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

[RivkahChaya]

We can also conclude that however many killers there were that they all managed to elude the police.

c.d.

Well, they managed to elude police capture, but not police notice. They didn't either hide the body so well that it remains officially a disappearance, and not a murder, or by the time it was found, the TOD could be fixed to an approximate year only; or manage to make the murder look like an accident or suicide, or frame someone else (unless, one of the "JTR" murders is a deliberate copycat to cover a deliberate killing of a specific woman).

Every victim at inquest, in other words was "willful murder by person or persons unknown," (if I got the wording right).

I'm not really sure what that means-- JTR wasn't terribly concerned about getting caught, or didn't think much into the future, or just thought the police were fools. Probably some combination of the first two, not so much the third.

[Wickerman]

I, BTW, I also think Tabram was a victim of JtR.

It was suggested that Emma Smith might have made up the story of her being attacked by a gang, rather than admit to the shame of her prostituting herself.

Keeping in mind the attacks on both Smith and Tabram, if we reflect on the Yorkshire Ripper's attack on Emily Jackson, we find a victim who was stabbed 52 times, and a length of wood pushed into her vagina.

I normally don't consider either Smith or Tabram as Ripper victims, but there is no good argument against the possibility.

Regards, Jon S.

[Lechmere]

I don't know why it is always regarded as an impossibility that the torsos couldn't be by the same perpetrator as the Whitechapel murders.

[RivkahChaya]

I don't know why it is always regarded as an impossibility that the torsos couldn't be by the same perpetrator as the Whitechapel murders.

The MO is too different. First, the abdominal mutilations are what seemed to get JTR off, and the torsos didn't have those. Second, the bodies were dumped, instead of left where they were killed, which suggested that the torso killer had a place where he could take women to be in privacy, and further that the dismemberment was possibly just to make the body dump easier. If you dump a dismembered body in the water, the abdomen will fill with gas after a while, and rise to the surface, but the limbs and head won't.

It's also possible that the torso killer didn't want the victim to be identified, which means they were connected to him in some way. People are likely to recognize a face, and the heads may have been removed for that reason as well. Or, he kept them. Jeffrey Dahmer had a collection of skulls.

[Fisherman]

Rivkah Chaya:

"the abdominal mutilations are what seemed to get JTR off, and the torsos didn't have those"

You are aware, I take it, that the Whitehall torso had had the uterus removed? And that there was an abdominal gash in the Pinchin Street torso? So we may need to be a bit cautious before writing an interest in the abdomen off.

Otherwise, you are of course right - the differences were very obvious. But that should not necessarily tell us that the killer was not the same, only that the results of his actions varied IF it was just the one killer.

There are of course differences inbetween the torso victims too. In all cases but one, the killer mocked the authorities by spending considerable time and effort to distribute body parts all over London.
Not so with the Pinchin Street torso, however. And interestingly, this is the one torso that surfaces smack in the middle of Ripper country. And it had Bagster Phillips concluding that the knifework of the neck was very similar to the butchery Kelly´s neck had been subjected to.

In my own personal opinion, this torso is of great interest, since I champion Lechmere as the killer. And the Pinchin Street torso was found more or less on the doorstep of Lechmere´s mothers quarters on Cable Street. One could also - for good measure - add that Maria Louisa Lechmere was listed in the 1891 census as a cat´s meat woman, that is to say a woman who dealt in cutting up dead horses, selling them as cat´s meat.

It is enough to make me raise an eyebrow. Others may do what they wish with their respective eyebrows, though, as long as they don´t claim that there were no signs of abdominal mutilations in the torso cases.

All very controversial, I´m sure - but there you are!

The best,
Fisherman

[kensei]

Just thought I'd pop in here, and say that I agree with the few who think it is at the very least not completely impossible that all of the C5 plus Tabram plus the Torso killings were all the work of one person, the infamous and notorious Jack the Ripper. I'm not saying I absolutely believe that 100%, but I do tend to lean in that direction. A movie comes to mind, "Henry," which I know was a fictionalized story loosely based on a real killer, in which he instructs his wanna-be apprentice to always vary your m.o. so that you can't possibly be linked to everything.

[Fisherman]

Keeping an open mind is always healthy, Kensei, so in that context I agree with you.
Then again I am having no difficulties seeing the sense in people telling me that the two series of killings are worlds apart in many a way. One seems to be more of a spur-of-the-moment killer, ready to take huge risks, whereas the other seems more of a meticulous planner, taking care to minimize the risks of exposure.

Whichever way, I would welcome an initiated discussion on the matter. When it is brought up, it is often too nonchalantly pooh-poohed I think.

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

honest

Hello Christer, Kensei. Although I do not agree, I do find your stance intellectually honest. At least you do not try to have your cake and eat it.

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

God knows I love cake, Lynn, so it´s not an altogether easy thing to achieve ...

Thanks, anyway!

Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Have your torso and rip it?

There is no reason why a killer wouldn't necessarily run a twin track approach - killing in different ways dependent upon the circumstances in which he acquires his victims.
As we can only guess at his motivation regarding how he left the bodies it is unsound to pontificate too much on what he intended doing or what he got his gratification from.
Having said that there was a degree of display with several of the torsos - leaving things to be found - to shock and awe, to demonstrate power over other humans perhaps.

With so much in this case ones views are inevitably influenced by potential suspects - did they have the potential opportunity to commit the crimes and then dispose of the bodies? I would suggest that nearly all potential Ripper suspects could not have been the Torso killer as they would not have had the facilities available to carry out the dismemberment nor the means of transportation to dispose of the body parts.

I can think of one suspect who did potentially have the requisite facilities and the means of transport and who as a child lived in the same street where one of the Torso’s was dumped and whose mother lived one street away when it was dumped.

The police believed that torso had been brought from nearby and dumped.

[Fisherman]

I can think of one suspect who did potentially have the requisite facilities and the means of transport and who as a child lived in the same street where one of the Torso’s was dumped and whose mother lived one street away when it was dumped.

The police believed that torso had been brought from nearby and dumped.

They even plumped for a guess that the torso had come from the streets south of Pinchin Street, I believe since there was some fencing forming an obstacle for a transport from the north. Which is why the police thought that the torso had been carried to the railway arch from the Cable Street area, and searched the premises there. The search yielded nothing, though.

Hope I got that right; I´m working from memory here.

The best,
Fisherman

[Abby Normal]

The MO is too different. First, the abdominal mutilations are what seemed to get JTR off, and the torsos didn't have those. Second, the bodies were dumped, instead of left where they were killed, which suggested that the torso killer had a place where he could take women to be in privacy, and further that the dismemberment was possibly just to make the body dump easier. If you dump a dismembered body in the water, the abdomen will fill with gas after a while, and rise to the surface, but the limbs and head won't.

It's also possible that the torso killer didn't want the victim to be identified, which means they were connected to him in some way. People are likely to recognize a face, and the heads may have been removed for that reason as well. Or, he kept them. Jeffrey Dahmer had a collection of skulls.

Actually most if not all the torsos had abdominal mutilations as shown by Debra Arif.

I have always thought it possible(though not probable) the Ripper and torso murders were done by the same man. The ripper murders have a distinct pattern-either done in the beginning or end of the month and on weekends or holidays (including Tabram)

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.

[RavenDarkendale]

In my own personal opinion, this torso is of great interest, since I champion Lechmere as the killer. And the Pinchin Street torso was found more or less on the doorstep of Lechmere´s mothers quarters on Cable Street. One could also - for good measure - add that Maria Louisa Lechmere was listed in the 1891 census as a cat´s meat woman, that is to say a woman who dealt in cutting up dead horses, selling them as cat´s meat.

Ah, perhaps she was selling "meat pies" as Mrs. Lovett, Sweeny Todd's partner in crime did! There was a desperate hunger in Whitechapel among the very poor...

Also @Lechmere:

The Hillside Strangler duo tried various things with their victims, electrocution once, and injection with household cleanser in another, They always went back to strangulation, however. Serial killers do break with MO once in a while

[Fisherman]

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

All the best,
Fisherman

[RivkahChaya]

You are aware, I take it, that the Whitehall torso had had the uterus removed? And that there was an abdominal gash in the Pinchin Street torso? So we may need to be a bit cautious before writing an interest in the abdomen off.

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.

A movie comes to mind, "Henry," which I know was a fictionalized story loosely based on a real killer, in which he instructs his wanna-be apprentice to always vary your m.o. so that you can't possibly be linked to everything.

A note on Henry Lee Lucas: he confesses to killing about 300 people, but while he did that, he was theoretically on death row; however, as long as he kept confessing, no one set a date for his execution, and he was a much nicer location (easier access to the public was the reason), where he was treated a lot better, got better food, had his own TV, and lots of other amenities. Sheriffs and police lieutenants came from all over, recording confessions, and closing cold cases.

The movie was based on a Henry Lee Lucas who had supposedly done all those murders, and it also switched the roles of Lee and his mentor (also lover) Ottis Toole, who is probably the person who killed Adam Walsh.

Lucas ended up dying in prison, IIRC, of liver cancer, and it was many years before the story of the false confessions got out.

So anyway, the murders "credited" to him really were done by a lot of different people.

I have always thought it possible(though not probable) the Ripper and torso murders were done by the same man. The ripper murders have a distinct pattern-either done in the beginning or end of the month and on weekends or holidays (including Tabram)

There are more murders and crime in general on the weekends. Most serial killers troll for victims on the weekend. Either the killer has a job, or the victim pool is larger then, or both.