JTR a "local" man? Arguments for and against

[Sam Flynn]

I certainly think the b...... would have given Doorstep Street, Flowery Bean and Han-berry etc a wide berth if he was a regular at the Victoria (sponge) Hive.

At a conservative estimate, there must have been at least four or five thousand people living in that narrow segment of London whose origin was in Wentworth Street, and whose area covered Dorset and Hanbury Streets, Caz. We could multiply the number of residents by a factor of... erm... "several", if that area were extended east to Buck's Row and west to the City boundary. Within these areas, and outside his bee-like "buffer zone", the chances of Jack being recognisable by a random passer-by would approach zero, even during the day. The chances of his being recognised by the infrequent passers-by who were also active during the "sleepy" hours would have been smaller still.

[caz]

Ah, I just noticed that someone has bee-n there before me on another thread...

And is there honey still for tea?

I certainly think the b...... would have given Doorstep Street, Flowery Bean and Han-berry etc a wide berth if he was a regular at the Victoria (sponge) Hive.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Hi Sam,

But of course you are not a hunter using your instincts to keep you from being hunted down and executed - I sincerely trust.

By strange coincidence, I just checked my emails and found that hubby sent me the following link at 5.30 this morning before getting ready for work:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7530666.stm

Enjoy!

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

Hi Caz,

You can argue that there was very little risk of Local Jack being spotted and recognised by anyone, but the difference between worrying that he could be and knowing that he couldn't be would be something else.

I reckon that he'd have been on safe territory if he didn't kill within, say, 200 yards of his dwelling - given the huge population density of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, I can well imagine that people living on opposite sides of certain streets wouldn't have known one another.

That 200-yard "circle of anonymity" might shrink further if Jack was of the more transient type, remaining within the same broad area, but not staying in a given place long enough to become particularly "known" to your average passer-by. This sort of nomadic behaviour wasn't exactly unheard of in that part of town, which would still have had its fair share of "faceless wonders" even if everyone stayed faithful to the same street of residence for years.

I live less than half a mile from my nearest town, but I can easily spend an hour in the town centre of an afternoon without seeing anyone I know by name. Indeed, I sometimes walk the length of my village (pop. 2,500) and get a similar result - in broad daylight. It'd be a doddle after dark, especially in those hours after the pubs have shut and before most people are getting ready for work.

[caz]

Hi Caz,If he didn't have bad feet, why did he never commit his evisceration murders elsewhere? It makes no sense to me that he should have favoured the area around Spitalfields/Whitechapel over a dozen similar places in London, unless it was conveniently-placed for him and he felt "at home" there.

Hi Sam,

So you seriously believe Jack had bad feet then?

Of course the area was 'convenient' for him and he felt "at home" there. I have never suggested that he plumped for a single victim-rich area that was hellishly inconvenient or completely alien and menacing for him.

I just think there are far too many plausible reasons for a serial killer to stick with one area for anyone to argue that he most likely did so because he had no other option, economically or physically. Local Jack always had the option to stop if he felt the area was becoming increasingly unsafe for him to keep operating there; he also had the same option as any non-local Jack to hot-foot it to one of a 'dozen similar places'. So he would have had some personal reason, or reasons, just as you suggest, for not opting to stop and not opting to hot-foot it - reasons that took priority over the increasing risk to his own neck.

The argument, therefore, that a non-local Jack would have put the risk to his neck before any such personal reasons (which could similarly include the convenience and familiarity of an adopted hunting ground, without even considering the numerous other possibilities) does not hold up. Same options, same risk (well almost*), same decision to ignore both.

*You can argue that there was very little risk of Local Jack being spotted and recognised by anyone, but the difference between worrying that he could be and knowing that he couldn't be would be something else.

Hi Fisherman,

Ok then, let me rephrase and add emphasis to what I wrote to make my point a little clearer:

"...I don't think it is hugely useful to make assumptions about Jack, based on what other killers have done, without taking into account the circumstances in which his crimes were committed."

That just seems like common sense to me. We can't ignore the space and time limits imposed on Jack (or which Jack imposed on himself, whichever you prefer), and then try to compare him with any killer who had no such limits.

…I think the likewise inescapable answer to that question is "because he never set out to have sex with them - he set out to kill and mutilate them".

