Same motive = same killer

[Fisherman]

Christer,

The part that I don't quite get about this particular torso (Tottenham Court Road) is why go to all the trouble to conceal identification and then take the risky move of depositing the parts along a major roadway in the middle of West London? Why not just find a spot and bury them or throw them into the river?

If I am correct, then he never worried a bit about the identification part. If he did, then just as you say, he was acting in a very strange way.

y guess is that he wanted as much recognition as possible, and that he took great care to ensure that he got it.

[Sam Flynn]

So, why would the killer have packed the parts in a disinfectant?

Carbolic acid/phenol is corrosive, and can cause serious skin burns if not handled correctly.

[Fisherman]

I admit, I lol'ed at that comment.

Jimmy Durante's nose may have taken a wheelbarrow to move?

Maybe a barge on the river - well insured - would have been ready to give it a try?

[Fisherman]

I'm actually serious, Christer.
I think a theory on the the death of Elizabeth Jackson that is based around the framework of genuine victims of Victorian morality, illegitimacy, criminal abortion, infanticide and poverty would be interesting. It would be factual with the odd little bit of speculation on some research loose ends.

Oh....kay? I wasn´t expecting that, but I´d be interested to see how it is more specifically outlined!

[Fisherman]

...Or I could have been deliberately sent here to kill the thread off.
In days past all it took was to mention Mary Jane Kelly's pubic hair. Scott will tell you.

What a privileged little community we are. The fewest get to discuss pubic hair nowadays.

[Elamarna]

Carbolic acid/phenol is corrosive, and can cause serious skin burns if not handled correctly.

Depends on the concentration used.

Steve

[Sam Flynn]

Depends on the concentration used.

Of course. I had written that initially, but the sentence that came out was rather cumbersome, so I kept it simple.

Besides, phenol really is nasty stuff if you're not careful.

[jerryd]

Just a few thoughts on Tottenham Court Road. On Jtr forums link http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=7919 there was a discussion on the case including Debra. On the newspaper reports it mentions the appearance of lime on the body also that the Doctor thought that an abortion had been attempted or completed. looking at old case files i came across this
When Henry Wainwright shot an ‘inconvenient’ mistress in London in 1874. He interred her remains packed in a half-weight of Chlorinated lime and stored it in his Whitechapel workshop. A year went past until he had to move the packages from the premises of get found out. As he was attempting to move the packages, his landlord appeared and offered to give him a hand with the hand tied packages down the stairs and in to the boot of the car, trying not to seem suspicious Wainwright agreed and told the landlord to mind the parcels while he went out to open the boot. By this time the landlord had noticed a liquid leaking from one of the parcels and so had a peek inside one of them. To his horror the package contained a human arm and hand attached,he quickly covered it up again before Wainwright came back. He was then able to go straight to the police who arrested Wainwright trying to dispose of the remains elsewhere.
So well did the lime preserve poor Harriet Lanes (Her name) corpse that even one year later the physicians were able to prove her identity by a triumphant twelve points of similarity; twelve points that sent Wainwright straight to the gallows.
Could the killer have made the same mistake and used some form of lime to try and get rid of the body, also could the lime have burnt the eyes out and maybe even the tip of the nose ? Maybe, maybe not. Could the killer have panicked when he realized the lime hadn't worked and tried to disfigure the facial figures as to avoid ID ? Jerry says himself - The part that I don't quite get about this particular torso (Tottenham Court Road) is why go to all the trouble to conceal identification and then take the risky move of depositing the parts along a major roadway in the middle of West London? . maybe because of the panicking and the need to get rid of the body quickly after the lime didn't work.

DK,

Addressing a few points you make I'd like to say this. You are correct when you say the killer might have made a mistake. Quick Lime would be the better choice to dissolve the flesh and destroy the body. The use of Chloride of Lime or Condy's fluid would mask the smell temporarily. A medical man would know this. If the body was exposed to carbolic acid it would have dissolved the body more than what we see in the TCR case. Some of the parts of the TCR case were sprinkled with CoL. Was the body removed from a container (possibly containing carbolic acid) to another location where they were sprinkled with CoL to mask the smell? The Whitehall torso may have been exposed to Condy's Fluid, by the way. It was mentioned twice at the inquest. Once, stating it may have been used by the perpetrator and second it was said to have been used after the torso was taken to the mortuary by the doctors.

The Wainwright case was mentioned during the Whitehall case as being "on all fours" with that case. The meaning of that, in my opinion, was to imply the perpetrator may have needed to get rid of the body due to an eviction or something similar to the Wainwright case. Wainwright had Harriet Lane stuffed in the floorboards for near a year and then they were being evicted. People were complaining of the smell in their warehouse. Incidentally, Thomas Wainwright served as an accessory to the crime with his brother Henry. Thomas was released early from his sentence and was presumably free in during all of these later torsos. He lived in Parsley Green in the early 1870's which was at the end of town the 1873 and 1874 torso's were found. No proof on where he was after his prison release, though. Another brother, William Wainwright, continued the family brush making business in Whitechapel and later committed suicide (IIRC 1892) by blowing his brains out on a train to Dalston. It was mentioned he might have been involved in the Harriet Lane murder, but again, never proven. The Wainwrights had a contract at one point with the Metropolitan Police to provide them Cholride of Lime, by the way.

Last, I would add that a blood soaked portmanteau was found about a month before the TCR torso find in Clarendon Gardens, Maida Vale. It was large and contained what appeared to be coagulated blood and flesh. It was thought to contain the body of a young child that had been found dead. It was shown not to be the case. The ends of it had been removed and it disappeared before it could be examined by the police. The location at Clarendon Gardens was about 2 blocks from the Regents Canal near Warwick Lock. Warwick Lock was said to be a possible dumping spot for parts of the Rainham torso.

