Practicality or madness?

[Abby Normal]

The torso series has not been shown to be a series dating back to the 1870s. So the length of time is currently uncertain.

That said, I and others have stated that the overlap in time 1887-1889 is the most convincing argument so far for a link between the torsos and the ripper.

Hi Kattrup
yes I agree but that they both ended at the same time is also a big one for me. I have not seen anyone come up with a credible explanation for THAT similarity other than just another big fat coincidence.
Don't you find it at least intriguing that these two series, just happen to end at the same time?

[Kattrup]

Don't you find it at least intriguing that these two series, just happen to end at the same time?

Yes, I just said that the most compelling argument is the closeness in time
So yeah, worthy of consideration.

[The Baron]

I have a genuine question for you Fisherman,

If Lechmere was proved to be not the murderer of any Torso victim.

Would you still believe the Theory of the one preparator?



The Baron

[Fisherman]

I have a genuine question for you Fisherman,

If Lechmere was proved to be not the murderer of any Torso victim.

Would you still believe the Theory of the one preparator?



The Baron

Well, a genuine question of course deserves a genuine answer: If Charles Lechmere was conclusively proven not to be the murderer of any of the torso victims, I would nevertheless say that the series will in all probability, and beyond reasonable doubt, have the same perpetrator.
Arguably, if you have followed the thread, you must have seen that I am not leaving myself any legroom whatsoever for any other course of action.

So hereīs a genuine question for you: Do you believe me when giving you this answer? Because if you were never going to believe me, I would like to know why you asked your question.

At the end of the day, I genuinely believe that your question is solely of academic interest, because I do not believe that Lechmere will ever be proven not to be the murderer of any of the torso victims.

[The Baron]

So hereīs a genuine question for you: Do you believe me when giving you this answer? Because if you were never going to believe me, I would like to know why you asked your question.

At the end of the day, I genuinely believe that your question is solely of academic interest, because I do not believe that Lechmere will ever be proven not to be the murderer of any of the torso victims.

Of course I believe you Fish and I always do.

I am asking on an academic ground, and I think, even if Lechmere was proved to be not the torsoman, that doesn't make the case against him as Jack the ripper any weaker or stronger.


The Baron

[Fisherman]

Of course I believe you Fish and I always do.

I am asking on an academic ground, and I think, even if Lechmere was proved to be not the torsoman, that doesn't make the case against him as Jack the ripper any weaker or stronger.


The Baron

We differ in that way, then - because in my world, if it could be proven that Lechmere was not the torso killer, then it follows that he was not the Ripper either. The man who laid Liz Jackson on her back and proceeded to cut her open from chest to groin, who cut away her abdominal walls in large flaps, who took her uterus out and who took her ring from her finger is the same man who did the exact same things, some of them weird and rare to an extremely high degree, to Annie Chapman nine months earlier in the exact same town. Logic, history, statistics, common sense and not least criminal psychology dictates it.

[Abby Normal]

Yes, I just said that the most compelling argument is the closeness in time
So yeah, worthy of consideration.

thanks K . ill take it!

[Abby Normal]

personally i feel that torsoman and the ripper were probably the same man.
also, there is little doubt in my mind that mackenzie is a ripper victim. lets assume for a moment she is.

so within a couple if months we have two women murdered, there bodies left lying in the streets of WC who have been been post mortem mutilated and with a vertical gash to the midsection. after these murders BOTH series seemingly end.
whats the chances that two different men did this and happened to stop at the same time?? did one die and the other move away? did they both get arrested? did one simply get burned out and stop and did the other get committed to an asylum?
you see i give these examples to try and illustrate the crazy chances that two serial killers operating in the same area just happened to stop at the same time.
it kind of boggles my mind that this could just be a coincidence.

[etenguy]

The man who laid Liz Jackson on her back and proceeded to cut her open from chest to groin, who cut away her abdominal walls in large flaps, who took her uterus out and who took her ring from her finger is the same man who did the exact same things, some of them weird and rare to an extremely high degree, to Annie Chapman nine months earlier in the exact same town.

