Pinching the "Canon" fuse

[The Good Michael]

Killers dont change why they kill.....

I don't believe this actually, but let's say it's true. We don't know why JTR killed. We haven't a clue. For all we know, it was all exploratory killing and whatever he did after the murder was invented as whim struck him. The predation may have been the reason and everything else gravy. The killing of people knowing that he had a chance to be caught, but knew he could get away with it, may have been the WHY. You don't know and neither did the police, and neither does anyone else.

Your breakdown of what you think the police believed after each murder isn't representative of the body of murders as a whole. Of course there is hesitancy in ascribing similarities to the first two (if you include Tabram), but it is as a whole, even including Stride, that one can see connectivity to all if one has eyes to do so. It is via the process of taking each murder as if in a vacuum, that one can look at dissimilarities, but is that a valid process? I don't know the answer to that question, but something tells me that it all depends on what your "theory" is as to the approach one takes.

Cheers,

Mike

[Fisherman]

Caz:

"My take was that only a very tiny minority would vote for 'definitely not', which you then turned into a (nearly) respectable 47%"

Caz, the wiews of those who say that they are sure that Jack did not do it are of as little interest to me as are the wiews of those who say he emphatically did. Both these stances are untenable, as anybody with a head on their shoulders should readily recognize.
The only things we are at liberty to do, is to deduct as best as we can from the existing evidence whether it was more or less probable that Jack was Strides killer, and since none of the evidence points in Jacks direction, it is an easy call as far as I´m concerned.

"you prefer to turn your head away and finger someone not known to have harmed a living soul."

I do? How odd! Who is this person? To the best of my knowledge, I have not fingered any named person at all.

Don´t you think you are being slightly over-melodramatic in your defense of this grey eminency? Is it not a tad silly to cry over my cynicism, given the fact that both you and I know that history has produced more killers than Jack? Quite a few, even.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Phil Carter writes:

" the cutting of a woman's throat, which...was...seemingly motiveless"

Such a stance points us directly to the rank of people to whom Jack would have belonged - people able to kill without any other motive than the lust of killing...
...which is why we are not at liberty to state such a thing with no substantiation, I´m afraid. Why would we presume that Strides killing was motiveless? What is there in the evidence to even suggest such a thing? How are we to be able to conclude that jealousy, economic gain or something else was not the factor that unleashed the cut to her throat???

There is absolutely no need to believe - if there were two killers around - that these killers represented the same sort of slayer: one who killed out of a need to do so. Such creatures are far more rare than the average, boring spur-of-the moment killer who has a drink too much and catastrophically looses his grip on things just once.

The best,
Fisherman

[Phil Carter]

Why would we presume that Strides killing was motiveless? What is there in the evidence to even suggest such a thing? How are we to be able to conclude that jealousy, economic gain or something else was not the factor that unleashed the cut to her throat???

There is absolutely no need to believe - if there were two killers around - that these killers represented the same sort of slayer: one who killed out of a need to do so. Such creatures are far more rare than the average, boring spur-of-the moment killer who has a drink too much and catastrophically looses his grip on things just once.

The best,
Fisherman

Hello Fisherman,

Thank you for your response.

1. From all the documentation that is currently available to us, there has never been, unless I am grossly mistaken, any KNOWN motive for Elizabeth Stride's killing. Therefore, as there isn't a known motive, and by definition, until one is factually produced, it is seemingly motiveless. Speculation around a motive doesn't equate to fact.
Ipso facto, we CANNOT "conclude that jealousy, economic gain or something else was not the factor that unleashed the cut to her throat" either. It is speculation.

2. The two killers.. I didn't state they WERE the same sort of slayer, only that they were both probably mad murderers. To me, "The same sort of slayer" is a generalization. Their methodology, and or indeed their motive/non-motiveness may well differ from each other. One could have been well heeled, one poor. WE don't know.

3. I agree with you that "such creatures are far more rare than the average, boring spur-of-the moment killer who has a drink too much and catastrophically looses his grip on things just once. ".. that was part of my point on a wider scale of having two such men in the midst of the local populace. Like I said.. this was DIFFERENT.

with best wishes

Phil

[Trevor Marriott]

Hey people

You need to clam down and chill out most of you are getting into this way above your heads take a step back. This thread is now full of wild speculative theories based on personal opinions.

Look at things from a different angle in relation to Strides murder.

