How to sort the Ripper

[Errata]

And according to my method, Chase is the peculiar combination of body hoarder and body abandoner you only get with cannibals or harvesters. People who see a human corpse as a commodity, but have no emotional attachment. Where Mullin is a straight body abandoner. And from what I'm seeing, the body abandoner operates mostly on impulse, where body hoarders are supplying specific needs. And looking at these two killers you can see how they fit the characteristics of their respective categories. Mullin was an opportunist like most of his kind, and Chase was seeking.

Two equally insane men, with not completely different kinds of insanity even, and even so Chase is at the mercy of his need for the corpse, where Mullin is free to walk away. It's kind of interesting how much that one point of the corpse which seems so outside the mindset of a killer actually molds the killer. I mean think about this. Ever wonder how long Chase spent at a crime scene looking for a bucket? How much he pushed his own safety by hanging around for so long in search of a bucket? Not part of his fantasy at all, a bucket is at best a tool to allow him to complete a fantasy, yet he really did need a bucket. He could have finished an hour earlier but for the bucket. A prop he needed to deal with the corpse. Not commit the murders or rapes.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

Keep in mind that I am no expert.


I don't think the point was killing these women. If killing is what he wanted to do, he would have spend more time doing it.

From what I read so far, the women died in a few minutes.

This was only to make sure they collaborate, so he could mutilate them.

Which makes me think his "insanity" category is in the no empathy at all. Very detached.

[Abby Normal]

Keep in mind that I am no expert.


I don't think the point was killing these women. If killing is what he wanted to do, he would have spend more time doing it.

From what I read so far, the women died in a few minutes.

This was only to make sure they collaborate, so he could mutilate them.

Which makes me think his "insanity" category is in the no empathy at all. Very detached.

I agree. at the very least he was a sociopath-with the main characteristic being feeling no empathy toward other people. and it seems he was not into the torture aspect of it-quite the opposite-he was very clinical in the way he dispatched his victims. He wanted it done quick and easy so he could get at what he really wanted-their bodies.

the ripper was mainly a post mortem type Lust serial killer.

[John G]

And according to my method, Chase is the peculiar combination of body hoarder and body abandoner you only get with cannibals or harvesters. People who see a human corpse as a commodity, but have no emotional attachment. Where Mullin is a straight body abandoner. And from what I'm seeing, the body abandoner operates mostly on impulse, where body hoarders are supplying specific needs. And looking at these two killers you can see how they fit the characteristics of their respective categories. Mullin was an opportunist like most of his kind, and Chase was seeking.

Two equally insane men, with not completely different kinds of insanity even, and even so Chase is at the mercy of his need for the corpse, where Mullin is free to walk away. It's kind of interesting how much that one point of the corpse which seems so outside the mindset of a killer actually molds the killer. I mean think about this. Ever wonder how long Chase spent at a crime scene looking for a bucket? How much he pushed his own safety by hanging around for so long in search of a bucket? Not part of his fantasy at all, a bucket is at best a tool to allow him to complete a fantasy, yet he really did need a bucket. He could have finished an hour earlier but for the bucket. A prop he needed to deal with the corpse. Not commit the murders or rapes.

Hi Errata,

Wouldn't Jack the Stripper, the Hammersmith Nude murderer, also fall into this category? His MO was certainly unusual: he abducted his victims, before asphyxiating them. He then stored their bodies for significant periods, before dumping them in sites all over London, including the River Thames. In fact, all the victims were stripped naked with the killer retaining their possessions.

[Errata]

Hi Errata,

Wouldn't Jack the Stripper, the Hammersmith Nude murderer, also fall into this category? His MO was certainly unusual: he abducted his victims, before asphyxiating them. He then stored their bodies for significant periods, before dumping them in sites all over London, including the River Thames. In fact, all the victims were stripped naked with the killer retaining their possessions.

I don't know a lot about the case, thought I know that theoretically some of it got wrapped up in the Profumo affair. But to be brief, yeah. I have no earthly idea what he was doing. I'm not entirely sure he did. He disposed of some of the bodies in the open, others were buried or hidden. But he did keep them, and I have no clue why. Maybe it was for artistic effect, maybe it was some odd quarantine procedure, maybe he was visiting them for a period of time.

