What's your profile for Jack?

[curious]

the same addresses on George Street.
Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi, Tom, Checked out your Facebook page for the book. It sounds very interesting.

If the murders deal with the "same addresses" on George Street . . . I was going to say "same landlords, then" but realize it's the same of so many possibilities. . .

Hurry and get that book out . . .!

curious

[curious]

Also Mylett is very interesting for me.

Hi, Boggles,

I find Mylett interesting too. Care to share about your interest?

thx,

curious

[Michael W Richards]

Just a reminder that providing proof that one of the Canonicals prostituted themselves is indeed valuable information, many of the remarks about them seem rather judgmental without actual incident proof of that activity...like in Kates case,... however, it solves none of the related questions about what some were doing when they meet their killer(s).

How the killer of Polly and Annie met them is fairly certain,.. but none of the other cases have corroboration on that same point from the soon to be victims themselves. In the case of Liz Stride, as mentioned previously, we have a woman who was killed with one cut on a night when domestic violence took one womans life, by knife....(the earlier point Tom on that murder was obviously the lack of mutilations, although I could see an argument for such considering the severity of the attempt at decapitation....but there was more than 1 stab), and an apparent madmans uncontrolled behaviours caused another death.

3 murders of women, 2 in the East End, only 1 with a known motive.

When you have not been able to discern a motive it is unwise to then just assume the motive must have been madness on the part of the killer, because in actuality a very small number of murders happen under those circumstances,... and a very small number of the many, many, killers over the years, killed solely because they felt a need to. Money, jealousy, power, rage, honor, political or religious disparity, protection of family or property...any number of core reasons might be present that can be understood by anyone as potential catalysts for violence.

No-one accused Mr Brown of being The Phantom Menace because he killed his wife that night with a knife, so why should Liz Strides killer be categorized that way without any physical evidence to support it, and a still unknown ulterior motive?

Search for possible motives...then rule them out. That seems to be far more practical to me. I can state that so far Ive been able to rule out that Liz Strides killers motivations were to mutilate her after cutting her throat...why?...because there is no evidence that supports that idea.

Cheers

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi, Tom, Checked out your Facebook page for the book. It sounds very interesting.

If the murders deal with the "same addresses" on George Street . . . I was going to say "same landlords, then" but realize it's the same of so many possibilities. . .

Hurry and get that book out . . .!

curious

Hi Curious. I've always said you're wise beyond your years. The landlords play a bit part in my book. I have a section called The Lords of Spitalfields about them. For a tutorial on what the police were up against when taking on the lodging houses I suggest everyone read Rob Clack's excellent Death in the Lodging House regarding the murder of Mary Ann Austin. It's more or less what I believe happened in the Emma Smith case.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

I can state that so far Ive been able to rule out that Liz Strides killers motivations were to mutilate her after cutting her throat...why?...because there is no evidence that supports that idea.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You only know the 'what' and not the 'why'. Having said that, I agree that it's by no means a foregone conclusion that the Ripper ever planned to mutilate Stride. I believe he went out that evening fully intending to kill two women. I believe he intended to kill in Met and City divisions and he had every intention of writing a chalk message (though I suspect it was intended to be over the body of his second victim and not over her torn apron blocks away). All of this was foretold weeks before the double event even happened.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Boggles]

I find Mylett interesting too. Care to share about your interest?

Its suspect bias driven interest im afraid for the most part but aside from this I find the witness descriptions of the two men seen with Rose earlier in the evening and shortly before her death interesting and also a little concerning. A shortish guy engaging with the woman and a tall guy walking around in the background - shades of Stride. Also a hint of Tabram, only this time not soldiers but sailors? - curious i think, what do you think?

[Damaso Marte]

Yes good comment - this is basically sums up the driving force behind most of the differences of opinions and lively debate i see on these threads. Each of us have our own threshold, depending on life experience, motivations, knowledge of serial killers and so forth. But I dont think Stride as a ripper victim is much in the way of conjecture

Now Farmer being a ripper victim is very much conjecture. I am personally very interested in this attack given the circumstances and amount of witness testimonies, did you know this was the only ripper related event where a distingishing feature was seen on the attacker? Serial killers can get slack towards the end. Also Mylett is very interesting for me.

