Ripper Anatomy Class

[The Good Michael]

Fisherman,

An Amish man would have known how to disembowel an animal. A wife would be similar, I imagine. It kind of attaches some significance to someone going through the ribs to get at something, doesn't it? Ignorance or anger, or both.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Hi Dave!

This is an interesting thread you´ve got going! Since it has been discussed how the heart could be removed from a body, I would like to offer a snippet from "crime library", describing the Amish man Ed Gingerich´s 1993 killing of his wife. It is a gruesome and disturbing story, but it is of interest to this issue. The quotation starts at a point where Gingerich has alreday killed his wife, by means of stomping on her head:

"After a few minutes, Ed dropped to his knees and undressed Katie's body. Once all of her clothes were removed, he took a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and used it to make a seven-inch incision in her lower abdomen. Through the incision, Ed reached his hand up inside Katie's body cavity, and removed her lungs, kidneys, stomach, liver, spleen, bladder, uterus and heart. He stacked all of her organs in a pile next to her body, and stuck the knife into the top of them."

Echoes of Mary Kelly´s demise here, of course, but the main point is that you need not work through the ribcage when you extract organs.

The best,
Fisherman

[protohistorian]

the black dot

The dot in the center of the vertebra is mine, I am still learning this damned program. Dave

[protohistorian]

Martha's heart

This is a ct image of a female human showing her heart ( the semi round bright object with the grey stripe on it). Using the average height of a female thoracic vertebrea and the dimensions of my swiss army knife I erased a white line from the skin down to the depth that represents complete blade burial. Notice that the line violates the heart proper. Even if we allow for Marth being larger than the woman in the scan, it would suggest that pen knife wound placement and not weapon blade length was the determining factor in causing death. Dave

[protohistorian]

the peritoneum (think Emma Smith)

This illustration gives you an idea of placement and function. Dave

[protohistorian]

structure of the abdomen

The abdominal wall, medical illustration and ct scan. Dave

[protohistorian]

neck vascularization

Blood vessels within the neck. Dave

[protohistorian]

That measurement should have been 4 and 5/16 on the Nichols transection. If we allow for the stature of victorians being smaller than present, I think we can say this is the correct wound type. Dave

[protohistorian]

against a sight driven offender

Here is a pair of images that to my mind argue against the person who plundered Ms. Eddowes being driven by sight in his work. One image shows a human abdomen laid open, the complexity of forms is staggering. The other image shows vascularization in the area of the uterus. This image demonstrates the quantity of connective tissue and blood vessels involved. Dave

[protohistorian]

The Uterus

I have a feeling this might be helpful for those handicapped by testicles, awkward social skills, and those who could never manage to get a glimpse of a female action figure without her pants on. It might also be useful to women who do not possess x ray vision. Dave

[protohistorian]

a case on interpretations

Below are two diagrams. Dr. Llewellyn describes a 4 inch (approx) incision on Mrs. Nichol's neck. The diagram with a black line around the edge represents 4 inches along the circumference of the neck. You can plainly see an incision of this variety would not sever the neck structures on both sides of the neck as Dr. Llewellyn indicates was the case. Image two is the cross section with a transecting line of the image removed. This line is 3 and 5/16s of an inch long. Dave

[protohistorian]

Hello Phil, light was fading, it was eent (sundown). He had done this before, he hunts frequently. There was no space restriction, although having seen his method I do not think one would make a hell of alot of difference. Dave

[Phil Carter]

Hello Dave,

Thank you for this. Of course, I presume that the space for the deer disembowellment was unlimited, the light was good and that he (your brother) knew what he was looking for?
I have never done such a thing, so am not knowledgable enough to be able to hazard a guess. Many thanks

best wishes

Phil

[protohistorian]

Hello Dave,

This is indeed an interesting little thread. Thanks for starting this. Perhaps with the help of diagrams etc, I would be obliged, if anyone can tell me, how a heart is usually removed from a body? You see, there seems to me a small, tiny, insignificant little problem removing Mary Kelly's heart... It is impossible to do it (as far as I am aware) through the chest without breaking the ribs, which isn't mentioned in the Kelly inquest papers. Intercostal muscles between the ribs being ripped will not enable a person to remove the heart. Having talked to a medical aquaintance of mine, he assures me that heart removal is almost certainly done through the chest area.
However, he also said
"of course, that if one was to remove a heart from under the ribcage, then of course it is possible, by removing the liver and other material first. But then one has the problems of light and sight, and the length of the knife being used."

Now that's what I would call working blind...especially without anatomical knowledge. I welcome any diagram to explain these thoughts.

best wishes

Phil

Hello Phil. I would think it was done from underneath. Watching my brother extract a deer heart one time I noticed he located the heart and gave a tug. This he said allowed him to gage where the connections were that were holding the heart in place and he rather quickly and blindly inserted his knife, cut the offending vessels and tugged. Total elapsed time from incision to heart extraction about 4 minutes on a dead animal. My brother, like myself, is not a particularly bright bulb. Dave

[protohistorian]

disregard the last image

I uploaded the wrong damn image, please forgiveme. Dave