I wonder whether Elizabeth Jackson was subject to the abdomen being cut away in large flaps due to being 7-8 months pregnant and the killer needing a larger space than he might otherwise to remove the uterus after death. Also, there would be more skin to get out of the way and so the similarity with Chapman might be a case of practicality rather than a specific way the killer mutilated a body.

It also makes me wonder whether she was prostituting herself at that time. She might not heed medical advice not to have sex at 7 - 8 months pregnant, but it would be uncomfortable for her and I am not sure how many men would choose an obviously pregnant prostitute. If she was not seeking clients, then we are less able to conclude that the torso killer was targeting active prostitutes (as the ripper seems to have done). Given we do not know who the other torso victims were, we can only speculate as to whether they were prostitutes.

[The Baron]

personally i feel that torsoman and the ripper were probably the same man.
also, there is little doubt in my mind that mackenzie is a ripper victim. lets assume for a moment she is.

so within a couple if months we have two women murdered, there bodies left lying in the streets of WC who have been been post mortem mutilated and with a vertical gash to the midsection. after these murders BOTH series seemingly end.
whats the chances that two different men did this and happened to stop at the same time?? did one die and the other move away? did they both get arrested? did one simply get burned out and stop and did the other get committed to an asylum?
you see i give these examples to try and illustrate the crazy chances that two serial killers operating in the same area just happened to stop at the same time.
it kind of boggles my mind that this could just be a coincidence.

There is a very simple explanation for this:

The Police!

Both killers have to stop or they will be caught.



The Baron

[Fisherman]

I wonder whether Elizabeth Jackson was subject to the abdomen being cut away in large flaps due to being 7-8 months pregnant and the killer needing a larger space than he might otherwise to remove the uterus after death. Also, there would be more skin to get out of the way and so the similarity with Chapman might be a case of practicality rather than a specific way the killer mutilated a body.

Do you also wonder if the killer cut from sternum to groin IN THIS CASE for other reasons than what was the case in the Ripper murders? And that he took the ring from Jacksons finger IN THIS CASE for other reasons than the ones making Chapmans killer do so? And do you reason that IN THIS CASE, the absense of any pre-mortem torture is down to other reasons than the ones the Ripper had for not applying torture? And are you of the meaning that IN THIS CASE, a prostitute was chosen for other reasons than the reasons making the Ripper kill prostitutes? And do you thing that IN THIS CASE, the killer had other reasons for taking the heart out than the Ripper had in the Kelly case? And would you say that IN THIS CASE, it is just a coincidence that the killer who happened to do the same things as the Ripper, but for all the different reasons, just happened to be active within walking distance of his fellow eviscerator/mutilator? And in the same time frame?

You see, etenguy, we can always suggest differing reasons for what happened to the victims within these series. We may, for example, suggest that the torso killer had a penchant for long, straight and clean cuts, and that was what caused him to cut from sternum to groin, whereas the Ripper wanted to inflict maximum damage, and that was why HE - it just so happens - did the same thing. But once we engage in such hobbies, we put ourselves at immense risk to miss out on an infinitely more credible, likely and logical explanation: similarities are normally there for quite logical reasons.

My own take is one where we have a killer with an anatomical curiosity. We have a killer who enjoys cutting a body up in pieces, a killer who used the bodies of his vicitims as a box of Lego parts: "Look what I can do, I can take THIS part out, I can take THAT part out, I can take that arm off and leave that leg on!" It is, of course, all about control, as is regularly the case with sexual serial killers. And if I am correct, then I would say that such a man would regard a pregnant prostitute a gift from above, a prize, because she would provide him with the opportunity to cut out a very small human being from within the womb of another human being. It is very likely the pinnacle of anatomical exercises for an eviscerator with this kind of interest.