Oh well I guess only one man ever knew for sure.

A lot of what Ripperology boils down to is considering which of two inelegant possibilities strikes you as more plausible. I agree, that based on our background, our biases, etc., we disagree on plausibility.

One of two things happened on the night of the double event...either a serial killer shifted his MO, possibly dramatically so, or there were multiple knife killers on the prowl in the same area at roughly the same time, operating in a broadly comparable fashion. One of two things happened on the night that Chapman was killed...either witnesses made errors about what time it was, or witnesses didn't actually witness the crime. Etc. None of these things are pretty, but one of them's gotta be true.

Even if, one day, statistical social science based on thorough examination and coding of murders tell us, e.g., that it's an x% chance that it was the former and y% chance it was the latter, people can still argue "well, if it happens y% of the time, why couldn't this have been part of that y%"

[Tom_Wescott]

One of two things happened on the night of the double event...either a serial killer shifted his MO, possibly dramatically so, or there were multiple knife killers on the prowl in the same area at roughly the same time, operating in a broadly comparable fashion.

What dramatic MO shift? The previous two victims were both also killed by a cut throat. If there was a dramatic shift it occurred between the murders of Tabram and Nichols.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Boggles]

either a serial killer shifted his MO, possibly dramatically so

You believe Stride/Eddowes as a shift in MO? Was Jack like a precision machine who killed everyone exactly the same way? of course not he was flesh and blood just like the rest of us.

There are lots of examples where serial killers changed MO dramatically, Bundy changed between bludgeoning and strangulation, Wemmer Pan Killer killed his victims with a rock, in others he shot them. This is not an example of an MO change.

Circumstances surely point to the ritualistic aspect, the subsequent mutilations were interrupted. That is why there was a double murder that night. Jack may or may not have been 'down on whores', but on this night he was certainly down on Jews.

[c.d.]

Hello Michael,

You keep referring to the lack of EVIDENCE to support the idea that Jack might have been interrupted before he could mutilate Stride as though we are all jurors in some court of law with the life of the accused hanging in the balance. The reality is that we are simply trying to make sense of events that took place over 125 years ago. We can't bring the victims back to life nor will our conclusion as to who might have killed Stride ultimately change what took place that night.

If we abandon the beyond a reasonable doubt approach and simply ask questions, look at possible answers and try to assign them some degree of probability, the idea that Jack might have been scared off seems to meet the possible and probable tests. We know this because criminals are constantly being scared off before their plans come to fruition. This takes place on a daily basis in all sorts of crimes, murder included.

We also know from people like serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, that in some instances he abandoned his plans for murder due to nothing more than his own paranoia. In such an instance, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that that took place, yet we know that it did. Add to the equation that it is reasonable to assume that Jack realized that he would be hanged if caught and that Stride was not the only woman in Whitechapel.

I believe that asking questions is a much better approach than simply saying Jack the Ripper mutilated women and since Stride was not mutilated she could not have been a Ripper victim. I see no harm in asking if there could be a reason why and simply continuing on with the chain of reasoning.

Let's get out of the mind set of juror mode.

c.d.

[GUT]

G'Day c.d

You keep referring to the lack of EVIDENCE to support the idea that Jack might have been interrupted before he could mutilate Stride as though we are all jurors in some court of law with the life of the accused hanging in the balance. The reality is that we are simply trying to make sense of events that took place over 125 years ago. We can't bring the victims back to life nor will our conclusion as to who might have killed Stride ultimately change what took place that night.

If we abandon the beyond a reasonable doubt approach and simply ask questions, look at possible answers and try to assign them some degree of probability, the idea that Jack might have been scared off seems to meet the possible and probable tests. We know this because criminals are constantly being scared off before their plans come to fruition. This takes place on a daily basis in all sorts of crimes, murder included.

How true.

