Same motive = same killer

[Debra A]

I made my reply to Trevor last night via email as he sent me Dr Biggs reply the same way before he posted it to the boards.

I pointed out exactly the same things that Fisherman just has; that Dr Biggs is basically saying that it would be difficult to tell which cuts were made for practical reasons and which could be regarded as mutilation for 'fun.' but that cutting away flaps of flesh from the abdomen would constitute unnecessary cutting for no practical reason, other than the perpetrator thought that necessary to access the abdomen..

Regarding the removal of the limbs through the joints; I think Dr Biggs made a good point that removal through the joints would have been the quicker alternative in the LVP without the aid of power saws to cut directly through the bone and so may have been more common.
Nowadays removal of limbs through joints may be less common than sawing limbs off, so Dr Rutty's observation that limb removal through the joint may suggest someone accustomed to cutting up animals like a butcher makes sense in that context.

I have read chapters of the book Dr Biggs recommends. There is a chapter in there on the torso cases but the historian who wrote the summary of some of the cases didn't go in to very much details and didn't mention all the cases 87-89. He also used Mei Trow's book as a source.


Thanks Trevor and Dr Biggs.

[Debra A]

Hi Debs. I'm confused. About Elizabeth Jackson. When the report states that the left piece included the umbilicus, it's referring to Elizabeth's navel (or belly button), right? I'm trying to 'draw out' the shape of the flaps based on which portions of her body where reportedly attached to each side. And also-because if it is describing her navel, once again we have a killer who tends to skirt his cuts around the umbilicus/navel.

Hi Robert.
Jerry linked to a diagram he did on top of a diagram I made of the point of division of the skeleton. A few posts down from that I mention that the horizontal cuts to Elizabeth's abdomen started just above the navel on one side and below it on the other (basically following the line of the top of the uterus in a woman 24+ weeks advanced in pregnancy) this does seem to suggest that the initial mid line cut, if that's what there was, was cut around the navel, yes.

[Sam Flynn]

Re the removal of part of the flesh of the buttock, this coincided with the cutting of one of the strips of flesh from Jackson's abdomen, but in Kelly's case the damage was caused in conjunction with the cutting of a "saddle" of flesh starting with, and including, the flesh of the right thigh.

[Fisherman]

Re the removal of part of the flesh of the buttock, this coincided with the cutting of one of the strips of flesh from Jackson's abdomen, but in Kelly's case the damage was caused in conjunction with the cutting of a "saddle" of flesh starting with, and including, the flesh of the right thigh.

Yes, that is correct - but we nevertheless have part of the buttock removed in two cases. And in both cases, there is no discernable reason to take the buttock part away - if he only wantes the thigh flesh in one case or the abdominal flap in the other, it remains that he ADDED part of the buttock in BOTH cases.

So a similarity. Again.

[Sam Flynn]

I tried to draw the flaps here, http://forum.casebook.org/showthread...aps#post434293 (post #1561) I may have gone a bit too high on the topside, but you can get the idea.

I thought you'd gone very high (and wide) on the top side, Jerry, hence my response:

Pregnancy doesn't push the woman's navel up to the breastbone, and there's still the same distance from breastbone to belly-button, possibly a little more than usual, allowing for the swollen abdomen. If someone wanted to cut from just above the umbilicus, they'd still be a good 5 or 6 inches clear of the base of the sternum. If that's what happened in this case, it might explain why all the upper abdominal organs, excluding part of the stomach, remained inside the torso - in effect, the killer only emptied the "bottom half", conceivably to make sawing through the lumbar vertebræ a little less messy.

Edit: Come to think of it, clearing a path for the saw might have been one of the reasons, or perhaps the reason, why the killer decided to remove the baby.

[Fisherman]

I thought you'd gone very high (and wide) on the top side, Jerry, hence my response:

I would have gone for the lower part of the costal arch being the limit, but I don´t know that we can exclude Jerrys suggestion. Anyway, he offers learoom for perhaps having gone too high.

Whether the flaps as such had anything at all to do with Jacksons pregnancy is written in the stars. All we know is that they were cut away.

[Trevor Marriott]

So, Biggs points out that normally, dismemberment is about practical matters. And he adds that there may be additions serving the purpose of making an identification impossible.
So that is about the same thing: practicality.

This is all very uncontroversial.

Then he arrvies at my question and delivers the answer: There are people out there who like to "cut for fun", he says.
Okay. I don´t think that it is always for fun, it is a deeply rooted urge and a serious matter for the cutter, but let´s go with the doctor´s terminology anyway.
He then delivers the solution about what is the result when such a person is responsible for the cutting: "these tend to be recognisable as acts of true mutilation rather than dismemberment".

That´s probably very close to the truth. And indeed, we do see examples of "true mutilation" with the Torso killer, the opening up of the abdomen, the taking out of organs, the cutting away of the abdominal wall und so weiter.

So basically, I find that Biggs is in agreement with me - not all cases of dismemberment are caused by people who are likely to cut up the body for practical reasons only, and thus the appearance of the outcome can differ a whole lot.

