modus operandi analysis

[Frank]

Maybe this article is of some interest for some people:

The Jack the Ripper Murders: A Modus Operandi
and Signature Analysis of the 1888–1891
Whitechapel Murders

by ROBERT D. KEPPEL, JOSEPH G. WEIS, KATHERINE M. BROWN and KRISTEN WELCH

It's from Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Volume 2 Issue 1, Pages 1 - 21

Published Online: 17 Mar 2005

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Link: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/j...TRY=1&SRETRY=0

Abstract: A number of females, commonly recognized as 11 victims, were murdered in separate events in Whitechapel, London between 1888 and 1891. An evaluation of the murders revealed that six of those murders were linked by a number of distinct, personal signature characteristics, including picquerism, overkill, incapacitation, domination and control, open and displayed, unusual body position, sexual degradation, mutilation, organ harvesting, specific areas of attack, preplanning and organization, and a combination of signature features. The signature characteristics observed in these infamous Jack the Ripper murders were compared to a 1981-1995 cohort of 3359 homicide cases from Washington State's HITS database. The analysis revealed that the signature displayed in six of the Whitechapel murders was extremely rare. There were only six records of female victims, one a prostitute, with probed, explored, or mutilated body cavities. There were only two cases, both females who were not prostitutes, where the body was left in an unusual position and body cavities were explored, probed, or mutilated. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[Wyatt Earp]

Maybe this article is of some interest for some people:

The Jack the Ripper Murders: A Modus Operandi
and Signature Analysis of the 1888–1891
Whitechapel Murders

by ROBERT D. KEPPEL, JOSEPH G. WEIS, KATHERINE M. BROWN and KRISTEN WELCH

It's from Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Volume 2 Issue 1, Pages 1 - 21

Published Online: 17 Mar 2005

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Link: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/j...TRY=1&SRETRY=0

Abstract: A number of females, commonly recognized as 11 victims, were murdered in separate events in Whitechapel, London between 1888 and 1891. An evaluation of the murders revealed that six of those murders were linked by a number of distinct, personal signature characteristics, including picquerism, overkill, incapacitation, domination and control, open and displayed, unusual body position, sexual degradation, mutilation, organ harvesting, specific areas of attack, preplanning and organization, and a combination of signature features. The signature characteristics observed in these infamous Jack the Ripper murders were compared to a 1981-1995 cohort of 3359 homicide cases from Washington State's HITS database. The analysis revealed that the signature displayed in six of the Whitechapel murders was extremely rare. There were only six records of female victims, one a prostitute, with probed, explored, or mutilated body cavities. There were only two cases, both females who were not prostitutes, where the body was left in an unusual position and body cavities were explored, probed, or mutilated. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Wiley link no longer works, but I wanted to mention that if you google the title of the article, you can snag a pdf off the Internet. This is a criminological study of the crimes and provides a good overview of the argument for the murders (Tabram + the canonical 5) being related.

I am curious to hear how the people arguing for more than one killer respond to this article.

[lynn cates]

harvest time is upon us

Hello Frank, Wyatt. Interesting. Thanks for posting this.

It would be very interesting to ascertain which organs were harvested from Martha, Polly and Liz.

It might have been a tad more convincing if these blokes had actually read the inquest reports at first hand. Hearsay loses a lot.

Cheers.
LC

[Wyatt Earp]

Hello Frank, Wyatt. Interesting. Thanks for posting this.

It would be very interesting to ascertain which organs were harvested from Martha, Polly and Liz.

It might have been a tad more convincing if these blokes had actually read the inquest reports at first hand. Hearsay loses a lot.

Cheers.
LC

Ha, no doubt these guys could have tightened up their manuscript by running it through the Casebook gauntlet first. Still, it's fun to read an academic study that gets down and dirty with the crimes themselves as opposed to something like a sociological analysis, a media analysis, etc. (nothing against those, they have their place too).

[lynn cates]

devil in the details

Hello Wyatt. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, do they get any of the specific details right?

Cheers.
LC

[Iain Wilson]

Hello Wyatt. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, do they get any of the specific details right?

Cheers.
LC

They get the basic facts right, and use some good sources. One mistake that they do make is when they describe all the crimes as having being committed with a long bladed knife. I believe (although my memory could be failing me here, so feel free to correct me!) that Elizabeth Stride was killed by a shorter penknife.

The basic gist of the document is that the Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly murders show a similar MO and signature and therefore were perpetrated by the same individual. It also goes on to do an analysis of the crimes using the Homicide Investigation Tracking System to prove that the unique nature of the crimes is such that they couldn't conceivably have been carried out by two or more killers in tandam. By necessitiy this piece of analaysis is carried out using more modern data, so that should be borne in mind.

It's an interesting enough read (and a good, quick-shot review of the crimes) but the authors seem to have shoe-horned Stride into their list of Ripper victims without fully examining her killing. Simply saying "he was interuptted and didn't get to do what he wanted to do" isn't enough when there exists significant enough deviations in this murder to warrant a more thorough investigation.

