Final killing -planned ?

[OctavBotnar]

Do you think JTR final killing (Mary Kelly) was planned ? Did the other victims have access to rooms for sex ? Or did JTR plan outside killings - and then decide his final one would be indoors?
Although , it seems odd that he stopped when he experienced his ultimate kill -and would have further needed to satisfy his bloodlust further ?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Others might disagree but I’d say that the killer would have known nothing personal about his victims therefore he wouldn’t have known that MJK had a room of her own. That’s my opinion anyway.

[c.d.]

My guess (and that is all that it is) is that Jack had met Mary a few days prior to killing her and thus became aware that she had her own place. I think that she told him to come by some night.

c.d.

[etenguy]

Others might disagree but I’d say that the killer would have known nothing personal about his victims therefore he wouldn’t have known that MJK had a room of her own. That’s my opinion anyway.

Hi Herlock

I think you are right, except I wonder whether having been interrupted twice (once by Lechmere (or Paul if you consider Lechmere the killer) and once at the club) he particularly looked out for someone with a private space for fear of being caught.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock

I think you are right, except I wonder whether having been interrupted twice (once by Lechmere (or Paul if you consider Lechmere the killer) and once at the club) he particularly looked out for someone with a private space for fear of being caught.

Hi Eten,

Its possible but I’m wondering how many prostitutes had their own room? And how would he have found one if that’s what he was looking for? How many would he have had to have spoken too before he found Mary?

[Herlock Sholmes]

My guess (and that is all that it is) is that Jack had met Mary a few days prior to killing her and thus became aware that she had her own place. I think that she told him to come by some night.

c.d.

Hi c.d.

I missed your post. It’s certainly a possibility.

[Gordon]

Do you think JTR final killing (Mary Kelly) was planned ? Did the other victims have access to rooms for sex ? Or did JTR plan outside killings - and then decide his final one would be indoors?
Although , it seems odd that he stopped when he experienced his ultimate kill -and would have further needed to satisfy his bloodlust further ?

“Planned” to what degree, precisely?

If we ask “did he plan to do murder when he went out that night?” my answer is Yes. If that sounds trite, I’m saying it was not an impulse killing--as the murder of Martha Tabram most probably was, regardless of whether Jack or someone else did it.

If we ask “did he plan to do this last killing in a private room?” again I’d say Yes--but can’t be sure of the reason, though I suspect it was largely a matter of safety.

Most of the other victims didn’t have private rooms. Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes all slept in common lodging houses. Liz Stride lived with Michael Kidney some of the time. so the presence of a man wouldn’t allow any privacy. I’m not sure about the rest of the time. That’s a good question about Stride; somebody here may know. As for Tabram, I know she’d lived with men in the past, but I can’t recall hearing where she was living at the time she was killed, though that’s irrelevant anyway.

My point is all about the escalation of public vigilance in response to the murders, which may also have affected the timing in between the murders. Let me suppose first that Jack did kill Tabram: an impulse killing, like Christie’s strangulation of his first victim, Ruth Fuerst. After that, Christie planned all of his other murders. The same with Jack. Having first tasted blood and found it stimulating, he decided to repeat the experience, only this time more deliberately, with more “method”: strangulation, throat cutting and mutilation. As a Web site about serial killers put it: “They tried it; they liked it; they did it again!” It could well have taken him three weeks to mull over his first experience before he arrived at his decision, went out, found Polly Nichols, and killed her.

Alternatively, maybe someone else killed Tabram and Jack just decided to start with Nichols. Maybe the close timing was a coincidence. Or maybe he heard about Tabram’s murder and it inspired him to emulate it. At any rate, he killed Nichols, and just a week later he killed Annie Chapman.

Now think about this from the public’s point of view. The killing of Tabram was unusually savage, though unfortunately savagery of that kind was not uncommon. But next came the murder of Nichols. That was really nasty with the mutilations, and coming so close on the heels of Tabram’s murder (regardless of who killed her) it left people thinking there was something out of the ordinary going on.

Then just a week later came the murder of Annie Chapman, the ghastliest horror show yet. Now people were really in a frenzy. It was pretty obvious the same guy had done Nichols, and no matter who did Tabram, in the public mind it was still “three in a row.” This reminds me of what Goldfinger said to James Bond: “Mister Bond, they have a saying in Chicago. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action!” And without doubt, this was “enemy action.” The people knew there was a deadly enemy out there, and they were baying for his blood, with mobs in the streets thirsting to lynch any suspect, however innocent. The police and everyone were on red alert.

