If the Police Had a Modern Understanding of Serial Killers

[caz]

Hi Chava,

I take it you haven't been up the A6 lately then.

Visitors to the A6 Murder threads under Other Mysteries might be forgiven for thinking that the correct procedure is to clear the bugger whose DNA you have because it's inherently unreliable, then nail any bugger of your choice whose DNA you don't have.

Love,

Caz
X

[Chava]

ChrisGeorge, I take your point. But at least, if you have the DNA, if you catch the bugger, you can nail him!

[ChrisGeorge]

If certain posters (not you I hasten to add ) want to take anything from the Napper case, they could do worse than looking again at their own presumption that the scene in Miller's Court could not have been the work of a serial outdoor offender behaving differently. It sure as hell had to be someone behaving differently, the only alternative being someone who never behaved in a remotely similar way before or since.

As for 'experts' trying to predict human behaviour, many ordinary people would have been predicting, by the second half of October 1888, that the worst was yet to come. It came pretty much on cue and was considered worse than the previous atrocities, which by definition made it different. The great ignorant unwashed of the LVP apparently saw no conflict with the idea that one offender might go on to display different levels and shades of behaviour. I think they had more sense in that respect than modern profilers, even if the prediction came true for the wrong reasons and the ripper was having an off-day when another man's behaviour changed beyond all recognition to destroy Mary.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz

You may have heard me say this before but the Ripper series of murders, if only five murders more or less (depending on the opinion of the commentator on the case), is so short that it's hard to generalize about this killer, and yet a lot of people do feel that they can generalize about him.

All the best

Chris

[ChrisGeorge]

DNA could have been helpful. Trace-evidence examination would have helped narrow down occupation etc. Also crime-scene semiotics--something I just heard about and love the idea of! I'm neither for nor against profiling. I think that when it works it's spectacular. When it doesn't, it tends to allow a serial killer to go on his way unnoticed far too long.

You can obtain DNA at a crime scene but if the matching DNA is not in any database you are screwed. This is the case for example where the offender has not been trouble with the law previously, which might well be the case with a canny serial killer.

Chris

[Chava]

DNA could have been helpful. Trace-evidence examination would have helped narrow down occupation etc. Also crime-scene semiotics--something I just heard about and love the idea of! I'm neither for nor against profiling. I think that when it works it's spectacular. When it doesn't, it tends to allow a serial killer to go on his way unnoticed far too long.

[Sam Flynn]

In point of fact, all human thought is binary. What leads to diversity is the layering of cultural filters.

Human thought can run in parallel streams, however, and any given action may comprise multiple binary decisions taken in sequence and/or laid on top of one another. There's complexity enough in that alone, without - as you rightly point out - the addition of cultural influences into the mix.

[ChrisGeorge]

If the police in 1888 had our modern understanding of serial killers, would anything have changed in how they approached the case? Would they have caught Jack? It seems to me that even today with what we know about serial killers that catching them remains a difficult task and often is the result of luck or a major slip up on the part of the killer.

c.d.

Exactly so, c.d. It's not as easy as it is in CSI or Cold Case.

We have reported in Ripperologist in the past two issues about the case of British serial killer Robert Napper whose crimes in the 1990's were not fully detected. For some years it was not known that Napper had killed Rachel Nickell in an attack on Wimbledon Common in 1992 because of an apparent foul-up between the police and profiler Paul Britton, on whom the fictional character "Cracker" was based.

The Met thought they had their man in Colin Stagg and apparently ignored evidence pointing to Napper as the killer. Yet, Stagg was cleared in 1994 when the evidence against him was ruled inadmissible.

In court on December 18, Napper, already in Broadmoor for other crimes, admitted to killing Ms. Nickell. For his part, profiler Paul Britton, author of The Jigsaw Man, now claims that he gave the police leads that could have led to the prevention of the Nickell murder and led to the apprehension of the so-called "Green Chain Walk attacker" which was apparently Napper all along. Detectives though pointed out late last year that in his book, profiler Britton said there was no link between Miss Nickell’s murder and Green Chain Walk attacks

Chris

[protohistorian]

Hi Sam,

I totally agree. To my mind, one of the worst pitfalls of examining and trying to predict human behaviour is to presume that different behaviours can safely be attributed to different unknown offenders, rather than to one unknown offender simply behaving differently. The reality is that nobody can offend in exactly the same way twice, and since they would be much more likely to be caught if they did, they'd have to be barking mad (and as such, doubly easy to catch) even to try. Those earning themselves the serial killer label are busy behaving badly a few steps ahead of anyone claiming to know their behavioural patterns or limitations.