If Stride hade been the first murder in Whitechapel at that time and the second i.e. Eddowes 7.14 or 21 days later. Would the police at the time have suggested the same killer was responsible for both having regard to the circunstances surrounding each murder. i would suggest probably not becasue it is quite clear that they are different.

Why should our thinking be any different today ?

The only real link is that Stride was murdered in between a series of murders which can be linked to the same killer. i.e Chapman, Eddowes and Nicholls.

Its time both the list of victims and suspects was amended. Murder investigations are not just focused on who did it but also who didnt do it. take the list of suspects on here clearly at least half of them should be removed.

[Fisherman]

Hi Phil!

You write:

"From all the documentation that is currently available to us, there has never been, unless I am grossly mistaken, any KNOWN motive for Elizabeth Stride's killing. Therefore, as there isn't a known motive, and by definition, until one is factually produced, it is seemingly motiveless. Speculation around a motive doesn't equate to fact.
Ipso facto, we CANNOT "conclude that jealousy, economic gain or something else was not the factor that unleashed the cut to her throat" either. It is speculation."

With respect, I beg to differ slightly here. Although no motive has been presented, I fail to see why we should regard the deed as "seemingly motiveless". It could be either way for all we know, and my feeling is that the term "seemingly motiveless" implies a heavy leaning towards one side.

The truth of the matter is that any suggestion that the Stride murder lacked a motive is just as much of a speculation as it is to say that a motive would have been there. Plus, describing a slaying as "motiveless" more or less equals saying that it was carried out by a madman.
It "seems" neither way, if you ask me.

"I didn't state they WERE the same sort of slayer, only that they were both probably mad murderers."

As for Jack, I would agree that he could most probably be ascribed to the mad community.
But the other guy? How could we possibly know that he was mad in the true sense of the word? Is a man who kills for money "mad"? Is a jilted lover, killing over it, "mad"?

If we are not ready to describe all killers as mad, we really need to stay away from dubbing the Dutfields Yard killer mad. Nothing in the procedures therein gives away the state of mind of the man.
What leads you to deduct that there was madness involved in the Stride slaying?

The best, Phil!
Fisherman

[caz]

Hi Fish,

Do you know of many other penniless unfortunates, before say 1888 or after say 1892, who had their throat cut out on the street by a knifeman with a conventional motive, eg robbery, rape, customer dissatisfaction etc, or crime of passion? It is a very rare thing for a man to kill a woman outdoors with a knife, even for one of these reasons.

The problem with Caz's assumptions regarding Jacks motives...

Er, Perry, what assumptions? What motives do I 'assign' to Jack? I'd really like to know because I have consistently stated that we cannot possibly even begin to guess what was motivating the author of any of these unsolved murders. You are the one gaily assigning motives: Polly and Annie slaughtered horribly just for their wombs, leaving every other unfortunate corpse to be accounted for by individuals harbouring deadly personal grudges. Womb Man comes along and supposedly gives 'em all permission to hide under his cape and do their own 'orrible deeds.

Why would you look for anything 'coherent' in murders that were completely irrational by any standards? The murders of Polly and Annie were no more rational than those of Liz, Kate or Mary, and if you were right about the womb motive for just those two, arguably a good deal less rational. I can't think of a more crazy way of trying to earn money, can you?

Could you please quote where I have ever said that I was 'convinced the guy just wanted to cut people'. How many more times do I have to repeat that we can't know what the killer(s) of these women really wanted. We can only know what was actually done.

It's not a case of Phillips or Baxter being 'incompetent' with their conclusions in the wake of the 'first 2 murders' (ie Polly and Annie). They were not psychic and could not be expected to know that more mutilated unfortunates would soon turn up to undermine the wombs for profit idea, in favour of the infinitely more reasonable conclusion that one man was mutilating unfortunates in any way that suited him at the time.

Of course I don't deny there were other dangerously violent men in the area at the same time, please stop making things up about me, it does nothing to help your case and makes you look slightly desperate. There are violent men in every town and always have been, which only serves to highlight the rarity of a series like the Whitechapel Murders, despite all the evil men do, every day, all round the world. I simply dispute your own rather incredible notion that there were possibly as many as three organ-removing ghouls preying on unfortunates in 1888 one after the other, in the same tiny part of town: one for Polly and Annie; a second for Kate; and a third for Mary. Why in God's name add to the already excessive number of known lady killers during the period in question? There were already x so we can add on as many more as we like? That makes no logical or statistical sense.

