Just jack, or others?

[kensei]

I've been meaning to start this thread for some time, and organizing my thoughts. There has been so much debate about exactly how many victims Jack the Ripper had, whether it was only the canonical five or whether there were others both before and after, and not everyone agrees even on whether all of the five were really Ripper victims.

There was Annie Millwood, Ada Wilson, and Martha Tabram before (Emma Smith is often mentioned but she herself stated before she died that she was attacked not by one man but by a gang). After, there was Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and those bizarre torso murders. And there were two of those, weren't there? And one of them had a headless and dismembered female body found at the construction site of the New Scotland Yard building in October of 1888, the one month within the span of the classic five fictims in which there weren't supposed to have been any Ripper murders.

Yes, the East End is acknowledged as having been a very violent place in which murder was common. Yes, fights and muggings and robberies and rapes that turned fatal were a regular occurrence. But what I am getting at is this- in spite of everything, serial killers are, always have been, and hopefully always will be RARE. So when it comes to all these cases of women who appear to have been killed by single individuals not in an argument, not for robbery, and not for rape, but apparently simply for the thrill of killing, and when so many of them have been not just knifed to death but victims of extreme overkill in which some have been literally cut to pieces, I really think it begs the question--

Even in the violent East End, just how many people who were even MENTALLY CAPABLE of literally cutting women to pieces for no logical reason can be expected to have been living and operating within such a relatively small area at the same time? Seriously, whenever someone like that rears his head it is an extremely rare thing and is against the odds. More than one within a couple of square miles in a time frame of a few years really seems extremely unlikely to me. Simple murder is common. Over the top serial mutilation murder is not. And yes, I understand that not all of the victims suggested were mutilated to the degree of Mary Kelly or the torso victims. But really, just how many depraved, sadistic, and unstoppably stealthy killers could have been creeping around Whitechapel and its environs in 1888-1891?

I have a strong feeling that Jack the Ripper was responsible for most if not all of the crimes that have been suggested for him, simply because aberrations like him simply don't occur very often, and we should all thank our lucky stars for that.

[Celesta]

Hi Kensei,

This has been argued until people have tied themselves into knots. On the one hand, it seems that there were at least two killers, maybe three, at work, but, on the other hand, it seems that there was, as you say, only one. You're sure to get some lively response to this one in time, unless folks are tired of arguing over it. My experience here is that they don't get tired!

Some will say that serial killers don't change their MO, but the Dusseldorf Ripper certainly did, and from the little I know about him, he did so intentionally.

Good luck with the thread.


C

[sdreid]

Hi all,

I'm not a ready dismisser of Smith. She may have had a reason to lie about the gang thing but, even if she didn't, only one guy inflicted the the mortal injury and that could have been the future Jack. Serial killers all have to start somewhere and the reinforcement of peers might have been just the thing to push him over the edge. If that's what happened then he didn't need any backup for further attacks.

[perrymason]

Hi Kensei,

I think that if one man didnt kill all the women mentioned, as you suggested by the nature of the attacks might have been the case, I think you must look for at least 2 multiple killers, and some random street violence.

I think the Torso's in 1888, and 1889 were related to a killer, and the man who takes with him abdominal organs is another. I personally feel that if you remove Liz, and Mary from the Canonicals,....which many would like to see happen, then you might wish to include Alice as a potential, for she is the only one that really mirrors kills like Polly, Annie and Kate. And since the police went into Alert mode when she was discovered, and asked medical personnel who worked with Ripper victims to compare the wounds, I think its safe to say he was still at large, or they thought he was.

Polly-Annie-Kate(maybe)-Alice(maybe).....thats my "Ripper" tally.

My very best regards.

[Jon Guy]

Hi all,

I'm not a ready dismisser of Smith. She may have had a reason to lie about the gang thing but, even if she didn't, only one guy inflicted the the mortal injury and that could have been the future Jack. Serial killers all have to start somewhere and the reinforcement of peers might have been just the thing to push him over the edge. If that's what happened then he didn't need any backup for further attacks.

I agree with you, Stan ,Smith only mentioned the "gang" later whilst in hospital to the Doctor who attended to her, it is not likely she would own up to been a prostitute to the doctor. When she was been escorted by her Lodging House keeper to the Hospital, they walked past where she was attacked and Smith was notably cagey or reticent as to exactly whom attacked her.
The time of her attack would be around 03.30 am, right in the centre of Jacks killing fields. Even the injury mirrors the sort of thing Sutcliffe, Ridgeway and Bundy did.