But I didn’t try to claim otherwise. I considered several options, including that he killed and mutilated the women he wanted to kill and mutilate, and may not have considered paying to have sex with those particular women. I’m not as fixed in my views as you are though and I just thought that a regular user of prostitutes would have several obvious advantages over a non-user if he took up serial murder for whatever reason. Who knows what motivated Harold Shipman, but his experience of treating patients in his care undoubtedly enabled him to do the opposite with others and kill them instead. I think we can speculate that he didn’t have his victims’ good health in mind when he set out to kill them. Similarly, if a user of prostitutes turns to killing prostitutes (because personal experience makes them the easiest targets for him) he is not obliged to have sexual feelings towards his chosen victims, any more than he is obliged to leave you evidence if he does get aroused.

If the Ripper functioned sexually, enjoying sex with the East end women, and if his deeds were fuelled by sexual lust, we have every reason to be very much suprised by the evinced lack of sexual activity (in the normal meaning) at the murder scenes, Caz!

But if sexual relief was on his killing agenda there were more ways than one of skinning a cat, and they certainly didn’t all involve fannying about wasting precious mutilating time to produce proof of ‘connection’ for those who fondly imagine that anyone in 1888 who had ever paid for sex with a prossie could not fail to leave it in detectable quantities when murdering one.

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

One can tell, Sam, that you never picked a hop.

Not many hop farms in deepest Spitalfields, AP - it was more like "abandon all hops ye who enter here". Not much of a mecca for job-seekers from outside the district, I fancy.

[Cap'n Jack]

One can tell, Sam, that you never picked a hop.

[Sam Flynn]

It is also possible that Jack chose to kill near his place of employment rather than where he lived. If he had a key to a side enterance, it might have given him a place to wash up and a place to hide the organs.

That may be true, CD - but local residency and local employment aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, in an area unlikely to attract too many regular workers from outside the district, "place of work" and "place of residence" would have been practically synonymous in many cases.

[Fisherman]

Hi Caz!

You write:

"... I don't think it is hugely useful to make any assumptions about Jack based on the known behaviour of his unsuccessful brothers-in-crime, without taking into account the circumstances in which the ripper crimes were committed."

Fact of the matter, Caz - we don´t know just how useful it is, simple as that. But that is not a very good argument to discredit the method, since it is to some extent what we are left with; we don´t know who or what Jack was, but we DO know what he left behind on the crime-scene. Therefore it is of relevance to look at other perpetrators, leaving something similar.
You argue that he may well have been a regular user of prostitutes, and by that I think you mean that he was able to perform sex with them.

Next up, you state that there was very little time and space afforded to the Ripper, and that is of course right - with a few possible exceptions. In both the Chapman case and in the Kelly case, we have no signs that he was hurried at all. That still did not mean that he left signs of having engaged in sex with these victims, did it? I think that leads us to the inescapable question of why. And I think the likewise inescapable answer to that question is "because he never set out to have sex with them - he set out to kill and mutilate them".

In light of this, Caz, I think you must admit the relevance of asking some questions:
How many known cases do we have where a sexual serial killer who could function sexually with a woman, with or without adding violence, did not engage in sex with his victims?
If the Ripper killings were sexual slayings, what reasons can we have for his not engaging in sex with the victims - not even when he had the time to do so?
Do we have examples of sexual serialists who only found sexual gratification after the strikes, using trophies taken from the victims?

If the Ripper functioned sexually, enjoying sex with the East end women, and if his deeds were fuelled by sexual lust, we have every reason to be very much suprised by the evinced lack of sexual activity (in the normal meaning) at the murder scenes, Caz!

The best,

Fisherman

[Cap'n Jack]

Caz, just to take you up on one point.
A local case here was a lesson to me.
A chap was arrested late at night for raping a woman in a drunken encounter above a take-away shop, but he was released on bail. While enjoying his freedom before trial he bumped into the best friend of the woman he had previously raped, who was absolutely aware of the rape on her best friend, and she then invited him back to her flat for a 'drink', where he then raped her.
Guilty of two rapes he awaits sentencing.
And thus does a rapist become a serial rapist.
I can't explain it, can you?

[c.d.]

