How to sort the Ripper

[Errata]

I'm a bit surprised, really, as his rapes and his murders seem to me pretty much chalk and cheese - he raped at knifepoint, and neither killed nor mutilated those victims (he my have stabbed one, as 'malicious wounding' was one of the charges).

But his murders.. those were blitz attacks, he wanted them dead as soon as possible so he could get on with stabbing and removing breasts. As far as I am aware, most if not all of the murders did not involve rape. He also is believed to have broken into a mortuary and stabbed the bodies of two women - again, no rape (or necro-sex, w/e). He may have been practising. He may have been seeking a 'safe' outlet for that particular paraphilia. Who knows.

I think the rape was one thing, the mutilations a whole 'nother, and much more akin to JtR. The way he attacked his first known victim, as a teenager, and the way he attacked his last are very similar, except that in the last he succeeded in killing. The mutilating came -first- and rape was a later development.

Edit - and he is said to have planned his crimes carefully. This is evident particularly with the murder of Nicole Patterson.

But if he don't fit, then he don't fit.

Sometimes it isn't even about whether or not they fit, but whether or not they fit with the limited amount of information I have available to me. Like, if someone kills in the victims house, that's tough to figure out if they abandoned the body or not. Because sometimes that's actually a dump, and sometimes it's collecting if they stay there awhile and do things. And it's not always clear cut. So almost no one who killed in their victims house made it in, because the odds of being wrong about the body disposition was just too high.

But the Ripper was not a rapist, and that makes him odd. Dupas' first murder mutilation was found with her panties down. Now that's all I have on first blush, but it's enough combined with his other activities to make me believe he did rape his victim. I only had three requirements, and not raping the victim was one. Not that Dupas isn't fascinating for a lot of other reasons. Malicious wounding is the hallmark of the psychopath. You almost never see it otherwise. But Dupas wasn't a psychopath. Psychotic maybe, but his moral compass was far more intact than one would think. So he is super interesting.

Pomeroy got left off for a couple of reasons. First, he was collecting bodies, which was the major disqualifier. Second, his ability to escape notice and/or capture is under suspicion. Which ended up being a qualifying characteristic after i saw the sheer number of people who did horrible things and then either just turned themselves in, or made no effort to hide their involvement. Which Jack did, and it's an important part of the crimes. But if I'm honest, even if these other things hadn't knocked him out of the running, his age would have. Killer kids are so different. They are not acting on the same impulses and needs as an adult, who might have been slowly warped over time, where a 14 year old serial killer is probably functioning off of physical brain abnormalities. Which just makes them a bad analog. Like comparing a chimp from a bad zoo to a chimp from the wild. They both might try to rip your face off, but their reasons are very different.

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Errata;374752]

But the Ripper was not a rapist, and that makes him odd.

Hi Errata,

Do you mean that it makes him odd in some realistic way, or do you mean that you find him odd?

I myself would have been very surprised, had he raped anyone. Rape was not a dimension of the crime, and therefore not a dimension of the criminal.

I think Dr Bond did put it well when he said:

"...in all the murders, the object was mutilation".

Perhaps you should also focus more on that single aspect? If that was a paramount aspect for the killer, other things would have been secondary.

Regards, Pierre

[Errata]

[QUOTE=Pierre;374759]

But the Ripper was not a rapist, and that makes him odd.

Hi Errata,

Do you mean that it makes him odd in some realistic way, or do you mean that you find him odd?

I myself would have been very surprised, had he raped anyone. Rape was not a dimension of the crime, and therefore not a dimension of the criminal.

I think Dr Bond did put it well when he said:

"...in all the murders, the object was mutilation".

Perhaps you should also focus more on that single aspect? If that was a paramount aspect for the killer, other things would have been secondary.

Regards, Pierre

It actually makes him odd, at least if you read through almost the entirety of Murderpedia, which I did. I don't recommend it by the way. Most serial killers rape. And Jack was a serial killer. Most post mortem purposeful mutilators have a sexual component in what they do, even if they don't actually rape their victim. Cutting off genitals, cutting out tongues, cutting off lips, whole heads, with some kind of sexual purpose behind it. Like Kemper. The body parts were for masturbation. Same with Dahmer.

