Same motive = same killer

[Elamarna]

Quite possibly, yes.

Suggestions?

None unfortunately Christer, its the nature of message boards that the post can become isolated from each other and that the written word lacks the subtext of the spoken word.


Steve

[Elamarna]

Nobody has been able to come up with anything like these cases, in terms of similarities, and that is proof enough to tell us that they are two very rare series containing the same very rare details.

That is enough - or so it should be.

Dear Christer,
It seems such obviously is enoigh for you, however it seems such is not true for all.

Something you have to accept i am afraid.


Steve

[Fisherman]

Hi Harry,

I actually agree.
I have said many times that while i do not rule out a link, i see nothing presented so far that can in my opinion be seen as suggested the "links" are significant or as Christer calls them "true".
We should be able to agree to disagree should we not?
But when you get told agree of you are "bias" which we all are to varing degrees or "ignorant " such an opotunity is denied us.
Not zure if you saw my post on Monday, but on Saturday i was involved in a meeting of the Whitechapel Society which discussed this very issue. The case for a connection was made by Ed Stow, who is just as convinced of Lechmere as is Christer.
And there was none of this hostility present.

Maybe it the very nature of message boards (isolation from the others in the debate) which leads to this outcome.

Steve

Quite possibly, yes.

Suggestions?

[Fisherman]

Frank, I am going to need time to answer you, so later, my friend!

[Fisherman]

"As for Fish, I see him as doubling-down on his convictions to make a point against mass scepticism"

I think you'll find that Fisherman has always come out with all guns blazing, Harry - it's his style. (That's not a criticism, by the way.)

Fisherman is normally met by a barrage of insults and belittling posts, some of them saying that "Fisherman is twisting the facts and overgeneralizing! He CAN NOT be trusted, he misleads and lies!"

Not sure of this (and I don´t want to be pushy, of course!), but that MAY just have a little something to do with how I post...? Just a thought, mind you.

[Fisherman]

It's a shame that these debates become so adversarial in nature, usually on account of posters airing old grievances. The possibility of a connection between the Ripper & Thames Torso series should be an interesting and thought-provoking discussion if you approach it with an open-mind. There's nothing in the rulebook that says that a serial killer can't deviate in their MO & signature, particularly when we have no idea of the circumstances they were operating under. I know it's self-evident but it bears repeating that since the perpetrator(s) of these crimes were never caught, none of us can make definitive statements on the killer's bio. As for Fish, I see him as doubling-down on his convictions to make a point against mass scepticism, that's all.

Look at it this way, multi-killer theorists have tried to separate the canonical five because of perceived discrepancies in skill-level and behaviour. The Ripper took the uterus from Chapman. He took the uterus AND a kidney from Eddowes. Why the kidney? He removed the uterus (along with everything else) from Mary Kelly, but only took the heart this time. This begs the question whether the uteri bore significance to the killer or not? What changed for him to leave it behind this time? Unless it wasn't the same killer behind the other Whitechapel victims, but what are the odds of that? I don't think we can take anything for granted and presume that the killer should have always done 'x' because of 'y'. In the case of the Ripper & Torsos, what we have are two series of gruesome murders with geographical overlap that betray a need to dehumanize and deconstruct their prey, be it via mutilation and/or dismemberment. That doesn't mean they were performed by the same hand, but it doesn't mean the possibility should be disregarded either.

WHAT? A thoughtful and good post? Out here? Really, Harry!

[Fisherman]

There you go again. If someone doesn't buy your interpretation it's because they are "dumb" and "playing the fool".

Well, not buying my "interpretation" in this case is suggesting that uteri removals, cutting out of hearts and the taking away of abdominal walls in sections is perhaps not uncommon at all.

What I am suggesting is that if we know quite well that these things ARE rare - and I think we may agree on it? - then why propose the opposite as a possibility?

[Fisherman]

Its ok for you to say there is so strong a certainty that those disageeing are bias or ignorant such implies it is a fact!
yet the opposing view is only a possability.
You trying to teach me, the degree of arrogance the implies is truly astonishing.

Steve

You are not expressing yourself very clearly, Steve. But if you are saying that it is wrong to say that the similarities point clearly to one killer whereas the dissimilarities do very little to dispell that notion, then you are mistaken.
It is the exact thing we can learn from the details - right (almost certainly) or wrong (only a freak possibility).

[Fisherman]

No there are links which are significant (true) or insignificant(false)

It is for those proposing a link to prove their significance, something you have failed to do. You have not proven a single "link" is significant.

As for misleading, another example of the pot calling the kettle black.


Steve

Nobody has been able to come up with anything like these cases, in terms of similarities, and that is proof enough to tell us that they are two very rare series containing the same very rare details.

That is enough - or so it should be.

[Fisherman]

Didnt you, very recently, threaten to report Harry for personal insults?

