If There Were Multiple Killers Wouldn't We Expect to See More Killings?

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, "cat's meat" is "pet food," right? meat to feed your cats and dogs? (although, I'm not sure my cats would eat horse meat, since they don't even sniff the dogs' food, when they get canned beef or lamb). Tell me there was not a market for actual meat from cats, for human consumption, and when there weren't enough cats, people sold horses at "cat."

[GregBaron]

A View to a Kill...

Oh, "cat's meat" is "pet food," right? meat to feed your cats and dogs? (although, I'm not sure my cats would eat horse meat, since they don't even sniff the dogs' food, when they get canned beef or lamb). Tell me there was not a market for actual meat from cats, for human consumption, and when there weren't enough cats, people sold horses at "cat."

Yes RivkahChaya, I believe this refers to pet food. Wouldn't be surprised; however, if some starving East Enders didn't occasionally dine on this wonderful horse meat. The old beggars can't be choosers comes to mind...

Perhaps, if done by the same person, the ripper murders occured when the killer had to kill in the streets because his private home or business situation was that at these times he could not bring victims there (someone else who he shared the house/place of work with was there at these times). And the torso murders occurred when they were absent so he could bring them to his private place. The dismembered body parts was for ease in removing the corpse from his house or place of work.

This could possibly explain, if the Torso and Ripper killers were the same man, the apparent difference in MO.

Well said Abby, this can't be ruled out. I suppose we could even surmise a singular perp all the way out to Coles, but if so, we're dealing with a very controlled killer...

I don't mean to speak for the multi-perpists but I will anyway...Ha
I believe they surmise different motivations for the various kills rather than multiple serialists about. Stride could be no more than an angry drunken sailor who was rebuffed. MJK a personal maniac run amok. Eddowes a revenge killing .. Possible copycating can also be suggested...

I don't think anybody thinks a Bundy, Dahmer and Wayne Gacy were all trolling the East End simultaneously...



Greg

[RivkahChaya]

I don't think anybody thinks a Bundy, Dahmer and Wayne Gacy were all trolling the East End simultaneously...

About that: London was a huge city, England was a go-to country at the time, and the East End was a port area.

It was a place where lots of different kinds of people drifted in and out. I would imagine if you were wanted by the police in some area, and were looking for a place where you could be anonymous, where you'd be likely to find some kind of work, and where you could also continue to troll for victims once you were certain the law hadn't followed you, the East End was attractive.

I think there's a reason that most serial killings happen in big cities.

And, for another thing, I lived in a city, that for a city was pretty small, but it was still an incorporated city, and because there was a large university, there was a big transient population. We weren't troubled by serial killers at large, so to speak, but during the time I lived there, there was one very disturbing MJK type killing-mutilation of a homeless woman, who slept much of the time in a tent in a park. The police caught the guy almost immediately. He had no other murder convictions, but he had lots of assault charges. If he hadn't been caught the first (presumably) time, he could have turned into a serial killer.

There was also a serial rapist on campus, but he was caught, and a female student who was murdered, on-campus, but then dumped in a cornfield. That guy was caught. Another student was waylaid while riding her bicycle. It took a long time to find the body, but meanwhile, the police kept close tabs on their main suspect, who was a suspect because of a tip from a family member. There's a student missing right now, although the theory is that she died of a drug overdose while drinking (underage) with friends, who were either also underage, or the over-21 people who provided the alcohol, and the prescription drugs (not hers) that witnesses say she was taking earlier that evening. The police theory is that her friends hid the body to avoid charges of felony homicide, with the felony being supplying drugs and alcohol to a minor, which is a very serious charge in this state.

My point is, that while the East End may not have bred multiple killers, it may have attracted them, and the general way of life in a big city may allow people to commit multiple crimes before getting caught, which is less likely to happen in a smaller town.

[Fisherman]

Well, yeah.

The thing about the torsos is that they all seem to be "dumps," that is, killed in one place, and left in another. The dismemberment could be purely practical.

It's even possible that JTR killed one of the torsos, but not all of them, because he was experimenting with killing in his home, or in some other place where the body couldn't stay, and ended up having to most it, so the dismemberment was purely practical. But also a lot of hard work, enough to put a damper on whatever the fun part was for him.

The dismemberment was judged to be of a practical nature, yes - but I would venture the guess that neither you nor me can see any practicality in cutting the abdomen open - much less in taking away the uterus? Mutilation of the abdomen or no mutilation of the abdomen was what we were discussing - and it was there.

