Left or right handed.

[Wickerman]

Absolutely. And the only way I can think of if they were killed in this mannner, is that the blood spray passed the front of the chest.

Ah, high blood pressure?

[Wickerman]

Hi wick
That's entirely plausible. I have always thought that the ripper may have cut there throats from behind if no strangulation was involved. It seems to be a quick and efficient way to dispatch a victim.

I suspect we differ in that regard. I only see Kelly being dispatched this way. The others were laid on their backs, only Kelly was face down when he cut her throat.

[Wickerman]

.... Now the same thing happens when the victim is lying down, but there is pooling. I think that if for some reason her throat was cut while lying on her stomach with her head about 30 degrees lower than her feet, then maybe there wouldn't be staining on the blouse. But then it would be all over her face and soaked in her hair. I don't think it can work.

...And this little detail is another consideration for Kelly being face down.

Reports about the amount of blood in the room suggest a considerable amount was under the bed, on the side between the bed and the partition.

Oddly, nothing said about the mattress being soaked in blood. The bedsheet was soaked, and a 2ft sq pool of blood on the floor, and of course the splashes on the wall.

If Kelly was laid on her back with her head on the mattress, pretty much as found just nearer to the partition (as many assume), after the initial arterial release, the blood would have pooled under her body, as it did with Eddowes, as it did with Nichols. In fact Nichol's back was saturated because of this. Kelly's mattress should have been saturated.

In Millers Court, no mention of the mattress being saturated directly beneath her shoulders. That is where the blood, purely directed by gravity, would have pooled.

However, if she was face down, at the edge as I show, when her head was raised to cut the throat, and left to drop the blood runs directly out at the left side of the neck and down to the floor.

[Abby Normal]

In a throat cut there are two kinds of blood spatter. Spurts come from the carotid, and a fine mist comes from the windpipe. Otherwise the blood just falls out of the wound at an alarming rate. If standing, then there is an actual sheet of blood that just comes out. There no pressure associated with it, so it's simple gravity. Now the same thing happens when the victim is lying down, but there is pooling. I think that if for some reason her throat was cut while lying on her stomach with her head about 30 degrees lower than her feet, then maybe there wouldn't be staining on the blouse. But then it would be all over her face and soaked in her hair. I don't think it can work.

Hi errata and wick
I was always under the impression that when the carteroid artery is severed when the victim is still alive (heart still pumping) that the blood will spurt from the wound, due to blood pressure.

[Errata]

Hi errata and wick
I was always under the impression that when the carteroid artery is severed when the victim is still alive (heart still pumping) that the blood will spurt from the wound, due to blood pressure.

It will, but the carotid is on either side of the neck. So arterial spurt has never been the issue with a lack of blood on the front. And arterial spray has never been responsible for the majority of blood loss with these victims. Mostly it's just normal bleeding. So really what has to happen is that something would have to pressed against the neck to direct the blood away from the front. Like a literal funnel. Like propping up a chute at a woman's clavicle to catch the blood and move it away from her. Which is why I say it seems unlikely.

[Wickerman]

Quite right Abby, it pumps out until the heart has nothing left to pump.
I don't mean the body is empty of blood, just that the pressure has dropped so much that blood is not being taken into the heart anymore due to the lack of pressure.
They effectively faint from loss of blood, thats what syncope is.

[Errata]

...And this little detail is another consideration for Kelly being face down.

Reports about the amount of blood in the room suggest a considerable amount was under the bed, on the side between the bed and the partition.

Oddly, nothing said about the mattress being soaked in blood. The bedsheet was soaked, and a 2ft sq pool of blood on the floor, and of course the splashes on the wall.

If Kelly was laid on her back with her head on the mattress, pretty much as found just nearer to the partition (as many assume), after the initial arterial release, the blood would have pooled under her body, as it did with Eddowes, as it did with Nichols. In fact Nichol's back was saturated because of this. Kelly's mattress should have been saturated.

In Millers Court, no mention of the mattress being saturated directly beneath her shoulders. That is where the blood, purely directed by gravity, would have pooled.