I did not "threaten" him - I told him that I would report him if he continues his personal insults. I stand by that.

The sentence you quote above was a general phrasing, like "you should never throw stones in glass houses".

It does not fall under the same category, therefore.

Gareth led on that the taking of uteri, hearts and abdomonal walls was perhaps not odd or unusual at all, and so I spoke in general terms of how not to do try and make it look as if you are not aware of given matters.

As an aside, I never thought that Gareth was dumb. I wrote as much a few pages back, commenting on him and you as very able and knowledgeable posters. That stands.

...and it comes with raised expectations on my behalf.

[harry]

Fisherman,
You wrote,'No we do not have to resort to court terms,since no court case is possible.He's dead you see"What a strange statement to make,seeing as you rely heavily on a court term of murder(In the torso cases),expressed by a court. Why does Cross being dead cancel out the need for proof?
Talk about being dumb,you head the list.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Never make yourself out as dumber than you are. If you are a bit dumb from the outset, that can be disastrous

Didnt you, very recently, threaten to report Harry for personal insults?

[Elamarna]

It's a shame that these debates become so adversarial in nature, usually on account of posters airing old grievances. The possibility of a connection between the Ripper & Thames Torso series should be an interesting and thought-provoking discussion if you approach it with an open-mind. There's nothing in the rulebook that says that a serial killer can't deviate in their MO & signature, particularly when we have no idea of the circumstances they were operating under. I know it's self-evident but it bears repeating that since the perpetrator(s) of these crimes were never caught, none of us can make definitive statements on the killer's bio. As for Fish, I see him as doubling-down on his convictions to make a point against mass scepticism, that's all.

Look at it this way, multi-killer theorists have tried to separate the canonical five because of perceived discrepancies in skill-level and behaviour. The Ripper took the uterus from Chapman. He took the uterus AND a kidney from Eddowes. Why the kidney? He removed the uterus (along with everything else) from Mary Kelly, but only took the heart this time. This begs the question whether the uteri bore significance to the killer or not? What changed for him to leave it behind this time? Unless it wasn't the same killer behind the other Whitechapel victims, but what are the odds of that? I don't think we can take anything for granted and presume that the killer should have always done 'x' because of 'y'. In the case of the Ripper & Torsos, what we have are two series of gruesome murders with geographical overlap that betray a need to dehumanize and deconstruct their prey, be it via mutilation and/or dismemberment. That doesn't mean they were performed by the same hand, but it doesn't mean the possibility should be disregarded either.

Hi Harry,

I actually agree.
I have said many times that while i do not rule out a link, i see nothing presented so far that can in my opinion be seen as suggested the "links" are significant or as Christer calls them "true".
We should be able to agree to disagree should we not?
But when you get told agree of you are "bias" which we all are to varing degrees or "ignorant " such an opotunity is denied us.
Not zure if you saw my post on Monday, but on Saturday i was involved in a meeting of the Whitechapel Society which discussed this very issue. The case for a connection was made by Ed Stow, who is just as convinced of Lechmere as is Christer.
And there was none of this hostility present.

Maybe it the very nature of message boards (isolation from the others in the debate) which leads to this outcome.



Steve

[FrankO]

Frank?

Yup, it’s me, Christer.

Anyways, you are welcome to the shooting gallery!

Thanks! Although I'm not sure that I will remain for long.

Here, you are presupposing that you know his driving force, Frank, and I am anything but sure that you do.

I do not claim to know what his motivation was, I don’t even think the Ripper would be able to tell what it was, but I do think that serial killers have dark fantasies that drive them and that they will try to live out these fantasies to the fullest, depending on the circumstances. Subsequently, what is found at the crime scene will give the police/us an idea of what this fantasy looked like. Organised serial killers will try to create the best circumstances, which boils down to trying to kill in privacy; disorganised serial killers don’t bother to try and create the right circumstances and will settle for less or very little privacy.

You also predispose that he would have gone further with the Ripper victims given the time, but I don´t think that necessarily applies either.

That would depend on the fantasy the Ripper was following, but looking at the Ripper crimes, I do see a pattern that is followed and I don’t think anyone can deny this pattern.

But what drove him? Can we know?

We can be sure that he was driven by the dark fantasy that was created in his mind years before he killed.

How would he know that he had little time? He would have time until somebody came along, and that could be ten seconds or ten minutes or half an hour.

He couldn’t know how much time he would have with each victim, but I’m sure you will agree that he couldn’t count on much, meaning a few minutes or the time a knee-trembler generally took. Therefore, he at least did what he wanted the most.

With Eddowes, he took the uterus and the kidney, and carved the face and cut the nosetip off. Since no reports were made about faeces in the facial wounds, it seems they preceded the abdominal carving. Why do you think that was? And why did he take a kidney too if a uterus was his desire?