One of the many benefits of Chase and Mullin being caught is that it let us know why they were doing what they were doing. We know why Chase thought he needed blood. Not knowing that makes a lot of his actions very mysterious, even contrary to good serial killing. Even with Mullin we know why he wasn't concerned with the corpses. It was the deaths that mattered. Not the bodies. Jack the Stripper? I got nothing. I can't even really sort him because if the dump sites were significant to him, that changes a lot of things. But I'm struggling to understand how such a man could be a dumper and an abandoner at the same time. So either he wasn't, and there are ways he would not be, or he was, and he was at best an exceptionally confused killer.

[harry]

I am thinking of the first murder,Tabram?
The intention here seems to be to kill.The killer just wanted to kill.My opinion.

[Abby Normal]

I am thinking of the first murder,Tabram?
The intention here seems to be to kill.The killer just wanted to kill.My opinion.

If Tabram was a ripper victim, and I think she was, I think she may have been his trigger kill. As in she did something that pissed him off. Thus the anger and frenzied stabbing.


However, I think the beginnings of the sig is there, as possibly with Millwood earlier, with stabbing of private parts/abdomen and interest in what's under that skirt.

[Errata]

Ugh. I've finished California and came up with two "maybes" that are really "probably nots". Not That I have the fastest system known to man. It's basically reading a third of Murderpedia.

It's the organ harvesting that doesn't make sense. What Harry says is right, what happened to Tabram makes sense, fits in the behaviors and psychology of body abandoners. Tabram is almost textbook. I don't know where the organ removal came from. It's almost like something else is driving that choice. Left to his own devices, it would be Tabram every time. But starting with Nichols we see interest in the organs, and after that... something changed that somehow did not change his habits with the body. Like he was taking orders or something. And some serial killers claim to do just that, but its a level of crazy that doesn't get you far in life. And Jack got far.

It's irritating. I don't think I'll solve it here. But it suggests to me that the part of the Ripper that just doesn't fit isn't that he wasn't a rapist. It is that he was taking organs. Because the people I'm finding close to what he Ripper did, had many things in common, but none took anything. Except Sota.

[Damaso Marte]

I'm late to this thread, but let me just say this is exactly the kind of data-driven approach to Ripperology that may actually shed light on the case and that I've been hoping to see for years. Good job!

[Errata]

I'm late to this thread, but let me just say this is exactly the kind of data-driven approach to Ripperology that may actually shed light on the case and that I've been hoping to see for years. Good job!

Thanks! Though, I'd give my left eye for a searchable database meticulously documented. Ah well.

[Errata]

So if I alter my search requirements to allow rape as part of the crime, I come up with a Joachim Kroll out of Germany. He raped and murdered women, cut what can only be described as steak sized pieces out of them, and abandoned the bodies. He was not what I would consider conventionally sane, but apparently he blended well enough until it was to late.

I don't think I'm going to change my parameters to allow the inclusion of rape, but I thought this case was potentially interesting in terms of possible parallels to the Ripper.

There are also a remarkable amount of suicides attached to this killer. Like the whole village is in serious need on mental health care.

[Errata]

Florida surprisingly was also a bust. I moved on the the UK for now. Can any of you UK folk shed some light on one Kieron Kelly, specifically what he did with the corpses of the people he killed? He fits the type I think I am beginning to identify, but I don't have access to that important bit of information.

[Robert]

Hi Errata

He's not generally known over here either. He seems to have killed men only.

Here are a couple of links. The best bet seems to be Mr Platt's book.

http://irishpost.co.uk/irelands-only-known-serial-killer-kieran-kelly-pushed-16-people-in-front-of-the-tube-in-london/

http://murderpedia.org/male.K/k/kelly-kieron.htm

[Errata]

Hi Errata

He's not generally known over here either. He seems to have killed men only.

Here are a couple of links. The best bet seems to be Mr Platt's book.

http://irishpost.co.uk/irelands-only-known-serial-killer-kieran-kelly-pushed-16-people-in-front-of-the-tube-in-london/

http://murderpedia.org/male.K/k/kelly-kieron.htm

Wow. The guy in the newspaper article is so not the guy described in he murderpedia article. Which leads me to believe that murderpedia conflated one homophobic serial killer's name with another's crimes, but it's the crimes described by murderpedia I am interested in. Either that or he had two very different murder methods. Or there was a Kieran Kelly and Keiron Kelly with very similar problems, which seems improbable. And if you wonder why I can't reconcile the two accounts, I have a hard time believing that Kelly managed to shove a broken bottle into a man's rectum, slashing his throat and genitals before pushing him in front of a train. I can't see how the guy gets on the platform, much less the tracks.

