The meaning of the GSG wording

[caz]

Hi Rivkah,

I did read what you wrote about a Jewish ripper who “doesn’t get it right”.

Here is what you wrote:

“Seriously, it makes sense ONLY if JTR is Jewish himself, and he also killed Stride, and he is suddenly worried, after the fact, that there will be more Leather Apron-type harassing because she was killed right outside a building full of Jews, so he wants to deflect blame, and is attempting to express the idea that Jews should not be blamed, but isn't a native English speaker, and doesn't get it right.”

My response was based on what you suggested he meant to say, and not what you think he ends up saying, so my original objection stands: if a Jewish ripper had got the phrase right and put: ‘Don’t blame the Jews’, then chucked the uniquely damning apron piece from Mitre Square beneath his message, how did he think this would have deflected blame away from Jews? Do you see the problem now?

“And yes, dropping apron was pretty disingenuous, as though the killer would really care that a particular group of people not take the rap for his crimes…”.

But in your scenario, the killer is from the particular group of people he doesn’t want blamed. If he is Jewish himself, and is trying to tell people not to blame the Jews for his murders, what is he doing leaving evidence from the murder scene at the entrance of the predominantly Jewish Dwellings? That's just asking people to blame the Jews, isn't it?

I’m not trying to be difficult, I genuinely didn't - and still don't - understand your reasoning on this point.

Love,

Caz
X

[DVV]

I'm not a Londoner, but I guess Goulston Street was somewhere between Mitre Square and the Victoria Home.

[RivkahChaya]

I’m not trying to be difficult, I genuinely didn't - and still don't - understand your reasoning on this point.

I didn't say it made stone-cold, Vulcan logic. In that scenario, it was a panic move, and stupid. I think I compared it to the Manson gang writing "Death to Pigs," in order to get the police looking for black suspects, because they were somehow under the impression that only black people in the US referred to the police as pigs, or at least the police thought that.

Personally, I don't think JTR wrote the graffito, and I further don't think it has anything to do with the murders.

The idea that any reference to Jews is a reference to the Stride murders would probably be true, if JTR wrote the graffito, since she was the one killed outside a Jewish hang-out, but the apron was Eddowes', not Stride's. A written reference to the Stride murder, and a physical remnant of the Eddowes murder, together, serves to connect them. Why would the killer want to do that? Even if the same person did kill both women, why does he want to clue the police into that fact?

If the graffito is intended to inform people that a Jew did not kill Stride, then why doesn't it say "The Jews are not to be blamed for the murder outside their club"? Or if it's meant to blame the Jews, then "The Jews ARE to be blamed for the murder outside their club"?

Unless someone wants to suggest the apron got dropped by accident.

[caz]

Hi Rivkah,

I thought Eddowes was also killed close to a 'Jewish hang-out'. Hadn't the three Jewish witnesses, who probably saw Eddowes with her hand on her killer's chest, just left a Jewish club?

When you include Schwartz, possibly Pipeman (if he was Jewish) and possibly Diemschitz (if his arrival spooked Stride's killer), you have half a dozen Jews with the potential to have got right up a killer's nose that night. So it always strikes me as odd when people prefer the theory that some random unknown Jewish trader had got right up the nose of a local random unknown graffiti artist, who decided to express his dissatisfaction with that non-specific message, left shortly before the killer left a genuine bloody calling card at the same spot, for no obvious reason.

The message could have been a reference to any of the Jewish witnesses or none of them. But the position of message and apron have never looked accidental, incidental or coincidental to me, but entirely contrived, although it's not clear what effect the writer/dropper would have been going for.

In the killer's own tiny and deranged mind, his latest murder, or murders, would have seemed the be all and end all of the universe. If he wrote that message he may have thought it was clear enough for a child to understand. Alternatively he may have been going for a double meaning - for a neat finish to a double killing.

Who will ever know now?

Love,

Caz
X

[Dane_F]

Maybe someone can help me understand this part.

If we are to believe that the GSG was not written by the Ripper, when was it written? Before or after he threw his apron there?

If it is after then that leaves a very short time for someone to ignore the bloody apron and take that as an opportunity to leave a message "from" JTR. I see this as highly unlikely - to the point of almost impossible.

So that leaves the message was written first. So then what are the odds that the Ripper would pick a random doorway that just happen to have graffiti scribbled on it? Again, I think that is highly unlikely. Why not toss it at the first doorway he passed? Or the second? Surely he wasn't cleaning his hands that entire time.

This would lead me to believe from a probability standpoint that he had to have known the message was there. If he did not write it at the time of dropping the apron, then he would have had to at least agree with it and then make an effort to carry the piece of apron longer than need be to leave it there.

Sadly, whatever message that was trying to be relayed is simply too cryptic to be of practical use in trying to understand what the meaning was. Whoever wrote it I'm sure knew what he was trying to say and maybe at the time people understood it better. Maybe if we had a picture to possibly compare handwriting.

Am I far off base with this line of reasoning?

