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

[c.d.]

So is it being suggested that not only were there multiple killers but there was a killer with a uterus fetish and another with a heart fetish and maybe another one with a kidney fetish?

c.d.

[Wickerman]

Coroner's report?, there was no report.

Nobody mentioned Kelly's state with respect to pregnancy, not the Coroner, nor Dr. Phillips.
Bond referred to the uterus but made no suggestion whether it was gravid or not.

Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

FWIW, we do have serial killers who removed and kept body parts, and had a particular fondness for certain parts, which they nearly always removed, and then, on occasion, removed something else as well, on a whim, or because a particular victim had an unusually interesting one (I can't remember the name, but I recall one killer who normally saved sexual parts, and bones, but on one particular occasion, made an attempt to preserve the skin of a leg, because of the victim's tattoo, and since this was before DNA, that's how they ended up identifying the victim, which is why I remember this). The "fetish" might be for "playing" with bodies, if that makes sense, and the killer has certain things they always like to do, while there are other things they try on a whim, and don't like, and don't try again, or find time-consuming, so they may try again, but much later, with a different method.

If you'll bear with a sort of bizarre analogy: when you go to a theme park, there are certain rides you have to ride, because they are your favorites, certain ones you try once and don't like, and other that you sort of like, but not as much as your favorites, so you'll ride if the lines aren't long, and you haven't been there in a while, and maybe there'll be a new one you decide to try.

JTR may have had a one track mind, and wanted uterses, and either not been especially good a retrieving them in the dark, and possibly even drunk sometimes, or he may have like "playing," and always intended to walk off with the uterus, but wanted to try out other things as well.

I know there was a persistent rumor that MJK was pregnant, but the coroner said in his report that she was not. Did he determine that from a uterus that was in fact present? Exactly how did he determine it? Absence of a clearly visible fetus, or absence of signs of very early pregnancy as well?

If I were writing a work of fiction based on the JTR story, I'd have MJK claim first not to be pregnant, in order to secure a customer, who asked her the question directly, then later, when she realized his intention, claim (falsely) that she was, in an attempt to get him to spare her life, but not only would that enrage him, because it would spoil his plans, he'd be obligated to kill her so she couldn't identify him.

[Errata]

Organs are organs and what happened in Whitechapel is extremely rare and bizarre. Let's not lose sight of that.

c.d.

This is my point precisely. Organs are organs to us. And to any number of serial killers who didn't care about innards in the slightest. But organs are not organs to a fetishist, an obsessive. That would be like saying "paintings are paintings" to an art historian. And I can't tell you how many people I have outraged with my view that cars are cars. What the hell do I care about the long design history of a Porsche when all I require a car to do is get me where I'm going. But if you're a Porsche guy, you care a lot. And I myself have had serious doubts about the sanity of people who confuse Star Wars and Star Trek, and then shrug and say "whatever". Not whatever, two totally different things. But to them, a sci fi movie is a sci fi movie.

If the uterus and the abdominal mutilations are a fetish, then my statements about fetishes stand. If they were not a fetish, they don't even come into the conversation. But if part of the argument is that this killer had a need to mutilate torsos and take uteruses, then it's a fetish. If the argument that he was doing it just to screw with cops or because he had a bet with his cousin Larry, then it isn't. I think it is. And if it is, the rules of obsession apply.

[Errata]

Errata, I might quibble with your use of the word fetish, only because I thought it was by definition, something not sexual, like an object, or a non-sexual body part. No one has a penis fetish, in other words. Obsession beyond normal occupation, but not "fetish," by definition. Focusing on organs of sex and reproduction seems a little to, well, "on point," if you will, to be, technically, a fetish. A fetish becomes what it is through some sort of accidental conditioning, or cross-wiring in a particular person's brain. No one has to be conditioned to think of the sex organs as sexual, or for that matter, the adjacent parts of the body, like the lower abdomen, and inner thighs.

