What's your profile for Jack?

[Errata]

Again, and I'm sorry to push you on this, Errata, but why a domineering mother and not an abusive father? Would an abusive father have led this same killer to target male victims if you are right about your 'substitution evolution'? I don't know of any such cases, do you? So why not an abusive father who maybe knocked seven shades of crap out of his mother on a regular basis, and his mother just meekly put up with it while little Jack watched in fascination, growing up with no respect for women because they let men do whatever they like to their bodies?

I'm not saying I believe this any more than your own theory, but I still see the whole gender thing as an indication of the killer's sexuality rather than whether an abuser in his past was male or female.

I suspect the killer was heterosexual and used prostitutes before he started killing them, so it would have been a simple enough progression, and the selection process could have been pretty much identical. I too doubt he would have seen his victims as potential sex 'partners' as such, but there would have been a fine line for him between using a living prostitute's body for thruppenceworth of impersonal sexual relief and going on to enjoy - even prefer - using his knife on one.

Beyond that, it need only have been a matter of picking his opportunities when they arose, and choosing the knife option when and where he thought he could get away with it. The victims (all of them, whether Jack killed them or not) are entirely consistent with this basic process. They don't need to resemble anyone in the dark or be of a certain age - or include Kelly as one of their aliases.

Love,

Caz
X

Push all you like, Caz. It's how theories get better.

You are absolutely correct that the choice of gender reflects sexuality. It doesn't always, but it's common enough to be reasonably accepted as fact. Serial killers with abusive fathers actually tend to be sexual sadists. It's too much to say that they copy their fathers, but they learn that men are sadists from their fathers, and these serial killers tend to be invested with being "real men". I don't think Jack was a sexual sadist, so combine that with some other assumptions, I don't think his father was ever known to him.

So why an abusive mother? Well, I think there was a sexual component to the abuse, and mixing mom's and sex never ends well. And while I am not surprised by the the sex of his victims, I am surprised by his care in selection. Because he never accidentally got a maid going to work, he wasn't interested in young women, he appeared to favor older prostitutes. Zaftig, older prostitutes. Women of a certain age. That's atypical, but when it does happen, there's usually a reason. An older woman isn't easier to kill. So it's not about that. He's picking them for a reason, and I think he's younger than them. So why kill older prostitutes? Transference is an easy answer. Yes, psychologically pat and wrapped in a neat bow, but it explains some other things. It would explain why there was rage present in the throat cuts, but not the organ removal. It explains no noticeable suspect, it potentially explains the removal of the uterus. And yeah, it happened in my family and I know what it looks like. Not the serial killing, but the domineering sexualized abuse. My grandmother hated me for taking my dad's attention. And I'm not entirely sure she didn't try to kill me as a baby. And I know how hard it was to train my dad how to interact with me and my sister, because his normal was what his mother wanted, and she was one twisted bitch.

And there are serial killers who experienced that kind of abuse. Ed Gein being the shining example. Ed Kempur, Ottis Toole, Henry Lee Lucas, etc. And they are all different on victimology and motivations. But all of them had their sexuality completely screwed with because of that abuse. And it's fair to say that the abuse skewed their victimology from what would have been expected. And I look at Jack's crimes, and I see it skewed from what one would expect. So I think it's very possible Jack suffered something like this. It didn't make him kill, but it made him target older women in a non sexual way, when one would expect him to target younger women with a sexual component.

[RivkahChaya]

Hi Rivkah,

This is all quite fascinating, but the fact remains that as least as many girls as boys are the victims of some kind of childhood abuse, and presumably as many girls suffer head injuries as a result of abuse or accident. So there must be some other factor at work here, because girls hardly ever grow up to become the kind of violent serial offender who will often 'take it out on' complete strangers.

Love,

Caz
X

Well, one of the most notorious women serial killers, Aileen Wuornos, had at least two serious head injuries.

This psychologist (psychiatrist, actually) was still gathering preliminary data for a meta-analysis. He was hoping to get permission to do brain imaging of people with head injuries, but those with and without violent histories, and also do some longitudinal studies-- follow children who happened to have closed-head injuries through to mid adulthood, do yearly images, reaction tests, track their school performances, etc., which is why I'm really frustrated that I can't find the article again.