Now, as it goes, you may be correct: he may have felt "Jesus, to get that uterus out, I may need to make a larger opening in her!" (which is not true, by the way)

And I may be right: he may have reasoned "Yes! YES! Finally, a pregnant woman. Just look at her displayed inside now that I have cut away the abdominal wall! Absolutely beautiful!"

Whichever applies, though, it remains that these two women with so very close backgrounds, Jackson and Chapman, suffered the exact same extremely rare and odd damage in the exact same city during the exact same nine month period, and once we know that, we must understand that an explanation that works from the premise of a single killer is a thousand times more likely to be correct than any explanation that predisposes different killers coying each others extremely rare and odd work purely coincidentally.
Once we have evidence that tells us that it cannot possibly have been a single killer, THEN there is reason to start looking for alternative reasons for the many similarities, but until that happens, we should harbour no worries of having gotten it wrong when we accept the single killer scenario. It will be correct, it really is that simple.

It also makes me wonder whether she was prostituting herself at that time. She might not heed medical advice not to have sex at 7 - 8 months pregnant, but it would be uncomfortable for her and I am not sure how many men would choose an obviously pregnant prostitute. If she was not seeking clients, then we are less able to conclude that the torso killer was targeting active prostitutes (as the ripper seems to have done). Given we do not know who the other torso victims were, we can only speculate as to whether they were prostitutes.

"Pregnancy fetishism (also known as maiesiophilia or maieusophoria) is a context where pregnancy is seen by individuals or cultures as an erotic phenomenon. It may involve sexual attraction to women who are pregnant or appear pregnant, attraction to lactation, or attraction to particular stages of pregnancy such as impregnation or childbirth."

When it comes to finding customers for sex, etenguy, I think there are very few attributes that do not have any followers. Most men may not actively seek out pregnant women for sex, but actually, some will. And most couples where the woman is pregnant engage in sex anyway, at least to a degree.
Whether Jackson would have thought it was too uncomfortable for her to have sex or not is not something we can possibly know. We can, however, realize that people living on the edge, the way Jackson did, rarely have the luxury of being able to turn offers down at will.
There is also the fact that a pregnancy is not always very obvious, least of all with first-time mothers, until very late in the process.
All in all, I donīt think there is any obstacle to accept that Jackson may have been prostituting herself as she met her killer.

[FrankO]

As for comparing Kelly to Jackson, I can see that it is a lot more tempting than to do so with Chapman, if you do not like the idea of a commmon killer.

Not liking the idea of a common killer has nothing to do with it, Christer. It has to do with the time spent with the victim. I think it’s safe to say that the Ripper spent a lot more time with Kelly than with Chapman, so Kelly represents more what the Ripper was about than Chapman. It would surprise me if you wouldn’t be able to see that. That’s why I find it much more in order to compare Kelly to Jackson, nothing else.

The worrying thing about your sketches above, is that you represent Jacksons and Kellys respective losses of their abdominal walls as being of different sizes. Actually, we donīt know just how large the openings in each woman was and how they were shaped - but we DO know that in Kellys case, the flaps were described as large, just as they were in Jacksons case! The only difference is that Hebbert also describe the flaps as long irregular strips, but the idea that they were thin and narrow is effectively counterweighed by the press reports, where they was described as covering the entire abdomen or the entire lower abdomen, respectively.
I would therefore say that a fair representation of the two victims would involve the same kind of area, for the very simple reason that we do not know exactly what the damage looked like, least of all in Jacksons case.

Dr. Bond described it as “The whole surface of the abdomen …. was removed.” That’s’ very clear: no part of the abdomen was left. Dr. Hebbert described it as “two long, irregular slips taken from the abdominal walls.” The bit “taken from the abdominal walls” to me, means that the slips represented part of the abdominal wall, and not the whole of it. But I have no problem with larger flaps in Jackson’s case, because that’s beside the point I was making.

After that, you move on to reasoning - if I understand you correctly - that since Jackson did not suffer the same kind of extensive damage as Kelly did, the victims will not have had the same originator (whereas Chapman and Jackson must reasonably have been killed by the same man, going on how THEY were exactly the same...?), but I think that we may need to look a bit further than that. For example, in the only two torso cases where we can tell anything at all about the faces, they WERE cut: 1873 and the Tottenham case. So even if we walk down that path, there are consistencies that are lost if we use only Kelly and Jackson for a comparison.

My reasoning is quite simple, Christer. What we see in the Ripper victims, and especially Kelly for reasons already mentioned, is what the Ripper was about. If he and Torso man are to be one and the same, I would expect more of what we see in Kelly in more than one Torso victim and if dismembering was part of Torso man’s driving force I would have expected to see something of that in at least Kelly.
As it stands, we have abdomen cut away in flaps & intestines/organs cut out of the abdomen in Jackson’s case and we have the faces mutilated in the 1873 & 1884 victims. So, yes, Jackson might be a Chapman twin, but that’s it. No cut off breasts, no stripped thighs, no deep slashes to arms or legs.

So I recommend staying with Jackson and Chapman. If you can produce a credible explanation to how two VERY different men just happened to produce twin sisters like these, although the killers were so mentally different - according to your take on things - as to disenable any real belief in them being one and the same, Iīd be intersted to hear that explanation.

Because they were 2 different serial killers who had the same sort of appetites with different accents?

Otherwise, I would love to hear you say "Yes, you are correct - the likeness is so overwhelming and rich in odd details as to convince me that we have at long last come to a point where we must acknowledge that we cannot possibly be dealing with two killers".

I’m not denying the likeness, Christer. It’s there. But for the reasons I’ve given you I’m just not convinced that we cannot possibly be dealing with 2 killers. But I can be wrong and you may well be right.

And here's your amended sketch:

[Abby Normal]

"Pregnancy fetishism (also known as maiesiophilia or maieusophoria) is a context where pregnancy is seen by individuals or cultures as an erotic phenomenon. It may involve sexual attraction to women who are pregnant or appear pregnant, attraction to lactation, or attraction to particular stages of pregnancy such as impregnation or childbirth."

When it comes to finding customers for sex, etenguy, I think there are very few attributes that do not have any followers. Most men may not actively seek out pregnant women for sex, but actually, some will. And most couples where the woman is pregnant engage in sex anyway, at least to a degree.
Whether Jackson would have thought it was too uncomfortable for her to have sex or not is not something we can possibly know. We can, however, realize that people living on the edge, the way Jackson did, rarely have the luxury of being able to turn offers down at will.
There is also the fact that a pregnancy is not always very obvious, least of all with first-time mothers, until very late in the process.
All in all, I donīt think there is any obstacle to accept that Jackson may have been prostituting herself as she met her killer.

exactly fish
or she may have accompanied torsoman back to his chop shop with some idea of non prostitute work, or under the pretext of a date-maybe she was hopefull of a relationship? who knows? or perhaps it was for sex-theres more than one way to have non intercourse sex BTW.

[Abby Normal]

Not liking the idea of a common killer has nothing to do with it, Christer. It has to do with the time spent with the victim. I think it’s safe to say that the Ripper spent a lot more time with Kelly than with Chapman, so Kelly represents more what the Ripper was about than Chapman. It would surprise me if you wouldn’t be able to see that. That’s why I find it much more in order to compare Kelly to Jackson, nothing else.

Dr. Bond described it as “The whole surface of the abdomen …. was removed.” That’s’ very clear: no part of the abdomen was left. Dr. Hebbert described it as “two long, irregular slips taken from the abdominal walls.” The bit “taken from the abdominal walls” to me, means that the slips represented part of the abdominal wall, and not the whole of it. But I have no problem with larger flaps in Jackson’s case, because that’s beside the point I was making.

My reasoning is quite simple, Christer. What we see in the Ripper victims, and especially Kelly for reasons already mentioned, is what the Ripper was about. If he and Torso man are to be one and the same, I would expect more of what we see in Kelly in more than one Torso victim and if dismembering was part of Torso man’s driving force I would have expected to see something of that in at least Kelly.
As it stands, we have abdomen cut away in flaps & intestines/organs cut out of the abdomen in Jackson’s case and we have the faces mutilated in the 1873 & 1884 victims. So, yes, Jackson might be a Chapman twin, but that’s it. No cut off breasts, no stripped thighs, no deep slashes to arms or legs.

Because they were 2 different serial killers who had the same sort of appetites with different accents?

I’m not denying the likeness, Christer. It’s there. But for the reasons I’ve given you I’m just not convinced that we cannot possibly be dealing with 2 killers. But I can be wrong and you may well be right.

And here's your amended sketch:

hi FrankO
IMHO you bring up some good points. One would expect to see more eviscerations in the torso series and some dismemberment in the ripper series if they were the same man. This is a stickler for me that points away from them being the same reason and one of the reasons Im not 100% certain they were the same man. If any of the ripper victims had dismemberment it would be game over for me.

That being said-when killing on the streets its not practical, and much more risky and time consuming to try and dismember. One cant easily carry around a saw, engage in dismemberment and carry away heads or limbs in this situation though. Re Kelly-yes it was in doors but a certain level of luck plays in here that she had her own place-and the killer still would have the same issues-not being able to carry around a saw nor easily escape her place with a limb or her head. And is cutting neck down to bone, flaying flesh off limbs and cutting away the breasts really THAT different? Not to me it isn't, especially since the torso victims also have post mortem mutilation above and beyond what was needed for dismemberment.

I agree with Fish that both killers had a certain anatomical curiosity-a trait most post mortem mutilators have-and that they enjoyed cutting up and removing parts of the female body-be it internal or external. Both killers did this. And the amount of other rare similarities-significance of the face and head being targeted, vertical gashes to the mid section, removing and taking away of parts etc. point heavily to the same man.

I do see your point though.

[Fisherman]

Not liking the idea of a common killer has nothing to do with it, Christer. It has to do with the time spent with the victim. I think it safe to say that the Ripper spent a lot more time with Kelly than with Chapman, so Kelly represents more what the Ripper was about than Chapman. It would surprise me if you wouldnt be able to see that. Thats why I find it much more in order to compare Kelly to Jackson, nothing else.

Dr. Bond described it as "The whole surface of the abdomen was removed. Thats very clear: no part of the abdomen was left. Dr. Hebbert described it as two long, irregular slips taken from the abdominal walls. The bit taken from the abdominal walls to me, means that the slips represented part of the abdominal wall, and not the whole of it. But I have no problem with larger flaps in Jacksons case, because thats beside the point I was making.

My reasoning is quite simple, Christer. What we see in the Ripper victims, and especially Kelly for reasons already mentioned, is what the Ripper was about. If he and Torso man are to be one and the same, I would expect more of what we see in Kelly in more than one Torso victim and if dismembering was part of Torso mans driving force I would have expected to see something of that in at least Kelly.
As it stands, we have abdomen cut away in flaps & intestines/organs cut out of the abdomen in Jacksons case and we have the faces mutilated in the 1873 & 1884 victims. So, yes, Jackson might be a Chapman twin, but thats it. No cut off breasts, no stripped thighs, no deep slashes to arms or legs.

Because they were 2 different serial killers who had the same sort of appetites with different accents?

Im not denying the likeness, Christer. Its there. But for the reasons Ive given you Im just not convinced that we cannot possibly be dealing with 2 killers. But I can be wrong and you may well be right.

And here's your amended sketch:

Your reasoning is well thought out and easy enough to follow, Frank. But it has some very serious flaws.

