Escalation: What would Jack do after Mary Kelly?

[ianincleveland]

Many serial killers produce a pattern which is called - The Mcdonald Triad. This refers to their history. as children they tended to set fires, torture animals and bed-wet beyond the age of eleven.

I think the fire thing allows them to vent their desire for destruction. The animal torture is lkely to be about inflicting pain, control and domination. I imagine the bed wetting is a response to the child abuse they have usually suffered.

Serial killers do not always have this history, but many do. Some may have two or less. Most I think, are likely to have all three.

Many indeed have at least two if not all three,but Peter sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper as far as im aware had none of these at all.he also managed to go many months without killing.however he did have a conviction for going equipped to steal when found in posession of a hammer.Im certain as are the police that the hammer was to be used for an awfully lot worse crime.

He laid low for a few years then went on his rampage.Im sure JTR had somewhere back in his past other convictions

[Pontius2000]

Is it reasonable to assume that there is a definite escalation of violence and ferocity with each of the canonical victims, excluding Liz Stride (but interruption could have been the reason for this being an anomoly)?

If so, what do we think Jack could possibly have done after killing Mary Kelly? I can't see how he could possibly have done anything worse than that, and can't think of any murders since that could be comparable in atrociousness (though I don't doubt there could have been).

I agree with Protohistorian. The logical next step after Mary Kelly would have been Elizabeth Jackson.....murder, mutilation, dismemberment, thrown in the river, head and other body parts possibly/probably kept as souvenirs.

I don't know a lot about Jackson as far as proximity to the other murders sites, etc. but what I've read, the mutilations themselves do not sound all that different than the ones done to Kelly.

I am not saying here that I think Jackson WAS a JTR victim, but I DO think that would be the most logical next step. and I'm not convinced she was a botched abortion.

and personally, I don't believe there's any way that JTR went on living a normal life in freedom. I've seen mentioned 2 serial killers that I recognize...Ted Bundy and the BTK killer. Ted Bundy did NOT stop killing as was suggested. he appeared normal IN BETWEEN the killings, but was he not killing right up to the very end of his freedom? I believe he was. then, the BTK killer was dormant, supposedly, for many years. but then, he started corresponding with police. does that sound like a serial killer who has resigned to live a normal life?

[Steven_Rex]

Great thread! I agree with Pontius - the killer could not, in my opinion, have retired to a completely 'normal' life. With regard to him taking a 'break' as well, I'd like to raise the fact that the canonical murders all took place within a few short months. This, to me, shows a high impulse and points towards a very industrious and committed serial killer. I might buy the idea that he could take a prolonged break and/or retire entirely had he not been so productive in the period in which he was active, but the rapidity of his crimes suggest to me that once he had begun, his desire to continue was almost insatiable - even with police keeping their eyes on Whitechapel, he still continued killing. This just doesn't comport with a killer who could casually take breaks from his work.

[Phil H]

An alternative

The alternative is, of course, that JtR did not kill MJK and that this murder was either a "one-off" or "a domestic".

In both cases the question what would "Jack" do next is irrelevant because he was not involved.

If the question is phrased differently then I believe two scenarios come into the frame and are worthy of debate:

a) if "Jack" killed only Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes, why did he stop or whom did he kill next? We then turn to the later non-canonicals, McKenzie etc and ask whether any of them fit the bill. The Castle Alley killing just might if we assume the murderer was disturbed.

b) if "Jack" did not kill Stride or Kelly, why did he stop after Eddowes?

I do not think that we should, any longer, automatically assume that Kelly was part of the "Ripper" series. To question that murder, in the round, opens up new possibilities and suspects who may not be candidates for JtR because they have alibis for some of the murders. To challenge the conventional wisdoms also opens us to new perceptions of these crimes and their possible solution.

Phil

[Ausgirl]

Some serial killers do not go through a process of escalation, it's true. Some don't start out as stalkers, rapists and then progress to murder, and then go on to commit a series of murders with signiature behaviours.

In the case of the man with head injury described above, however, the murder he committed does not seem as 'sophisticated' nor as ritualised as many serial killers' crimes are. As horrible as his crime was, I doubt he sought gratification in his victim's suffering.

And whereas some seem to just "pop up" as full blown serial killers with distinct mannerisms and with no obviously discernable trail of 'markers' that might have predicted that behaviour, this doesn't mean they aren't there - they may simply not fit the list of behaviours that are generally accepted as being such triggers.

There will, in any area humans are involved with, be the exception to the rule -- but the vast majority of serial killers do escalate, so it's not unreasonable to consider the idea that Mary Nichols was far from the first of JTR's victims.

