Colony

[Howard Brown]

Excuse me for butting in here..

This has been a pretty interesting thread.

In the search to determine what type of man Jack The Ripper was, sometimes we might be overlooking it may be a matter of what types he was we are looking for..

With no intent to add or subtract to the previous posts, may I refer the readers to the 1966 case of Richard Speck for just a moment. Speck, to those unfamiliar with that 42 year old mass murder ( spree,not serial), killed 7 female nurses in one afternoon in Chicago.

Speck fulfilled so many of the criteria of what profilers use and would have used back then had that 'art' been employed, he would be their "poster boy" for a generic American heterosexual serial killer.

There's a problem with all of this on two levels.

First, Speck spent most of his days in Illinois Correctional facilities having his chest implanted to look like my Aunt Magda and camping it up among the prison, snorting cocaine off of other inmates thighs and doing so while being videotaped. Filmed segments of this behavior were presented on A&E television approximately a decade ago. There's little doubt that Speck had engaged in homosexual acts long before that day in 1966.

Second of all, the reader may or may not be aware that Speck's driving force...his all-encompassing drive to kill...was based on this simple explanation:

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time"

Speck simply took out all his life frustrations on women and indeed sexually violated them as well. Imagine the bewilderment on the face of a 1966 profiler or interviewer if they had known what Speck's primary sexual bent was. Imagine the profilers having access to the 1990's videotape and then trying to put Speck into the frame of the 1966 mass murderer.

Speck,rest assured,was not the only homosexual man ( he had been engaged or married at one time,off the top of my head...to a lady) to have killed women as Roger Palmer has pointed out in the comments Hazlewood made and in other sources....where it would be assumed that only a heterosexual could or would have committed them.

Whether or not Jack The Ripper was a heterosexual or a homosexual is sort of irrelevant,isn't it? Yet, I think I am not alone when I say I enjoy any sort of theorization of what type of man JTR may have been, regardless of their orientation.

For there is no proof that he was either of these gender types.

P.S.

The poster above mentions that :

I think any theory.....by anyone....should be grounded by the facts available at least.- Perry Mason

There are no "facts" as to the sexual orientation in regard to whom Jack The Ripper was. No offense. Theorizing as to what sexuality he may have been is an open playing field,in my view.

[perrymason]

Howard, I enjoyed reading your post, and some thoughtful examples there...I saw the Speck film too..disturbing actually seeing these men.

I take your point on the word "facts"...perhaps what I meant to say was the existing physical evidence and reports.

I hope that you and others understand that I am not trying to be combatative with senior students at all,...they are the reason I know anything about these cases to begin with.

I just believe that some of the "Ripperology Canons" need re-configuring, and different POV's offered. I remember discussing Stride with Tom Wescott a while back, and in discussions he offered information about how Goulston St had some meaning to new Jewish Immigrants, perhaps Socialists among them, ....and suddenly, for me a new way to read the grafitto emerged, one that maybe could help eliminate Strides inclusion in the Canon.

Id just like to see more open minded reactions to following ideas like that.

Best regards

[JSchmidt]

Just to barge in again: If I remember correctly, then Peter Kürten would not be a good example of someone only partly motivated by his sexual urges.
He achieved sexual relief during or after his crimes and his victims were female with one exception.
And there is the case of Andrei Chikatilo, who seemed to be unable to ejaculate unless he stabbed his female victims or at least brutalise them.
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.
And there is also the aspect of rape or at least sex as a gesture of dominance, enforcing the social pecking order inside the prison.
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.

[Doctor X]

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.

Indeed.

Did that apply to Richard Speck?


--J.D.

[Natalie Severn]

Well Simon,Polly Nichols was left on her back in the street,"her skirts raised almost to her stomach,her legs a little apart".The first thing Cross and Paul did was to pull her skirts down.On examination,apart from her abdomen being ripped open with a knife,there were two small stabs to her private parts.