FYI- I don't really have too much stock in the Wainwrights anymore. Although, I did, and I can't rule them out really. The cutting of the body was done with an axe in their case and a fine tooth saw in the later cases. I won't get into Frederick Wildbore in this thread but I still hold him the highest on my list for the torso deeds.

[jerryd]

Wonder how easy Carbolic Acid would have been to obtain?

curious

Chloride of Lime and other disinfectants were used by the police to clean up blood from crime scenes.

So, why would the killer have packed the parts in a disinfectant?

curious

To mask the smell.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Jerry
Thank you for the interesting info. Will try to read more on the Wainwright case and TCR when i can .

[curious]

Chloride of Lime and other disinfectants were used by the police to clean up blood from crime scenes.



To mask the smell.

Thanks, Jerry and Sam.

Never considered the torso murders before, but I'm seeing this as a logistical nightmare for someone to experience a few minutes pleasure . . . .

What a freedom the Ripper murders were compared to the torso murders.

Were the Chloride of Lime, carbolic acid and other disinfectants sold as liquids, powder or some other form?

curious

[Joshua Rogan]

Never considered the torso murders before, but I'm seeing this as a logistical nightmare for someone to experience a few minutes pleasure . . . .

What a freedom the Ripper murders were compared to the torso murders

That's an interesting angle, I'd never thought of it like that before.
What do you think that says about the likelihood of the two series being related?

[curious]

That's an interesting angle, I'd never thought of it like that before.
What do you think that says about the likelihood of the two series being related?

I haven't thought anything through, yet.

However:

Just getting the supplies and location together for the torso murders indicates someone with some means, don't you think? Most likely even his own transportation?

On the other hand --- let's say the urge strikes you and you haven't prepared . . .

Successfully committing a Ripper murder might be very exhilarating. BUT why in the world EVER go back to the confines of a torso murder?

And, more importantly, could a person who needed the methodical, well-prepared torso-type murders even be capable of a Ripper murder? He might possess the physical skills but would he possess the emotional and mental skills?

curious

[Fisherman]

Successfully committing a Ripper murder might be very exhilarating. BUT why in the world EVER go back to the confines of a torso murder?

And, more importantly, could a person who needed the methodical, well-prepared torso-type murders even be capable of a Ripper murder? He might possess the physical skills but would he possess the emotional and mental skills?

curious

If I may?

My take on things is actually that the Ripper murders may have been sort of "Torso Murder Light" strikes. "Light" in the capacity that the killer at these instances would never be able to at will decide what he would do, how long time he would spend doing it, he would not be as meticulous etc; he simply would not have the time and he would not be able to fetch a saw and so on. Therefore, even if there is a very real possibility that the Ripper deeds exhilarated the killer, just as you suggest, I think that returning to the Torso style of killing had it´s advantages.

As for how you reason that the Torso killer was methodical and well prepared, I think we all have a tendency to reason like that - but I am not at all sure that it holds any water.
What if the Torso murders were all spur of the moment strikes? What if he went out with no intention to kill, stumbled over a woman who go the urge going and simply took it from there?

If this was so - and it could well have been - then the murders may have been very much aquainted to those of the Ripper series. Seeing a woman who arouses you, chatting her up "Hello dear, how about taking a walk with me?" - and when the "Torso lair" is within reach he takes the woman there, but when it is not, he strikes in the open street.

There is no reason to think that it could not have gone down like that. Just as there is no reason to accept that these killers must have been of differing mindsets. That is something we add ourselves, and for understandable reasons.

But once we realize that victims of both series suffered the same unusual damages to a very large degree, we may need to take that into account and look at the killers from a different perspective.

[curious]

I think that returning to the Torso style of killing had it´s advantages.
---------------------

As for how you reason that the Torso killer was methodical and well prepared, I think we all have a tendency to reason like that - but I am not at all sure that it holds any water.
What if the Torso murders were all spur of the moment strikes? What if he went out with no intention to kill, stumbled over a woman who go the urge going and simply took it from there?

I can see some of the advantages the torso-style may have afforded the killer -- particularly the time to work at his leisure and to savor his moments. However, a torso killing required an incredible amount of work -- sheer hard manual labor -- and incredible risk.

---------------------------------

Perhaps the first time he might just have taken it from there. I have serious doubts he would not have organized himself after the massive undertaking of that first expedition. No, I think he would have learned and prepared, because he needed quite a list:

** He had to have a space.

** He had to have the tools necessary to inflict the damage: knife, saw, perhaps a hanging beam for the blood to drain; did he also need something to catch the blood? Tables, etc. to hold first the body, then the parts.

** He had to have a container in which to pack down the body parts (the size of the container might had been responsible for the smaller size of some of parts than of most dis-memberments). I'm thinking about the size of a hogshead. What do you see?

** He had to be able to obtain enough Lime/Carbolic Acid or whatever he used to cut down the smell. He had to cover the entire body. So, how was it purchased? Was it in a solid form that he mixed with water? How did it arrive? How did he learn to work with it in order not to harm himself? Does his use of it indicate a possible occupation for the killer?

**Then, the disposal . . . Imagine how that would had to have been accomplished. Can you see a man carrying a large, paper-wrapped parcel through the streets -- or did fish porters, etc. do that on a daily basis? Even so, would it not have been required that he be someone often seen hauling about big parcels?

** paper, string

** Would his own transportation have been a requirement for the torso killer?

I think the individual killings could have been spur of the moment -- HOWEVER certain things were required to be on hand in advance of even the first killing -- the space for example, and the tools -- OR the MEANS with which to purchase the tools.

He had to have access to quite a string of items to have ever accomplished the first killing, let alone multiple killings.

The torso-killer had to have some means . . . The Ripper was required to have only a knife.

curious