I concur that we may be dealing with just the one torso killing being Jack´s. This can be so, of course. And I am not sure that the hard work, as you put it, was any damper. Maybe he enjoyed dismembering, if it was him. Maybe he was curious about the possible joys of copying the torso killer´s work. It´s a world of possibilities.
The bottom line, though, remains that the types of killings are different. Too different, perhaps, to offer any really "hot" perspective with just the one killer.
If, however, we work from the assumption that Charles Lechmere was the killer, then the geographical connotations are tantalizing, taken together with the anomalies built into the Pichin Street case as opposed to the other torso killings. But that´s as far as we are going to get at the present stage.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Oh, "cat's meat" is "pet food," right? meat to feed your cats and dogs? (although, I'm not sure my cats would eat horse meat, since they don't even sniff the dogs' food, when they get canned beef or lamb). Tell me there was not a market for actual meat from cats, for human consumption, and when there weren't enough cats, people sold horses at "cat."

Yes, Rivkah - the meat was put on skewers in the shape of cubes and sellers brought it into the streets to sell it. It was pet food, but of course the odd risktaker probably had a bite or two at times... Since most of the meat was way past it´s "best before" date, it would not have been healthy. Have a look at http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-...-Cats-Meat-Man and you will see how it was done.

The best,
Fisherman

[Abby Normal]

Yes RivkahChaya, I believe this refers to pet food. Wouldn't be surprised; however, if some starving East Enders didn't occasionally dine on this wonderful horse meat. The old beggars can't be choosers comes to mind...



Well said Abby, this can't be ruled out. I suppose we could even surmise a singular perp all the way out to Coles, but if so, we're dealing with a very controlled killer...

I don't mean to speak for the multi-perpists but I will anyway...Ha
I believe they surmise different motivations for the various kills rather than multiple serialists about. Stride could be no more than an angry drunken sailor who was rebuffed. MJK a personal maniac run amok. Eddowes a revenge killing .. Possible copycating can also be suggested...

I don't think anybody thinks a Bundy, Dahmer and Wayne Gacy were all trolling the East End simultaneously...



Greg

Thanks Greg
Sometimes i find it hard to fathom that there was a Jack the Ripper and Torso killer trolling simultaneously, especially this early in the history of serial killers.

[GregBaron]

Count Dracula...

Thanks Greg
Sometimes i find it hard to fathom that there was a Jack the Ripper and Torso killer trolling simultaneously, especially this early in the history of serial killers.

I can give you that Abby but I'm not so sure we're early in the history of serial killers. We've simply put a name to something that's probably go on since Cave Man days. Now granted, as RivkahChaya has pointed out, the modern city is a fertile killing field but in the Dark Ages such motiveless murders went by other names;we called them witches, werewolves and vampires...



Greg

[RivkahChaya]

Yes, Rivkah - the meat was put on skewers in the shape of cubes and sellers brought it into the streets to sell it. It was pet food, but of course the odd risktaker probably had a bite or two at times... Since most of the meat was way past it´s "best before" date, it would not have been healthy.

For humans, there's a world of difference between eating horsemeat and catmeat, which is to say, a world of difference between eating an herbivore and a carnivore. I'm a vegetarian, and have been for 27 years, so I'm not up on methods of preparing meat, and probably the meat never got up to whatever the current health department temperature was, for the required 20 minutes. But as I understand it, the main reason, historically, people haven't eaten horses, was that they were too valuable as work animals; people who had to make every scrap count, though, butchered old horses that couldn't work anymore.

Thanks Greg
Sometimes i find it hard to fathom that there was a Jack the Ripper and Torso killer trolling simultaneously, especially this early in the history of serial killers.

I can give you that Abby but I'm not so sure we're early in the history of serial killers. We've simply put a name to something that's probably go on since Cave Man days. Now granted, as RivkahChaya has pointed out, the modern city is a fertile killing field but in the Dark Ages such motiveless murders went by other names;we called them witches, werewolves and vampires...

Or just never put 2 & 2 together.

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but serial killing, to the killer, probably qualifies as a hobby, or indulgence, or something. Every sort of leisure pursuit, from making miniatures, to (harmless) role-playing sex games, to spelunking, has grown in the last few centuries as people gained more leisure time.

And yet, another point: there have been municipal police forces for only a few hundred years, so, pretty much, you only had a murder if you had a body. People disappeared, and up until about 120 years ago, if the person wasn't highly placed, or there wasn't a ransom note, there wasn't the assumption that a crime had happened-- or at any rate, a murder. When a person disappears without a trace now, if they aren't deliberately hiding (which isn't common, unless they are fugitives), there is a good chance they've been murdered.