Now if you try to "envisage" this horrific spectacle, discovered like three of the others in a very public place,you see the murderer paid specific attention to Polly"s lower body and genitals which he left ,as in the case of Annie Chapman,Kate Eddowes and Mary Kelly,quite naked and exposed. More so in their case since he appears to me to have deliberately left them not only "flat on their backs" but with the angle of their legs deliberately posed in a mocking invitation to coitus.So to me it seems as though at the very least sexually rapacious violation of these women is intended.
Cross and Paul actually seem a bit callous in many respects but at least they showed they needed to observe societies "niceties" compared with the rippers outrageous assault on them.In fact all they seem to have done was to attempt to pull her skirts down-they only managed to get them a little above the knee-before they went on their way.However,had Polly been alive she would have been grateful I believe,for that small gesture of chivalry.

Natalie

[Doctor X]

Indeed.

--J.D.

[Howard Brown]

Minor correction to a minor post.

I meant "orientation" not "gender" in my post from before. My mistake.

[Cap'n Jack]

It was a spicy post, Howard, enjoyed that.

But what is entertaining here is that I idly speculate - using the vehicle of fiction as my tool - that subtle social signalling, and its consequent environment may form or shape the behaviour and activities of serial killers; a notion that is hotly disputed by many who claim that I have no 'evidence' for such a notion... and then those very same people come along and directly contradict their argument by claiming that long term heterosexual prisoners will become homosexuals in the socially restrictive and limited confines of the prison system.
In other words they actually agree with my notion of a restrictive social environment being the breeding ground for sudden and inexplicable swerves and changes in a individual's behaviour towards his fellow social beings.
And despite the best efforts of some here to categorise these swerves and changes as being of a 'sexual' nature, I am here to say that they are far more likely to be the result of confusion, rage, anger and frustration.

[Howard Brown]

I'm glad you liked it, A.P.

From JSchmidt:

"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."

Again,no offense meant or intended in countering your comment above, but wouldn't it be more likely that those people who engage in homosexual acts in prison were already either active ( and perhaps secretive about it ) or not closeminded to engaging in homosexual activity in the first place?

The first thing or just about the first thing that a heterosexual man thinks of when he goes to prison for the first time ( and maybe the second or third) is the security and welfare of his backside from other men. Simplistic? Yes. Nevertheless,true. So, if one did engage in homosexual acts, either fellatio or whatever, it would have had to been considered before the actual act of performing it. Men, who otherwise were tough guys,reprobates, or hard guys on the outside, are immediately faced with the issue of being "turned out" while on the inside. Ironic,isn't it?

I wanted to bring up the matter of Joe Christopher, a serial killer from New York who employed several methods of dispatching negroes over a brief period back in the 1970's or early '80's.

Christopher was immediately characterized as a devout White supremacist in the media and throughout the racist community, both with different views, naturally, on his murder skein. Its true Christopher was a White racialist, but the truth in the matter as to his motivation is somewhat altogether different.

For you see, Joe Christopher had a secret crush on negro males that he wished to rid himself of by ...you guessed it...killing them.

[Cap'n Jack]

That's a good solid case you mention there, How. I must look into it at once, as if falls outside of my ken at the present.
But the type of disguised 'motif' you talk of - and that is not a sp. - is exactly on the wave length of my Colony ravings. That we look at vicious mimicry in such crimes rather than something rational we can all grip to, such as a simplistic 'sexual' motive, which is the motive most of the lightweights cling to in the forlorn hope that they can explain such vicious mimicry with a rational, explainable, understandable and everyday motive: it was 'sexual'.
Well, it's not, it's smoke and mirrors, and the vast majority are too frightened to part the smoke and stare in the mirror, simply because they know that the image in the mirror will be them.
There is so much magical thinking in the behaviour of serial killers, and most of it is redirected back at their audience in an effort to please them. The audience wants a 'sexual' serial killer so the serial killer gives 'em that very thing, even if he has to magical transfer his fluid using a twig to twist it into the core of his victim in a totally irrational act which he explains to his audience rationally as having had 'sex' with his victim.
The audience applauds the smoke and mirrors because they want to, they have to.
So it is an 'act' of mimicry. The killer is disguising himself as his audience wants to see him.
The white soldier ant cleaning and protecting the colony from a threat that all perceive but few react to with physical action. But it his job, and he takes his signals from the Colony. The signals are biologically confusing, they have to be to make you kill someone.
Then to explain this totally irrational and illogical act of violence against one or more of its members, the Colony sends out signals of rationality and logic.
It was of course a 'sexual' thing.
The Colony moves on.
The smoke billows and the mirrors reflect no image.