Now, here's just me talking. One fundamental difference between men and women's brains, on the whole (you will certainly find individual brains that do not conform to the statistical trends), are that women's brains are less differentiated, or "specialized" at the end of puberty. The downside for women is very slightly lower reaction times on tests like hitting a buzzer when you see a light of a particular color flash-- however, women can practice, and catch up to men's scores-- the advantage is only when neither group has practiced. The plus is that women have much better prognosis for recovering from strokes or other brain assaults in adulthood.

Another difference is that women have bigger corpora callosa, the band of nerves that connects one hemisphere to the other. It's bigger by percentage of brain mass. That means that if you have damage to one side of your frontal lobe, but not the other, the undamaged side can get information to the side of your brain with the damaged lobe better through a bigger corpus callosum. Also, FWIW, while men have slightly larger brains, on average, than women, women have bigger brains as a portion of body weight, and big, tall men, with somewhat proportionately bigger brains, have a few more motor neurons, and some more non-neuronal supportive tissue, but no more cognitive tissue than the smallest women.

Anyway, women patients who are elderly usually do have much better prognoses for recovery of function after strokes, although it depends on the actual area of damage. So girls may recover from head injuries better.

Or, maybe head injuries don't cause violence, they damage natural ability to inhibit, and a lot more men than women have violent tendencies that need natural inhibition to be intact.

[Cogidubnus]

What's your profile for Jack?

I have to say, I never imagined this particular thread would end up quite here...a result that might surprise even the most Darwinist Meerkat...

All the best

Dave

[GregBaron]

Alpha to Omega...

Hi Greg,

My graduate professor used this very example to flummox us students. His focus was upon meerkats.

Sincerely,
Mike

Hmmm, sounds cruel and unusual....

It must be nice to be an alpha male........at least until the party ends...


Greg

[GregBaron]

Monster within...

No worries, I'm a big girl. When I say "A la Columbine" I mean school shooters killing their peers, as opposed to school shooters who target authority figures or where total strangers bust in and start killing kids. While Harris was in fact a psychopath, that's actually not enough to create a school shooter. He was bullied mercilessly, there are a lot of documented accounts, including some kids confessing to throwing a cup full of **** on him. And I don't know if that's enough to make a school shooter or if there was something else as well, but that's another topic for another day.

Psychopathy, which is somewhat relevant, doesn't make someone a killer, or even a serial killer. It usually makes them a criminal, often a violent criminal, but it does not automatically equal murder. Psychopaths actually make very good embezzlers and white collar criminals. So there is a tendency to for people to say "Oh.. well he was a psychopath. Case Closed." when in terms of motive and explanation, it isn't closed at all. Psychopathy isn't enough. I mean, it is for the psychopath but while we don't have to reach very far to see how a psychopath becomes a criminal, we have no idea why one becomes a murderer instead of a rapist, or a loan shark, or a blackmailer. So psychopathy is part of it, but not the whole part.

But as for the shooter metaphor, it was not meant as a discourse on the state of mind of the shooters, merely to show the evolution from an organized killer to a disorganized one. They go in with one motive and end with another due to the lightening fast evolution of the crime. But because it is so fast, you see each kind of victimology. A "regular" serial killer can stay in the first or second evolution for months, years, even decades before devolving. Which by necessity means more selective with prey.

Serial killers are if nothing else fetishists. They seek to relive the same experience over and over. Usually their first kill. So the 5th victim isn't the telling one. It's the first. If there was a subconscious association, if there was a preferred type for whatever reason, it shows in the first. Basically, the first victim is the person this guy screwed up his courage to go from fantasy to reality. It's a huge step, and it's one that requires quite a prod. It's why possible triggering events are considered psychologically important. But because these guys are stalkers and peepers, they almost never grab a random person for their first kill. It might have nothing to do with looks. It could be voice, perceived morality, what they drive, where they shop. But something makes that person incredibly attractive to the killer. The first is almost never about availability. For some reason a lot of these guys think it's more bad ass to say they just grabbed the first person who walked by, but more in depth interviews usually show that there were potential victims rejected before their first kill.

Just understand this. There is a pathology to these crimes. There is an element of biology, sociology, physiology, genetics, psychology... And of all of the components that makes someone become a serial killer, psychology gets the most crap. Mostly because most people cannot separate out reason and blame. Trying to subconsciously kill one's own mother is a perfectly valid reason to kill. But there is nothing that ever showed up in any psychological book in the history of man that excuses murder. Nothing mitigates a serial killer's guilt. And I'm not remotely interested in finding a way of mitigating a serial killer's guilt. I want to know what is going on in their heads. Because every symptom, every delusion, every psychotic break could have been detected before they killed. We don't know how many serial killers we prevented by court ordered counseling after a divorce or a death or abuse. We have no idea how many people step up to that line, but then step back. But the answer to that lies in psychology. That's what I want to find. Because the only thing that would make these monsters victims is if they were doomed from birth to be serial killers. That they had no choice.