But people would travel, get into accidents, and never be identified. Or, people would locally know their name, but not know how to get in touch with their families-- Mary Jane Kelly's family may have considered her missing for years, for all we know, either until news of a Ripper victim reached Ireland, or maybe forever.

So we don't know how many missing people were actually victims of murderers who knew how to dispose of a body.

Greg is quite right, though: There's a pretty well-documented story of a guy named Peter Stubbe, who supposedly savagely killed several people, after first having been an animal mutilator. This happened in 1589. He was tortured, and it seems, eventually confessed to witchcraft, and a lot of things, but the original charge was being a werewolf. The "proof" was that someone wounded the "wolf" in the act of killing one of it's victims, and Stubbe had the same wound the next day. It's murky, how much is legend, and how much is false accusation and panic, but there were some people savagely murdered, and, aside from the fact that wolves tend to attack big game, like humans, in packs, they also tend to eat what they kill, particularly if they are desperate enough to attack humans. So, they were probably killed by another person. It may have been incomprehensible to people at the time that someone could do that, so clearly, there must be something supernatural, or the devil, involved

[Cogidubnus]

Horsemeat - Catmeat

Hi Rivkah

I'd assume the reason Horsemeat eating never really caught on in the UK is at least partly sentiment - it's certainly eaten "sur le continent" (and by all accounts is very tasty)...I'd personally have no problem with horse (so long as usual abbatoir standards were observed and no "Bute" was present...why not...we don't baulk at venison (which is IMHO omnivore/carnivore heaven) after all...

Catsmeat depends on how you interpret it...In the 19th and early 20th century context, particularly in the East End, catsmeat really was horse or beef, well well beyond sell-by, potentially "off", and often dyed green or blue to demonstrate that possibility...it was hawked around by salespeople yelling out "walla, walla catsmeat"...I've no doubt it sometimes ended up in the family cookpot....

If you want to define cat's meat literally (as in the siege of Paris), or dogs meat the same for that matter, again I daresay it happened...people ate rats after all...but I suspect the, by far, common definition and understanding was as above!

All the best

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

Interesting note: when kosher butchers either cut into an animal, and discovered some reason it wasn't kosher, or, more likely, made some mistake in the butchering, they would sell that meat to gentiles at a very low price, and some Jews bought it as dog food (I recall my mother doing so). Shecters (kosher butchers) also sold the meat they cut out to remove the sciatic nerve, which isn't kosher, to gentiles.

Some gentiles got the idea that the kosher meat was in some way "better," though-- since it was expensive, it must be, and if Jews fed the other stuff to their dogs, well.... Then there was a bit of a scandal in the US regarding how unsanitary some of the slaughterhouses were, and gentiles started going to kosher butchers in droves. Some butchers were running out of kosher meat for the Jews.

Anyway, some shecters got the idea that they could just tell the gentiles that the non-kosher meat was kosher, and if it was salted, they wouldn't know the difference, and it wouldn't matter. The more honest ones still sold it at the cheap price.

Keep in mind, there was nothing wrong with the meat, it simply wasn't kosher, but there's nothing cleaner, or better tasting about kosher meat, and it matters only to observant Jews-- not that I'm defending mendacity; I'm just saying, no one got sick from it. Nonetheless, the rabbinical courts in New York made a ruling that it was wrong (in the sense of violating Jewish law) to sell non-kosher meat to gentiles, and allow them to think it is kosher.

[RavenDarkendale]

Perhaps, Raven. Such a proposition, however, involves straying some way from the given facts ...

All the best,
Fisherman

Really? Which ones? There was a torso killer, JtR, and probably a third or even fourth, but it doesn't ignore any evidence to say they could have all been the same person. We don't know who the Ripper was, so how is it avoiding evidence to say he COULD have done them all? I am not saying JtR DID all the murders. in fact I don't think he even did all of the C5. I am pointing out that serial killers sometime vary their method of operation

God Bless

Darkendale

[Errata]

Really? Which ones? There was a torso killer, JtR, and probably a third or even fourth, but it doesn't ignore any evidence to say they could have all been the same person. We don't know who the Ripper was, so how is it avoiding evidence to say he COULD have done them all? I am not saying JtR DID all the murders. in fact I don't think he even did all of the C5. I am pointing out that serial killers sometime vary their method of operation

God Bless

Darkendale

They do occassionally alter their MO, but this is why the signature of a serial killer becomes vital to the understanding of the man. And slightly different from the signature (though often inextricably interlinked) is the reward. What does the killer get out of the act? Not the motive... but what is the psychological reward in doing precisely what they do? Killers who vary their MO are not invested in the MO. They have no psychological ties to how they kill. Zodiac is a perfect example. He didn't have an attachment to guns or knives. He may have switched things up based on curiosity, based on the size of the male victim, who knows. What was important to him is that these death be linked to the image he created for himself (but not to his actual self). Thus the communication with police, the press, the codes, etc. BTK varied his MO, but usually a version of oxygen deprivation. But his attention wasn't focused so much on method, as much as it was on resolution. He stalked his victims, he planned, he built a fantasy methodically and he saw it through. Evidently his inability to get some victims he had stalked created a huge amount of distress, manifesting in rage. He also taunted cops with letters.