So many on these threads want beyond reasonable doubt, when it fits their argument but then abandon it when it is better for them to speculate.

Go figure.

[Damaso Marte]

You believe Stride/Eddowes as a shift in MO? Was Jack like a precision machine who killed everyone exactly the same way? of course not he was flesh and blood just like the rest of us.

There are lots of examples where serial killers changed MO dramatically, Bundy changed between bludgeoning and strangulation, Wemmer Pan Killer killed his victims with a rock, in others he shot them. This is not an example of an MO change.

Circumstances surely point to the ritualistic aspect, the subsequent mutilations were interrupted. That is why there was a double murder that night. Jack may or may not have been 'down on whores', but on this night he was certainly down on Jews.

To be perfectly clear: I am a defender of Ripper orthodoxy. I believe that the same man killed the canonical 5, and may have killed Tabram as well.

However, there are differences between the murders, as lynn cates will be happy to tell you. No sign of strangulation in the last 3, two throat cuts in the first two victims, one throat cut in the last three victims, direction of the cut in Eddowes, etc. With Stride its an even bigger difference: no mutilation at all, body left sideways and not on back.

To me, it is plausible that the same killer did all 5 murders and changed his methodology out of innate human variance or circumstances. To me, these differences are fairly small. To somebody else, it's more likely that there were copycats than for one killer to vary this much.

[Michael W Richards]

Hello Michael,

You keep referring to the lack of EVIDENCE to support the idea that Jack might have been interrupted before he could mutilate Stride as though we are all jurors in some court of law with the life of the accused hanging in the balance. The reality is that we are simply trying to make sense of events that took place over 125 years ago. We can't bring the victims back to life nor will our conclusion as to who might have killed Stride ultimately change what took place that night.

If we abandon the beyond a reasonable doubt approach and simply ask questions, look at possible answers and try to assign them some degree of probability, the idea that Jack might have been scared off seems to meet the possible and probable tests. We know this because criminals are constantly being scared off before their plans come to fruition. This takes place on a daily basis in all sorts of crimes, murder included.

We also know from people like serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, that in some instances he abandoned his plans for murder due to nothing more than his own paranoia. In such an instance, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that that took place, yet we know that it did. Add to the equation that it is reasonable to assume that Jack realized that he would be hanged if caught and that Stride was not the only woman in Whitechapel.

I believe that asking questions is a much better approach than simply saying Jack the Ripper mutilated women and since Stride was not mutilated she could not have been a Ripper victim. I see no harm in asking if there could be a reason why and simply continuing on with the chain of reasoning.

Let's get out of the mind set of juror mode.

c.d.

The lack of any evidence makes an interruption a remote possibility cd, not a probability. If there was any evidence he was scared off, or changed his mind about mutilating, it isnt within any known data we have to study,...and as such, it becomes just a possibility, and a remote one.

When she is found on her side without being touched after the single throat cut...another uncharacteristic element....then we can say that the probability is that the man who places victims on their backs with their legs spread in order to mutilate the abdomen was likely not her killer.

There are a dozen signs we could have seen if that were the case....and yet they are not present.

My policy is if it isnt indicated by the crime scene or the physical evidence of the victim, then why put it forward as a probable scenario....and pretty clearly, it wasnt. Add all the circumstantial evidence in now....and you have an unsolved murder, but not one that can be assigned to the same man who killed Polly and Annie almost exactly the same way.

Cheers

[Tom_Wescott]

The lack of any evidence makes an interruption a remote possibility cd, not a probability.

I would agree with that except I would strike the word 'remote', since it's not more remote than any other possibility, and certainly less remote than some. But I agree that to say it's a probability her killer was interrupted is stepping a bit over the line since no one seems to have seen a man fleeing from the passageway post-murder.

It seems Damaso is ignoring my responses to him.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Damaso Marte]

It seems Damaso is ignoring my responses to him.

There's a limited extent to which I am willing to defend the views of Lynn Cates, seeing as I don't actually agree with them. I merely happen to understand and respect them.