However, if she was face down, at the edge as I show, when her head was raised to cut the throat, and left to drop the blood runs directly out at the left side of the neck and down to the floor.

There is a blood problem at every single one of these crime scenes, in that some of it seems missing. It gets a mention with Nichols, but otherwise the blood problem slips into the background. But with Kelly, the blood problem is actually extraordinary. Human body has roughly five liters of blood. One liter gets you a two foot puddle on the floor. There is about a half a liter of blood in other places. A little on the wall, a little on the sheets, some on the chemise, etc. Given her injuries she should have been essentially exsanguinated. Maybe half a liter left in her legs and arms, and we'll say half a liter pooling in various places, her head, her torso. The organs he removed clearly were not bleeding, or the would have soaked through the sheets into the mattress, and covered the table in a pool of blood. They should have been bleeding. Especially the filtration organs.

There is no way she doesn't bleed enough to soak through the mattress. Which means either the mattress was soaked through, and they failed to mention it, or she had to bleed somewhere else, not on the mattress. From the photos you can tell the pool of blood does not originate on the left side of the bed. But the bed was pushed against the wall, so she couldn't have bled off the right side of the bed. And aside from that particular problem, she's still missing anywhere from one to two and a half liters of blood at the end of it all. Which makes no sense at all.

I mean unless he bled her. Put a bucket under her neck wound or something. But there's no evidence of that, and even that doesn't explain the relatively clean state of her organs. Unless he wrung them out into the bucket, but I would imagine they would show signs of having been squeezed.

Clearly there is a solution to the problem because he did successfully commit this murder. And I'm sure a lot of it is in records that didn't survive. But the Kelly crime scene looks more like a gutted woman was tossed on the bed rather than murdered and eviscerated on it. I rather looks more like she was murdered under the bed..

[Wickerman]

With Nichols, the back of her jacket and upper clothing had soaked up a considerable amount of blood.

With Kelly, the floor was wood, perhaps any splits between the boards were enough to allow seepage through. Someone, was it Dew?, mentioned there was so much blood on the floor that they were slipping on it. The doctors only mention blood being under the bed.

I certainly do think the mattress must have absorbed some, it just does not receive any attention. Either it was too obvious a detail to bother mentioning or, the amount was not great enough when compared to the amount on the floor.
One small point, we are in no position to determine how close the bed was to the wall at the moment Mary was murdered. The killer may even have moved it subsequent to killing her.

We have one photo which appears to show the bed angled away from the wall, the other shows it against the wall, and a newspaper sketch shows it pulled away sufficiently for the doctors to all gather around the bed.
So who knows what the position of the bed was at the time of the killing, or even at the moment of discovery.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Jon

Reserving my position as to whether or not MJK is a "ripper murder", I have to say that method-wise I can't see any objection at all to what you're proposing...seems entirely logical to me...ditto your comments on bleeding...

Twice in one post...now there's a record!

All the best

Dave

[Michael W Richards]

I am making a very basic assumption that we have one killer responsible for the Whitechapel murders.......

........I see the same technique's applied by the same killer.

Regards, Jon S.

Hi Jon,

I did read your argument, and of course found areas with which I disagree...since we are of 2 minds when looking at these cases.....but the sentences above to me lay at the heart of the differences.

Your assumption is all well and good, it has also been assumed by many, many, many people over the last 125 years..so, you are far from alone in your beliefs. However, pragmatically, I have never seen sufficient evidence to assume a conclusion that leads to the rarest of the killers here. One benefit to that position is that its freed me in my interpretation of the data. I dont expect to find one,...so I see things in an isolated way....not as part of the killers overall profile or style or technique. Thats why we differ on the Kelly data.

As to the same techniques,.........well, I believe the physical evidence alone makes my counter argument.

All the best Jon

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon

Reserving my position as to whether or not MJK is a "ripper murder", I have to say that method-wise I can't see any objection at all to what you're proposing...seems entirely logical to me...ditto your comments on bleeding...

Twice in one post...now there's a record!

All the best

Dave

For a man of few words, very kind of you to say so Dave.