Not every serial killer has fetishized some part of the act. But those who do don't stray from that. Not without some catastrophic event that makes them look elsewhere for their kicks. Almost getting caught can do it, something happening that the killer finds disgusting, some association being created that makes the act no longer enjoyable. Mutilators fetishize the mutilation. And in our minds, we say "well he's willing to cut them open, why wouldn't he be willing to cut off their limbs?". In our minds the outrage is the same. But it doesn't work like that. A person may like to be tied to the bed during sex, but that doesn't mean they want to be beaten during sex. A husband may enjoy rape role playing with his wife, but would never ever commit a rape. I bite my nails well past the quick, but I don't cut myself. The fetish lies in the fantasy, and the fantasy is very specific in terms of focus. Jack the ripper focused on the abdomen. And there is a reason for that, even if we don't know what it is. The limbs meant nothing to him. And one can conceivably evolve into the other, but the two types of crimes were occurring at the same time. If Jack had evolved into the torso killer, he would not have reverted back to an abdominal fetish for a couple of kills. That fantasy would have been replaced, and would offer no satisfaction to him. Its how fetish killers work. They are very obsessive. And it is brutally hard to knock loose an obsession.

[RivkahChaya]

Killers who vary their MO are not invested in the MO. They have no psychological ties to how they kill. Zodiac is a perfect example. He didn't have an attachment to guns or knives. He may have switched things up based on curiosity, based on the size of the male victim, who knows. What was important to him is that these death be linked to the image he created for himself (but not to his actual self).

Some serial killers are terrorists. They like holding a city hostage to fear. They don't move to a new location, and aren't married to a method, as long as they know they can use it. Zodiac had probably hunted animals, and therefore knew how to kill with both knives and firearms. Terrorists generally have little of no contact with their victims. The New Orleans Axe-man, and the DC sniper were terrorists. Zodiac and probably the Axe-man communicated with the authorities. BTK had elements of both, although sometimes I wonder if his sexual elements weren't just part of the way he created fear.

One reason that I doubt any of the Ripper letters are real, is that I don't think creating terror was part of his motive. I'm happy to be proved wrong, though, as accepting even one letter as real suggests that JTR didn't kill anyone after Eddowes (or, maybe Kelly), because the few serial killers who have communicated with authorities, and not been caught, have continued to try to keep the spotlight on themselves even after their last murder. If JTR were trying to create terror, even as a secondary motive, and he killed one of the later victims, like Coles, or Mackenzie, I think he would have communicated with the police or papers sometime around the time of those murders.

The limbs meant nothing to him.

That's an interesting observation. In the case of MJK (assuming for the moment that he killed her), the inner thighs seem to register as part of the abdominal/genital region for him (they did with film censors as well; under the Hays' Code, filmmakers could show the outside of a woman's thigh, but not the inside, even when everything above it was out of frame). He isn't interested in her arms at all, not even as an extension of breasts.

[Fisherman]

Really? Which ones? There was a torso killer, JtR, and probably a third or even fourth, but it doesn't ignore any evidence to say they could have all been the same person. We don't know who the Ripper was, so how is it avoiding evidence to say he COULD have done them all? I am not saying JtR DID all the murders. in fact I don't think he even did all of the C5. I am pointing out that serial killers sometime vary their method of operation

God Bless

Darkendale

Raven, what I pointed to as straying from the given facts was your proposition that Lechmere and his mother produced pies à la Sweeney Todd.
Who the Ripper was, what he could, would or should have done was not something my post touched upon. I know that these are unresolved matters.

The best,
Fisherman

[RavenDarkendale]

Raven, what I pointed to as straying from the given facts was your proposition that Lechmere and his mother produced pies à la Sweeney Todd.
Who the Ripper was, what he could, would or should have done was not something my post touched upon. I know that these are unresolved matters.

The best,
Fisherman

OH! That was just a joke, Fisherman! Sweeney Todd wasn't even a real person!