What Biggs does not touch on is the dismemberment procedure as such. If we were to rule out any mutilation and ONLY go by the parting of the body, will differing mindsets produce different outcomes? Well, we already know that this is so, and we can see examples of it in the torso cases, where the parting of the body went to lenghts that are normally not seen in dismemberment cases.

But I am happy to have Biggs recognizing that urge killers who dismember are very likely to add inclusions of mutilation that go beyond any practical considerations. Which is the case in the torso matter, where AT LEAST a uterus, a heart and two lungs were plucked out, together with the abdominal walls.

Biggs tells us that it can be difficult to tell practical cases and urge cases apart, and that probably owes to how a practical killer may cut away parts that can give the identity away. So we may find mutilation on a practically dismembered body too. Which is true.
But no killer tries to hide the identity of a victim by taking out the heart and the lungs, so the torso cases are urge cases.

I also like how Biggs says “As for the abdominal flaps, there is nothing that would ‘necessitate’ removal of the abdominal wall in large flaps, as we are able to get all the bits and pieces we need out of the body though a single incision that removes no abdominal wall tissue (even in very well-padded individuals)."
This is what I have pointed out for the longest. I only wish Biggs had said something about how unusual the matter is.

At any rate, Trevor, thank you - worth waiting for.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[/QUOTE]

I have re-posted below some of Dr Biggs earlier comments with regards to the flapf of skin which seem to be regarded by some as part of a signature he clearly refutes this suggestion !

"I don't think the removal of 'flaps' of tissue can be taken as evidence of a 'signature' of the killer. By signature, I am including both the intentional (i.e. 'calling card') and unintentional (habit, MO) interpretations of the word. Essentially, these two individuals could have been killed by the same person, or by different individuals. There is no way of telling one scenario from the other based purely on the pattern of body dismemberment.

A person who is faced with a body to dispose of will often attempt to 'chop it up', either to make it easier to hide, easier to transport or easier to 'get rid of' in some way. What is quite striking is that even individuals with no prior knowledge will often end up doing a job that will look remarkably similar (in appearance afterwards) to that of another, completely unrelated case. It is not the presence of a common killer that is responsible for the similarities between cases, but the fact that bodies tend to have fairly obvious 'joins' to go for when attempting to reduce the size / bulk of a body.

Put simply, the pattern of removing the head and limbs from the torso +/- splitting the torso in half seems to be fairly 'normal' in cases of dismemberment. The handful of dismemberment cases that I have personally dealt with in my short career so far have all ended up looking fairly similar, but I would never have tried to claim that this represented some sort of common link between cases"

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

I have re-posted below some of Dr Biggs earlier comments with regards to the flapf of skin which seem to be regarded by some as part of a signature he clearly refutes this suggestion !

"I don't think the removal of 'flaps' of tissue can be taken as evidence of a 'signature' of the killer. By signature, I am including both the intentional (i.e. 'calling card') and unintentional (habit, MO) interpretations of the word. Essentially, these two individuals could have been killed by the same person, or by different individuals. There is no way of telling one scenario from the other based purely on the pattern of body dismemberment.

A person who is faced with a body to dispose of will often attempt to 'chop it up', either to make it easier to hide, easier to transport or easier to 'get rid of' in some way. What is quite striking is that even individuals with no prior knowledge will often end up doing a job that will look remarkably similar (in appearance afterwards) to that of another, completely unrelated case. It is not the presence of a common killer that is responsible for the similarities between cases, but the fact that bodies tend to have fairly obvious 'joins' to go for when attempting to reduce the size / bulk of a body.

Put simply, the pattern of removing the head and limbs from the torso +/- splitting the torso in half seems to be fairly 'normal' in cases of dismemberment. The handful of dismemberment cases that I have personally dealt with in my short career so far have all ended up looking fairly similar, but I would never have tried to claim that this represented some sort of common link between cases"

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

You HAVE published a quotation before, where it was obvious that Biggs thought we were speaking about flaps formed by accident. Evidently, this belongs to the same thinking.
Of course taking the abdominal wall away in large flaps can be part of a signature. But if it was, then the combined Ripper/Torso killer only did it in a minority of the cases, so my money is on it not being a necessary signature as such, but instead a very rare thing that was tied to his overall aims. Part of a signature, sort of, but not something he felt compelled to do every time.
Any which way, the flaps were NOT accidentally formed, Trevor!

[Sam Flynn]

Yes, that is correct - but we nevertheless have part of the buttock removed in two cases.

As the result of two entirely different actions. As to "no discernable reason", I'd argue the contrary in Kelly's case, in that her killer was bent on de-fleshing her entire undercarriage - that part of the buttock which was removed just happening to be in the middle of a cut which extended from the right thigh up to, and including, the entirety of the external genitalia. In Jackson's case, the damage to part of her buttock appears to have been an overrun of a cut designed to release one of the two strips of flesh from the lower abdomen.