He very well could have had a history of violent behaviour toward women for years prior - in the lower social strata of Victorian London, women in the sex trade really didn't have much recourse to justice if they were beaten, tortured and raped in the course of their work. Even to this day, sex workers (along with women who resemble the stereotype of women with 'loose' morality) still have trouble making a charge of rape stick, due to the sickening and sadly lingering attitude that they put themselves at risk, or somehow 'deserve' it by engaging in immoral behaviour.

So who's to say whether or not JTR may have escalated from rapist to killer, 'blossoming' finally, into the killer who murdered Nichols and the rest in such a distinctive way? His early murders may not have exhibited those markers that identify a "Jack the Ripper murder'. The women he killed may have only been strangled or stabbed in a perfunctory (rather than a ritualistic) way, or he may not have yet developed the signiature act of leaving his victims on display, but instead more carefully disposed of the bodies.

Mary Kelly, to address the OP's question, may have merely been the place where Jack, for whatever reason stopped killing - whether altogether or just in London - and may not necessarily have represented the peak of his capacity to develop as a killer. It's been known in rare cases for killers to suddenly change MO (usually not signiature, though) - knife killers will start using a gun, stranglers will start using a knife (personally, though, I don't think this is what happened with JTR. I think he stopped altogether due to death, incarceration or some other reason, or moved far enough away for his crimes to go unlinked to those in Whitechapel).

I'm not a JTR expert, so I really don't know if anyone's looked into any clusters of killings that exhibited some but not all of the JTR behaviours in years prior to 1888. But it would not be surprising to me if Jack had killed before, or serial raped as a precursor to the crimes clearly identified as being his.

Of course, his preference for targeting prostitutes makes looking for that sort of link extremely difficult. Which is, of course, why so many killers target them, aside from the obvious connection to sex and/or twisted morality.

[The Rookie Detective]

Bump up for an excellent thread.

[The Rookie Detective]

I am sure that the police in 1888 subscribed to the popular view that serial killers are 'mad', you must be able to tell somehow as it 'must do something to their brains', and they will only stop by suicide (remorse) or by being incarcerated -and that's one reason that they had the wrong profile.

Completely agree with this assessment.

[Scott Nelson]

Disappearing Into History in Ripperologist 159 December 2017/January 2018

[Holmes' Idiot Brother]

As a retired Corrections Officer, I have had the dubious distinction of getting to know a few serial murderers, most notably the late Robert Durst, multimillionaire heir to a New York real estate empire. While a model inmate, even a brief encounter with him was enough for the most inexperienced officer to realize that the man was crazier than an outhouse rat. There was a vibe he gave off that screamed "lunatic." I also housed James McBride, who was convicted of only one murder, but suspected of having multiple murders of prostitutes to his name; they just couldn't prove it. He was superficially one of the most disarming men I've ever met, and can easily see women duped by him and lured to their deaths. And especially notable for this topic, we have the aforementioned Dennis Rader, aka "BTK." All these men were able to act reasonably sane while hiding their psychopathic tendencies. It's very possible that the Ripper blended back into the shadows. But I don't think he would be able to do it for very long. I believe he was escalating, and one thing these killers almost unanimously get off on is the power they hold over their victims. A religious psychopath, for example, believing he was doing god's work by taking out prostitutes, might well have believed that his actions were sanctioned from above. After all, God is the biggest killer of them all, so it must feel good to Him. And the Ripper may have believed that if he did what God does enough times, he would become as God is. Would you give that up? Of course, this is pure speculation on my part.

Personally, I would like to believe that Jack's mind went FUBAR, and after Mary Kelly's murder he had what alcoholics refer to as "a moment of clarity," saw what he had done and what he was, did the decent and topped himself. Perhaps he "pulled a Druitt" (without him actually being Druitt), and ol' Montague was not the only poor bugger found floating in the Thames. Perhaps he was caught committing another crime. Very possible. Also possible is that he was murdered and became a victim himself. That kind of irony is very satisfying. Or he could have died the most banal death imaginable, being run over by a lorry and dragged across Whitechapel High Street, dying without anyone knowing who he was. I like this idea of Jack's demise: no doubt very painful, along with the posthumous humiliation of dying from being run over by a lorry! I even recall reading a particularly lurid and badly written horror novel a long time ago where the hero time travels back and ambushes the Ripper as he is leaving Miller's Court. The "hero" then mugs the Ripper, beating him to death and concealing his body. There's an unending amount of speculation limited only by one's imagination as to whether Jack stopped or how he met his end. Come to think of it, he also could have.......there, Enough! LOL