[Robert]

AP, he may be mortified to know this, but Dan Norder was saying something like this - I mean the mimicry - in his latest Ripper Notes article, i.e. Jack was reading the newspapers and living up to the reports (however erroneous).

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Robert, I knew all along that Dan loved me really.
He's just using smoke and mirrors to disguise his passion for my work.

[rjpalmer]

Michael -- Thanks for your thoughts. You’re in good company; two of the best thinkers in the field --Alex Chisholm and Stewart Evans-- have also questioned the canon. I only dispute the value of the current rage for arbitrary catagorizing murderers as “sexual’ and “non-sexual,” when it is obvious from any number of case studies that we are dealing with a much more complex, convoluted behavior. Glad you agree. All the best.


Natalie -- Fabulous. I don’t dispute your “evidence.” In fact, I agree with it and have said so on this site many times. I also share your disgust.

But what is it evidence of?

If you catagorize every crime where a sexual organ is involved as ‘sexual,’ then you’re guilty of the same descriptive technique that offers no hope, and certainly no insight.

For instance, by what leap of faith do you go from a man humilating a woman to a man having heterosexual desire for her?

A man stabs a woman in the genitals with a knife. Why? Because he is a genital stabber.

A man robs a bank. Because he’s a bank robber.

A man drives his car fast. Why? Because he’s a speeder.

This descriptive stuff is so easy, we can do it all day long. The point is that we now need to start asking ourselves the next set of questions. If not, we can call all crimes where the sexual organ is involved ‘sexual,’ and pretend we have reached nirvana. And then let’s compound this purely descriptive classification by pretending it is motivated by heterosexual lust in 100% of the cases.

By that same standard of thought, when little Mary Bell, aged ten, strangled a playmate and damaged his sexual organ, it was because she lusted him. It wasn’t because she was imitating ---in her rage and frustration--- the appalling abuse she received by the punters in her mother’s bed-sit. It was simply an act of “lust.”

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Never have, never will.

I think human behavior is far too muddled and complex for such simplistic answers. No one who is as obviously extreme as Speck, Chikatilo, or the Ripper can be explained by the standards of normal sexuality. Nothing here is going to apply.

And that’s it! Homosexuality, in my mind, is entirely normal. It appears everywhere in nature. There are milions of heterosexuals living healthy fabulous lives, just as there are millions of homosexuals doing the same. But Chikatilo isn’t normal, and neither is the Ripper, so those standards do not work.

My real point is about making arbitrary catagorizations for complex subjects.

I could make up a catagory called “animals that swim in the sea” and include:

Tuna, herring, swordfish, kipper, dolphins, sharks, penguins, halibut, salmon.

I could then merrily dance along for years & years and be entirely oblivious to the fact that a dolphin is more closely related to a pig than it is to a swordfish, and a penguin is more closely related to a sparrow than a halibut. And this would be because I never bothered to go beyond my simplistic and misleading catagory and start actually examing the structures underneath.

The neat little box of “sexual serial murder” works in precisely the same way; 120 years ago an Austrian bloke invented a largely superficial and arbitrary standard and whipped it up into a sub-class.

It doesn’t work. It conceals more than it reveals.

[Natalie Severn]

First and foremost these were crimes against women.Moreover,the women were not a convenient "sub species" of humanity to be treated only with contempt.That way leads to fascism. These were a series of crimes against humanity committed by a human being living in a society of human beings---not in a colony of ants.
AP, instead of attending to the subject matter of the crimes and the evidence we actually have of what happened to these women, chooses instead to fly off on some ego led and completely mad trajectory ,where he "amuses himself" meditating on a comparison between the criminal [human] behaviour of the ripper and the behaviour of societies of ants !Its insane and rather profane .
The ripper committed crimes against humanity ---- AP seems to want to condone and absolve him of these same crimes by discovering similar phenomena in societies of ants. Absurd stuff.

PS-have just read RJ"s post and will return to it in a short while.Must go and thank my neighbour who put the heating on for me.

[perrymason]

Thanks for the reply RJ, and my apologies for the earlier tone. I suppose I do like playing Devils Advocate.

Best regards.