A person can absolutely have penis fetish. A fetish does not have to be sexual. It can be emotional, intellectual, behavioral. The term fetish is most often used in conjunction with paraphilias, but it is by no means limited to that sphere. Those guys who collect every Star Wars figure ever made, or 50's cartoon lunch boxes? The guys who live in one room of their house and devote the rest to their collection? That's a fetish.

But even so, a uterus can be fetishized in a sexual sense. As could ovaries, testicles, an number of things. As humans, our biggest stimulus is sight. Our biggest memory triggers are smells. Most sexual fetishes have an element of both in them. But the average man has never laid eyes on a uterus, nor has he been stimulated by the smell of one. It's a closed system. So it can be sexually fetishized, but then the big question would have to be where on earth did he come across one in the first place, and how did he associate it with sexual pleasure? And on that, all I can guess is that it was an intellectual or emotional fetish before it was a sexual one. Maybe he was angry at the uterus for being the thing that brought him into the world. Maybe he was obsessively fascinated with the idea of it, and would not rest until he held one in his hands. I can't imagine how it became a sexual fetish from there, but I can't imagine where copraphilia comes from either. I just know it exists.

[lynn cates]

What?

Hello Mike. Thanks.

"Id like to thank Lynn for the way he addressed some of your earlier concerns, because sometimes it's the speaker not the message that gets heard."

Thank you very much. Umm, what did I say?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

All of them?

Hello CD. Thanks.

"That might suggest a different person but in the case of the C5 they all had their throats cut with a knife, did they not?"

And after that? Or are you suggesting that every woman with a cut throat was a victim of "JTR"?

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

For how long? the guy didn't die of a massive infection six weeks later?

So, as head surgeon, your instructions would be not to bother?
Just let him go, he'll only last 6 more weeks anyway, whats the point?

Ok. let me find that hippocratic oath...

[RivkahChaya]

For some reason I'm not getting that JTR knew MJK personally,

He didn't have to know her well, or even know her to speak to, but may still have been aware of her identity, so that she was not an anonymous victim the way the others were. It could have been as simple as having approached her once, and being told she was done for the day, and taking it personally, and then letting what he thought of as an insult fester for a few weeks.

That's enough for the killing to be "personal" in a way the others were not, without Kelly necessarily being someone he was even really acquainted with.

According to Dr. Brown's report "a piece [of intestine] was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm apparently by design...the face was very much mutilated."

First, I understood "by design," as meaning simply "placed there," rather than flung aside, which may indicate nothing more than a peculiar regard for a part of a woman that he did not have for the woman herself, or it may be that he was considering taking it with him, and changed his mind when he got something "better."

As for her being "much mutilated," he said that before the Kelly murder, so we can't understand that statement as made in comparison to Kelly. It may be that once Kelly was murdered, Dr. Brown thought "Wow, and here I thought the Eddowes mutilations were bad, but they were nothing compared to this."

Isn't it natural for a collector of any kind to want most what he doesn't have in his collection?

Except we don't know anything about his "collection." If he ate half of Eddowes kidney, and mailed half to Lusk, he didn't "collect" it. We don't know that he has any kind of collection, or if he does, that it doesn't include reproductive parts from many different species. He may have taken MJK's heart on a particular whim, and discarded it later.

T
This recalls a scene from London Hospital (Victorian Drama) where in response to a patient dying of heart failure?, the surgeon sliced across his abdomen below the ribs and reached up beneath the ribcage, and with his hand massaged the heart. The stories were apparently taken from real cases.
He saved the patients life.

For how long? the guy didn't die of a massive infection six weeks later?

In any series of murders, one of the victims is going to be the youngest. If we eliminate Mary from the equation that title would go to someone else.

Except that Nichols through Eddowes were all very close in age, 44, 47, 45, & 46 (albeit, Nichols is reported as looking younger than she was), while Kelly was young enough to be the daughter of any of the others. That's significant. There's only a three-year difference between the second youngest, and the oldest. If we had five ages that lined up with what looked like random intervals, I'd agree, but this is really a "One of these things is not like the others."

