How Fast An Operator Was JtR?

[Hunter]

I believe the mutilations on all of the victims where this was the case were done quicker than most people - past or present - can or could imagine - with the exception of Sequiera, who probably got it right with Eddowes.

[Errata]

I believe the mutilations on all of the victims where this was the case were done quicker than most people - past or present - can or could imagine - with the exception of Sequiera, who probably got it right with Eddowes.

I agree. I think people have a very basic difficulty finding something to compare to mutilations like this. Most people think surgery, but it's nothing like surgery. It's not even really like field dressing an animal where you at least have some care because it would affect the taste of the meat. A billion different considerations a murderer doesn't have affects the time it takes to do either surgery or butchering.

It's like comparing unpacking your china with a three year old and a christmas present. Different goals, different requirements, different ends. It probably wouldn't take too much longer than it would to paint the cuts on the ground in front of you. I mean, I've had to rip out couch upholstery, and that seems like the best analog.

[Damaso Marte]

It's rather funny. We can take the same set of basic facts and you can conclude that - Stride and Eddowes aside - Jack could work at an almost leisurely pace, and others can conclude that - with the exception of Kelly - Jack was constantly on the verge of being interrupted.

Yep. All of the eyewitnesses are open to impeachment, at various levels.

You can believe the eyewitnesses 100%...you can believe that they saw what they saw but at a different time than they stated...or you can believe that they saw something unrelated. All lead you to different outcomes.

I, for one, think we're giving too much credit to the ability of the eyewitnesses to tell exact time. Though thanks to my interest in Ripperology, everytime I witness what might be a crime, I check my watch to get the exact time.

[lynn cates]

stopping

Hello Gareth. Thanks.

"Interestingly - and this has only just occurred to me - perhaps what he achieved in such a short time span in Mitre Square might tell us something about the previous murders. Specifically, the time he had available to "finish the job" on those occasions, and what might have prompted him to stop when he did."

So you are of opinion that the assailant stopped when he saw Harvey's light in Church Passage?

Cheers.
LC

[Amanda Sumner]

I don't understand why there is any doubt about these crimes being done by the same hand. Murder was not uncommon but one of the reasons JtR is still talked about today is because of the mutilations and the taking of body parts. This was so unusual that the thought of two or more Rippers roaming the streets over the same period seems highly unlikely to me.
The varied skill of the mutilations depended on how quickly he worked. With Eddowes the time frame was very short and had to be performed quickly but in the case of Kelly he had all the time in the world. It seems that an average of 15 minutes or less was all he needed to do his damage but I'm a bit skeptical that Lawende saw the same woman. I don't think anyone could have done that much damage in under 10 minutes, less if you consider the time it must have taken to walk down to Mitre Square.
So the answer to the first post is that our Jack was, indeed, a very fast worker if he had to be.

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

doubt

Hullo Amanda. Reason for doubt being there is a very small amount of factual data. When reasoning, be it deductive, inductive, etc, there is a limit one can conclude/infer to and still remain logical and provable. If I completely failed at explaing that sorry. I think Lynn could prob say it perfect like, as he knows a little about logic. Well I think he might anyways.

[Amanda Sumner]

Thank you, Digalittledeeperwatson, you explain it very well. There is always room for doubt in most things though, but it still seems logical to me, however small the amount of factual data, that there can not have been too many knife wielding, eviscerating maniacs running about. This was someone of very sick mind and certainly, by the time of Kelly's murder, totally unhinged.
It would take a very strong stomach and an equally unhinged mind to do a copycat killing, in my opinion.

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

Thanks.

Thank you, Digalittledeeperwatson, you explain it very well. There is always room for doubt in most things though, but it still seems logical to me, however small the amount of factual data, that there can not have been too many knife wielding, eviscerating maniacs running about. This was someone of very sick mind and certainly, by the time of Kelly's murder, totally unhinged.
It would take a very strong stomach and an equally unhinged mind to do a copycat killing, in my opinion.

It is 3 degrees f here so my brain is a little bit frozen. If there was more than one individual who commited, specifically the mutilation murders, they were indeed sick if not sicker than say Nichol's and Chapman's murderers. There is another option, though it sounds fanciful. Someone acting upon orders or something along those lines. That's about the only thing I can really come up with as far as some one who was not just as sick. I have a hard time in believing in the, as example, Barnett killed "MJK" then made it look like a Ripper murder theory. I respect it as a possibility, however, it is an extremely unlikely possibility. The idea of a singular killer is the highest possibility, unfortunately it is not so high as to have great distance from other options. Long winded this morning. I'm shutting up now. Sorry for any derailing. Great thread.