In Robert Napper's case, it was presumed that the man who killed a mother in front of her young son on Wimbledon Common could not have behaved differently enough to go on to commit the indoor murder of another mother and her young daughter in their home. Funny how no such sweeping presumption about behavioural differences or limits was made about Colin Stagg. None of his known behaviour, as the local 'oddball' who regularly walked his dog on the common (along with every other blinking dog owner living nearby), could have been considered remotely similar to the behaviour indicated by the murder scene, and yet it was his behaviour that was used to justify the suspicions against him. His life was ruined as a result.

If certain posters (not you I hasten to add ) want to take anything from the Napper case, they could do worse than looking again at their own presumption that the scene in Miller's Court could not have been the work of a serial outdoor offender behaving differently. It sure as hell had to be someone behaving differently, the only alternative being someone who never behaved in a remotely similar way before or since.

As for 'experts' trying to predict human behaviour, many ordinary people would have been predicting, by the second half of October 1888, that the worst was yet to come. It came pretty much on cue and was considered worse than the previous atrocities, which by definition made it different. The great ignorant unwashed of the LVP apparently saw no conflict with the idea that one offender might go on to display different levels and shades of behaviour. I think they had more sense in that respect than modern profilers, even if the prediction came true for the wrong reasons and the ripper was having an off-day when another man's behaviour changed beyond all recognition to destroy Mary.

Love,

Caz
X

In point of fact, all human thought is binary. What leads to diversity is the layering of cultural filters. Binary simply means comparive analysis of two things, and is the foundation on which inductive reasoning rests.

[caz]

I strongly suspect that profiling will come to be seen as the 20th Century's equivalent of phrenology. Some may wish to persist in trying to find the Holy Grail of predicting human behaviour, but that ain't going to happen. We can't even predict the behaviour of something as basic as a flipped coin, except in the most general probabilistic terms. The degrees of freedom enjoyed by the human mind, as well as the number of possible environmental/experiential variables that shape our personalities, are significantly more numerous than the binary simplicity of a "head" or a "tail".

Hi Sam,

I totally agree. To my mind, one of the worst pitfalls of examining and trying to predict human behaviour is to presume that different behaviours can safely be attributed to different unknown offenders, rather than to one unknown offender simply behaving differently. The reality is that nobody can offend in exactly the same way twice, and since they would be much more likely to be caught if they did, they'd have to be barking mad (and as such, doubly easy to catch) even to try. Those earning themselves the serial killer label are busy behaving badly a few steps ahead of anyone claiming to know their behavioural patterns or limitations.

In Robert Napper's case, it was presumed that the man who killed a mother in front of her young son on Wimbledon Common could not have behaved differently enough to go on to commit the indoor murder of another mother and her young daughter in their home. Funny how no such sweeping presumption about behavioural differences or limits was made about Colin Stagg. None of his known behaviour, as the local 'oddball' who regularly walked his dog on the common (along with every other blinking dog owner living nearby), could have been considered remotely similar to the behaviour indicated by the murder scene, and yet it was his behaviour that was used to justify the suspicions against him. His life was ruined as a result.

If certain posters (not you I hasten to add ) want to take anything from the Napper case, they could do worse than looking again at their own presumption that the scene in Miller's Court could not have been the work of a serial outdoor offender behaving differently. It sure as hell had to be someone behaving differently, the only alternative being someone who never behaved in a remotely similar way before or since.

As for 'experts' trying to predict human behaviour, many ordinary people would have been predicting, by the second half of October 1888, that the worst was yet to come. It came pretty much on cue and was considered worse than the previous atrocities, which by definition made it different. The great ignorant unwashed of the LVP apparently saw no conflict with the idea that one offender might go on to display different levels and shades of behaviour. I think they had more sense in that respect than modern profilers, even if the prediction came true for the wrong reasons and the ripper was having an off-day when another man's behaviour changed beyond all recognition to destroy Mary.