So a similarity. Again.

No. Quite different in purpose and execution.

[Fisherman]

As the result of two entirely different actions. As to "no discernable reason", I'd argue the contrary in Kelly's case, in that her killer was bent on de-fleshing her entire undercarriage - that part of the buttock which was removed just happening to be in the middle of a cut which extended from the right thigh up to, and including, the entirety of the external genitalia. In Jackson's case, the damage to part of her buttock appears to have been an overrun of a cut designed to release one of the two strips of flesh from the lower abdomen.
No. Quite different in purpose and execution.

You can argue all you want to that the killer was "bent on de-fleshing her entire undercarriage" (which makes you wonder why he didn´t do just that, but instead settled for part of the right buttock only...). That is just another personal interpretation, and I don´t put any stock in them. I look at the similarities only, and I don´t try to explain them - or explain them away.

You write that in Jacksons case, the damage to the part of the buttock would be a result of an "overrun". That is a strange thing to say. For the killer to have been able to cut the abdominal flaps away, he must have had Jackson on her back. So why would he reach in underneath her to cut?
Well, that will owe to how the flaps were not flaps of abdominal meat only! They also included the mons veneris and the labium - meaning that the killer mutilated the genital area just like he mutilated that area on Kelly. And the external genital parts were attached to the flaps. That was why he also cut away part of the buttock - because what we call abdominal flaps were also genital flaps.
He had an interest in that region, and when you do, the buttocks may well come into play too.

Both Kelly and Jackson had damage done to their buttocks. Try as we might, that does not go away because we can come up with a possible explanation for it or loftily claim that we know the "purpose". And the same goes for the rest of the dozen or so similarities. It takes a fascinating mind to come up with alternative explanations for all of them. Just as it takes a lot not to acknowledge that the Torso killer was a sexual mutilator.

[Trevor Marriott]

You HAVE published a quotation before, where it was obvious that Biggs thought we were speaking about flaps formed by accident. Evidently, this belongs to the same thinking.
Of course taking the abdominal wall away in large flaps can be part of a signature. But if it was, then the combined Ripper/Torso killer only did it in a minority of the cases, so my money is on it not being a necessary signature as such, but instead a very rare thing that was tied to his overall aims. Part of a signature, sort of, but not something he felt compelled to do every time.
Any which way, the flaps were NOT accidentally formed, Trevor!

Are you for real? We have a forensic pathologist who destroys your suggestion that the flaps removed from these torsos were part of the killers signature, yet you still want to argue against the expert

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Sam Flynn]

Any which way, the flaps were NOT accidentally formed, Trevor!

The flaps themselves might not have been accidentally formed, but the damage to the flesh adjoining the flaps could easily have been incidental to their purpose, in much the same way as the (non-flap) cut to Eddowes' abdomen just happened to bisect the ensiform cartilage of the sternum. In like manner, the damage to part of Jackson's buttock could easily have been incidental to the cut whose true purpose was to cut one of the strips of flesh from her lower abdomen.

[Sam Flynn]

You can argue all you want to that the killer was "bent on de-fleshing her entire undercarriage" which makes you wonder why he didn´t do just that

Wrong. He did precisely that, as can be confirmed from reading Bond's description of the wounds: "The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation & part of the right buttock". If you're going to cut a single saddle of flesh from the right up to, and including, the entirety of the external genitalia, you have effectively de-fleshed the undercarriage, as the gruesome closeup photograph of Kelly's genital area clearly shows, and part of the right buttock is inevitably going to suffer as a result. In order to achieve his aim of giving Kelly the "ultimate Brazilian", part of the buttock was sacrificed. Part of Jackson's buttock was almost certainly damaged in a similar accidental manner, although the aim of her killer was evidently quite different.

In either case, there is zero reason to suppose that the perpetrators were thinking to themselves, "I... must... include... part... of... the... right... buttock", anymore than Eddowes' killer was thinking, "I... must... cut... the... xiphoid... process... in... half".

[Debra A]

Are you for real? We have a forensic pathologist who destroys your suggestion that the flaps removed from these torsos were part of the killers signature, yet you still want to argue against the expert

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Trevor, Dr Biggs seems to be answering the questions from the point of view of what expertise was demonstrated by removing flaps of flesh. He says that it shows no medical skill or knowledge, which is actually a big point against your suggestion that organs were removed for anatomical purposes by medical men in the torso cases where organs were absent.

[Debra A]

The flaps themselves might not have been accidentally formed, but the damage to the flesh adjoining the flaps could easily have been incidental to their purpose, in much the same way as the (non-flap) cut to Eddowes' abdomen just happened to bisect the ensiform cartilage of the sternum. In like manner, the damage to part of Jackson's buttock could easily have been incidental to the cut whose true purpose was to cut one of the strips of flesh from her lower abdomen.

The damage to the buttock seems to have been caused by continuing the abdominal 'flap' cutting down through the genitals and not knowing quite where or how to end that cut.