Colony

[perrymason]

Im curious what type of designation would be given to the person who cut a young boy in half, and stuffed his feet and shoes into his chest, then crammed him in a barrel? I believe this was near Bradford, during that Fall Reign of Terror.

Aren't some acts simply "cold"? Isnt Freud a little overworked when looking for killing impulses?

Best regards.

[Stephen Thomas]

Homosexual acts in prison also seem to be at least problematic as an indicator of sexual preference, same sex prisons offer not many options for heterosexual intercourse and so people grab what they get and resort to homosexual sex even if they act strictly heterosexual outside the prison
.

Any port in a storm as olden day sailors used to say.

[Robert]

Calm down, Nats! Humanity may be Mozart and Einstein but it's also the most conceited animal.

[rjpalmer]

I’ve decided to push the envelope a bit further.

This is a painful topic and it’s not my cup of tea. At the same time, it also strikes at the heart of our standard ‘Ripperological beliefs’ and thus is a subject that many merely chose to ignore, or react to with a quick retreat to psychological clichés. So my gratitude to all contributors who discuss it in an intelligent manner.

The last thing I would want is to inadvertantly insult anyone, so I want to make one point exceedingly clear.

J. Schmidt writes:

I can understand the criticism of profiling and putting perpetrators into neat little bins with a label attached, but if we generalise that homosexuality and violent acts against women go hand in hand we are opening not a neat little bin but a whole barrel. Exchanging one generalised image of serial killers for another won't help to solve crimes.

This is an entirely legitimate point, and I want to stress that it is certainly not what I am arguing. APW can, and will, go his own way.

I am arguing nearly the opposite. I’m arguing that the perpetrator’s sexuality is irrelevant. I suggest that these crimes have nothing to do with either heterosexuality, nor homosexuality, and the true motivation lies elsewhere. Indeed, I’m arguing that these aren’t ‘sex crimes’ at all--not in any meaningful use of the term.

If I had a dollar for each time that I’ve read on this forum that Druitt or Tumblety “dont’ fit the profile” because of their homosexuality, I could buy a first edition Jack the Myth. If I had another dollar for each time someone, allegedly quoting a profiler, stated that “gay men don’t kill women,” I could buy a case of French absynthe to go along with it.

I’ve mentioned the FBI’s Roy Hazelwood. The following extracts are from pg. 223-226 of Lethal Shadow by Stephen G. Michaud (1994) which included statements and interviews with several prominent contributors to the original FBI ‘sexual serial killer” study, including Hazelwood himself:


“The FBI serial killer study conducted by our unit covered 26 serial killers, with 127 victims. We have thirty sexual sadists, twenty-two of whom were murderers, and they killed at least 187 people. Seventeen of those twenty-two that we studied were serial killers in addition to being sexual sadists.”

Hazelwood then suggest that the one common feature in all these criminals was that they were men who ‘violently despise women.’

“There is deep-seated hatred,” says Hazelwood. “I dont’ mean just angry. They hate women. To the heterosexual sexual sadist, all women are bitches, whores, and sluts. This means all women; his mother, his sister, his wife, his Sunday school teacher, Mother Teresa.”
“He believes that if he pushes the right buttons he’ll find this to be true of all women. And to prove this is true, he takes a nice middle-class woman and tears her down. He tries to create a slut, or a prostitute-like personality. This proves his theory. Then he punishes her for being that.”

I find this particularly interesting because two of the main suspects in the Whitechapel murders --and two that are often dismissed with a wave of the hand--are said to have been misogynists: Tumblety and Kosminski.

Next, (p. 226) Hazelwood goes on to discuss the sexuality of the thirty sexual sadists in the study. He states that 7 of these cross-dressed--over 20%. Further, nearly half of them had gay affairs. “Thirteen of the study’s thirty sexual sadists engaged in consenting homosexual acts,” he notes. After describing one particularly nasty man who brutalized women, Hazelwood points out that a hidden stash of pornography, including 13 magazines depicting homosexual men, were found in his garage. “The erotic images that a man collects usually indicate his sexual preference,” Dr. Dietz observes. (Dietz was Hazelwood’s partner in the FBI study)

The FBI profiler then drops the bombshell.

“Logic tells me that homosexuality, or latent homosexuality, plays an important role here,” says Hazelwood. “We do not have scientific data to back that up. It is simply a gut feeling, based on my experience.”

So there you have it, folks. One of the most prominent of all FBI profilers, often referred to and quoted, is stating that the abiding motivation of sexual sadism is: 1) misogyny and 2) homosexuality or latent homosexuality.