Jack realized he had to lie low for a while, hoping all the furor would die down. So he let three weeks elapse before he ventured out on his next foray. If most people’s suppositions are right, Liz Stride was his next victim, but he was interrupted (possibly by Diemschutz himself) before he had a chance to indulge himself in mutilation. Still, in spite of the risks, now that his blood was up he wasn’t going to let the night go without doing his customary carving, so he carried on and did poor Kate Eddowes as well.

Again, from the viewpoint of public perception, Jack was a master of that old Jaws slogan: ”Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... A pause, longer than the last, long enough to lull people into a false sense of security (was it all over at last?) followed by yet another atrocity, each one worse than the last. This time it was two in one night!

Needless to say, this was never more true that with the later murder of Mary Kelly.

However, the result each time was a further ramping up of public vigilance and precautions. After that double murder at the end of September, Ripper hysteria was at fever pitch--now he’d even been given a “name,” and a feeling (however irrational) that authorities were “closing in” on his identity--and Jack really had to keep a low profile for a time. Also, once he was safely home that night, once the adrenaline stopped pumping and reaction set in after his risky venture, he must have realized that he nearly got caught in the act with Stride--and was probably close to getting caught literally “red-handed” as he headed down Goulston Street with a piece of Kate’s bloodstained apron in his hands.

He couldn’t afford to go out again too soon. And next time, he would have to be very careful.

That meant finding a truly secure place to do his next murder. A private dwelling.

Other things follow from that. Mary Kelly was said to be “different” from the other victims because she was so much younger and more attractive. All kinds of myths have been woven around her because she was “different,” “special,” exceptional.” It so happens that far less is known about her background than that of the other victims, which makes her seem tantalizingly mysterious, alluring and open to all kinds of speculation, justified or not. Some people think she wasn’t a Ripper victim on account of these “differences,” while others as we know (including one suffering from a brain tumor) have built crazy theories around her about “Royal conspiracies” and whatnot. But to me this is all nonsense, and reality is perfectly simple, straightforward and mundane.

Jack needed a safer place to do his next murder, that’s all. Whether he met Mary earlier, or just encountered her by luck in the street, we will never know. At any rate, the very fact that she had a private room virtually dictated that she would be younger and more attractive than the large majority of older and sadly worn-out women who practiced the same trade; more capable of commanding a higher price for her services to be able to afford a private room in the first place. Even then she could hardly have afforded the room without being able to attract a man like Joe Barnett who could keep her for a time, until he fell out of work. She was weeks behind with the rent, as we know.

If Jack wanted a private room, he had to find a more attractive woman like Mary, not the other, older victims he’d killed so far. Once he met her, she would certainly be touting a night in her room as a saleable attraction, compared with a hasty encounter in some dark alley. To a man who may or may not have been her killer, she was heard to say “Alright my dear, come along, you will be comfortable.”

Whether Jack looked forward to “really giving his next victim the works” the way he did, or whether he was first and foremost looking only for a safe place to continue his career, is a moot point. Anyway the second followed from the first. Given the time and the opportunity, he naturally made the best of it--or the worst, if you like.

I don’t find it surprising that he seems to have stopped after that. Admittedly most serial killers do carry on until they’re caught, but not all. Some of them stop, for reasons of their own. Did the Zodiac “just stop,” and was that why he was never caught? MacNaghten theorized that the Ripper’s “brain gave way after his awful glut in Miller’s Court,” but I doubt that’s what happened to a killer of that kind. I don’t think the Ripper was a "lunatic" in the usual sense. It could be that he did “plan” this killing as the ultimate and final experience, his “swan song” before retiring from this career. Or perhaps that wasn’t his intention, but afterwards he felt so supremely satisfied that it didn’t seem worth repeating the experience. Alternatively--and perhaps more likely--he may have found this last experience disappointing! Having nursed a sick fantasy of carving a woman up, and having finally indulged it to the fullest extent, if it didn’t satisfy him as much as he’d imagined it would, he might just have thrown up his hands and given up the whole ghastly business.

[erobitha]

I would be inclined to agree with Herlock on this. It was most likely rare enough for a woman on her own to have a private room. She also didn’t have it fully as hers until just before she was killed. There is a chance the killer knew this but my guess is it was pure luck.