Liz is included as far as I am aware. If you want to exclude her as well as Kate and Mary, you need evidence against yet another knife-wielding lady killer, or a firm alibi for the murderer in Buck's Row, Hanbury St and Mitre Sq. And no, I don't need any of the interruption theories, as I have surely told you a dozen times. If only you could try and read my posts, you wouldn't be forced to invent a position for me that I don't hold. There are many other plausible reasons why Liz's killer, whoever he was, would have been wise to leave when he did, or not even contemplate mutilating her where he found her, outside that busy club, looking like the kind of woman who could be bought and taken to a more secluded spot.

I love the way you talk about everyone else's failed attempts at 'deciphering' these crimes, as if that somehow gives your take on them a better chance of being correct. Once again, we can't attribute a motive to any of these unsolved murders, singly or collectively, using any combination of victims list you can think of. You are trying to do just that by excluding every murder that doesn't indicate a womb for profit motive. It's like saying that everybody has failed to cure the common cold so it's about time they stopped looking at germs and coughs and sneezes and started praying to the Goddess of Kleenex instead.

What drove Jack to kill certainly didn’t need to change to make sense of any of the murders. But I don't know what that driving force was any more than you do. You are the one stuck in a groove because you have convinced yourself that his driving force was limited to trying to make a quick and easy buck from outdoor murder and womb extraction. That makes him a total nut job in my book, which in turn means that he could have got fed up trying to extract wombs for his demanding, and equally peculiar paymaster, and decided to feed a kidney and later a heart to his invisible friend instead - the driving force being the thrill that only a nut job could get from mutilating a female in any way, shape or form.

Jack could have killed Liz to silence a threat. He could have done it just because she annoyed him and he knew exactly how to shut her up. How can you profess to know what would cause him to flip his lid with any woman and what he would tolerate from one? He butchered women who went with him willingly. So what would stop him harming one who gave him a moment's grief?

If Stride hade been the first murder...

A pointless exercise, Trevor old stick, because she wasn't. You might as well say 'if Mary Kelly had been killed in 1930...' (yes, when Miller's Court was gone).

If you have to tinker around in any way with the order or timing of one of the murders, I humbly submit that your overall argument must be in trouble. If we assume, for argument's sake, that Liz was killed by Jack, the time and date don't need tinkering with to make perfect sense of what happened next. So I can see why people like to play this game of moving victims, like pawns in a chess game, from their starting position, to score pretendy points.

Love,

Caz
X

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Fish,

A pointless exercise, Trevor old stick, because she wasn't. You might as well say 'if Mary Kelly had been killed in 1930...' (yes, when Miller's Court was gone).
Caz
X

Its not a pointless excercise it shows the police and everyone else since then should have looked at each murder separately instead of lumping them all together and calling it a C5 and suggesting the same killer killed all 5.

Another example if the police of today in your town receive reports of three overnight house burglaries. do they automatically jump to the conclusion that the same burglar broke into all 3. No they dont they study the facts surrounding each individual offence. because all though they all may be houses (analogy victims) the method of entry and property stolen may be different. The they then will be able to either link them or deal with them as different offences

If this victim fiasco is going to continue then why not re name them The C8 to take in Tabram,Coles and Mckenzie. :

[Phil Carter]

wild speculation?

Hello Trevor,

Respectfully, I, for one, am not "up"..and as calm as the next person.

Also, "WILD" speculation it most certainly isn't. It is a thoughtful prosess designed to broaden the way we ALL look at things, opinions, are, after all, only what the police and public and newspapers (Police Illustrated INCLUDED), gave 121 years ago.. so I can't see any "wildness" in sensible balancing of the facts.

In conjunction with that, calling it a C8 is not "wild" ...I don't happen to think that way...but wild it isn't. What's good for the goose....

Personally speaking, I was pondering a possiblity of 2 killers in the same area at the same time. Thats not wild..it is sensible GIVEN the questions we, as a group, and as individuals, raise against MacNaghten's judgement, Stride's killer, Kelly's killer to name but a few.

How we INTERPRET facts, as INDIVIDUALS, is a matter, ALWAYS, of personal conjecture. So of course theories etc will come from within with a slant from the meaning of the writer of such theories. It's human nature. We dissolve facts and come up with ideas, based on such facts. There is no emotion involved, it is a calculated judgement as we see things.

