Did Jack kill more than three?

[Sam Flynn]

What still puzzles me with the out to buy stuff scenario is that contacting an unscrupulous mortician or coroner might have gotten him the specimens he sought way easier.

Indeed - one would think, on balance, that robbing a fresh grave would have been significantly less risky.

Anyhow... all this talk of why he might have done it gets us nowhere in terms of this thread's question, namely, "Did he kill more than three?".

[Doctor X]

Problem is people use motivation to include and exclude victims.

--J.D.

[Christine]

Why would human organs be worth money in 1888? We know intact cadavers were sold illegally to medical students, but isolated organs would be of limited value. If they were meant as study items, surely the various cadavers already properly dissected at medical schools would be a better source.

Furthermore, can you imagine the reaction of even the most cynical and ghoulish professor of medicine if someone showed up with a kidney matching Eddowes' a day or two after the dual event? And besides the obvious, the first thing any doctor would do is ask for the patient's medical history! No study organ would be worth much without it. ("What did this lady die of, my boy? She looks to have had Bright's disease!")

I guess we can't rule out the existence of a buyer who doesn't go straight to the police and collect the reward, (enough to pay for a good many black market cadavers, I imagine) but he'd be nuts to buy single human organs on the open market, and doubly nuts not to turn the killer in.

I have to think that the organ market was a legend, although it's not impossible that the killer actually thought he might sell them. More likely he got some sort of psychological pleasure out of taking them home with him.

[Sam Flynn]

Problem is people use motivation to include and exclude victims.

Problem is, "knowing" Jack's motivation without knowing who he even was is 100% speculation - therefore using motivation as a means of differentiating between the various murders can get us absolutely nowhere. As I'm sure you'd agree.

[Doctor X]

I absolutely agree, Sam. Much of this reminds me of historical reconstructions of mythical characters. Absent evidence, researchers make "reasonable assumptions."

--J.D.

[Fisherman]

Doctor X - who once again fails to see the point - writes:

"Then demonstrate the spray.
You cannot."

This, Doc, is quite an awkward task. If you had read my posts on the topic, you would by now know exactly why.

Then again, if you really had read those self same posts, and understood them, you would not still be around posting on the issue, would you?

I am a man of great patience. So I will once again go though the motions, showing you why this question of yours is ... well, a bit strange, to say the least.

This is how we will do it this time around:

1. Was there any spray? Depends, of course, just as the area it covered would depend on the distance to the ground from the wound as it was opened up.
As I have stated before, I will not say with any certainty that she was cut lying down. Nor will I say that she was cut falling.
One of the two will - in all probability - apply here.
The discussion you and I have been having on the topic has been dealing with the issue if she could have been cut while falling, without that showing itself in blood traces or not.
No, is what you say.
Yes, is my take on it.

Back to your question: "Then demonstrate the spray. You cannot".

Was there any spray if she was cut falling?
Probably, yes.
How much ground would the spray cover?
Depends on the combination of A/ the pressure of the blood as it exited the wound (the more pressure, the further away the spray would travel, covering a larger area on the ground the more powerful the spurt was, and B/ the distance between the wound and the ground as the blood exited the wound.

That, as far as I understand, would be the two parameters that governed here.

So; if she was cut standing up, and if her blood exited her in a mighty jet, we would get a very different result than if she was cut very close to the ground, and if the blood left her body with much less pressure.

It compares, Doc, pretty well with a depth sonar on a fishing boat. Such a device sends out a cone-shaped signal, more or less. That means that the longer the distance to the bottom, the wider the cone will get before it reaches that bottom. Down there, it will cover a large area, but a mere decimetre under the sonar sounder, it will cover just a square inch or two.

Now, lets keep working from the assumption that there was blood spray exiting the wound. Then the same thing would apply as applies for a depth sonar; close to the wound, the spreading of the spray will be small, but the longer out from the wound we measure it, the greater the spreading will be - at least as long as the blood has the power to travel.

What I have been saying for score and seven years by now, is that if she fell to her left, with the opening of the left carotid artery facing directly downwards, then the direction of the bloodspurt will not be up against the sky. It will travel downwards, maybe even shoot downwards, but down is where it will go. And the closer to the ground she was when she was cut, the bigger the chance will be that she ends up on the same spot where the jet of blood ended up.

Now, Doctor X, if you use a spray can, and spray from a metre up, down towards the ground, you will cover a significant area. But the closer to the ground you hold the can when you spray, the smaller the sprayed area will be, right?