Hi Jon,

I did read your argument, and of course found areas with which I disagree...since we are of 2 minds when looking at these cases...

And that is good, debating our differences is where we are all challenged to think a little deeper about our conclusions.

Your assumption is all well and good, it has also been assumed by many, ...

Certainly, I know I am walking a well trodden path, but I think you hit on a significant point which no-one to my knowledge has raised before.
Even Dr. Phillips assumed Mary had been murdered in the position in which she was found, hence his conclusion that the cut to her right carotid artery was the cause of her death. How could a right-handed man do that?

So, in response I think I have managed to counter your argument with another observation which is also new, certainly new to me.
I had to ask myself if this really was the same right-handed killer, then how did he manage it?
So I now think we have an answer, but maybe not the only answer.

So you see in order to respond to the point you raised I had to view the killer as the same person, or at least another right-handed person
Sooner or later, no matter what issue we choose to interpret we are bound to base our views on an assumption.

[Michael W Richards]

Jon,

Just to tag onto your last post, when we are assessing how the murder took place based on the known physical evidence and the probable physical interaction between murderer and victim, everything that is done needs to be considered.

Your suggestion of a riding bare-back-pull-the-head-back throat slit doesnt address the splashes on the wall to what would be made by the left side of Marys neck..I believe it was cut from the right hand side,... which with Mary lying on her right side facing the wall, or even on her back facing the ceiling..in either or both of those positions her right artery would be aimed at that wall, not her left. Since she was cut from her right to her left side, that needs to be considered.

Plus we have to have an idea on how mechanically he cut and placed the materials on the nighttable,... if he faced the bed from its left side, the only reasonable assumption, then a right handed cutter would have to be able to cut the inside of Marys left thigh from the bone, as well as almost sever her right arm.

There are a lot of reasons to suggest this man was left handed.

Best regards

[Wickerman]

Your suggestion of a riding bare-back-pull-the-head-back throat slit doesnt address the splashes on the wall to what would be made by the left side of Marys neck..

Hi Michael.
This objection I do not understand. Her head is up clear of the bed. The left side of her neck is closest to the partition.
If cutting the right side of her neck could have caused the blood spray, if on her back, then when laying face down, with head raised, cutting the left side will equally cause the spray.
I don't see your objection, all I'm suggesting is a complete opposite orientation.


Neither do I understand this..

Since she was cut from her right to her left side, that needs to be considered.

Bond specifically noted that it was not possible to determine the direction of the cuts across the throat.

Plus we have to have an idea on how mechanically he cut and placed the materials on the nighttable,...

We don't know where the nighttable was when he was in the room with her.
We only where the table was found on entering the room.

.

[Michael W Richards]

Hi Jon,

I can see that the reason you dont understand my objections is because you feel that the first cut could have been to the left side of her throat. In Bonds PM submission he does not speculate on which side of the throat the cut was made, but I believe that there is other opinion that suggests the right artery was cut first. Thats why my counter points.

As to the position of the nighttable, just how comfortable do you imagine this killer made himself while dissecting Mary, and how much noise do you imagine he was willing to make while doing so? Elizabeth Prater said she could hear when Mary moved about in her room...surely, moving tables and such would be risky.

Since it is found in the place where we would imagine it was to begin with, why imagine it took a trip we have no evidence of? I believe the KISS principle here is that he used the table, not that he moved the table for his ease of use.

Cheers Jon

[Wickerman]

Since it is found in the place where we would imagine it was to begin with, why imagine it took a trip we have no evidence of? I believe the KISS principle here is that he used the table, not that he moved the table for his ease of use.

Hi Michael.

We do know the door struck the table as it was opened, suggesting the placement of the table was not its usual location, therefore someone in the room that night had moved it.

There were two tables, the second table was under one of the windows, perhaps this first table was normally under the other window?

Nevertheless, your scenario appears to assume the killer used the table while he was in the process of mutilating the body, for this we have no confirmation.
He could just as easily have picked up the table and placed it by the bed, then picked up a pile of flesh off the bed in both hands and dumped in on the table.

.