Mary Jane Violence

[Errata]

Which victims do you regard as "straightforward ways to dump a body", Errata?

In general, any torso recovered without evidence of unnecessary mutilation. So any mutilation not connected to disarticulation of the body. So I think Pinchin Street was a dump, I think the Thames of 1874 was a dump. I have to go over it again but at the moment with sticks out in my mind is the Thames Murder of 1873 and Elizabeth Jackson were not just dumps.

There’s post mortem mutilators and post mortem mutilators. Not a sentence I ever thought I’d type. But yes, Jack the ripper was a post mortem mutilator. But so was my great uncle (really a third cousin twice removed) Saul who was a member of Murder inc. who apparently cut up a rival hit man and dumped him in the Hudson off a friend’s fishing boat. Which is probably why I never found parts in a river that surprising. Saul by the way came to New York after 20 years in London after escaping the Pale. Went away for murder in 39.

if you’re cutting up a body because you accidentally killed a girl, and you want to dump her in various parts of the river, there is no need to cut up in the abdomen. There’s no need to scalp the body. There’s very little point in scraping the face off of the body. So then why do it? And then you get to the difference between a serial killer and a multiple murderer. Essentially a serial killer gets off on it. Or is trying to. Both are interesting subtypes, but as it stands, we aren’t terribly interested in multiple murderers. Gang wars. So it’s the ones cut up more than just disarticulation that “count” when looking for a connection to a guy who takes uteruses. Maybe.

[Fisherman]

No, the difference is a few cuts vs slashing back and forth. Surely that's not an incomprehensible difference.

Very few things are incomprehensible to me; one of them is how people claim that the two series are very different. But thatīs another matter.

Eddowes and Kelly were both evisceration victims.

They both had organs taken out.

The organs taken out were of both a sexual and a non-sexual character.

The both had their their abdomens cut all the way from breastplate to groin.

They both engaged in prostitution.

You say that one of them had "a few cuts" wheras the other had "slashing back and forth" to the face. Eddowes was a victim who was killed under severe time pressure, and it may well be that the killer limited his facial cutting either to flee the scene or so as to allow for other cutting too (if the facial cuts came first). Kelly would not have imposed that kind of problem on the killer, and it therefore becomes logical that whereas Eddowes had only kidney and uterus cut out, Kelly had all the organs of the abdomen removed. Instread of going looking for another killer, we may simple accept the difference as a diffence in volume.

[Fisherman]

You have additional information here that helps with clarity Al....the man took Mary apart after arriving at her room after midnight, being in her presence while she is in her underwear, a situation shich she apparently allowed, and then she went to bed, turned on her side to face the partition wall, and slid over to the right hand side of the bed. That, and the wounds, let us know she knew her killer, and that he was mad. As in angry.

Whoa, thatīs a whole lot of guesswork there. It seems the sheet from the right hand side of the bed was used to cover the face as the killer cut. That alone speaks for a position in the midst of the bed and on her back, not on her side facing the partition wall. But I would not go as far as to say that I know how she lay - and nor should you do so, least of all in conflict with the evidence...

[Fisherman]

yup
fish do you think torsoripper was trying to recreate the anatomical venus museum display, which interestingly shut down right before the first torso in 73, or at least was inspired by it?

There were many anatomical exhibitions, Abby - the Louis Kahn museum will be the one you are referring to, but these exhibitions and museums were closed over a longish period of time, although commencing in 1873 with the Kahn museum.

And I think the suggestion of a link to the murders is an excellent one.

[Fisherman]

I believe the killer's motive was driven by the satisfaction of causing a particular response rather the kill itself.

Are you suggesting a communicative motive?

The murders were a means rather than the ends.

Quite possibly, yes. Although Iīd suggest the communicative element may have grown on the killer as he kept going.

To include the torso case and infer it's the same killer removes the idea of escalation.

So does involving MacKenzie in the Ripper tally. Nevertheless, she is likely to belong. I think we must accept that the circumstances may have ruled what the killings looked like - Stride was not much of an escalation, was she? Furthermore, we may perhaps need to weigh in a dwindling interest on account of the killer, although the Ripper period as such is short. MacKenzie was in 1889, and some of the enthusiasm may have worn off by that stage. It is the same in the Torso series - there were. o organs extracted from the Pinchin Street torso - but Hebbert had no doubts that she belonged. He even saw a refined technique in her, so there was THAT kind of an escalation...

It switches methodology and it's very unlikely for a serial killer to - if you pardon the phrase - chop and change the way they dispose of the body/evidence.

Yes, unusual - but in no way unheard of. There are numerous examples of killers who eviscerate on some occasions and not on others.

There may be similarities in the way some victims were killed - there are only so many ways to commit a murder when the weapon of choice is a knife - but what happens post mortem is purely signature to the killer, whether it's how they dispose of the body or hide/not hide the evidence.