Meaning that if you spray with, say, yellow paint from a metre up, and then pour half a bucket of blood over the spray image, centering the place where you pour, you will afterwards end up with a large pool of blood, covering most of the yellow spray colour, maybe all of it. Maybe there will be yellow dots to see outside the pool, I don´t know.

But I do know that the more you diminish the distance between spray can and floor, the smaller the chance will be that you will be able to see any yellow dots after having poured half a bucket of blood over them!

That of course means that you are absolutely right when you say that I cannot demonstrate the spray - since it would all be covered by the pool of blood leaving her after she fell to the ground. To say that it could not have happened thus because there was no spray, is therefore not correct - that spray may well have been there, but if the pool of blood that formed under her covered it afterwards, it would not be discernable.
Add to this the fact that if it happened thus, Stride would have landed on the spray, further diminishing any possibility to recognize it afterwards.

This is a long post, Doc, and I admit that it would have been a lot easier to just say that your question was incorrectly formulated and thus not viable. It´s just that I got a feeling that you would not have gotten my drift.

I hope, though, that you did so now...?

The best,
Fisherman

[Doctor X]

This, Doc, is quite an awkward task. If you had read my posts on the topic, you would by now know exactly why.

Have and understood the reason: you cannot.

Which makes the rest of your protests irrelevant.

Yours truly,

--J.D.

[perrymason]

Hello my Swedish friend,

I addressed your points inside your post....

Even though it is easy to recognize the fact that there may have been large money involved in organ trading, I think that there is so much pointing away from it in the Ripper case that we need not get too interested in the stuff.

To begin with, if he was after the uteri, to sell them, why would he:

-leave Kellys uterus behing in Miller´s court?

Who says the killer in Millers Court was the same man that wanted abdominal organs....clearly he wasnt at all interested in taking any away.

-cut Eddowes face; no uterus there!

No, but he does take a partial uterus from her. Did the story specify only intact organs had value....I dont recall.

settle for outdoor venues, ensuring very little time to work on the victims, and accepting immense risks?

I would accept any evidence at all for that conclusion to be accurate......but there is none, without automatically adding Mary Jane and then assuming he killed all 4 priors. Both bad choices. There is a leap that many are making that is from false footing...that being that the outdoor venues were anything but his preference. There is no evidence that was not the case.

-make such a hash of the job, coming up with only one undamaged uterus in five tries?

I think your mistaken Fisherman, because the evidence says that a killer got 1 complete uterus with a single swoop, and a killer got another partial uterus from the next Canonical victim with similar characteristics. Again, how you cannot see that your arguments are based on conclusions that are not proven correct...namely one man killed all 5, is beyond my ability to explain obviously. There are so many opinions on individual murders that use a Canon and a mad killer as the starting point....which is not only assbackwards detective work...but completely illogical. How can you analyze any one properly unless it is in focus as as a single unsolved murder first. If you take them all as murders, not one "spree", then a single guy may likely have killed 2 women to obtain their abdominal organs...perhaps to sell, and possibly attempted to do so with another, the first Canonical. And using their murders as a source for evidence that the killer was anything but contented with his surroundings, we find that he even accomplishes all he does with Kate and is still not discovered over her trying to squeeze that last cut in.

-cut all the way up to the breast bone?

I dont think Im talking about a surgeon here, and how rough or shoddy the cuts are, perhaps considering he is working in the dark, with cops everywhere looking to catch and hang him, he has little or no light where he works, ...are perhaps excusable under the circumstances.

There are too many elements around pointing away from the Ripper ripping to gain tradeable items to make it viable, I feel.

The best,
Fisherman

I saved the last answer for here.......I think you Fisherman are a keen and interested amateur detective, and I hate to see you have to defend arguments that are not your own.

Just to be sure we all talk about the same things......the reality is that we discuss murders of unfortunates in East End London in 1888-1889,... we dont discuss the list of one bloodthirsty killer within that time period, nor are we discussing "a man" we have any information on which may be used to suggest why he does these things. Or more pointedly, what he would really prefer if given the chance.

So....if youd like to make a case for the mad killer of yours to be itching to move indoors, first prove he killed one outdoor victim if you would, so we can establish at the very least justification for the premise.

We only know what we can see and touch...and in that information there are clues. Two women had abdominal organs taken...the rest didnt.

Best regards FM.

[Fisherman]

Doctor X writes:
"Have and understood the reason: you cannot.
Which makes the rest of your protests irrelevant."

One yes and one no there, Doc.

Yes:
I cannot point to spray that is covered under a pool of blood. Nor can you. Nor can anyone else. It is physically impossible, just as it is and remains physically impossible for you to grasp that fact.

