Why didn't Jack rape his victims?

[John Wheat]

Confused?

Lynn has not confused me. If Lynn thinks there were four killers then she's wrong.

[Wickerman]

Lynn has not confused me. If Lynn thinks there were four killers then she's wrong.

There's an irony in that statement that will eventually surface....

[lynn cates]

You're a naughty boy, Clement.

Hello Dave. Hmm, I like the way you think.

(But me name's not Clement. Now 'e'll nail my 'ead to the floor.)

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

mistake

Hello John. Yes, I may well be wrong. You see, sometimes we THINK we know something and it turns out we (note my neuter pronoun) do not.

Convince me?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

X,X and X,Y

Hello Jon.

"There's an irony in that statement that will eventually surface."

Quite true. But not just yet. Some things in life are like an old wine--they must first be truly savoured. (heh-heh)

Let's just say some of us are INDEED mistaken. (I am blinking back the tears.)

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

And there's me thinking I was making things clearer!

Dave

[Archaic]

re: Psych-Sexual Motivation of Torso Killers

To Archaic
Jack and the Torso Killer are in my opinion two very different killers. Jack being a killer who used a blitz attack to murder his victims followed by mutilating them post death and is in all likeliness from the same class as his victims e.g. from the lower classes whereas the Torso Killer is a killer who murdered his victims as they slept, then dismembered them for the purpose of easy disposal.

Hi John.

I'm curious as to why you state that the Torso Killer "murdered his victims as they slept"?
That might be your personal hypothesis, and you're entitled to it, but it's certainly not an established fact. We don't even know how many "Torso Killers" there were, much less what methods they used. And the notion that "torso killers" dismembered their victims for "easy disposal" is a theory or a fact in some murder cases, but it's a theory with rather obvious inadequacies in many others.

There exist other compelling reasons besides "easy disposal" which motivate certain killers to dismember their victims and strew the pieces around. Some killers choose to dismember their victim and deposit the body parts in multiple locations because, quite simply, they enjoy it. In fact, many killers exhibit a powerful psycho-sexual motivation to avoid what might be termed "easy disposal" of the victim. They don't want it to be quick and easy, because then their "fun" is over too soon. They prefer to draw it out longer and make it as 'exciting' and 'dramatic' as possible.

Dismemberment and dispersal are behaviors that allow a single act of murder to be extended, indulged in, and "enjoyed" for much longer than it takes to simply kill someone and dispose of their body.

Because they have more time and some degree of privacy, these killers can indulge in sadism, torture, mutilation, dissection... whatever gives them sick pleasure. They can indulge in complex fantasies of taunting the police, terrifying the public, further degrading the victim- whatever makes them feel powerful, omnipotent, and in control. Eventually they can choose to go to the next phase, which is physically placing the dismembered pieces wherever they wish to.

Dismemberment and dispersal effectively "multiplies" a single act of murder into many acts of violence, deviancy, and display, all of which give the killer deviant psycho-sexual pleasure and satisfaction.

Torso killers are often going for maximum horror on the part of the public, which is why they often choose to dump dismembered bodies in multiple locations or in very strange and 'public' locations.

A good example of this is the 1888 Whitehall Torso- still a stunning display of deviant hubris on the part of the perpetrator. The torso was obviously placed there deliberately to shock and embarrass Scotland Yard... You don't think the killer was just looking for an "easy disposal" location when he placed the torso within the very foundations of the new Scotland Yard headquarters, do you?
It was quite deliberate, remarkably daring, and unfortunately successful. I can't even imagine the sick thrill it must have given the killer to pull that off.

Another good example closer to us in time is the Black Dahlia Murder. In that case the killer mutilated and dismembered his victim, then dumped the various pieces of her nude corpse in a single public location. What's more, he deliberately arranged the segments of her corpse in a carefully composed "display" calculated to horrify and traumatize all who had the misfortune to witness it. I guarantee you that the act gave him intense pleasure, pride, and satisfaction. He actively fantasized about it beforehand (that's a polite euphemism of course), and he relived it and acted it out in his deviant sexual fantasies forever after.

The photographs of the Black Dahlia case are available on the internet, but if you haven't seen them, be warned- they're utterly sickening, and once you see them you will never be able to get them out of your head. What makes it even worse is that's exactly what the killer wanted- superlative horror. A grotesque version of "success" beyond his wildest dreams.