[Barnaby]

Hi Dane,

I agree with you that someone else writing it after he dropped the apron is improbable. So he either wrote it then, or he wrote it before (frustrated with Stride interruption perhaps) and then "signed" it later with the apron, or it was already there by another hand.

I think the GSG was written by the killer after he dropped the apron but I certainly can understand the opposing viewpoint. I think that is quite reasonable to argue that he just dropped the apron and that message just happened to be there. I don't think we need to assume that he even knew it was there. Remember it was dark and he was fleeing from a murder scene.

[Dane_F]

Thank You Barnaby,

I certainly understand that it was dark and not necessarily being able to see it, but wouldn't he have gotten rid of it sooner if he didn't have a specific purpose for the apron? The longer he carried it the longer he took a risk of being seen with it.

Yet here we are with the apron left at the doorway of the graffiti message. There seems to be so much conjecture in people's theories that they sometimes believe in the less reasonable explanation to fit their theory. I have none and so I hope to speak from a point of view of just accepting the most plausible answer.

[Mr Lucky]

but wouldn't he have gotten rid of it sooner if he didn't have a specific purpose for the apron? The longer he carried it the longer he took a risk of being seen with it.

Hi Dane

I heartily agree.

[GUT]

G'day Dane F

Welcome to case book.

So that leaves the message was written first. So then what are the odds that the Ripper would pick a random doorway that just happen to have graffiti scribbled on it? Again, I think that is highly unlikely. Why not toss it at the first doorway he passed? Or the second? Surely he wasn't cleaning his hands that entire time.

Firstly no one seems to have any real evidence, a lot have opinions, as to how common graffiti was maybe where ever he dumped it it would have been near some graffiti.

Maybe he had seen the GSG earlier and wanted to mark it and that was why he took the apron in the first place.

1st doorway etc might make sense to us but killers don't always act logically and we don't know of the opportunities he had, ie he might have thought here's a good doorway and then a light came on a he thought he saw someone. We just do not know.

[pinkmoon]

If our killer had gone home and dropped of his nights collection of organs and then decided to go back and drop the apron to create the impression that he lived in the Whitechapel area why not go a little further and write a message that points blame at a different race.

[Dane_F]

Welcome to case book.

Firstly no one seems to have any real evidence, a lot have opinions, as to how common graffiti was maybe where ever he dumped it it would have been near some graffiti.

Maybe he had seen the GSG earlier and wanted to mark it and that was why he took the apron in the first place.

1st doorway etc might make sense to us but killers don't always act logically and we don't know of the opportunities he had, ie he might have thought here's a good doorway and then a light came on a he thought he saw someone. We just do not know.

Hello GUT and thank you.

As far as your post goes, I do agree to a point. However my rebuttal would be isn't it far more illogical to assume something came up with every other doorway he pass on his way than it would be that he simply wrote the message there or went back and marked it?

I guess the way I see it is, I am making one logical jump explain the GSG and the apron. To accept your explanation you'd have to make multiple jumps of logic. I suppose I just prefer to believe that the simplest explanations are usually the correct ones.

Another point, which wasn't something you posted but got me thinking was - if he went back to his "lair" and then left again to dispose of the apron why not just burn it? If the suggestion is to throw them off of where he was going, wouldn't not finding a piece of evidence throw them off far more than trying to falsely plant it, while also running the risk of getting caught? And even if he did try to throw them off by dumping the apron - why is it acceptable to make that logical jump but not accept that he also left the apron at a specific place?

I'm sorry I might be just thinking out loud.

[GUT]

Hello GUT and thank you.

As far as your post goes, I do agree to a point. However my rebuttal would be isn't it far more illogical to assume something came up with every other doorway he pass on his way than it would be that he simply wrote the message there or went back and marked it?

My point was that we don't know how common Graffiti was, if it was everywhere it mitigates against the apron being left to mark the particular Graffiti but just that is where he decided to dump the piece of apron.

I guess the way I see it is, I am making one logical jump explain the GSG and the apron. To accept your explanation you'd have to make multiple jumps of logic. I suppose I just prefer to believe that the simplest explanations are usually the correct ones.

Firstly I don't see how conclusion that the person who wrote the GSG also left the apron is any more or less logical than the conclusion that the two were unrelated. Secondly the simplest explanation may usually be correct but not always.

Another point, which wasn't something you posted but got me thinking was - if he went back to his "lair" and then left again to dispose of the apron why not just burn it? If the suggestion is to throw them off of where he was going, wouldn't not finding a piece of evidence throw them off far more than trying to falsely plant it, while also running the risk of getting caught? And even if he did try to throw them off by dumping the apron - why is it acceptable to make that logical jump but not accept that he also left the apron at a specific place?

I don't think that that was my post but how is nothing pointing in the wrong direction more of a red herring than indicating "I went this way" when I really went the opposite direction?

I'm sorry I might be just thinking out loud.

That's fine by me

[The Good Michael]

Hey! Jews suck!!! get out
I love Suzi. Nobody does it better!
The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing


Any difference?

[GUT]

G'day Michael

They look the same to me ...

[The Good Michael]

Gut,

you are the man who will not be noticing nothing

Mike