The Absence Of Evidence

[Astatine211]

Heck it could've even been Morris Eagle who caused the disturbance rather than Diemschutz.

Also just pondering could one interpretation of the Goulston Street Graffito be a reference to the interruption of Stride. The working men's club was known to be predominantly Jewish and maybe Jack assumed it was a Jewish person had disturbed him, hence his anger towards them in the graffito.

[erobitha]

C.d. has put it well Erobitha. It’s certainly amazing that someone can actually argue that the lack of evidence for interruption somehow proves that there was no intention to mutilate. Not on any planet that I’ve inhabited.

But if you reverse engineer from Eddowes to Stride you would definitely say based on the cutting of the throat in the exact same place, it was the same murderer. Especially with only an hour difference. I do not see anyone debating that Eddowes was not a JtR victim. Ergo....

C.D's explanation is a good one. It clearly explains that just because there is no evidence of any previous signatures that the intent to do so was absent. If they were interrupted the opportunity simply passed.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm genuinely intrigued to know what evidence of interruption we would expect to see???

What would that look like??

MWR?

Michael has quoted things like “raised skirts” “legs parted.” Obviously though these wouldn’t have been evident if the killer had been disturbed before he’d got to that point. For some reason Michael doesn’t accept this. For him it’s a case of - we see no evidence of interruption therefore we should assume that there was no intention to mutilate therefore...no ripper.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I come at this from another angle, because I don't necessarily agree that if the ripper killed Stride, he must have done so with the intention of going on to mutilate her and remove body parts, and therefore something or someone must have interrupted him before he could do more than inflict a single cut, which proved fatal.

We don't know what Stride and her killer were doing, from when they were first alone together, to the moment he slit her throat. We don't really know how long they were alone together, or whether they talked, or argued, or fought, or even canoodled. Whoever the killer was, ripper or not, he'd have been wise to assess the location and the likelihood of being seen with Stride, if he meant her serious harm. And it doesn't come much more serious than taking a knife to the woman's throat. It was not the ideal place for committing a capital crime, let alone for fannying about afterwards, raiding the corpse. So I humbly submit that if the killer's original intention had been to make Stride his next mutilation victim, he could have been stymied in two ways, by realising they were in a lousy place for the purpose, and by failing to induce her to go off with him to a less risky one. If she suspected his motives, and he decided to kill her there and then and get safely away, he needn't have been interrupted at all, but alternatively it could have been the sound of the pony and cart that made up his mind for him, and led him to cut swiftly and make a run for it. Then we wouldn't need the coincidental timing of Louis D approaching just as, or just after her throat was cut - which is one of Michael Richards's main objections.

Love,

Caz
X

I agree Caz. It’s easy to make assumptions but we have consider the situation or how the killer perceived the situation to have been at the time. Maybe he just wasn’t comfortable in that spot? Maybe Liz started to get a bit vocal if the killer tried to get her further to the back of the yard so he decided to just silence her and move on? Maybe the killer did occasionally have sex with prostitutes without killing them but on this occasion an argument broke out and he lost his temper? I think that it’s easy to mistakenly close off lines of thought because we assume that we know what the killer was thinking at any given time.

[c.d.]

True. It might not even have been Diemschutz that initially caused him to stop? A noise from somewhere nearby perhaps? Maybe someone opened the side door and went to the outside toilet a minute or two before Diemschutz returned? That person would have been facing away from the Club and so might not have seen the killer. He might not have come forward and admitted that he’d been in the yard because he didn’t want to be implicated.

It could have started right from the beginning if he realized (and why wouldn't he?) that this simply was not a safe place and there were too many people around. So why kill under those circumstances? Who knows? It could be that he was simply overcome with the desire to do so and danger be damned. Then paranoia kicked in after the kill.

c.d.