When I see photos of the tragic girl known as "the Black Dahlia" or photos of poor ravaged Mary Kelly, in addition to feelings of horror and pity for the victim, I always feel intense anger at the perpetrator... because in a way, he's still successfully shocking and manipulating us, even after all these years... it makes me mad as hell to know that.

Best regards,
Archaic

[John Wheat]

My Opinion

To Archaic
I stated at the beginning of my post 'In my opinion'. In my opinion Jack and the Torso killer used different m.o.'s . You claimed in an earlier post how Jack may have been responsible for some of the Torso Killings and yet in your last post eloquently describe dismemberment as part of the Torso Killers m.o. Jack's m.o. didn't include dismemberment. Considering how similar the Torso murders from 1873-1874, 1884 and then 1887-1889. I believe they were by the same hand. You seem to think that they were two or more killers responsible for the Torso Murders even attributing some to Jack. However Jack's m.o. seems to be comparatively very different to the m.o.'s used in all the Torso Murders.
Cheers
John

[RivkahChaya]

Apologies for dredging up an old thread, but I'm new to the board, and I've got a couple of ideas I've had for a long time, and this seemed like a good place to post them.

First, he may have been a premature ejaculator, which is to say, he didn't have control; whether he wanted to rape the victims or not, he may have ejaculated too soon.

Archaic you make some good points. Jack ... masturbated at the crime scenes.

From what I've read, it seems like the scenes attracted a lot of attention; the bodies were found pretty quickly, and there was a general panic, and a lot of people gathering, at a time of day when there weren't always that many people around.

I wonder if the killer stuck around to watch the scene, and possibly that excited him. He may have masturbated then, and I think there's a really good chance he returned to the scenes. It's too bad the police didn't know a serial killer would do that, because one way he might have been captured using the technology of the time was to stake out the old crime sites.

Another thing I wonder about is if possibly the reason that we don't see any obvious victims after Mary Kelly, is that after her, he stopped killing women on the street. The previous victims were killed on the street, because they had no where to take him; they lived in doss houses. MJK took him to her room, because she had a room. Once he was there, he could do things he couldn't do on the street, and after that, what he could do on the street may not have been satisfying anymore.

What that means exactly, I don't know. Maybe he lived somewhere, but he hadn't taken previous victims home, because he didn't want to be seen with them; after MJK, he didn't care anymore-- he had to have the experience of being alone with them for hours. Or maybe he looked for women who actually lived some place, so he may have had to move away from Whitechapel to look for victims.

Obviously, if he was killing them in his own home, he would have needed a clever way to dispose of the bodies, but maybe, like Jeffrey Dahmer, he thought of ways to keep parts of them preserved, and because he had those, he didn't feel the need to kill as often.

I don't have a theory as to where the bodies were, or who the later victims would be, who were killed indoors, just a possible explanation for why there were no more victims on the street.

[Bridewell]

Another thing I wonder about is if possibly the reason that we don't see any obvious victims after Mary Kelly, is that after her, he stopped killing women on the street. The previous victims were killed on the street, because they had no where to take him; they lived in doss houses. MJK took him to her room, because she had a room. Once he was there, he could do things he couldn't do on the street, and after that, what he could do on the street may not have been satisfying anymore.

Hi RivkahChaya,

I think this is quite likely. I've wondered if the McKenzie murder was a final outdoor killing which didn't give the thrill he'd experienced before. It's difficult to determine the thought processes of such an essentially irrational individual.

Regards, Bridewell.

[RivkahChaya]

It's difficult to determine the thought processes of such an essentially irrational individual.

Regards, Bridewell.

Yes, and no. We might not understand what is fun about killing somebody, but we can understand why the midway at the state fair isn't as fun once you've been to Disney World. Also, why you don't want to eat a big meal an hour after you've just had one, but if you get interrupted three bites into dinner, you might feel hungrier than if you'd never sat down at all. That's latter one is why no one is ever surprised by the idea that after being interrupted during the Stride murder, JTR didn't get spooked and go home, but rather went immediately in search of another victim, and mutilated her to a greater degree than he had done so far.

Even people with pathologies still operate with general consistencies. And I would call JTR pathological, not really irrational. Irrational is like trying to play chess against a computer programmed to play backgammon. JTR continued to act in his self-interest, by avoiding the police, and seems to have cased the areas a bit before he committed any specific crime-- knowing the timing of a policeman's beat, for example. None of that is irrational.