I completely agree with you here Errata. I don't really like the term psychopath because the media has created a murderer in everyone's mind. They walk among us and most aren't violent.

In the Columbine book by Cullen, the Harris boy was described as a malevolent and tyrannical psychopath. He wanted to kill the entire human race. I'm not sure your bullying reference is factual but it doesn't really matter.

As for Jack(s), it's hard to imagine he wasn't a psychopath although as you say, from there to murder is an unknown path...


Greg

[mklhawley]

Thanks Mike, this is just the sort of explanation I was seeking. The idea had
me a bit flummoxed. Makes perfect sense...


Greg

Hi Greg,

My graduate professor used this very example to flummox us students. His focus was upon meerkats.

Sincerely,
Mike

[GregBaron]

Eureka...

Quick point on evolution and natural selection, since this is my field of expertise. The two are not synonymous. Evolution is the hereditary change in a population over successive generations, while natural selection is merely a mechanism which guides the change in a population. It can be argued that homosexuality is not counter to natural selection for a number of reasons. Natural selection deals with populations and not individuals. Homosexuality is observed in most mammal species (therefore, not cultural), but at a low percentage, so its deletarious influence is negligible. Also, its not so important that an individual does the mating, but a relative. For example, the alpha male of many species is the only reproducing male, and the subordinate males ensure this process. If a homosexual male has no interest in a female, yet ensures the success of the pack with solid hunting skills, then his contribution just improved natural selection.

Sorry about the babbling.

Sincerely,
Mike

Thanks Mike, this is just the sort of explanation I was seeking. The idea had
me a bit flummoxed. Makes perfect sense...


Greg

[mklhawley]

Hi Greg,

Ooh, how very dare you? Who's treading a fine line now?

There's no natural selection value in people who are born sterile either, or with conditions which prove fatal before they reach puberty. So why are they here? That's not cultural, and it's not a lifestyle choice either. If it's intelligent design, the designer must have an awful lot of off days or be some kind of sadist. Mother Nature sadly has never claimed to have a conscience or to treat us all equally.

Love,

Caz
X

Quick point on evolution and natural selection, since this is my field of expertise. The two are not synonymous. Evolution is the hereditary change in a population over successive generations, while natural selection is merely a mechanism which guides the change in a population. It can be argued that homosexuality is not counter to natural selection for a number of reasons. Natural selection deals with populations and not individuals. Homosexuality is observed in most mammal species (therefore, not cultural), but at a low percentage, so its deletarious influence is negligible. Also, its not so important that an individual does the mating, but a relative. For example, the alpha male of many species is the only reproducing male, and the subordinate males ensure this process. If a homosexual male has no interest in a female, yet ensures the success of the pack with solid hunting skills, then his contribution just improved natural selection.

Sorry about the babbling.

Sincerely,
Mike

[GregBaron]

Darwin never lies...

Hi Greg,

Ooh, how very dare you? Who's treading a fine line now?

There's no natural selection value in people who are born sterile either, or with conditions which prove fatal before they reach puberty. So why are they here? That's not cultural, and it's not a lifestyle choice either. If it's intelligent design, the designer must have an awful lot of off days or be some kind of sadist. Mother Nature sadly has never claimed to have a conscience or to treat us all equally.

Love,

Caz
X

This is true Caz but it's still hard to explain 3.8% of the population from a Darwinian perspective. And in case you're misenterpreting, I'm a convinced Darwinist.

If you want to see a witty answer to Intelligent Design, search Youtube for Neil Degrasse Tyson. He's terrific..


Greg

[caz]

Actually evolution is what gives this idea pause. There's no natural selection value in homosexuality. It doesn't pass along genes (or doesn't want to).Why then is it here? It must be cultural e.g., we needed better hairdressers.......Sorry, couldn't resist..

Hi Greg,

Ooh, how very dare you? Who's treading a fine line now?