It is also possible that Jack chose to kill near his place of employment rather than where he lived. If he had a key to a side enterance, it might have given him a place to wash up and a place to hide the organs.

c.d.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Caz,

The fact is, Ben, that Jack chose to go round the same hotspot. To keep repeating that this, by itself, makes it much more likely than not that he was living and/or working in that hotspot is not helpful unless you can make a case for him having extremely bad feet.

If he didn't have bad feet, why did he never commit his evisceration murders elsewhere? It makes no sense to me that he should have favoured the area around Spitalfields/Whitechapel over a dozen similar places in London, unless it was conveniently-placed for him and he felt "at home" there.

[caz]

Just a question, if I may, Caz:
Just how common is it that serial killers who have a history of being regular users of prostitutes do NOT engage in sex with their victims? Off-hand examples, anybody?
I am not saying it does not happen, I am just being curious.

The best,

Fisherman

Hi Fisherman,

I have no idea.

But then I don't think it is hugely useful to make any assumptions about Jack based on the known behaviour of his unsuccessful brothers-in-crime, without taking into account the circumstances in which the ripper crimes were committed.

By this I mean that Jack operated within very limited time and space parameters. Other serial killers, like Steve Wright in Ipswich, for example, did not leave the bodies of his victims where they would be discovered almost instantly, before he had even made good his escape from the scene of attack. Arguably Jack could not have spared much more time with a victim than a punter would normally have spared with an unfortunate.

Apart from that, there is no reason why Jack could not have kept 'normal' sex with a prostitute in a different compartment from any thrill associated with cutting and ripping an unfortunate, whether his selection criteria would have differed for each purpose or remained broadly similar for both. The most desperate and easiest women to kill may not have been the ones he would have paid to have sex with, but who knows?

Maybe he found himself temporarily or permanently unable to get it up with a prostitute, triggering anger against them generally (although I tend to resist tangible motives like this and put them in the Serial Killer's Book of Excuses), or found he could only achieve satisfaction while both hands were round a woman's neck or one hand was holding a knife, confining any evidence of that satisfaction within his trousers.

Sam Flynn provided a useful map recently highlighting the prostitute hotspots in the East End and elsewhere in London. Jack's patch wasn't the ultimate prozzie mecca it is often envisaged to be.

Here we go again, round and round the same old mulberry bush.

The fact is, Ben, that Jack chose to go round the same hotspot. To keep repeating that this, by itself, makes it much more likely than not that he was living and/or working in that hotspot is not helpful unless you can make a case for him having extremely bad feet. If his comfort spot remained a comfort spot regardless of how hot it got for him there, his reasons for staying put and carrying on ripping did not include having no other option.

Bear in mind that no outsider (i.e. someone who visited the area explicitly for sex with prostituts) had occasion to venture into that locality for that purpose. A chap from Mayfair, for example, had only to loiter near the periphery of the district - near St. Botolph's in Aldgate - for the prostitutes to come to them.

Yes, but then what? You are surely not suggesting that any chap wanting sex, or the chap who wanted to mutilate, thought he would be doing either of those things at the point where he waited for a prostitute to come to him. Surely he went off with said prostitute wherever she decided to take him, and he either went the whole way or thought it safer to decline, depending on his surroundings, courage and tastes.

Sutcliffe's criminal map was wider because he had private transport. His bas was still centrally localted in relation to the crime sites, just as I suggest was the case in 1888 Whitechapel; it was simply larger in the former case on account of private transport. Whatever the merits (or lack thereof) of any hypothesis, we ought to bear in mind that actual experience from other serial cases strongly supports the case for a locally-based offender. When we're dealing with a closely clustered and easily walkable series of murders, the perpetrator is usually based within, and enjoys some sort of familiarity with, the district.

Are you sure it’s not misleading to argue that Sutcliffe lived ‘centrally’ in relation to the crime sites? He didn’t live in the heart of a red light district, did he? I thought he lived close to, but outside of one, and had he not been a driver, or lost his licence for example, or been dirt poor (as you usually claim Jack was likely to have been - I wonder if your statistics tell you that penniless serial killers outnumber those who hold down jobs), I would have expected him to make the best of it and walk to where he could most easily find suitably vulnerable victims - the difference between the 1880s and the 1970s being that the latter included women out alone at night who no more resembled prostitutes looking for trade than Mother Teresa would have done.