What you base your take on - and please correct me if I am wrong - is this:
Since Kelly was the quintessential Ripper deed, the one representing what he was truly about, and since the slashes to the arms, the stripped thighs and the cut off breasts are not present within the torso series, it is logical to think that the originators of the series were not one and the same.

So what is it I find flawed in your reasoning? Well, mainly this:

Why would we predispose that Kelly is the best and fullest representation of what the killer wanted to do, the quintessential Ripper deed? Because, you say, he had more time with her and more privacy, and so he could inflict the kind of damage that was representative to him.

One large problem with this reasoning - although not the largest one - is that we simply do not know WHY he did what he did to Kelly. We know that she had what can be interpreted as defensive damage to her arms, and we know that it seems she may have cried out "Murder!" at a remove in time that is consistent with when she may have died.
It therefore seems evident that she was aware what was happening to her and tried to fend the killer off.

So what rules out that she had some real success? Maybe she kicked him in the balls? Maybe she managed to have him cut, maybe she put her thumb in his eye and damaged it. And maybe, Frank, THAT is the reason why he cut into the flesh in so many places where he in the other deeds did not do so - because he was pissed. The point being that if this was the reason, then the Kelly murder becomes strictly atypical instead of typical.

Which leads me over to the larger flaw in your reasoning: There are no other Ripper victims who suffered the kind of slashing, flesh stripping and breast removal that Kelly did, not in the torso series and not in the Ripper series. She is a one-off, to use a term that has done the rounds out here lately. She is, going on the damage done, actually the most atypical victim there is in the two series.
So how viable is it to use her as the benchmark?

I could tell you that the 1873 deed is what I believe perhaps most clearly represents the true ideas of the killer - but why would you buy it? It is atypical, is it not?

The typical damages in these series of a collected nine victims (if we use the 87-89 torso victims and the five "canonicals") are these:

throat subjected to cutting - 9
abdomen opened up from groin to sternum - 7
uterus taken out (or missing) - 4 (5)
abdominal flesh taken away in large flaps - 3
colon sections taken away - 3
hearts taken (or missing) - 2 (3)
lungs removed (or missing) 2 (3)
kidneys removed - 2
rings taken - 2


The most atypical damages are these:

breasts removed - 1 (Kelly)
slashed arms - 1 (Kelly)
thighs stripped of flesh - 1 (Kelly)
spleen removed - 1 (Kelly)
liver removed - 1 (Kelly)

Now, we can either go on your gut feeling and use Kelly as the benchmark for a typical Ripper deed and the best comparison against the torso deeds - or we can go on the matters that were reoccurring throughout. And when we do that, we end up comparing not Kelly and Jackson, but instead Chapman and Jackson. And to me, that is the only factually safe way to go about it.

Moreover, I think that a killer who inflicts signature damages, if you like, will always be more likely to inflict these damages BEFORE he - perhaps - adds other damages that are not as typical. And if this holds true, then the breast removal, the slashing and stripping were perhaps actually of secondary interest to the killer. My own guess is that he very likely FIRST cut the neck of Kelly, THEN cut the abdomen open and took out organs and only FINALLY cut the breasts away and stripped the thighs. And if he did, that does not bode well for yoour aspirations.
Finally, if the slashing to the arms is defensive damage, then it has no bearing at all on our discussion.

A further problem with suggesting Kelly as the quintessential Ripper deed is that it predisposes that the killer was disturbed or spooked in all other four canonical killings. Because if he was not, why would he not do a Kelly on them too?

These are the points I feel I need to make before we have people agreeing that Kelly is the typical Ripper deed. She is not, she is instead atypical. She may or may not represent what the killer strived against, but the true answer to that one is written in the stars. And until we know, the only factually based comparisons that should be made are the ones involving as many as possible of the frequently occurring traits.

By the way: "The same sort of appetite but with different accents", Frank? Letīs just say that the one thing proven is the appetite - the accents remain guesswork only. Elegantly phrased though it was.