Even though he may have cut her face before he cut her abdomen, which I think may have taken only 10 or 20 seconds, it didn’t refrain him from cutting out the uterus through the opening he had cut in the abdomen. Furthermore, I don’t claim that cutting out the uterus was his only desire. I only know that, when he had little time, he went for that part of the female body that (out in the streets) was under the skirts, which he did in 4 cases out of the 4 he mutilated and he cut out the uterus in 3 of these cases. When he had more time, he did more (as his fantasy comprised of more than only opening the abdomen and cutting out the uterus). So, in the case of Eddowes, he must have had more time.

So what was this desire? What did it stipulate? And why?

What his desire was exactly, we can’t know and I don’t claim to know. I only go by what the Ripper did to his victims, with Kelly giving the best idea of what he wanted. My personal idea is that, on the one hand, he was very interested in the female body, very curious about it, while, on the other, he felt a fierce rage towards women, which resulted in what the Ripper did to his victims. That the cutting was directed towards those parts of the body that the Ripper found sexually significant is to be expected, according to Vernon Geberth. He is a retired Lieutenant-Commander of the New York City Police Department with over 40 years of law enforcement experience and he has written a number of books on murder, including cases of post-mortem mutilation.

I think that the Ripper murders were slayings where he was not worried about being meticulous or exact because he knew that he would probably be pressed for time. So he set about things quickly and produced sloppier results. But the gist was the same - disassemble the woman into parts in one way or another.

I agree that, if Torso man and the Ripper are to be one and the same, the Ripper murders would be sloppier and less meticulous. But not different in the way Kelly differed from the Torso victims. Furthermore, I don’t agree with your view that he would disassemble the woman into parts one way or the other. The Ripper crimes give us a pattern. I’m not sure the Torso murders do and if they do, they give a different pattern.

He strived, if I am correct, after a result that could only reach near perfection if he had time and seclusion enough to cut meticulously and exactly, the way he did when he took the face off the 1873 victim.

That doesn’t make sense. If you’re saying that what the Torso victims looked like was as close as he could get to his fantasy, then why did he do less to them than what was done to Kelly while he had at least about as much time the Ripper spent with Kelly and, probably, more?

Not less - quicker.

No, definitely less, in the sense that less time = less time to do as he pleased, less time to enjoy, less/no light to see what he was doing and enjoy that. This is a big difference with the Torso series.

Kelly was more, not less, remember.

I do remember, Christer. But the Ripper couldn’t know beforehand that he would have more time and privacy with Kelly. Unless we assume that he knew she got a place of her own. But it turned out that he did have more time with Kelly and it strikes me that he did indeed do more to her than what was done to the torso victims.

And your thinking only works if you have made a correct identification of his driving force. I don´t think you have.

That’s not true. It is as good as a simple fact that the Ripper had less time with his victims (apart from perhaps Kelly) than Torso man had with his.

There are many examples of killers with a narcissistic thinking who have gotten more and more careless, taking larger and larger risks.

You mean killers who first kill 4 or 5 women in privacy over a period of years, then kill 3 or 4 out in the streets (with perhaps one lucky shot indoors) in only a couple of months, only then to return to killing at a slower pace in privacy? If you do mean this, then please give me some examples.

I would have been more worried about how he goes back to the torso mode instead of developing an increasingly risky MO altogether.

That’s another thing that has me wondering.

But basically, what you are asking is "Can a killer really do it like that?", and the answer is "Yes, it is obvious since the siilarities give him away."

I’m not claiming that a serial couldn’t do it like that, I’m suggesting that it would be rare.

You say cases where a killer goes from security to risktaking are not to be expected.

Not in the way (or very similar to how) it was done in the Torso and Ripper series (if they are to have been committed by one and the same man), no.

How expected is it to find two killer in the same town and time with so many baffling similarities, Frank?

Based on statistics it isn’t to be expected. But I wonder how much stock we can put into statistics. If you only list the similarities or lump them together in one sentence, you might regard them as “so many” and “baffling”, but when you look at it the way I do, it becomes less so.

The cutting of the soft part of the neck and throat, the opening of the abdomen, the taking of the heart, the taking of the uterus, the taking away of the abdominal wall in flaps, the vanishing rings leaving wrench marks on the fingers, the commonality in how no obvious torture was applied , all of these things

Ah, there’s that list/lumping in one sentence again…

- how do you explain them? Coincidence?

I would explain them by two different killers (although I’m not convinced that all the torso victims were the work of one man, but that’s perhaps because I may not know everything there is to know about the 1873, 1874 and 1884 cases).

Cheers,
Frank

[Sam Flynn]

"As for Fish, I see him as doubling-down on his convictions to make a point against mass scepticism"

I think you'll find that Fisherman has always come out with all guns blazing, Harry - it's his style. (That's not a criticism, by the way.)