There are a million ways to cut a body, Iīm afraid. There is the ordinary stab to the trunk, and there is cutting away the abdominal "lid" and plucking out organs from under it. The two are lightyears apart in terms of implications. And it was never a question of how there "may" be similarities. They are there, in spades.

[Fisherman]

In general, any torso recovered without evidence of unnecessary mutilation.

What, then, is necessary mutilation?

1873: Face taken away carefully, leaving the eyelashes and ears and lips on the "mask". Body divided in a dozen parts or so.

1884: Head found with large gashes and a cut away nose.

1887: Body lacking heart and lungs and having been opened up with an incision from pubes to groin before it the trunk was parted in three.

1888: Torso placed inside the new Scotland Yard building, part of it buried. An arm was thrown in the Thames. So why not throw it all there?

1889 (1): Body opened up frpm pubes to ribs, heart and lungs removed, uterus cut out and deprived of the foetus inside,then packed together with cord and placenta inside the two flaps cut away from the abdominal wall and tied up before being thrown into the Thames.

1889 (2): Body having a fifteen inch long cut from the vagine to the breastplate, cutting the vagina open but not oassing through the omentum.

It is NOT the ordinary practical dismemberer we are dealing with here.

So any mutilation not connected to disarticulation of the body. So I think Pinchin Street was a dump,

With a fifteen inch cut to the abdomen - how was that necessary for dismemberment?

I think the Thames of 1874 was a dump.

We know very little about it - but if it was a practical matter, then why not cut off BOTH legs? Why leave one on the body?

I have to go over it again but at the moment with sticks out in my mind is the Thames Murder of 1873 and Elizabeth Jackson were not just dumps.

Read the above!

There’s post mortem mutilators and post mortem mutilators.

Indeed.

Not a sentence I ever thought I’d type. But yes, Jack the ripper was a post mortem mutilator. But so was my great uncle (really a third cousin twice removed) Saul who was a member of Murder inc. who apparently cut up a rival hit man and dumped him in the Hudson off a friend’s fishing boat. Which is probably why I never found parts in a river that surprising. Saul by the way came to New York after 20 years in London after escaping the Pale. Went away for murder in 39.

The Torso killer also mutilated post mortem. We know this for sure. He may have done so in many cases, although we can only be sure of the Jackson case. Then again, when we know that Jacksons trunk was cut in three parts and that the heart and lungs were removed, does it not make for a useful guess that the same had happened to the Rainham victim, where the trunk was divided in three parts in the exact same fashion and where the heart and lungs were also missing? The only difference is that Galloway does not say outright that these parts were "removed", he says they were "missing" - which allows totally for them having been removed. In both these cases, part of the colon had also gone lost.
If it walks like a duck...

if you’re cutting up a body because you accidentally killed a girl, and you want to dump her in various parts of the river, there is no need to cut up in the abdomen. There’s no need to scalp the body. There’s very little point in scraping the face off of the body. So then why do it?

It is perfectly obvious once you see the implications, actually. And the face was cut away, not "scraped" from the body. It was a meticulous and timeconsuming act. WHo would do such a thing - and then throw the face away? There is a very useful solution to that question around the corner.

And then you get to the difference between a serial killer and a multiple murderer. Essentially a serial killer gets off on it. Or is trying to. Both are interesting subtypes, but as it stands, we aren’t terribly interested in multiple murderers. Gang wars. So it’s the ones cut up more than just disarticulation that “count” when looking for a connection to a guy who takes uteruses. Maybe.

If there is an eviscerator on the prowl in a city, the odds that any eviscerated bodies surfacing are by that same man are extremely low. Once victims in both series involve the cutting away of the abdominal wall, we have very compelling evidence of a common killer. The fewest engage in these practices.
And it is not about a man taking uteri, itīs about a man taking out uteri AND hearts. It is the stuff of a sick urge, not one of warlords battling it out, Errata.

[Abby Normal]

In general, any torso recovered without evidence of unnecessary mutilation. So any mutilation not connected to disarticulation of the body. So I think Pinchin Street was a dump, I think the Thames of 1874 was a dump. I have to go over it again but at the moment with sticks out in my mind is the Thames Murder of 1873 and Elizabeth Jackson were not just dumps.