I, for one, keep AN OPEN MIND to all possibilities. Whether it ends up as one killer for the whole lot or five different killers, it really doesn't matter to me. BUT, I will not doggedly defend any idea, and am always open to other opinions, whether I agree with them or not. I RESPECT your opinions and your judgement, but won't call it wild theorising because it doesn't fit with my view. Thats blinkered and judgemental.

Fisherman respectfully disagrees with my comments... I like that, and he uses HIS balanced judgement to perhaps point me in another direction...looking at things another way. Which, Fisherman, I am considering. Thank you. :-)

From what I have seen on this thread, there hasn't been "wild" theorising. Because Trevor, respectfully, if it so happens in 50 years time that Caz, or Fisherman, or me, or yourself, or Humpty Dumpty turned out to be right all along, it wouldn't have been a wild theory...would it? It would be the CORRECT one.

I'm sure some thought SPE's theory was "wild", ditto Daniel Farson or Leonard Matters..etc etc etc.

I consider them all, without having to agree to any particular one. Surely, that is a sensible way of approaching difference of opinion?

The fact is, that MacNaghten's original canon was based heavily upon the opinion of one Doctor, who only saw first hand, one body. He read the reports of the others. JUST LIKE WE ARE DOING.

The good Doctor's opinion wasn't deemed wild. Neither has MacNaghten's. Just, in the opinion of many here..it is seriously flawed..hence the thread.
Hence debate, hence opinions, hence theories to substantiate those opinions.

That is what makes this thread so interesting.

RESPECTFULLY,

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Motiveless?

Fisherman,

Yes, I will change that statement.

Would you accept.. "In all probability there is a motive, however we are, at present, without a known one".. better than seemingly motiveless I hope?

best wishes

Phil

[Fisherman]

Almost there, Phil, though I would favour a version that leans in no way at all - perhaps only by stating, just like you do, that at present nothing is known about a perhaps once existing motive.

Statistically, though, you would be right - most killings HAVE motives. But since the Stride killing is such a hot potatoe, it may be wise to tread carefully...

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Caz asks:

"Do you know of many other penniless unfortunates, before say 1888 or after say 1892, who had their throat cut out on the street by a knifeman with a conventional motive, eg robbery, rape, customer dissatisfaction etc, or crime of passion? It is a very rare thing for a man to kill a woman outdoors with a knife, even for one of these reasons. "

A clever move, Caz, to deny me McKenzie and Coles!

That matters little, though, since you are asking the wrong thing here. The fact that Stride was penniless and sometimes prostituting herself could have precious little to do with the fact that she was killed.
If we are dealing with a domestic affair of some sort - and much speaks for it - then the reason for Stride getting cut may well have been a thing like jealousy. We should also consider that she was practically living out on the streets, since she had no real home address. The risk of her getting killed out in the streets would be much, much larger than the same risk would have been for somebody with a steady home. Even when she was at her dosshouse, she would have been one in a collective of people, making it almost impossible for a killer to get to her unnoticed. Such a thing would be a lot easier out in the open street, in fact!

So maybe we should not ask ourselves how credible it was for a pennyless unfortunate to get killed in the open street. Instead we may have to ask ourselves how common it is for women to be killed by their spouses in love affairs. And suddenly we are left with another answer than the one you are looking for! And radically different probabilities!

Any which way we cut it, Caz, it will not change one single bit of the evidence from Dutfields yard. Parallel to your question, it must also be asked how common it is that eviscerating serial killers change their MO, change their way of choosing venues, change the time they are operating at and even change the manner in which they cut. And all of this is changed JUST THE ONE TIME, whereas all other killings conform to a nigh on robotic scenario in these details.

Believe me, Caz - Jack never was the only option for Strides demise.

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

the police and everyone else since then should have looked at each murder separately instead of lumping them all together...

Another example if the police of today in your town receive reports of three overnight house burglaries. do they automatically jump to the conclusion that the same burglar broke into all 3. No they dont they study the facts surrounding each individual offence. because all though they all may be houses (analogy victims) the method of entry and property stolen may be different. The they then will be able to either link them or deal with them as different offences

A very good point, well made, Trevor.

[c.d.]

Then why do we put the word "serial" in front of killer?

c.d.

[Sam Flynn]

Then why do we put the word "serial" in front of killer?

When there is little reasonable doubt (or, ideally, when it is known) that the same person committed a series of murders. Also, to sell papers. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose