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

[Wickerman]

It had to be with a relative degree of care, since the description is that the pericardium was empty. Just cutting the blood vessels and yanking out would take the heart with the pericardium. But the pericardium was opened, and heart taken out. Which isn't necessarily hard, but it requires some care.

I had the vision of this being a single-handed operation, reaching under the ribs to pull out the heart. Using one hand cannot help but tear any attachments, if the heart was removed 'with care' (as you suggest) then might that also suggest he had both hands under the ribs? One to grasp the heart, the other to cut the attachments?

Is that likely, or even feasible, given the limited space?

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Blotches perhaps?

Exactly, or a "sunburnt face", or a man without eyelashes? which may have been accompanied by some other disfigurement.

Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

One of the things that I think is misunderstood about mutilating someone a person has killed is that it IS a fetish. Whether it's a sexual fetish, an emotional fetish, a behavioral fetish, the motive doesn't matter. Fetishes work in predictable and understood ways within their own their own seemingly random existence.

We may never know why someone develops a spanking fetish (although many times we do in fact know why) but once it's there, we know how it works. Fetishes have OCD components to them. Less compulsion, more obsession, but the rules are the same. A man with a spanking fetish is obsessed with the buttocks, he is obsessed with the notion of paternal relationships, he is obsessed with causing a certain amount of pain and humiliation, and the fulfillment of these obsessions create a sexual release. A man with a spanking fetish is not going to punch his partner in the face for his own gratification. It won't gratify him. Now we may think that is he is willing to hit his partner in the ass it's not such a stretch to hit his partner in the face, but it it's a huge stretch. His partner's face has no part of his fetish. He would view hitting his partner in the face as abuse, where he does not attach that label to spanking. A foot fetishist is no more going to switch to or include hands in his fetish than he is going suddenly going to become a necrophiliac. The two can exist together, but they will always have existed together. One doesn't switch. Anymore than a compulsive hand washer will suddenly settle for wiping their hands on their jeans.

Fetishes are symbolic. They have meaning. They derive from a place, time or association from the past of the person with the fetish. The fetish is a tool to summon the feelings associated with that act. It is not necessarily a recreation. Spanking fetishes usually are, recreating the first time a child felt arousal, which was during a spanking. Compulsive hand washing is a reaction, not a recreation. The feeling of anxiety associated with mysophobia are relieved by the act of hand washing. Fetishes and compulsions are fueled by very specific fantasies and fears. Fetishes and compulsions are indulged for the sole purpose of recreating or combating a very specific image in the persons head. Deviating from the fetish or compulsion provides no relief. Only the fetish or compulsion does. It's why they don't change without a ton of work.

Now, I'm OCD (mostly terribly well managed). For example, I have to twirl the dryer button three times before I turn it on. A simple nonsensical thing. But there will never be a time when only two twirls will do, or tapping the buttons, shutting the dryer door three times or doing nothing will do. Not without therapy. Now the specific image in my head when I do this is both very specific and very vague. I very specifically picture myself in the throes of profound psychological agony, akin to watching someone detox from heroin the hard way. The psychological agony is being caused by a fear of some nebulous consequence. I don't know what happens if I don't do it. I mean, clearly nothing, but I don't know what I fear is going to happen. It's not like I picture a meteor hitting my house (though recent events give me pause). But in the end, I'm not twirling buttons to avoid death by space debris. I'm doing it to avoid pain. Very specific pain, that I know well and on a personal level. I can picture it clearly because I have experienced it.

Ed Kemper murdered his mother and threw her larynx in the garbage disposal. That was a fetishistic act. It was not repeated, but it was fetish. Desperate need to silence his domineering and abusive mother. An act Freud would have found poetic. Now, a lot of people will say that "No, Ed Kemper was a necrophiliac". And he was, in that he clearly had sex with corpses. But he was not a classic necrophiliac. He was not sexually attracted to corpses. He didn't have sex with dead animals, he didn't break into funeral homes, he didn't dig anyone up, he didn't keep pictures of random dead people around for porn. He was sexually attracted to the specific women he killed. And he killed them to have sex with their corpses. But not because he preferred them dead. It was because he thought they would never have sex with him if they were alive. It was the only way they wouldn't reject him. That's not fetish. That is deep psychological trauma. It is maladaptive behavior at it's finest. Had he been less hateful of himself, he would have been a rapist. He would have been able to tolerate the pain and hate he would have caused in women. So despite the fact that he was a necrophiliac in the societal sense, he wasn't one in the psychological sense. Fetish is complicated.

Specifically to Jack the Ripper(s), his concentration on the abdomen was fetish. So was the taking of the uterus. It was not a trophy, in that he grabbed something that reminded him of the kill. For that he could have taken something a lot easier to get to, an ear, a finger, the tongue, hair, whatever. The uterus was specifically targeted in two women, and that is just not an easy organ to get to. It was important to him. He went through a lot of trouble to get them. Now with Kate Eddowes he also took a kidney. Personally I think he took it to eat. Whether or not he actually did, no one knows. I think he was expanding on his fantasy a little. I think that the new idea also made him incredibly nervous. The stress involved in adding to a ritual is enormous. Expanding a fantasy is dangerous. It could ruin the fantasy, or it could enhance it. But expanding is not abandoning.