There’s post mortem mutilators and post mortem mutilators. Not a sentence I ever thought I’d type. But yes, Jack the ripper was a post mortem mutilator. But so was my great uncle (really a third cousin twice removed) Saul who was a member of Murder inc. who apparently cut up a rival hit man and dumped him in the Hudson off a friend’s fishing boat. Which is probably why I never found parts in a river that surprising. Saul by the way came to New York after 20 years in London after escaping the Pale. Went away for murder in 39.

if you’re cutting up a body because you accidentally killed a girl, and you want to dump her in various parts of the river, there is no need to cut up in the abdomen. There’s no need to scalp the body. There’s very little point in scraping the face off of the body. So then why do it? And then you get to the difference between a serial killer and a multiple murderer. Essentially a serial killer gets off on it. Or is trying to. Both are interesting subtypes, but as it stands, we aren’t terribly interested in multiple murderers. Gang wars. So it’s the ones cut up more than just disarticulation that “count” when looking for a connection to a guy who takes uteruses. Maybe.

hi errata
ALL of the torsos had post mortem mutilation above and beyond what was needed for dismemberment. This is what kind of pushed me over the edge to lean toward torsoman and the ripper being the same.
ALL the torsos/parts were dumped in odd, public places in shocking fashion and certainly with no overt attempts to hide.

Both go to sig-the former to primary motivation-and the latter to secondary motivation (shocking the public) however could also be some overlap with MO since he needed to get the body out of his place.

both the post mortem mutilation and the way the bodies/parts were left is similar to the ripper.

[Abby Normal]

If there is an eviscerator on the prowl in a city, the odds that any eviscerated bodies surfacing are by that same man are extremely low. Once victims in both series involve the cutting away of the abdominal wall, we have very compelling evidence of a common killer. The fewest engage in these practices.
And it is not about a man taking uteri, itīs about a man taking out uteri AND hearts. It is the stuff of a sick urge, not one of warlords battling it out, Errata.

hey fish
didn't one of the 70s torsos have a breast removed? (like Kelly)

[Marie Jeanette Davies]

Thank you everyone!
Regarding the Torso Killer, I see quite a few similarities with Jack, but somehow I keep thinking that they were not one and the same. Perhaps the Ripper was fascinated with the Torso Man's "work" and wanted to emulate him.

[Errata]

hey fish
didn't one of the 70s torsos have a breast removed? (like Kelly)

1873 I think

[Errata]

I said Pinchin. I meant Whitehall was a dump. Mea Culpa.

but even beyond that but my father told me that men like Uncle Saul open up the abdomens so they don’t gas up and float. So what do I know about the way you dump a body. I thought you just used cement blocks.

Though with more than 500 bodies coming out of the Thames in one year, you could make an argument that a better disposal was due for a trial.

[Abby Normal]

I said Pinchin. I meant Whitehall was a dump. Mea Culpa.
very rare.
but even beyond that but my father told me that men like Uncle Saul open up the abdomens so they don’t gas up and float. So what do I know about the way you dump a body. I thought you just used cement blocks.

Though with more than 500 bodies coming out of the Thames in one year, you could make an argument that a better disposal was due for a trial.

hi errata
alot of bodies coming out of the river yes, but torsos/ body parts coming out very rare. actually, torsos found anywhere in or around london, including the river extremely rare.

[Errata]

hi errata
alot of bodies coming out of the river yes, but torsos/ body parts coming out very rare. actually, torsos found anywhere in or around london, including the river extremely rare.

I believe it, but I also believe there is a ratio of torsos they found vs torsos they didn’t, and while I don’t think it’s high, I think it’s probably higher than I would expect it to be. Rivers are funny creatures.

[Fisherman]

hey fish
didn't one of the 70s torsos have a breast removed? (like Kelly)

The 1873 body was cut up in very many pieces, and one of them entailed a breast - but with the underlying torso attached, so to speak. Itīs not the same as Kelly, who had her breasts removed from her torso by circular cuts.

[Fisherman]

Thank you everyone!
Regarding the Torso Killer, I see quite a few similarities with Jack, but somehow I keep thinking that they were not one and the same. Perhaps the Ripper was fascinated with the Torso Man's "work" and wanted to emulate him.

Okay. Then you have top ask yourself how many cases we have in the history of crime where somebody emulated an eviscerators work. Once you come up with an answer to that one, the next question becomes: Who emulated who? The torso killer was first to take out a heart and to cut from ribs to pubes (1887), something the Ripper did a year later (1888). Then again, the Ripper was first to take away the abdominal wall in sections (1888), something the Torso killer did the next year (1889).

The problem with a copycat scenario is that it will always be much less likely than the suggestion of a single killer. Once we have the same kind of odd damage inflicted in two cases, then our best guess will always be that it was the same perpetrator. It is only when there is evidence to the contrary that we need to drop that idea. And there is no such evidence at all, since a killer is perfectly able to dismember in some cases while not doing so in others - the practice is not a common one but it exists in numerous cases, and the evidence compels us to accept that this was what heppened here.

Whichever way we try to solve this enigma, we will end up with a strange scenario. There is no easy and smooth solution. A killer who sometimes dismembers and sometimes not is an odd matter (although not unheard of), but then again, two killers who do the same odd things to their victims is even more so.