[Mike Covell]

Hi Guys,

I have the following "Torso" reports
Eastern Morning News, Thurs Sept 13th 88
Eastern Morning News, Thurs Oct 4th 88
Eastern Morning News, Saturday Oct 6th 88
eastern Morning News, Tues Oct 18th 88
Eastern Morning News, Wed Oct 19th 88
Hull Daily Mail May 1891 Regents Canal Torso
Hull and North Lincolnshire Times Sept 20th 1873 Thames Torso
Hull and North Lincolnshire Times sept 30th 1873 Thames Torso
Hull and East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Times Oct 13th 88 Whitehall
Hull and East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Times Oct 20th 88 Whitehall



Female bodies in Thames (No Mutilations)
Eastern Morning News, Oct 8th 88
Eastern Morning News Oct 9th 88

And after that many more which I have yet to sort through and catalouge.
I get all my reports from Hull newspapers and have worked my way through several years of the 4 main newspapers that covered the period.

The 1873 Thames Torso report was discovered whilst looking for items on Robert D'Onston Stephenson and family.

The 1891 Regents Canal report was discovered whilst looking for Frederick Bailey Deeming stuff.

As you can see there were more Torso murders in this period than those closer to the Whitchapel Mystery.

Once i have sorted through the other 100+ reports i obtained recently I will post them on the Torso Victims Thread.

Mike

[kensei]

If Emma Smith did lie and was really attacked by just one man who was the future Ripper, I guess I have to agree with the comparison to Ted Bundy as it mirrors the non-fatal attacks he made on women before he started killing (though Emma did die from her injuries later). Bundy also did not always stick to the same m.o. Sometimes he simply strangled or bludgeoned and left the body in a hidden place, but I know I read that he was supposed to have once beheaded a girl and kept the head with him for a time, and of course he twice got bold enough to attack multiple victims at a time. Then there was the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, whose m.o. was all over the place. Yes it generally involved home invasion and burglary, but he attacked men as well as women, ranging in age from teenage to elderly, and killed in a variety of ways (gun, blade, strangulation). He even mirrored the Ripper by taking organs- a woman's eyes- but only once, and early on.

So I do think that one man could have been responsible for all or at least most of the East End cases in question, including the torso killings, altering his m.o. here and there. And really, the m.o. never really changed that much. The victims were probably all prostitutes, killed by or at least subjected to blades, and mutilated in ways that seemed to be meant to shock people in varying degrees. Even the sporadic length of time between killings doesn't rule out one man. Dennis Rader (BTK) had an incredible variation in times between killings.

Basically, I think I am just struck by simple mathematical odds, and by Occam's Razor. Even when such a human monster does emerge, that emergence is extremely unlikely and is beating the odds against it. For two or more such monsters to appear in the same place at the same time is beating astronomical odds. If a headless and dismembered female corpse turns up in East London in October, and then in November in the same general area Mary Kelly is completely disassembled internally, well... those kinds of things just don't happen every day, even in habitually violent neighborhoods! If you want someone dead, you just don't have to go that far. Is it really a stretch to assume that we're only looking for one guy?

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Kensei,

For two or more such monsters to appear in the same place at the same time is beating astronomical odds.

Depends how you define "such" monsters. It could be argued that "torso" murderers belong to a different statistical population than throat-cutters, who in turn might belong to a different "species" of killer than mutilators and/or disembowellers. In which case combining the odds to get an "astronomical" number would be practically invalid, at least in terms of individual suspects. Collectively, however, these different statistical distributions might add up to indicate general societal undercurrents of brutality and misogyny.

[Govenor Leeus]

Could this not be a conspiracy with more than one murderer working together?

[Sam Flynn]

Hi GL,

Could this not be a conspiracy with more than one murderer working together?

...employing different methods to throw cunning Victorian sleuths off the scent?

I don't think so - where was the motive? How could such a conspiracy sustain itself over such a period of time, not to mention straddle the thousand streets and the hundreds of thousands of transient, anonymous poor that were drifted around the East End of London? It's hard to imagine a less fertile substrate for conspiracy than the East End, with its hordes of faceless nomads scraping a haphazard life at the lowest echelons of society.