Love,

Caz
X

[Limehouse]

If we take the 'cannonical five' murders attributed to the Whitechapel Murderer and consider the proximity of their locations, it is entirely possible that a man carrying out the same attacks today (as close to the original locations as is possible) would be captured on CCTV cameras. Police would track through thousands of camera images to find a suspect who is seen passing through the locations within a key time frame. Of course, there would also need to be some forensic evidence but CCTV tracking would be a much more precise start to the investigation than profiling.

I think CCTV played an important part in tracking the movements of Steve Wright in Ipswich.

[Howard Brown]

Thanks for the kiss ( you rogue you...) and the clarification.

I arrived at that conclusion, or at least,concept, after watching the 1996 Tumbelty documentary for the tenth time...that had he pushed obscene materials,he'd lose his daytime gig. Dumb he wasn't.

[jmenges]

Had Tumbelty been seen in the act of or suspected of peddling pornographic materials, he'd have been given the boot in a heartbeat by Lispenard.

Hi How,

Just to clarify, according to Tim Riordan (whom I have utmost faith in all things Tumblety) there was no such person as "Dr. Lispenard". It was an alias of sorts, or false front, for the office of Dr. Reynolds.



JM

[Howard Brown]

Recall that at the time of this supposed porn peddling, Tumblety was an apprentice to Dr. Reynolds at Lispenard's 'hospital'. Tumblety's job as an apprentice would have included selling the "doctor's" books, pamphlets, recruiting patients and sweeping the office floors. -JMenges

Good that you brought this up Jon.

Had Tumbelty been seen in the act of or suspected of peddling pornographic materials, he'd have been given the boot in a heartbeat by Lispenard. Its a good if not better bet that what he was peddling was the springboard for his future career as a quack.

Back to this idea of 19th century police being able to apprehend murderers ( JTR ) so quickly, lets not forget that JTR, if a psychopath, would have been cognizant of the existing police capabilities and adjusted to them. In 1888, no criminal bothered to remove fingerprints from crime scenes. In 2009, even a 10 year old knows to do that for even petty crimes like nicking.

[jmenges]

I do recall that Tumblety sold pornography to boats on the river near his home when he was a child. Perhaps indicating an early predisposition to seeing women as "objects" rather than people, and a skewed idea of what relationships between the sexes entails. That might be re-enforced by his later predilection towards homosexual activities. Those might be relevant characteristics with his candidacy.

As Tim Riordan notes elsewhere, and I happen to agree with him, this story of Tumblety supposedly peddling pornography is likely to be exaggerated and taken out of historical context.

The claim was made by a canal boat captain in Rochester that Tumblety (circa the years 1848-1850, Tumblety would be a respected physician with loads of money 6 years later) was selling books that at the time of the interview would violate the Comstock law. We think of them today as pornographic materials that would be illegal if sent through the mail. But in the 1840's-1850's, printed materials dealing with feminine issues, birth control, abortion and sexual dysfunction was also considered lewd by the authorities.

Recall that at the time of this supposed porn peddling, Tumblety was an apprentice to Dr. Reynolds at Lispenard's 'hospital'. Tumblety's job as an apprentice would have included selling the "doctor's" books, pamphlets, recruiting patients and sweeping the office floors.

"Dr. Lispenard" published a book (that Dr. Reynolds later affixed his name to) around this very time of the mid to late 1840s that's subject was sexually-transmitted diseases in both males and females. This book, Mr. Riordan suggests, was the one sold on the Erie Canal boats by apprentice Tumblety and was a book which indeed would have violated the Comstock law if it was sent through the post.

So, it is very likely that Tumblety was selling pamphlets and books of a sexual-medical nature in effort to recruit patients for his employer rather than peddling what we would today classify as porn.

JM

[diana]

The reason Dennis Rader sent the disc to the cops is that they had spent weeks under the direction of the behavioral unit manipulating him.

http://abajournal.com/magazine/how_the_cops_caught_btk/

This article from the ABA Journal includes a section (Aid from the Feds -- scroll down) describing how the behavioral unit helped.