No:
This of course in no way makes my point invalid or irrelevant to anyone but you, I should think.

End of discussion; no sense flogging a dead doc.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Hi Michael!

Here are my comments:

"Who says the killer in Millers Court was the same man that wanted abdominal organs"

"No, but he does take a partial uterus from her. Did the story specify only intact organs had value....I dont recall."

Nor do I, Michael. But I assume that intact organs would at least fetch a better price that damaged or halfed ones. And we are still left with a cut face on Eddowes, demanding some sort of explanation.

"There is a leap that many are making that is from false footing...that being that the outdoor venues were anything but his preference."

I think that the outdoor venues could well have added to the buzz, Michael. But a buzz is not what an organ harvester is looking for. To make any sense, he would be looking for localities that ensured him plenty of time to go about his business.

"If you take them all as murders, not one "spree", then a single guy may likely have killed 2 women to obtain their abdominal organs"

Absolutely! And I always try to be openminded on how many - or few - that belonged to Jack. It´s just that even if we go only for Chapman and Eddowes as victims of our organ-harvester, he still cut all the way to the breastbone.


The reason I went with the canon in my answer was that you finished the post I was answering "why is a mad killer of all 5 without objectives more sensible than some kills for profit?" But I do think that Mary belonged to Jacks tally - and that she was not killed for profiting on her organs afterwards.

Finally:

"if youd like to make a case for the mad killer of yours to be itching to move indoors, first prove he killed one outdoor victim if you would, so we can establish at the very least justification for the premise"

Michael, you are jumping the gun here, when you are speaking of "my" mad killer.I do not for one moment think that we are looking for a raving lunatic. I believe that the Ripper was a calculating guy, who managed to keep up appearances in society, who calmly walked away from his murder sites, and who was able to judge what time he had at hand at the occasions he struck. Plus he had all the luck he could have asked for.
Like I said, I made my post from the premise you supplied in your own post. I have no problems seeing that Kelly may have been killed by a different killer than the others. As may Stride have been. And, of course, Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes may have been killed by three different killers, there is at least no way to effectively disprove it.
My feeling though, is that Stride is the only one who does not belong to the "canon". But that is just a consequence of the way I read the evidence. Otheres read it differently and come up with other theories on who to involve or exclude.

Inthe end, if we are to seek an organ harvester here, my take on it is that the most likely victim would be Chapman.
The number two on the list would be Stride - for the simple reason that we cannot say what would have been the killers next move, and thus he may of course have been an interrupted harvester of organs.
Number three? Nichols. But there was too large cuts on her to justify an extraction of the uterus alone.
Consequentially, Eddowes ends up as number four, and Kelly as number five on the list. They are both very unlikely to have been killed solely for their inner organs, I think.

The best, Michael!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Hi again, Michael!

Sorry, but I apparently made a hash of my last post, copying better than I pasted.
Here it is again, all in good order:

Here are my comments:

"Who says the killer in Millers Court was the same man that wanted abdominal organs"

The reason I went with the canon in my answer was that you finished the post I was answering "why is a mad killer of all 5 without objectives more sensible than some kills for profit?" But I do think that Mary belonged to Jacks tally - and that she was not killed for profiting on her organs afterwards.

"No, but he does take a partial uterus from her. Did the story specify only intact organs had value....I dont recall."

Nor do I, Michael. But I assume that intact organs would at least fetch a better price that damaged or halfed ones. And we are still left with a cut face on Eddowes, demanding some sort of explanation.

"There is a leap that many are making that is from false footing...that being that the outdoor venues were anything but his preference."

I think that the outdoor venues could well have added to the buzz, Michael. But a buzz is not what an organ harvester is looking for. To make any sense, he would be looking for localities that ensured him plenty of time to go about his business.

"If you take them all as murders, not one "spree", then a single guy may likely have killed 2 women to obtain their abdominal organs"

Absolutely! And I always try to be openminded on how many - or few - that belonged to Jack. It´s just that even if we go only for Chapman and Eddowes as victims of our organ-harvester, he still cut all the way to the breastbone.