Since I think two of the five best suspects are homosexual (three if I counted Cutbush, but I’m not sure why APW believes Cutbush was gay) it would be very easy for me to agree with Hazelwood.

But do I?

No, I don’t. But I also think that it is utter balderdash to say that gay men don't kill women.

In fact, altough I agree with Hazelwood's general comments about misogyny, I think he has entirely missed the boat. And I don’t think homosexuality has anything to do with it. Nor sex.

So what do I think is going on?

I think that the murderer, through a combination of genetics, personal history, childhood abuse, and/or environmental factors has been left with a deep identity crisis. A gaping black-hole inside that he can’t fill. He hears the hum around him but he doesn’t know where it is coming from. He doesn’t understand it, but he knows it’s there. So he tries to ‘fix it.’ He can do this in many ways. He may drink heavily. He may try to collect huge amounts of currency. He looks for external validation. He may do enormous amounts of psychoactive drugs. He may join the salvation army and bang on a tamberine. He cross-dresses, thinking maybe that’s the problem. Nothing helps. So he inject his veins with rabbit blood, like APW’s friend Richard Chase. Doesn’t work. He tries to alter his sexuality, thinking maybe that’s what is doing it. His snorts cholorform like Neill Cream. He changes his clothes and his personal appearance frequently (like Bundy, Manson, and, by the way, Francis Tumblety). Nothing fills that black-hole. So, finally, when nothing else works, he tries violence. He goes out and finds a surrogate victim. He may, or may not, sexually abuse the vicitm.

So, in my opinon, the sex is a smoke screen. The behavors that Hazelwood is seeing and considers strange, although they may be sexual on the surface, are really merely the bi-products of a deeper affliction. One way to fill that gaping blackhole that can’t be filled is sexual experimentation. Yet, because the profilers are obsessed with sexuality, they can’t see that the bigger issue is really the murderer’s sense of identity, and, specifcally, his sense of social identity. Thus, there is no real difference between a Chase, a Berkowitz, a Malvo, or a Kurten, and the whole catagory of ‘sexual serial murder’ misses the point.

Why women? For the same reason Natalie states. But this doesn’t entirely destroy APW’s argument. The Ripper is killing the victims that society (the colony) deems it justiable to victimize. At least that’s what he’s telling himself.

[Cap'n Jack]

He removes the smoke, then RJP, and sees himself in the mirror.
He is a soldier.

[Doctor X]

If I had a dollar for each time that I’ve read on this forum that Druitt or Tumblety “dont’ fit the profile” because of their homosexuality, . . .

Indeed, however, I think there are far more relevant reasons to challenge a suspect like Druitt than whether or not he was a homosexual, bisexual, or metrosexual. I am unaware of anyone credible excluding either suspects simply because they were homosexual.

Including/excluding a suspect simply on the basis of supposed or actual sexual preferences fails. It is as absurd to claim that "Cranston Snord" was the Ripper because he was heterosexual as it would be to exclude a guy who was the right age, right body type, wrote a detailed confession, had body parts preserved in a jar, took photos of himself with the bodies, but was a homosexual!

Yours truly,

--J.D.

[Cap'n Jack]

Michael, I remember a case I found in London thoughout that Autumn of Terror in 1888 where a French housemaid murdered her new born child by strangling it, and then actually cleaving the body into perfect halves, and then stuffing it down a communal drain.
This reminded me of Marias thoughts that when you cleaved a termite colony in half they continued to grow as perfect mirror reflections of themselves.
I guess none of you will ever know how much I wished, as I read that story, that the LVP society could have sent this lonely and desperate woman more positive signals about the birth of her child; and that the magical transfer system that serial killers, and their supporters, use could have recreated the perfect image of that poor dead child who was murdered by a Colony running on overload.
You play with me at your peril. Not you, Michael, but everyone.

[Doctor X]

A pirate cannot defeat Ninja.

--J.D.

[Natalie Severn]

Thankyou RJ for your thoughtful post-with its spirit of reciprocity.
It may be true that we are sticking too much to the description of crime scenes,what he did etc rather than addressing what moved him.But to some extent these are rather dull,nasty crimes and their motive is just as dull and nasty.
Many women will recognise him actually because he lurks in every potential rapist,the type who hangs round young girls at clubs,getting ready to spike their drink if they take their eye off the ball.He is sadly more common than people think .Lots of us have met him , recognised him and slid away sensing the danger behind the leer.
No need to dress it up or turn to "the creatively inspired male " for answers.Ask any young woman of average or more than average attractiveness.They will be able to tell you what he wants.
As for someone who looked like Marilyn-----well lets take Marilyn----she apparently knew him in all his many and various disguises.....
Best
Natalie

OK Robert
time to lighten up

[Natalie Severn]

Good night everybody, sorry if I have been a bit disagreeable tonight.It doesnt do for me to surf my unconscious mind too much...........
best
Natalie

[Robert]

No worries, Nats. I hope I have an unconscious mind too - then I'd have a spare!