Well that's irritating. Appalling, morally, irritating personally.

Finished the UK. No one else quite like the Ripper, though the Yorkshire Ripper probably comes closest. You guys don't have nearly as many spree killers as we do. Probably equal on parricide, but statistically far few incidents of going postal. Good job. I don't know if anyone has congratulated you guys for that.

Oh, and I take back what I said about Florida. Texas is definitely the place to go for serial killers.

[Pierre]

The Preface:

I have been espousing of late the idea that it is more informative to sort serial killers by the way they treat the body than other methods used. It's not my theory, I cannot for the life of me remember whose theory it is, but a very smart person whose name escapes me. When I find it again, I will correctly attribute it.

So the way it boils down is this: There are body hoarders, body dumpers, and body abandoners.

Body hoarder have a relationship with the corpse, to the point that it is almost as, if not far more important than the actual murder itself. Dahmer, Gein, Kemper, all body hoarders.

Body dumpers are just that. They get rid of the body, hiding it (sometimes poorly) either to not get caught or to disassociate themselves from the corpse, or even the crime itself. Bundy, Suff, Ridgeway, all body dumpers.

Body abandoners have no relationship with the body whatsoever. Once he murder is over the corpse has no value, and they simply walk away. Son of Sam is the perfect example,

End of Preface

So how do we sort Jack? It's not entirely clear whether he walked away from the bodies, or whether his intent was to display them in a way (which would put him in the body hoarder category). One of the benefits of sorting serial killers this way is that other behavioral traits tend to line up. Rapists are almost always body dumpers. Mission oriented killers are almost always body abandoners. Body hoarders tend to be at least a little fetish-y, which is not something I necessarily see in Jack, but we'll put the proverbial pin n that. But mission oriented serial killers walk away. It would make sense for Jack to be a body abandoner, which would make him more likely to be a mission oriented killer.

So I got to thinking that when we sort serial killers, we are comparing them to each other. But the usual suspects don't really compare with Jack. Different styles, different treatment of the corpse, different timing. So what do we get if we say that Jack was a body abandoner? Who does he compare to.

So I've been sorting through multiple murderers, looking for body abandoners. My first search was way to broad, so narrowed it down to New York, Florida, and California. And if you fear being serially killed, don't move to Florida. But it was still too much so I just went with New York, mostly because that information was already on my hard drive.

Finding a body abandoner is not easy. I'll just say that. Finding one who is also a mutilator is even harder, and finding a body abandoning mutilator who did not turn himself in is frankly not recommended. Out of hundreds of killers, I found one guy.

We turn in our hymnals now to Murderpedia because I got lazy.
Erno Soto (also called Charlie Chopoff) was a man who became obsessed with the biracial boy his wife conceived while they were separated. And apparently he became incredibly fixated on how this child ruined his life. Every couple of months, Soto would stalk a black child, take them or allow himself to be taken somewhere private, stab the child dozens of times, cut the penis off and walk away with it.

I give you our Jack Analog. What we see in Soto we can expect in Jack. In doing so I am challenging one of my own fairly strong assertions that Jack was sane. Because Soto was not. He was in and out of hospitals, mostly through his own wishes. But Soto suffered from a dangerous obsession, one I am not at all convinced that Victorian medicine was equipped to recognize. Had Soto told his story to any Victorian doctor, his rage would be seen as reasonable. Even expected. And psychiatry had a hard time recognizing the problem with any obsession over a person in someone's life. It' why we didn't get anti stalking laws until almost the 90s. So I'm not sure Soto would be seen as ill.

There was another man, Vincent Johnson, who also fit a lot of my criteria (though he was not a mutilator. He was the Willamsburg Strangler. He targeted prostitutes every couple of months, was a mission oriented serial killer, similar timeline, body abandoner. I think he's also worth a look, despite not being a mutilator.

Anyway, I leave this here for perusal and comment. I'm going to finish looking through California and god help me Florida. But I think the reason we have a problem coming up with a comparison for Jack is that the most important aspects of his crimes are relatively rare. And certainly don't appear in the famous serial killers we know to compare him to. By looking for a different aspect of his crime, I think we have a better chance at finding guys like him. So we can maybe understand him better.