[Errata]

It is 3 degrees f here so my brain is a little bit frozen. If there was more than one individual who commited, specifically the mutilation murders, they were indeed sick if not sicker than say Nichol's and Chapman's murderers. There is another option, though it sounds fanciful. Someone acting upon orders or something along those lines. That's about the only thing I can really come up with as far as some one who was not just as sick. I have a hard time in believing in the, as example, Barnett killed "MJK" then made it look like a Ripper murder theory. I respect it as a possibility, however, it is an extremely unlikely possibility. The idea of a singular killer is the highest possibility, unfortunately it is not so high as to have great distance from other options. Long winded this morning. I'm shutting up now. Sorry for any derailing. Great thread.

And where a lot of this case veers off the regimen of logic when we run out of facts is essentially, vibe. Everyone looks at these murders and get a certain vibe. This looks cold and calculating. This looks angry. This looks frenzied. Base on our vibe we assign an emotional quality to the murders that we can in no way quantify. We try, but we just can't. Neither could the investigators and doctor's of the day.

But not everybody gets the same vibe off of every murder. For example, I can look at Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes and see the same thing. I can look at Polly Nichols and see how it could relate to Chapman and Eddowes. I look at Stride, and I see something... less than Chapman and Eddowes (not in terms of mutilation. More like emotion or intent). I look at Mary Kelly and I see more. More emotion. More intent. Just more. Chapman,Eddowes and even Nichols make me wonder. It feels like a puzzle. Kind of standard really. Stride makes me sad, like it was for nothing. Like it was an execution. Kelly creeps me out. I see it as personal. I see her as knowing her killer but not knowing why this was happening. I see it like the woman who had acid thrown in her face because she didn't notice some guy. It's scary.

And yet I have absolutely nothing to back up these emotional responses. There's no evidence. No statement. It's a gut feeling. A vibe. I've worked with serial killers, I've worked with a lot of murder scene photographs. I don't ignore my vibes because my old boss told me not to. I don't count on them being correct for the same reason. But I see something different in these murders. Lynn does as well. He sees something different than what I see. And we can probably both whip out statements and statistics to support our views, but in the end it's a vibe. A gut feeling. Can't prove it.

It's like being in the middle of say, the Gobi desert. And there is a signpost with an arrow pointing and a word on it. We don't know the language. I am sure that it is a town name, because every arrow like that I've ever seen has had a name on it. Lynn thinks it says "North" because it's pointing north. You think it says water, because whats the one thing you need in a desert? We all have valid arguments. Any one of us could easily be right. We could follow and find a town with water to the north. All of us are right. But the sign only says one thing, and we will never know what that was. Logic only gets us so far. Vibe only gets us so far. The rest is projection, and that's all we will ever have.

[Bridewell]

It was a crude job, to say the least. The whole Kelly "operation" could easily have been finished in under 30 minutes, in my estimation.

There's an old posting where I show my workings-out here: http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.p...25&postcount=2

Thanks for posting that, Sam. I too have always entertained a degree of scepticism about the two hours supposedly necessary for inflicting the Kelly injuries.

[Bridewell]

Time Parameters

However you need to modify the possible start point, since at 1am she is just being released and still a few minutes walk to her murder location.

Thanks Michael. I used the 1am time as it is the first point at which Eddowes might have encountered her killer. Obviously the murder couldn't have occurred that early but the encounter could have begun at that time. I take the point though - she couldn't have been murdered that early.

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

Hullo Errata.

You are on point. I usually refer to it as intuition. But it can be refined and made fairly reliable. I guess one of my points was that it is important to make sure the distinction is always made when reasoning. To remember where the lines are once they begin to blur. So to speak.

[lynn cates]

enhancing understanding

Hello Amanda.

"I don't understand why there is any doubt about these crimes being done by the same hand."

You might have a go at the inquest reports. Real eye opener.

And only two ladies had missing body parts.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

sample size

Hello DLDW. Hmm, insufficient sample size?

Cheers.
LC

[Amanda Sumner]

Hello Amanda.

"I don't understand why there is any doubt about these crimes being done by the same hand."

You might have a go at the inquest reports. Real eye opener.

And only two ladies had missing body parts.

Cheers.
LC

I'm aware of the missing body parts and who had what removed. I am also familiar with the inquest reports. Three of the ladies were eviscerated, one had deep cuts across the abdomen and Stride just had her throat cut.
There is nothing to suggest that they were not done by the same person but anything is possible and I'm sure people have their own opinions on it. I just think that it seems unlikely to me that there was more than one who had the stomach to do this. In the case of Stride it may be possible that someone else did it but it seems a terrible coincidence, then, that on the very same night there were two men out there, within walking distance of one another, cutting women's throats.
I'm a newbie and no expert on the subject but I can understand that people who know better have different vibes and feelings on the case. I just thought I'd put my tuppenny worth in.
What I do find astonishing is the little time the Ripper needed to accomplish his deeds, and in very poor light too. He must have been a butcher or something similar to know where all the organs were and, if his daily job was eviscerating animals for the meat trade, that may explain why and how he did it so fast.