Finally:

"if you´d like to make a case for the mad killer of yours to be itching to move indoors, first prove he killed one outdoor victim if you would, so we can establish at the very least justification for the premise"

Michael, you are jumping the gun here, when you are speaking of "my" mad killer. I do not for one moment think that we are looking for a raving lunatic. I believe that the Ripper was a calculating guy, who managed to keep up appearances in society, who calmly walked away from his murder sites, and who was able to judge what time he had at hand at the occasions he struck. Plus he had all the luck he could have asked for.
Like I said, I made my post from the premise you supplied in your own post. I have no problems seeing that Kelly may have been killed by a different killer than the others. As may Stride have been. And, of course, Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes may have been killed by three different killers, there is at least no way to effectively disprove it.
My feeling though, is that Stride is the only one who does not belong to the "canon". But that is just a consequence of the way I read the evidence. Others read it differently and come up with other theories on who to involve or exclude.

In the end, if we are to seek an organ harvester here, my take on it is that the most likely victim would be Chapman.
Number two on the list would be Stride - for the simple reason that we cannot say what would have been the killers next move, and thus he may of course have been an interrupted harvester of organs.
Number three? Nichols. But there was too large cuts on her to justify an extraction of the uterus alone.
Consequentially, Eddowes ends up as number four, and Kelly as number five on the list. They are both very unlikely to have been killed solely for their inner organs, I think.

The best, Michael!
Fisherman

[FrankO]

In the end, if we are to seek an organ harvester here, my take on it is that the most likely victim would be Chapman.

And even she would be unlikely, Fisherman, because why take away part of the belly wall if you're interested in harvesting organs and preferably whole ones?

The best,
Frank

[perrymason]

Hi Fisherman,

I didnt mean to paint you as buying a maniacal drolling killer Fisherman, but if you choose to use all 5 victims as one killers tally, you lose any thread of continuity that existed prior to Mary Jane,...and excluding Liz. And you get a single killer apparently without motivations other than mutilating, a killer who may just cut once, ignore his previous choices, and have a different goal each time he kills.

With Liz, the only physical evidence we have suggests she was simply murdered, with a single throat cut. To assume there was any more intent than what occurred is unsupportable speculation, because there are no indications of further interest in her by her killer after that one cut.

As far as who were intended to be abdominal organ donors, I think the only logical assumption is the 2 that did lose abdominal organs. Leaving one victim with wounds consistent with the preliminary steps one need take to extract abdominal organs, one with a single throat cut, and one with all abdominal organs cut out....but none taken.

If you remove Liz and Mary....you have 3 kills that it would make sense to associate with a single killer.....but by adding the 2, you now have a man whose acts are incomprehensible, and impossible to anticipate, or categorize. The Canon has tainted this study.

Adding the two that dont fit skews all the previous data. And makes the potential answers seem more improbable and unlikely.

Cheers Mate.

[JSchmidt]

Ok, we can group the murders like that, but does that necessarily imply that we have different perpetrators?
Problem with that is that we do not know if we have one killer with an extremely similar pattern, a possible copycat and an unrelated crime, or if we have a killer that modifies his killings depending on circumstances and preferences.
If we have the former case of unrelated crimes we have at least one highly ritualised or at least very consistent killer. How likely is that very consistent pattern if we assume that these were his only crimes? Seems pretty fully developed to me and that makes me a bit skeptic.
But then again I admit that Martha Tabram may have been an early victim in my opinion.
Sorry to say it Michael, but I think that you are too strongly focussed on the taking of the abdominal organs. Don't ignore all the other injuries.
I admit that all knife injuries may be superficially similar, but the number and location of the wounds as a whole seem consistent to me if you disregard the double event.
And that is a case of not enought data to really say whether or not it might fit the pattern. Disturbance or at least the fear of getting caught are plausible but not provable explanations of that. Liz is really a case where modern criminological methods would have been needed to include or exclude it, so I refrain from judgment.

[perrymason]

Hi JS,

I can assure you that I am in no way "focussed" on the abdominal organs. I am only making a case that within the Canon murders, one or more men with that focus may have killed some of the victims assigned to "Jacks" ledger sheet.

Because the physical evidence would support that assumption with at least 2 victims.

What is not in our "evidentiary" basket is solid grounds for a "Canon" in the first place, a credible explanation for the 3rd alleged victim only receiving a single cut if a Ripper victim, and any accredited evidence that shows Mary Jane met her killer the same way all the others did...outdoors while likely soliciting.

Wounds inflicted by a knife are hardly definitive indications of any one mans work, clearly any man matching the approximate age and description of some suspects....5'6"-5'8", 35-38 years old, using a knife at all like the one that may have created the cuts on the Canonicals, could easily make cuts that appear similar to The Canon's wounds.....and with Mary Jane, her killer may have had the benefit of knowing everything done to the prior victims....which is why we see many similarities and repetitions, but none of the focus that is present in the abdominal organ donors wounds.

Best regards.