Hi,

Serial killer typologies have been strongly criticized by researchers for a long time. These killers rarely match the theoretical models and there are often overlaps between operational definitions of types of serial killers and problems with understanding their MO:s with these typologies as tools. Even the concept of MO has been called into questions by researchers.

But I have a suggestion, since you seem to work rather inductively with comparing Jack the Ripper to others. Try and hypothesize that Jack the Ripper was also the dismemberment murderer in 1888 and 1889. Perhaps you will get some interesting results!

I wish you the best of luck.

Kind regards, Pierre

"The second victim of the Thames series was discovered in September of 1888, in the middle of the hunt for the Whitechapel Murder. On September 11, an arm belonging to a female was discovered in the Thames off Pimlico. On September 28, another arm was found along the Lambeth-road and on October 2, the torso of a female, minus the head, was discovered. The torso was discovered on the grounds of the construction site for the New Scotland Yard building and was dubbed by the press the "Whitehall Mystery." Scotland Yard had a murder mystery to solve even before their new building was complete.

The medical men involved, along with Dr. Bond, agreed that a degree of medical knowledge had been used, but they could give no evidence pointing to the method of death. Dr. Charles Hibbert, who examined one of the arms, stated that, "I thought the arm was cut off by a person who, while he was not necessarily an anatomist, certainly knew what he was doing-who knew where the joints were and cut them pretty regularly." At the inquest, the jury, despite the fact that an obvious murder had taken place, returned a verdict of "Found Dead."

Eighteen eighty-eight is considered the "Year of the Ripper" in the chronological accounts of the history of London. Within his ten-week reign, the Ripper had managed to shake Victorian London to its core. Yet, by the end of the year, interest in Jack the Ripper began to dwindle rapidly. By June of 1889, almost seven months had passed without a Ripper type murder, and hopes were being entertained that his bloody wrath was over. The same could not be said for the Thames series, which was about to begin again.

On June 4, part of a female torso was fished out of the Thames at Horselydown, while at about the same time; a left leg to the body was plucked from under the Albert-bridge, Chelsea. Within the next week, numerous other parts of the same body were recovered in or near the Thames.

The London Times on June 11, reported that the remains found so far "are as follows: Tuesday, left leg and thigh off Battersea, lower part of the abdomen at Horselydown; Thursday, the liver near Nine Elms, upper part of the body in Battersea-Park, neck and shoulders off Battersea; Friday, right foot and part of leg at Wandsworth, left leg and foot at Limehouse; Saturday, left arm and hand at Bankside, buttocks and pelvis off Battersea, right thigh at Chelsea Embankment, yesterday, right arm and hand at Bankside."

It is an interesting fact that one of the body parts had been purposely thrown over the private railing to the Shelley Estate. It is ironic that Mary Shelley had earlier written a novel entitled Frankenstein, about a monster pieced together by various body parts.

The medical men who examined the pieces agree that some degree of medical skill was involved. At the inquest on June 17, it was stated that, "the division of the parts showed skill and design: not, however, the anatomical skill of a surgeon, but the practical knowledge of a butcher or a knacker. There was a great similarity between the condition, as regarded cutting up, of the remains and that of those found at Rainham, and at the new police building on the Thames Embankment." The London Times of June 5, reported that "in the opinion of the doctors the women had been dead only 48 hours, and the body had been dissected somewhat roughly by a person who must have had some knowledge of the joints of the human body."

Once again, the doctors were unable to provide a means of death. However, this time, the jury was confident in reaching a decision of "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." As in the other similar cases, the head of the victim was never found, however, the identity of the victim was clearly established. The body was identified as that of Elizabeth Jackson, a suspected prostitute, from Chelsea. This lead was of little use, as the murder was to remain, as the others, unsolved.

In July, Whitechapel was awakened to the possibility of another Jack the Ripper crime. A known prostitute, Alice McKenzie, was found murdered in the heart of the district. While police and citizens were entertaining the theory that Jack was back in business, the torso killer would strike again, and this time in the Ripper's backyard.

On September 10, Police Constable William Pennett was walking his beat along Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, when he discovered the torso of a female under a railway arch. As in the McKenzie case, this murder created a flurry of police activity in the district. Within minutes of finding the body, the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Police, as well as numerous detectives who had been engaged on the Ripper investigation, were on their way to the crime scene. Officially, the police were to place this murder in the same category as the rest, unsolved and of the Thames type."

http://www.casebook.org/dissertation...o-murders.html