[Robert]

RJ, I liked your idea that Jack was somehow trying to come to rest or anchor himself. So often we hear "Jack was this" or "Jack was that." But what if Jack wasn't anything?

Robert

[perrymason]

You know AP I wish I had your talent as a wordsmith, it is quite a gift.

Just for my two "sense", I think RJ was bold, and correct, when suggesting these are not murders motivated by sexual confusion or desire. I believe at least a few of these womens deaths smell of desperation...the killer being desperate enough to attempt these acts in public, the women being desperate enough to chance a dark corner with a stranger during a street whore killing spree, ...the Police desperate enough that they offer opinions publically on the nature of the beast that eludes them, ...being that of a shifting patch of fog.

I think two of the murders were for nothing more than financial gain...sheer desperation, and enough madness to do those acts. I think one was supposed to be, but frustratingly was fouled by "outsiders"...and I believe 1, and maybe 2 victims, were the result of affairs de couer.

But I think all were intended to be seen as by a single individual....so some crime scenes were "dressed".

Best regards all.

[JSchmidt]

As I stated above, I think labeling murders does not help to solve the crimes.
But ruling out sexuality or at least sex as a motivator for the crimes seems to me to be as problematic as reducing a crime to be of a sexual nature and nothing else.
I can follow rjpalmer so far that indeed it all depends on the specific factors of the perpetrators life.
In other words: Each case may look similar but the specific meaning of the crimes depend all on the human committing them and his psychological constructs.
For some of them the violence, the ripping, carving up of women may be a substitute for or at least associated with intercourse while others may also experience a kind of release (which may or may not be sexual in nature) because they utterly reduced the human being they projected their hatred on to blood, meat and bone.
The result may look similar, but the psychological paths leading there diverge.
What I think is problematic with the ant colony metaphor is that we don't know if the victims were singled out as unfortunates, designated pariahs, or whether they were just the women with the weakest protection and therefore just killed because the opportunity presented itself.
We have no idea what the killer saw in them, so writing that the killer acted upon unconscious signals of the society as collective strikes me as a lot of speculation.
I can clearly see that as a means to justify the crimes against these poor women, but I'm not convinced that society as a whole send signals to justify the killings, especially because if we look at prostitution from a purely pragmatic perspective, society always seems to need it as a vent for urges and drives that fail to be fulfilled by "mainstream" society.

[Cap'n Jack]

Thank you, Michael, very kind of you to say so.
Although I'm using the white ant Colony as a kind of template for the construction of the Colony model, it is important to note that I am referring to human society and how it responds as a mass - and as individuals - to subtle social signals.
I think that becomes plain when you read more.
As I said earlier I believe serial killers are playing to an audience, and it matters not a jot if that audience is an imaginary one, just as long as the killer hears them clap.
When killers like Richard Chase, Colin Pitchfork and Peter Sutcliffe claim to have had 'sex' with their victims, they are merely telling the audience what it wants to hear, that the killer was driven by lust and that he viewed the total destruction of his victim as a 'sexual' pleasure.
Smoke and mirrors, for these killers are actually killing 'sex', making the sexual act inoperative, and an option no longer to be considered.
They are not killing a person - because any person would do - they are ensuring that the reproductive facilities of a woman can longer pose a threat to them, or to society.

In the case I mentioned earlier, of the French housemaid who murdered her child and then cut the body into two, we can only speculate at the social signals that drove her to commit such an awesome and dreadful crime; as she was confined to a lunatic system and her story never told.
But I think it clear to say that the social stigma attached to an unmarried mother at that time was a far more powerful social signal than the actual act of murdering her child, cutting it in two and throwing it down a drain.
Why should that be?
In our own age the social signal has shifted somewhat and there is today no social stigma attached to an unmarried mother, so it is difficult for us today, to grapple with the concept of a then dreaded horror - the simple birth of a child - being far more dreadful than the murder of that child and its ghastly mutilation.
This is exactly the type of social signalling that I refer to in the Colony model, and I prefer to think, and believe, that the majority of serial killers find themselves in exactly the same kind of position when they murder someone.
That this devil they slaughter is a far better alternative than the devil that pursues them if they don't.
That is also why I think it futile to borrow from our modern day understanding of criminal profiling and all that other psycho babble, because what we really seek here are the social signals that were being sent out by the Colony in the Late Victorian Period.