Patterns formed by murder locations

[DVV]

As for the rest of your post, I'll never believe there were two killers with similar obsessions/fantasies in the East End during the same period.

I think you are wrong for various reasons. But to consider just the Torso killer shows there was at least one other murderer around at the time focusing on unfortunates.

Phil H

As you like, but you're clearly wrong here. There is absolutely no chance that two serial killers with similar (understatement) fantasies were active in the same little area at the same time. The Torso killer is not to be compared, really not.

[Phil H]

As for the rest of your post, I'll never believe there were two killers with similar obsessions/fantasies in the East End during the same period.

I think you are wrong for various reasons. But to consider just the Torso killer shows there was at least one other murderer around at the time focusing on unfortunates.

Phil H

[DVV]

It strikes me that it might have been a domestic.
Phil H

Oh, here you're preaching a converted, Phil.
It's a domestic affair, I have no doubt, and more precisely a "ripper-domestic" affair. Serial killers can have a private life, can't they ?

As for the rest of your post, I'll never believe there were two killers with similar obsessions/fantasies in the East End during the same period.

[Phil H]

It strikes me that it might have been a domestic.

the intimacy of the place. The fact that Mary was practically naked, probably asleep and leaving space in the bed for another.

The mutilation of her face, the attempt to eradicate her personality, even her humanity strike me as very personal and perhaps suggest that the perpetrator was someone who was or had been intimate with Mary.

In the mix of fury and passion, the murderer may have sought to emulate what he had read about in the papers - especially Eddowes - but not seen. So he goes too far. The mutilations are greater, less controlled, more extreme.

I don't think this is the same butchery as was done by the man who killed Nichols and Chapman and probably Eddowes too.

A thought struck me as I wrote this - new to me maybe not to others. I don't know whether it has been discussed before, pardon me if it has.

Could a woman have done this? Could Mary have killed a female lover. or simply another woman? We know women had stayed in the room. If mary was murderer not victim it might explain why she was seen, even why Mrs maxwell as keen to say so. It might explain burnt clothing - to conceal the identity of the victim. It might explain Mary's singing and drawing attention to herself - almost saying - I can't be dead 'cos you can see/hear me.

Having ensured people knew she was around, she does the deed and vanishes.

Full of holes, but I had never examined the murder from that perspective before and I found it interesting.

Phil H

[DVV]

Hi Phil

How Delphic.

Not delphic at all, actually. Would a copycat do what has been done in Miller's Court ? Does it seem an ordinary domestic murder ?

[DVV]

Hi Rivkah, I simply meant that I was not sure whether the Ripper killed prostitutes because they were easy (or easier) preys... hence my surprise to read that I "had reasoned around a full circle". It was a bit unfair, don't you think ?

Isabelle Huppert, one of my all-time favorite actresses.

...but now I can see you're a man of taste.

[RivkahChaya]

Hello Rivkahmachinchose

I can't tell whether that's a weak attempt to make fun of my last name, or whether "chaya" means something obscure in French that you are humorously referring to as the "thingy," loosely translated.

And I'm pretty sure Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary. Dorothy Parker once said that "Flaubert spent 5 years on Madame Bovary; how did she stand it?" and it got cribbed into the script for the musical Mame. (Somehow, the number got changed to 13.) It's not like Dorothy Parker to get things like that wrong, although I can't vouch for the authors of the script for Mame. I'm not sure about Patrick Dennis, but at any rate, the line isn't in the book Auntie Mame, which I've read 3 or 4 times, and that's more than I can say for Madame Bovary. Even just skimming through it for the "good" parts, I didn't manage to read it in five years. I gave up after 3. I did watch all of a mini-series version, though, from the 1970s, and then the French movie with Isabelle Huppert, one of my all-time favorite actresses.

I stay away from stuff with "Madame" in the title, anymore. I hate Madame Butterfly. Some people should have low self-esteem.

Oh, wow. It's 11:45.

[DVV]

How Delphic.

Agreed all round.

[DVV]

Hello Rivkahmachinchose

Because you are defining them that way. The type of woman is "victims of JTR." People just generally assume Eddowes was soliciting because she was a Ripper-type victim. It's question begging: She was a Ripper victim, and the Ripper killed prostitutes, therefore, she must have been soliciting, and that's how the Ripper found her. You've just reasoned around in a full circle.

Also, you define the "area" as "the place where the bodies were found," and then say that she was a Ripper victim, because that's where her body was found. It's not only question begging, it's specifying an event after the fact.

If the FBI is tracking a killer who is active, and notes that the bodies are found withing certain coordinates, then they find another body within those coordinates, that's reason (along with other indicators) that this is a victim of the same person. Or, retrospectively, saying "If there are more victims of the same killer that we haven't found, look in this area, plus two miles around. But just to say "This is the area where we found the victims, therefore, all the victims are in this area," is meaningless.