Cheers,

Iain

[ChrisGeorge]

They get the basic facts right, and use some good sources. One mistake that they do make is when they describe all the crimes as having being committed with a long bladed knife. I believe (although my memory could be failing me here, so feel free to correct me!) that Elizabeth Stride was killed by a shorter penknife.

The basic gist of the document is that the Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly murders show a similar MO and signature and therefore were perpetrated by the same individual. It also goes on to do an analysis of the crimes using the Homicide Investigation Tracking System to prove that the unique nature of the crimes is such that they couldn't conceivably have been carried out by two or more killers in tandam. By necessitiy this piece of analaysis is carried out using more modern data, so that should be borne in mind.

It's an interesting enough read (and a good, quick-shot review of the crimes) but the authors seem to have shoe-horned Stride into their list of Ripper victims without fully examining her killing. Simply saying "he was interuptted and didn't get to do what he wanted to do" isn't enough when there exists significant enough deviations in this murder to warrant a more thorough investigation.

Cheers,

Iain

Hi Iain

You wrote, "One mistake that they do make is when they describe all the crimes as having being committed with a long bladed knife. I believe (although my memory could be failing me here, so feel free to correct me!) that Elizabeth Stride was killed by a shorter penknife."

The murder weapon was not judged to be a penknife. The implication was that the knife might have been shorter than that used in the other murders but since there was no abdominal mutilation, it is hard to judge how long the knife was, so this confuses the situation. Additionally, the testimony is also not as clear as it could be about the murder weapon because the medical experts were asked about the knife found by Thomas Coram on the steps of 253 Whitechapel Road, so part of their testimony relates to discussion of a comparison between the knife found by Coram and the murder weapon.

Best regards

Chris

[lynn cates]

pen knife

Hello Iain. Thanks.

I should be shocked if Liz's throat cutting were the result of a pen knife.

So they use a preset rigmarole to show how many hands were involved? Sounds altogether boring.

Cheers.
LC

[Iain Wilson]

Hi IainThe murder weapon was not judged to be a penknife. The implication was that the knife might have been shorter than that used in the other murders

Thanks for that Chris - that was probably what I was getting confused by! Was there not something said about the knife being used to kill Stride being more blunt than the one used in the other killings?

So they use a preset rigmarole to show how many hands were involved? Sounds altogether boring.

I'm not sure exactly how the system works, but it seems to be along the lines of taking the various components that make up the Ripper's murders (slaying of prostitutes, laying out of the bodies, mutilation etc) and comparing this to how many murders over a given period display some or all of these characteristics, in order to give an indication of how common (or in this case rare) such a killing is.

The logic here is that that by using this method, and a sufficently large sample of data, you can infer how likely it is that more than one killer displaying the same signature traits could be operating in the same geographical area at the same time.

While this is an interesting exercise the data used devalues it. Rather than ask the question "How many crimes displaying similar characteristics took place in Victorian London?" and, when it becomes apparent that this data wais not available, answering with "We don't know and therefore can't draw any useful inferences" it instead asks "Given that contemporary data was not available to us, how common were such crimes in the Washington State area of the United States between the period 1981 and 1995?"

The very fact that both eras are seperated by a vast expanse of time should be enough to indicate that the various cultural, technological and psychological changes taking place over these years are enough to prevent any meaningful comparison of behaviours.

[lynn cates]

wisdom

Hello Iain. thanks.

"The very fact that both eras are separated by a vast expanse of time should be enough to indicate that the various cultural, technological and psychological changes taking place over these years are enough to prevent any meaningful comparison of behaviours."

Well done. "For a man who has not lived even a single lifetime, you're a wise man, Van Helsing." (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Bridewell]

Their Eleven

The eleven murders they look at are:
Smith, Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly, Mylett, McKenzie, the Pinchin Street torso & Coles.

I haven't yet got past the first couple of pages, but the authors allude to consulting original documentation in preference to press reports which is encouraging:

The crime scene assessment and signature analysis were based on recently
released Scotland Yard case files, inquest reports, police records, crime scene photographs,
and sketches contained in the sources cited in this paper. References to newspaper articles
contained in the sources were avoided due to lack of substantiation

Regards, Bridewell.

[GregBaron]

Infinite loop...

Hi all,

This article was posted some time ago and I see it's resurfaced - like most things on casebook - looping cartesian product that it is....

I found this article to be impressive in its arguments - taking into account the difficulty with backward extrapolations...

Nevertheless, despite the quality of any modern thesis, the reductionists (or multiplicitists) will never accept a lone wolf killer till we pry him - knife in hand - from the grave. If they did, the scaffolding of their elaborate edifice would crumble like many a Whitechapel ruin....

In all fairness, the same must be said of the Fab Fivers, who will hurl clots of dung at any suggestion of multiple perpetrators....

One must admit, it makes for great fun....



Greg

[lynn cates]

pots vs kettles

Hello Greg.

"One must admit, it makes for great fun...."

It does indeed. Pots vs kettles.

Cheers.
LC

[Iain Wilson]

One must admit, it makes for great fun...

Absolutely - it's one of the reasons we all hang around here endlessly debating the same points

[Bridewell]

Interesting and well-written article IMHO.