There's no natural selection value in people who are born sterile either, or with conditions which prove fatal before they reach puberty. So why are they here? That's not cultural, and it's not a lifestyle choice either. If it's intelligent design, the designer must have an awful lot of off days or be some kind of sadist. Mother Nature sadly has never claimed to have a conscience or to treat us all equally.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I don't think Jack the Ripper killed because he was a sexual sadist, I don't think he saw them as potential sex partners. That means his victims are significant for another reason, and that puts us back into the evolution. I think it's the substitution evolution. Given what I see in the murders, it's not sexual, it's about the organs of generation, he saws through the necks, he's meek enough to be non threatening and go unnoticed, I think it's a domineering mother. And there is a kind of abuse that would make sense for that kind of targeting.

Again, and I'm sorry to push you on this, Errata, but why a domineering mother and not an abusive father? Would an abusive father have led this same killer to target male victims if you are right about your 'substitution evolution'? I don't know of any such cases, do you? So why not an abusive father who maybe knocked seven shades of crap out of his mother on a regular basis, and his mother just meekly put up with it while little Jack watched in fascination, growing up with no respect for women because they let men do whatever they like to their bodies?

I'm not saying I believe this any more than your own theory, but I still see the whole gender thing as an indication of the killer's sexuality rather than whether an abuser in his past was male or female.

I suspect the killer was heterosexual and used prostitutes before he started killing them, so it would have been a simple enough progression, and the selection process could have been pretty much identical. I too doubt he would have seen his victims as potential sex 'partners' as such, but there would have been a fine line for him between using a living prostitute's body for thruppenceworth of impersonal sexual relief and going on to enjoy - even prefer - using his knife on one.

Beyond that, it need only have been a matter of picking his opportunities when they arose, and choosing the knife option when and where he thought he could get away with it. The victims (all of them, whether Jack killed them or not) are entirely consistent with this basic process. They don't need to resemble anyone in the dark or be of a certain age - or include Kelly as one of their aliases.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

To Caz

You've completely misread my post, self-servingly if I may say so.

Ha ha, Jonathan. It's you who completely misread mine. When I wrote "JtR" I thought it was obvious I meant the name. You claimed that the name (ie "JtR") was 'certainly' a tabloid construct, completely swallowing and parroting police claims to have found out it was 'an invention of two reporters'.

Some evidence would be nice rather than the usual leaps of faith.

My oil is still boiling and my pliers are strong.

Love,

Caz
X

[Errata]

I don't mean for it to be Errata torture day but this Columbine reference is also a myth. Eric Harris was a bona fide psychopath who recruited a depressed loser to assist him in his evil plans. Harris especially, bullied as much as he was ever bullied....



Greg

No worries, I'm a big girl. When I say "A la Columbine" I mean school shooters killing their peers, as opposed to school shooters who target authority figures or where total strangers bust in and start killing kids. While Harris was in fact a psychopath, that's actually not enough to create a school shooter. He was bullied mercilessly, there are a lot of documented accounts, including some kids confessing to throwing a cup full of **** on him. And I don't know if that's enough to make a school shooter or if there was something else as well, but that's another topic for another day.

Psychopathy, which is somewhat relevant, doesn't make someone a killer, or even a serial killer. It usually makes them a criminal, often a violent criminal, but it does not automatically equal murder. Psychopaths actually make very good embezzlers and white collar criminals. So there is a tendency to for people to say "Oh.. well he was a psychopath. Case Closed." when in terms of motive and explanation, it isn't closed at all. Psychopathy isn't enough. I mean, it is for the psychopath but while we don't have to reach very far to see how a psychopath becomes a criminal, we have no idea why one becomes a murderer instead of a rapist, or a loan shark, or a blackmailer. So psychopathy is part of it, but not the whole part.

But as for the shooter metaphor, it was not meant as a discourse on the state of mind of the shooters, merely to show the evolution from an organized killer to a disorganized one. They go in with one motive and end with another due to the lightening fast evolution of the crime. But because it is so fast, you see each kind of victimology. A "regular" serial killer can stay in the first or second evolution for months, years, even decades before devolving. Which by necessity means more selective with prey.