[Azarna]

Why didn't he kill again after Mary Jane Kelly...

1. He did, Alice McKenzie and/or Frances Coles
2. He did - he moved away from Whitechapel and killed elsewhere
3. He was killed or committed suicide
4. He was caught for a different crime and incarcerated
5. He was placed in a mental hospital
6. He was injured during the MJK injury and unable to continue the spree
7. He only killed MJK, for a personal reason, and once that was done had no reason to kill anyone else
8. He moved away and the change of circumstances quelled his bloodlust
9. Some situation in his life was changed - he married, his wife died, a child died - something that changed him so he no longer had the desire to kill
10. He was incapacitated so as to be physically unable to continue - blinded, lameness, illness
11. He had completed an objective, for example to specifically kill 5 - the stuff of movie plots but still a possibility

My son and I were having a think.

[DJA]

Why didn't he kill again after Mary Jane Kelly...

1. He only killed MJK, for a personal reason, and once that was done had no reason to kill anyone else

My son and I were having a think.

Winner,winner,chicken dinner!

[Vfor]

Although , it seems odd that he stopped when he experienced his ultimate kill -and would have further needed to satisfy his bloodlust further ?

First of all I just want to comment that people constantly saying "he" & "his" is only opinion, it should be he/she & his/her. Though certainly a male is more likely than a female.

At this stage it is impossible to prove whether MJK was or was not the last JTR murder, though it is conventionally the last canonical one. There were some other murders after MJK that may or may not be JTR's, and there was another JTR letter sometime after MJK. And if it was the last it is so far impossible to prove why. Several suspects either died or shifted or were incarcerated in the month after the MJK murder, and one JTR claimant (James Carnac) claimed they saw themself in MJK's mirror which had an effect on them and could be why they stopped.

Do you think JTR final killing (Mary Kelly) was planned ? Did the other victims have access to rooms for sex ? Or did JTR plan outside killings - and then decide his final one would be indoors?

In my MJK theory I gave some seeming reasons why the MJK murder seemingly may have been planned.
The reasons why MJK's murder stands out include:
- It was "the most savage", with the mutilation of all identifying features of the body.
- Unlike the other victims her clothes were removed.
- It was the only one of the 5 canonical murders done inside.
- It was a longer time duration (2 hours).
- It is the last of the 5 canonical JTR murders.
- "The great hush after MJK."
- MJK is also the only victim to have 5 or 6 other major names/nicknames listed.
Plus 3 more reasons given by others here:
- Most likely rare for prostitute to have her own room. Most of the other victims did't have private rooms.
- She was so much younger and more attractive.
- Far less is known about her background than that of the other victims.
These and other evidences (given in the MJK thread) suggested to me that it seemed as if it was a planned stagged false identity murder.
Though this theory is unpopular here and I am also not so sure of it myself now (I just retain it until any better suspect theory arises).

Everything seems impossible to prove at this stage, there are always more than one possibilities.

[c.d.]

Hello Vfor,

Where are you getting the 2 hours duration from?

c.d.

[Vfor]

Hello Vfor,

Where are you getting the 2 hours duration from?

c.d.

"Dr Phillips suggested that the extensive mutilations would have taken two hours to perform."

[spyglass]

The murder of MJK is baffling in many ways.
A few years back I decided to think of a different left field theory.
I had always thought it possible that the Muderer was known or even caught after the double event, thus leaving MJK as a separate murder or something completely different.
I went for the something completely different angle and worked out a theory that it was a police staged event, using many known facts to fit it together.

The only problem I had was the "why" question.

I did post my theory on here for amusement...And got accused of being high on something....even though I wasnt being serious .....Although!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

The murder of MJK is baffling in many ways.
A few years back I decided to think of a different left field theory.
I had always thought it possible that the Muderer was known or even caught after the double event, thus leaving MJK as a separate murder or something completely different.
I went for the something completely different angle and worked out a theory that it was a police staged event, using many known facts to fit it together.

The only problem I had was the "why" question.

I did post my theory on here for amusement...And got accused of being high on something....even though I wasnt being serious .....Although!

And thereby demonstrating that if someone starts with a theory, they'll find enough facts to give it credence, no matter how tenuous. You might not have been serious in your theory construction, but the principle remains the same.