the violence against Catherine Eddows' face was a sign of something else.

I am sure a lot of people hated Mary Kelly. There are many people in the world who have given a lot of people reason enough to dislike them. Yet the overwhelming majority of these people are not murdered, let alone mutilated. Why? Because most people do not go around butchering people that they dislike. The overwhelming likelihood is that there was one man whose mind was so out of control that his confused hatred and sexual desires and lack of good sense led him to do these things. That's the pattern that has been established with study of modern serial killers, and that is far more likely than Kelly having been killed because someone other than the person that killed Eddowes and company disliked her.

[Suzi]

Hi Christine-
Emma Campbell??
Suzi

Smith??

[Christine]

Hi Christine-
Emma Campbell??
Suzi

Smith??

Whoops, I mean Emma Smith. I don't know where I came up with Campbell either.

[Suzi]

Hi Christine-
"All the ripper murders show rage"-Do they? rage usually demonstrates itself in wild behaviour- Our man worked quickly and in highly organised fashion- hardly in any form of rage- some form of anger maybe but totally controlled.

"George Hutchinson was almost caught"- He took himself off to the police,after the inquest- OK for reasons various but allegedly the police didn't consider him to be a suspect.

'Catherine Edowes' - Catharine Eddowes

"I'm sure a lot of people hated Mary Kelly"- Really?...Contemporary comments would refute this and to be honest I'm sure that a lot of the 'usual suspects' weren't particularly 'likeable' in modern terms.

I cannot see our man as an enraged lunatic stalking the streets looking for someone to rip up-indoors or outdoors...IMHO he was someone who was known to and knew the girls in ways various,most definately trusted- and had the wonderful ability to become invisible-i.e disappear into the masses- as one of their own in some way or another!

Suzi

No worries about the mysterious Miss Campbell!
Sorry if I had a bit of a rant there!

[BLUE WIZZARD]

Killing somebody is a pretty profound act of rage. Most murder victims are not someone the killer likes, and most of us could never bring ourselves to kill even someone we hated. All the ripper murders show rage. All the possible ripper murders, even ones like Emma Campbell that we have good reason to believe were not ripper murders, show rage. That's why people classed them as possible ripper murders--there's so much rage there, more than is necessary even to kill someone you loathe.

Saying that someone who disagrees with you is afraid of your position is not very helpful, especially if your position is weak. You claim that Jack enjoyed the thrill of almost getting caught. This is at least possible, but the person who killed Mary Kelly was almost caught by George Hutchinson, unless he was George Hutchinson, in which case he was almost caught by the police. You say Jack was an outdoorsman, which is a circular argument--the one indoor murder proves he had no problem working indoors, so you argue that the indoor killing was not his. You say the violence against Mary's face was a sign of personal hatred of Mary, but that the violence against Catherine Eddows' face was a sign of something else.

I am sure a lot of people hated Mary Kelly. There are many people in the world who have given a lot of people reason enough to dislike them. Yet the overwhelming majority of these people are not murdered, let alone mutilated. Why? Because most people do not go around butchering people that they dislike. The overwhelming likelihood is that there was one man whose mind was so out of control that his confused hatred and sexual desires and lack of good sense led him to do these things. That's the pattern that has been established with study of modern serial killers, and that is far more likely than Kelly having been killed because someone other than the person that killed Eddowes and company disliked her.

Nice quote Christine but you need to read my post a little slower.
I did not say that the other victims were not killed with rage; I said that the face mutilation revealed a more personal approach.

Have you ever wanted to punch someone in the face for insulting you or harassing you? Punching the face not the arm or the leg or the stomach but the part you really wanted to send a message to, the face. If not then maybe you were not as angry as you thought. The killer’s rage was destroying the victim especially the face that offended him the most.

BW

[Christine]

Hi Christine-
"All the ripper murders show rage"-Do they? rage usually demonstrates itself in wild behaviour- Our man worked quickly and in highly organised fashion- hardly in any form of rage- some form of anger maybe but totally controlled.

"George Hutchinson was almost caught"- He took himself off to the police,after the inquest- OK for reasons various but allegedly the police didn't consider him to be a suspect.

'Catherine Edowes' - Catharine Eddowes

"I'm sure a lot of people hated Mary Kelly"- Really?...Contemporary comments would refute this and to be honest I'm sure that a lot of the 'usual suspects' weren't particularly 'likeable' in modern terms.

I cannot see our man as an enraged lunatic stalking the streets looking for someone to rip up-indoors or outdoors...IMHO he was someone who was known to and knew the girls in ways various,most definately trusted- and had the wonderful ability to become invisible-i.e disappear into the masses- as one of their own in some way or another!