His fantasy was specific. It had to be prostitutes. He never killed a maid or shop girl or housewife. And they were on the streets as well at odd hours. He had to cut their throats, even if it wasn't strictly necessary to kill them. He had to open the abdomen. If this was strictly sexual, he would have targeted parts associated with sex. Specifically the breasts. And access to them was not difficult. He could have ripped their bodices open. He didn't care. He was intent of the abdomen. He took the uteruses, not just removed them, but kept them. He had no care for them in the slightest once he was done. He didn't compose their bodies, he didn't close eyes or mouths, he didn't even bother to pull their skirts down. They were valuable as long as they had something he wanted, and once he got it, they were no more important to him than a pile of leaves. That is all fetish. That is a guy who is trying to meticulously match a picture in his head. His fantasy did not include sophisticated stalking, it didn't include any sort of ritual for the dead, it didn't include anything about public reaction. He didn't care how they were found, but he was not interested in composing the body for a certain amount of dignity, not in composing the body for maximum shock value. He abandoned them.

But everything was different with Mary Kelly. Whoever killed her had a very different fantasy than the man who killed Chapman and Eddowes. Her murder scene was carefully designed for maximum shock value. She was posed after her mutilations. Her organs were used as props, literally and figuratively. She was destroyed. And her uterus was under her head. The murder of Kelly and the murder of Eddowes do have things in common. In both the abdomen was targeted, the uterus and kidney removed. Both had their throats cut, both had their faces mutilated. Which is not an insignificant number of commonalities. And it's easy to say "well he took the kidney from Eddowes, why not the heart from Kelly?" And the simple answer is, there's no reason why not take the heart. IF he had taken the uterus. Which he didn't. The organ that was the star of his fantasy for several murders and mutilations was abandoned. That doesn't happen with fetishists. They never abandon their fetish. They may learn to alter it somewhat or control it over the course of years, but they never abandon it. If he killed a woman and for some reason as unable to take the uterus, he might try to satisfy himself with something else. It wouldn't really work, but he would try. But he had Mary Kelly's uterus. He didn't want it. He wanted her heart. He also wanted to destroy her face, remove her external sexual characteristics. He destroyed everything that made her a woman. That's a whole different fantasy. And one that tends to be personal. Taking away what a person is usually requires a lot of very personal rage. It's a punishment. And if Mary Kelly was not the exact person her killer wanted to punish, he saw her as a good substitute.

But the previous victims weren't punished. Not even poor Kate with her mutilated face. They weren't displayed the way Kelly was. They weren't emptied. Jack the Ripper for the most part was terribly focused. Mary Kelly's killer was all over the place. Could Jack the Ripper have evolved his fantasy enough to do what was done to Mary Kelly? Maybe. It's possible, though obviously it depends on the individual. But it doesn't happen in a month. Had there been a three year gap, maybe. But fantasies just don't adapt that fast, and obsessions cannot be abandoned so quickly. Fetishes are stubborn. They are linked to a person through the most basic emotions and needs that we have. How long would it take him to adapt his fetish? How long would it take you get over a fear of flying? How long would it take you to develop a sexual desire for being tied up? Not just tolerate, but require it? It's Skinner and his pigeons, Pavlov and his dogs. Tie classical conditioning into deeply rooted emotions and needs like the need for love, sex, approval, relief, and you have an incredibly powerful force shaping your actions. One that requires years of therapy to get rid. And sometimes, you can't ever be rid of it. A fetish doesn't change in a month. And I fully believe that the uterus was the target of this killers fetish.

[RivkahChaya]

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.

But I still like your general analysis.

I also still think what sets Mary Kelly apart the most was her age, and since you pointed out hope focused JTR was on the uterus in Nichols, Chapman, & Eddowes, I wonder if it's possible he sought out middle-aged women because they were unlikely to be pregnant. He might really have had a fear of causing a fetal death, or more likely, just not wanted to share the uterus.

Of course, he could have attacked really old women, and entirely avoided the possibility, but their uteruses (uteri, whatever) have often shrunk from lack of blood flow, and be difficult to locate in the dark, and in addition, they don't tend to be out alone after dark.

I tend to think he was just looking for vulnerable women, and middle-aged women just won't be as strong, generally speaking, as younger women of the same size.

You just got me thinking, that's all.

[c.d.]

It is true that a heart is not a uterus or a kidney but they are all internal organs. And in these murders those internal organs, be it a heart, kidney or uterus came from women who had their throats cut and their abdomens ripped open. To me, that is the overriding factor. Is it really so hard to believe that someone sick enough to cut a woman't throat and take out her uterus would never consider taking a heart?

If there were a purse snatcher operating in a given area and his M.O. was to knock women down so they never saw his face and then to make off with their purses would the police say "well this has to be a different guy because the other purses were made of leather and this one is straw?"

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

c.d.

[lynn cates]

scenario

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?

Same or different?

Cheers.
LC

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.]

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,

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

[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.

[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...

[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