Serial killers are if nothing else fetishists. They seek to relive the same experience over and over. Usually their first kill. So the 5th victim isn't the telling one. It's the first. If there was a subconscious association, if there was a preferred type for whatever reason, it shows in the first. Basically, the first victim is the person this guy screwed up his courage to go from fantasy to reality. It's a huge step, and it's one that requires quite a prod. It's why possible triggering events are considered psychologically important. But because these guys are stalkers and peepers, they almost never grab a random person for their first kill. It might have nothing to do with looks. It could be voice, perceived morality, what they drive, where they shop. But something makes that person incredibly attractive to the killer. The first is almost never about availability. For some reason a lot of these guys think it's more bad ass to say they just grabbed the first person who walked by, but more in depth interviews usually show that there were potential victims rejected before their first kill.

Just understand this. There is a pathology to these crimes. There is an element of biology, sociology, physiology, genetics, psychology... And of all of the components that makes someone become a serial killer, psychology gets the most crap. Mostly because most people cannot separate out reason and blame. Trying to subconsciously kill one's own mother is a perfectly valid reason to kill. But there is nothing that ever showed up in any psychological book in the history of man that excuses murder. Nothing mitigates a serial killer's guilt. And I'm not remotely interested in finding a way of mitigating a serial killer's guilt. I want to know what is going on in their heads. Because every symptom, every delusion, every psychotic break could have been detected before they killed. We don't know how many serial killers we prevented by court ordered counseling after a divorce or a death or abuse. We have no idea how many people step up to that line, but then step back. But the answer to that lies in psychology. That's what I want to find. Because the only thing that would make these monsters victims is if they were doomed from birth to be serial killers. That they had no choice.

[GregBaron]

Stuff...........counter Stuff...

Well most of us know that our sexual leanings are chosen for us before we are born, Greg. But then some continue to think evolution is not a proven scientific fact and we were all created in God's image. So we can never please everyone.

Actually evolution is what gives this idea pause. There's no natural selection value in homosexuality. It doesn't pass along genes (or doesn't want to).Why then is it here? It must be cultural e.g., we needed better hairdressers.......Sorry, couldn't resist..

I agree with you here. It was a matter of personal taste.
The ripper similarly felt comfortable walking the streets in the early hours where his victims also walked. If we look at the age range, state of health and impoverished circumstances of the Spitalfields victims, it's pretty much what we would expect if the killer was simply picking on lone and vulnerable females at random - those who were too weak, too sick, too drunk or too broke to put up any resistance. And that, to my mind, makes it impossible to conclude anything about his victim choice connected with his childhood.

Thanks Caz. I agree with your agreement...

Yes, I agree with this. But look at how it was interpreted by Littlechild, who linked homosexuality with sadism and masochism. I sincerely hope nobody would do that today.

Nobody certainly with any rational leanings...

I agree with you entirely here, Greg. It's all a bit chicken and egg, which is why some are taken in by the idea that it was the girlfriend trouble that set him off, while others (me included) see the girlfriend trouble as inevitable for someone like Bundy, and something that could be turned into an excuse for himself and an explanation for the profilers, for his subsequent violence against other young women, whether they were clones of the girlfriend or just similar in the broadest sense.

It's nice to be agreed with sometimes Caz.............especially by someone whose posts I greatly enjoy and usually find quite convincing...

Well said. Plus the "looks like his girlfriend" idea is so subjective. You would first have to agree that they all(or most) looked like his girlfriend. personally i dont think they looked like his girlfriend. And as Greg pointed out-that hairstyle, long straight parted down the middle was such a common hairstyle. I have five older sisters and if you look at a family picture from the 70's guess what? All of them-long straight parted down the middle.
Not sure who the person who first proposed that theory-but IMHO the "looks like his girlfriend" theory is such self serving psycho babble at its worst. i think misguided speculation like that actually misleads more than it enlightens and it has been repeated ad nauseum over the years.

Abby, I second your motion........Bundy wanted victims, he liked young pretty girls.............Imagine that?

As to the other murders, it really is too early to say.

Darn, 125 years is a rush to judgement.....

You have bullied and tortured kids who seek revenge against their abusers, and who want to make everyone sorry for treating them that way.

I don't mean for it to be Errata torture day but this Columbine reference is also a myth. Eric Harris was a bona fide psychopath who recruited a depressed loser to assist him in his evil plans. Harris especially, bullied as much as he was ever bullied....



Greg

[Bridewell]

the Ripper name is an invention of two reporters, as Mac found out in mid 1890's

You say "found out". Is that as in "definitely ascertained fact" or as in MacNaghten's opinion? To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever determined the authorship of the letters giving rise to the 'Jack the Ripper' soubriquet, although theories abound.