[kensei]

Hi Kensei,Depends how you define "such" monsters. It could be argued that "torso" murderers belong to a different statistical population than throat-cutters, who in turn might belong to a different "species" of killer than mutilators and/or disembowellers.

Sam,

I define "such" monsters as men who are mentally and emotionally able to go out and hunt down women who are strangers to them and not just kill them but take a blade and cut them up in radically extreme ways, and then are able to live with themselves afterwards to the point of being able to do it again. That's the general description. I look at the constable's drawing of Catherine Eddowe's body that looks like a grenade has gone off inside her stomach, and then at the doctor's careful account of where each of Mary Kelly's body parts was found around the bed, and then consider that first torso killing that happened in between those two events, and I guess I just find it difficult to believe that there could be more than one person in that place at that time that would have the inclination to do such things in the first place, let alone that once he did it he wouldn't just mentally fly apart and would be capable of doing it again.

I mean-- it's cutting women to pieces. Does it really matter in what precise way one cuts a woman to pieces?

[perrymason]

I mean-- it's cutting women to pieces. Does it really matter in what precise way one cuts a woman to pieces?

Hi Kensei,

My answer would be yes, absolutely it does. The killer of Liz Stride for example need not be any monster, a killer who kills and rapidly extracts specific organs is surely different to a killer who cuts his victims up over days, and what the killer chooses to do when killing and after is ultimately a clue to his true nature. Although Jack the Ripper has been called bloodthirsty and unmentionabley cruel, he in fact does not prolong the killing, and subdued his victims, placing them on the ground, before cutting their throats. He only cuts into them after they have been dealt a death blow.

I dont think that says Sadist. I think a Sadist killed Mary Kelly though.

My best regards.

[kensei]

Perrymason,

I'm glad you mentioned Elizabeth Stride, for I had been meaning to make a point about the Double Event. I think the theory is entirely plausible that it was Jack the Ripper that killed Liz, that Israel Schwartz saw the beginning of that attack and that he and "Pipe Man" were both just innocent bystanders and that the Ripper shouting "Lipski!" was an insult/warning aimed at Schwartz, and that five minutes later Louis Dieumshutz came along and drove the Ripper off after he had only had time to cut Liz's throat rather than mutilating her further. He would have had to duck into the shadows of Dutfield's Yard and hide there until Diemshutz went inside, then slip out the gate and make his escape, annoyed and emotionally keyed up and still needing to satisfy his urges. After that, it comes down to what I was saying about mathematical odds and Occam's Razor. How likely is it that two violent throat-cutting murders of prostitutes took place within a 15-minute walk from each other within 45 minutes? I think Las Vegas odds-makers would have a field day with this.

[Sam Flynn]

I mean-- it's cutting women to pieces. Does it really matter in what precise way one cuts a woman to pieces?

I rather think it does, Kensei. Lopping the head off a body smacks of somebody wanting to ensure that the corpse isn't identifiable - very probably because the perpetrator had a relationship of some kind with the deceased. Slashing a woman's throat and ripping her entrails out, whilst leaving the corpse in a situation by which it could be easily identified, betokens an entirely different approach and, arguably, a totally different motive.

[perrymason]

Hi Kensei,

Interesting storyline, and Im sure many would side with you on it, but statistically, although unrelated to these crimes, there were 3 knife throat-cut murders that night in the East End, not 2.

Since you mention the Razor, isnt it very simple to conclude that a cut requiring no skill, a feature that is arguable with most of "Jacks" victims, taking place mere feet from the scene of an altercation between the soon to be victim and a drunk passerby, which is witnessed by a man who may have seen a verbal exchange between the drunk and a man in a doorway across Berner St,allowing for a confederate in the crime, ...while the drunk is tussling with the woman, causing the man in the doorway to follow the witness from the scene...leaving the drunk man and the soon to be victim alone....isnt it simple if Broadshouldered Man takes a few steps with her inside the gates, and in anger, slits her throat?

They are left alone at around 12:45ish...and 12:46am is the earliest time she could have had her throat cut by Blackwells opinion onsite at around 1:16am. 12:56am being the latest time....between you and me, Diemshutz Interruptus is a red herring, but I wouldnt let him off the stand just yet.

My best.