Of course, I also wonder about the fact that the first two women were stout, and then Eddowes was quite thin, and it seems that MJK was slender as well, and so was Stride (I'm becoming more and more convinced that Stride wasn't a Ripper victim, though).

I admit that we don't know what any of those things mean, and without identifying JTR, won't know what they mean, but serial killers do usually have a physical type, for whatever reason, or, like David Berkowitz, seem triggered by a specific kind of target, such as couples in cars. The Axeman of New Orleans appeared to target Italian immigrants, and there weren't that many Italian immigrants, compared to other ethnicities, in New Orleans at the time.

[Michael W Richards]

Hello Michael,

I agree that it appears that Mary was the recipient of a great deal of anger on the part of her killer. But can we necessarily conclude that that anger was personal and directed towards her? She simply might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

c.d.

Seems to me cd that she was in the right place at the right time....she was in her room, in bed, in the middle of the night.

Your question is couldnt the killer have been angry about any number of things aside from just Mary, and the answer is sure. But at what? I believe the convention has it that he is now in a place where he has longed to be in...alone with a corpse and with the privacy and ability to do all the things people must presume he was unable to do outdoors. So what is he angry about?

Its the fact that the anger is taken out on Marys face, and the fact that she is far more mutilated than any other victim that allows for my initial observation.

Cheers cd

[c.d.]

Hello Michael,

I agree that it appears that Mary was the recipient of a great deal of anger on the part of her killer. But can we necessarily conclude that that anger was personal and directed towards her? She simply might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

c.d.

[Michael W Richards]

Hello Michael,

You describe the cuts to Kate's face as being mocking and cruel. Dr. Brown said the "face was very much mutilated." That seems much more in line with what happened to Mary.

c.d.

Hi cd,

Before I respond to the above Id like to thank Lynn for the way he addressed some of your earlier concerns, because sometimes its the speaker not the message that gets heard.

If you look at slicing the surface of something with a knife and slashing back and forth across the surface, which to you seems a more emotional act? It would appear that Marys death was not as quick as some of the others in that she has defensive wounds and this slashing of the face back and forth, at least to me, seems angry.

Ive looked at the FBI site with respect to their serial killer data, and I hope that many others do as a result of this post, ...I believe it will be eye-opening for many who see a serial killing of the 5 Canonicals. The question here is whether we should expect more murders if more killers were involved, when the statistics show us that of the small percentage of the population that commit murder and even smaller number within that group, a minute fragment, are defined as serial killers....which is set around 3 murders or more. Therefore, statistically, despite the number of unsolved murders that Fall we should still expect to see some of these murders as solo acts. Singular murder after all is the most prevalent within the stats.

The Torso murderer, which I believe qualifies as a serial killer since we have multiple Torsos in and around 1888, was active that Fall...the corpse discovered on Oct the 3rd proves it. The victim was put in the water after Martha Tabrams murder. Lets assume we have a 3-peat instead of a Canonical Group...that still leaves it probable statistically that the 2 remaining murders were by 2 people. So thats 4 murderers...active that Fall.

So...How many corpses would we expect to see with that many killers? Well, 4, or 5, or 6 would be most likely I suppose, based on the stats.

Best regards

[c.d.]

In any series of murders, one of the victims is going to be the youngest. If we eliminate Mary from the equation that title would go to someone else. If Mary was targeted, I think it was because she had her own place in which case her age would be a moot point.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Hello Lynn,

That might suggest a different person but in the case of the C5 they all had their throats cut with a knife, did they not?

c.d.

[Observer]

Hello CD. What if your purse snatcher had been cutting straps with a men's razor, then there were a report that a lady had been knocked down and beaten and her purse taken?
Cheers.
LC

They'd blame the Ochrana or Sinn Fein?