What you ought to bear in mind, but stubbornly refuse to do, is that all this actual experience from other cases strongly supports is an argument for locally-based offenders not getting away with it like Jack did. In short, what you are telling me is that most of the ones who got caught produced a closely clustered series within easy walking distance of where they called home. Well there’s a surprise, Ben. But that in no way tells me that Jack, who was not caught, would have been stupid enough to put his own head in the fire.

You can’t argue that it was not a factor in their capture that they were self-evidently reckless enough to connect themselves to all their victims by personal geography. One way or another, they all must have allowed themselves to be connected without doubt to their crimes or they would not have been identified. Jack was either lucky that no connection between him and his crimes could be made or ever came to light, or he took simple precautions to avoid the more obvious potential connections.

But at the time Shipman was committing his murders, they would not have been recognisable as such. There wasn't immediate alert that a serial killer was on the prowl in the district, as there was in the panic-stricken East End. If Shipman had stabbed his elderly victims before fleeing, he was very unlikely to have commuted in for the purpose. He risked doing so precisely because police and vigilante personal weren't mounting up in his primary target area. In cases where murders continue in that primary (small) target area despite that increasing pressure, it invariably points towards a locally-based offender making the best of what limited options (travel, domestic etc) were available to him.

No no, Ben, you totally miss the point about Shipman by making it for me. The benefit from his murders not being recognisable as such was given up voluntarily by the stupid man himself the moment he sent one too many bodies to the same funeral parlour. If Shipman had cut the throats of his elderly victims before mutilating them, he would have been a hundred times more stupid to ‘operate’ only on his own patients, if he could have commuted into a different practice or practices to do so.

You really can’t keep using the ‘no other option’ card here, Ben. Of course there are always other options for any serial killer, regardless of his circumstances, even if he would not consider stopping to be one of the more desirable ones. You can’t keep forcing all non-local suspects to sod off to other victim-rich areas within walking distance of Aldgate and then insist that your local suspect would have been stuck with Miller’s Court or nothing. It makes no sense unless you make your suspect so physically challenged that he would have had trouble killing anything but a cat who came within arm's reach of him. Jack was either lured into MJK's room by circumstance or by choice, but that applies regardless of where his base was.

Well, Kate's probable killer was hardly the picture of Victorian elegance, and yet presumably she allowed herself to be inveigled into the square. I don't believe for a moment that any more financial incentive than the local "norm" was required to bend them to his whim.

But that doesn’t really address my point, which was that Kate could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that several women in her circumstances had been brutally murdered in the area in recent months. I just don’t see her going off cheerfully with anyone who looked so poor themselves that they would not normally have spared a copper to help her out, let alone the going rate for her company. If she was going to smell a rat, a poor sewer rat with rare cash to splash may have given off more of a pong than a humble but hard-working rat giving off the typical vibes of a twice weekly punter.

Love,

Caz
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[Ben]

For starters didn't Sir Charles Warren undertake an extensive searching of premises in the East End?

Well, house to house searches were conducted, Billy, but in the likely absence of anything incriminating lying around, and the unlikilihood of the real killer exhibiting obvious "loony" traits, they probably didn't bear fruit. A sound initiative on the part, but unsurprisingly unsuccessful in that district.

In it was a newspaper interview with a resident who felt the Ripper, if familiar with Whitechapel, would certainly not have selected the area he selected to murder Chapman as it was, even at such a late hour, a populated area.

Never seen that article, but I certainly don't agree with the premise of it if that's what it said. The backyard of Hanbury Street was one of the more secluded locations available short of using his own home (and if he lived in a doss house like a hefty chunk of the male population, that was impossible), which is why it was used by locals and prostitutes for "business".

PS I know many have dismissed the carriage theory but I feel it should not be ruled out

Yes, it should, Billy.

Surely if the killer was from outside the area he would have switched "hunting grounds" when the heat was turned up.

Absolutely, String. Welcome to Casebook!

[String]

My 2ps worth.
Surely if the killer was from outside the area he would have switched "hunting grounds" when the heat was turned up.
He would have read all the publicly in the newspapers and the reports of increased police presence so why not just go to another area? Less risk of being caught. Actually far less risk as I'm sure the police presence would have dropped in other areas to transfer more men into Whitechapel.