Suzi

No worries about the mysterious Miss Campbell!
Sorry if I had a bit of a rant there!

Hi Suzi, thanks for answering.

I certainly think it's possible that rage was not the only or even the primary motive, because I think that the ultimate motive was some sort of mental illness. It may or may not be possible to make logical sense of all the connections because sometimes the ultimate reason is just some random misfiring in the brain. But Jack sure doesn't seem to like women. And when I visualize him slicing women open, I don't visualize a bored meat packer mumbling to himself that the demon is demanding a kidney this week, where you'd think he still be working on the womb from the last one. My main point is that I don't see Kelly as an angry murder and Eddowes as a thoughtful murder. They both look angry to me, and if not anger, then they both were driven by the same weird mental pathology.


George Hutchinson is a real enigma, and may have made it all up, but I brought him primarily to show that it's far from obvious that Eddowes' killer was taking risks and was almost caught, where Kelly's killer was playing it safe by staying indoors. Indeed, one interpretation is that Jack took fewer risks with the Kelly crime because he did not enjoy taking risks.

As far as Kelly being hated, most of us have someone who dislikes us, but Kelly doesn't seem to me to be particularly likable. But my point here is that even a normal person who had good reason to dislike her would never do such a thing to her--no matter how bad she was, the ultimate badness was not in her, it was in the killer. That's why I think she was a ripper victim, people ill enough to do such a thing, even to someone they have good reason to hate, are few and far between.

The enraged lunatic question is a hard one to answer, because Jack was an enraged lunatic. If there ever has been an enraged lunatic in all of human history, Jack has got to be him. Yet, as you say, he functioned well enough to disappear into normal society for some months. So clearly he wasn't some sort of comic stereotype, jumping up and down and drooling. I am inclined not to try and work out what was going on inside of his head, because ultimately what was going on inside his head was malfunction--things misunderstood, things connected to things that had no real connection, voices telling him it was very important to do some weird, random things, a failure of the circuits of the brain that keep us from acting on every weird and angry impulse, an overload of the circuits that drive us to lose our tempers.

[Blues]

A disagreement

"this killing of Mary in my opinion was not Jack, for many reasons. This was not his M.O. There was no thrill in the killing and mutilation of Mary for Jack."


I disagree - this was entirely Jack's M.O.

First of all - Inspectors and doctors agreed that "the same hand" killed the 5. With the possibility of Stride I agree completely as well. There was physical evidence - what we know because of what has survived paper-wise, and also physical evidence that the police did NOT give out as they didn't want to give ALL aspects of the murder out...signatures such as they distinct way the BTK killer signed his name to his letters - veritcally with the B having 2 boooobeez drawn in to it - was not given out to the public and was only just recently told to us...I guarantee that knife marks, distinct ways the head was held leaving similar bruises on the women, etc. matched up in many ways that was much more evident to them than to us 100 years later. Jack piled up the belly wall of his victims - Chapman's belly was cut and placed to her right...MJK's flaps were cut in the same way and placed to her right. Nobody but the killer and the police - and some of the early lookyloos - would have known this. A copycat could not have replicated this gruesome detail from what HE (no way it was a she re: an earlier post by someone) read in the papers. Let alone had the stomach for it.

As for Jack being an "outdoorsman" - Jack could NOT have foreseen the fact that MJK was going to invite him indoors. Jack had been lying low for the last several weeks...cops were thick on the street...each tart could be a setup or a policemen herself...this was BONUS time for Jack. He is now alone, inside, free from interruption. Maybe Jack liked the thrill of possibly getting caught - but he loved the thrill of killing and mutilating far more. For your scenario to ring true, Jack is killing and mutilating as something to do while getting off on being outside and possibly seen. I don't agree with that. I think Jack is killing and mutilating because that is what he is looking to do. The women he has chosen just happen to not work inside for the most part. If prostitution was illegal on the street and had to be indoors in a brother - we would have 4-5 dead women inside and this would be a moot point. Jack's first priority was killing and mutilating - period. Once he was able to get down to it for the first time, he indulged himself...and he indulged himself in signature ways that his psychosis and blade indelibly left on each scene he entered.

I have more to say but no the time to say it...and I doubt anyone wishes to read much more of my tripe...

Good day y'all.

Blues

[c.d.]

Hi Christine,

How could Jack have been a lunatic and still function normally? That would appear to be an oxymoron. At the very least, he was smart enough and prudent enough to leave the scene of the crime before being caught as opposed to standing there with a big grin on his face saying hey look what I just did.

c.d.