Oh !

Wait-- what?

Ah !

[RivkahChaya]

Hi Rivkah
all very reasonable, BUT....on the other hand, although prostitutes are easy preys, there are also many other opportunities in daily life. Fact is that this killer only killed the same type of women in the same area.

Because you are defining them that way. The type of woman is "victims of JTR." People just generally assume Eddowes was soliciting because she was a Ripper-type victim. It's question begging: She was a Ripper victim, and the Ripper killed prostitutes, therefore, she must have been soliciting, and that's how the Ripper found her. You've just reasoned around in a full circle.

Also, you define the "area" as "the place where the bodies were found," and then say that she was a Ripper victim, because that's where her body was found. It's not only question begging, it's specifying an event after the fact.

If the FBI is tracking a killer who is active, and notes that the bodies are found withing certain coordinates, then they find another body within those coordinates, that's reason (along with other indicators) that this is a victim of the same person. Or, retrospectively, saying "If there are more victims of the same killer that we haven't found, look in this area, plus two miles around. But just to say "This is the area where we found the victims, therefore, all the victims are in this area," is meaningless.

Hi Phil

And Madame Bovary is Balzac's masterpiece.

Wait-- what?

[Phil H]

How Delphic.

[DVV]

Hi Phil

I now tend to discount Kelly
Phil H

And Madame Bovary is Balzac's masterpiece.

[Phil H]

I think helplessness may have been one of the reasons "Jack" chose these specific women.

Polly was inebriated as we know. Annie was desperately sick and weak and probably tired. Eddowes (if we consider her a victim of "Jack") was no doubt still hung-over and not quite herself. They were easy pickings.

One reason I now tend to discount Stride and Kelly as victims of "Jack" is that they were NOT helpless. Stride was not drunk and on a date when attacked. Kelly was drunk but a fit and energetic girl and she had a room - by all accounts she was rowdy and boisterous on the night before she died.

Phil H

[DVV]

If JTR were looking for textbook prostitutes, because the idea of the sex profession got him going, somehow, then you'd think he'd be finding his victims in brothels, not among the "I just need my doss money" women.

The prostitute thing really isn't significant as far as who the victims were, in that JTR was actively seeking sex workers. I think he was just seeking women who would go somewhere alone with a man they didn't know. You have to remember how uncommon it was for women to go out alone at night back then. I very much doubt that if JTR had found a woman alone for some other reason besides soliciting, and discovered that she wasn't a prostitute, he would have turned away an easy mark for someone who fit his victim profile better, and that may be what happened to Catherine Eddowes. She was alone, because she'd been alone at a much earlier time, and then had been detained involuntarily.

Hi Rivkah
all very reasonable, BUT....on the other hand, although prostitutes are easy preys, there are also many other opportunities in daily life. Fact is that this killer only killed the same type of women in the same area.

[RavenDarkendale]

In my mail today were four books on JtR

Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight
Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation by Trevor Marriott
Prince Jack by Frank Spiering
Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals by Ivor Edwards

Saturday I received Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect by Robert House.

This list shows that I am not bound down to any suspect, I like to read about them all.

However, pertinent to this thread, I would like to refer to Ivor Edwards' book.

First: His suspect is Stephenson, Robert Donston ( Roslyn D'Onston).

He uses the victim location to come up with an extremely complex occult design that he calls a Vesica Piscis. I quote, however, from page 149:

"If sites 1 and 2 had not been moved to afford better cover (italics mine), then the distances between sites 1, 2, 4, and 4 (the four sides of the parallelogram) would have been the same, 950 yards. Note the distance of 500 yards from sites 3, 4, and 5 from the center point.Considering that the murders were planned in such a matter (italics mine), the distances that were involved and the built up nature of the area the killer was as accurate as the situation would allow. (italics mine) I tried to improve upon the plan without moving two sites. I could not."

Now I must say this. I do not like to disparage any investigator and JtR writer. Yet something doesn't fit with me. The very complexity of the design of a Vesica Piscis, (look it up!) (On second thought you would need to see the one in Mr Edwards' book, it isn't exactly traditional, since it sports an outer parallelogram, which doesn't show up in Wiki) would make any competent person designing one on a map of Whitechapel to conclude that two of the points lacked cover to commit the crime, and this person would redesign the Vesica Piscis with sites that fit better.

They after all wouldn't go to this trouble without wanting people to know, and they couldn't expect people to say "Oh! I see it now! This point and this one are off because there was insufficient cover for the crime! Brilliant!"

This is real life, not Doctor Who...

Regards

Raven Darkendale