[Christine]

Hi Christine,

How could Jack have been a lunatic and still function normally? That would appear to be an oxymoron. At the very least, he was smart enough and prudent enough to leave the scene of the crime before being caught as opposed to standing there with a big grin on his face saying hey look what I just did.

c.d.

What is a lunatic anyhow? The word implies someone driven mad by the phases of the moon, which is an idea no longer taken very seriously. The official definition, which is no longer used, is someone so severely mentally ill that he was a danger to himself or others. So Jack was clearly a lunatic by the legal definitions of his time. Nowadays the term seems to get used mostly in comic or literary contexts, and seems to imply someone jumping up and down and screaming all of the time, which would tire you out. Obviously his behavior ranged from fairly normal to truly psychotic. That doesn't mean he was obviously agitated all of the time.

[BLUE WIZZARD]

Christine,

You strike me as very sweet person, which looks for the good in everyone.
And I know of someone that has the very same nature as yours.

Jack was a murderer and he enjoyed the kill, he was by no means a lunatic.

At the time of the kill he would have gone into a rage, triggered by whatever he needed for the kill, after which he would have to get himself back in control so as not to be noticed by the average person he would pass on his way back to his home.

If Jack were a Lunatic, he surely would have been seen by people as he walked by them, he would have been like a crazy man, Jack was always in control of himself and that is not something a lunatic can do.

A lunatic (colloquially: "looney" or "loon") is a commonly used term for a person who is mentally ill, dangerous, foolish or unpredictable: a condition once called lunacy.

I highlighted the word foolish because Jack was not foolish.

BW

[Christine]

Christine,

You strike me as very sweet person, which looks for the good in everyone.
And I know of someone that has the very same nature as yours.

Jack was a murderer and he enjoyed the kill, he was by no means a lunatic.

At the time of the kill he would have gone into a rage, triggered by whatever he needed for the kill, after which he would have to get himself back in control so as not to be noticed by the average person he would pass on his way back to his home.

If Jack were a Lunatic, he surely would have been seen by people as he walked by them, he would have been like a crazy man, Jack was always in control of himself and that is not something a lunatic can do.

A lunatic (colloquially: "looney" or "loon") is a commonly used term for a person who is mentally ill, dangerous, foolish or unpredictable: a condition once called lunacy.

I highlighted the word foolish because Jack was not foolish.

BW

BLUE_WIZZARD,

Thanks for you kind comments.

I realize that there are different definitions of lunatic, but Jack clearly met the legal definition as used until the first part of the 20th century: so dangerously mentally ill so as to be a danger to himself or others. The popular notion of a lunatic is someone jumping up and down and screaming incoherently. While many untreated mental patients will act this way, not even the sickest of them do this all of the time. If you take the other part of your quote: or unpredictable. He seems to have been more unpredictable than foolish, but how can you call cutting women up "not foolish?" It sure ain't smart. Likewise, how can call cutting up women "being in control of oneself?" That's about as out-of-control as I can imagine. The fact that he wasn't obviously so ill, twenty-four hours a day, doesn't change the fact that he behaved in an extraordinarily angry, stupid, and out of control fashion about once a month during the fall of 1888.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

I don't see how Mary's murder seems like a personal thing to some people. No offence, but the only reason this is is because of the extent of her mutilations and because hers is the first murder that Jack committed inside. Well, of course the extent of mutilation would've been extreme under those circumstances. The escalation in mutilation ties in beautifully with Eddowes' facial mutilations previous. Think, if Eddowes had been murdered in a remote area that wouldn't have been prone to interruption for long periods of time (say an hour and a half) and she had been as extensively mutilated as Mary, would her murder then be classed as personal? I very highly doubt it. But I do think that if Eddowes was single and invited Jack into her room (pretending for a moment that she had a permanent place to live) that her body would've been in the same state as Mary's.

[JSchmidt]

There is something problematic with the notion that the Kelly murder was too personal and close for JtR. If it was indeed someone with a personal grudge against Kelly, then she knew someone that was perfectly capable and perfectly willing to not only kill her but to mutilate her body in a very gruesome way. And that leaves us either with a very coldblooded person that does this as a deception or a raging madman.
Where would that person come from? I think it is very unlikely someone does something like that out of the blue, with no history of violence before. To me it seems more likely that it was indeed JtR and not a hypothetical killer from Mary's past. Because JtR has that history of violence and that acquired numbness to manage something like defleshing her leg as if she was just a piece of meat.