(And yes, it could be that Jack was taking the uterus to masturbate with, but that would make him even more odd because the uterus is not something the either generates or classically represents lust. Breasts, a head, we get it. But a fist sized muscle? Most partialists focus on a body part that represents sex in some way. Breasts, legs, buttocks. I've never heard of one targeting an organ at all. But if Jack was the only guy who did, behaviorists would sell their souls for information on how that fetish develops. Solving these crimes would be a HUGE deal. You're in the social sciences. The link between the sexual gaze and certain body parts and arousal in our culture, and the one guy who crossed over though granted in a hideous way? We'd need to know everything about that guy to answer questions from why can't women wear comfortable bras to what body language precedes a rape. It's one of those big questions we have that is essentially unanswered.)

So Jack is odd for not being a rapist, at least statistically. But you are right in that his crimes are not about rape, and so rape would in fact be a strange thing to do when he kills the way that he kills. What I have found is that Jack as a serial killer totally makes sense, up until the moment he takes an organ. And then it's off the rails. Because there are guys just like him, up to that point. So in reality, that's the odd part, because it doesn't fit the type of killer he proved himself to be up to that moment. He shouldn't have done that. I don't know why he did.

I ended up with four guys who met all three criteria.
1: they are a mutilator.
2: They are not a rapist.
3: They abandoned the corpses of the people they killed

And those three simple things I assure you was asking a lot. But the guys I have do not, at the moment, have a whole lot in common. I don't have much on them, so I'm waiting for those files to see if something comes up. One I think will turn out to be a straight psychopath, and I don't think Jack was one of those. But when I get more information on them, I'll let you know what I find, if anything. It might be all for naught. But when I was looking for guys like the Ripper, I really was not being super specific. There's just not a lot of killers like him.

[Ausgirl]

I don't know how anyone can be sure there was not a sexual component to the crimes.

Sure, there was no evidence he raped his victims, no sperm visibly left behind. But we *cannot* be sure he didn't jizz in his pants while cutting them up. That's just a fact.

Errata, I'm a bit more clear on what your parameters are, thank you. I found your comments re juvenile killers interesting, as several mutilators I can think of right away have started killing/mutilating very young, not much older than Pomeroy really (Percy, Kemper & Dupas at 15, for eg.), but the aberrant behaviors in their early childhoods are quite analogous too. Maybe mutilators suffer a form of arrested development? ***In that, while they sexually mature and this obviously had an impact on them and their crimes, the mutilation component came first and is in itself a form of deep satisfaction that is not necessarily sexual, and may even be quite separate (though concurrent or associated later). I hope I'm making sense.


I'm not convinced that needs and impulses are any different in child (teenaged) mutilators than for adult mutilators..Percy was only 21 when they put him away for life. Kemper, too. They were Pomeroys, just a few years before that, and I don't think 4-5 years made all that much difference to their motives or their needs.


This is all quite aside from your experiment, sorry if I'm getting off track.

Anyway. There's no proof Jack never, ever raped anyone. And Dupas kind of proved that rapists can also commit non-rape mutilation crimes. And yeah.. nothing proves Jack wasn't getting a sexual thrill from rummaging in innards either.


Oh, almost forgot.. re the "wombs as objects of sexual fixation" thing -- I actually know a guy with a womb fetish, won't date women who can't menstruate or are infertile. Doesn't want to breed, as such. Just, the idea of fertile wombs is what gets him going and infertility turns him right off. I dunno why I never thought of him before, in context with the Ripper. But that's why I enjoy our conversations, there's always a gift.

**just to add: I definitely have never heard of anyone getting off while visualising a nicely functioning kidney though..

[John Wheat]

To Ausgirl

I think its highly likely there was a sexual element to Jack's crimes. I think he probably did jizz in his pants and or masturbate when thinking about his crimes.

Cheers John

[Harry D]

I don't rule out the idea that the killer was some kind of paranoid schizophrenic. When I look at the state of Mary Kelly's corpse, you certainly get the feeling this was committed by a guy who had completely lost touch with reality. Although, I know Errata isn't convinced the Ripper was a schizo because someone like that wouldn't have been able to get away with the murders. I beg to differ. It's not like the Ripper wasn't a man living on the edge, killing in the locations that he did. Take 'BS Man', for instance, he was seen by no less than two witnesses accosting a woman outside a busy social club moments before her corpse is found. Hardly the actions of a smooth criminal, and yet he somehow got away with it.

I would compare the Ripper to two other serial killers & paranoid schizophrenics: Robert Napper & Richard Chase. Napper mutilated a woman and took part of her abdomen as a trophy, and Chase splayed open one of his victims and removed several internal organs. However, once again we come back to the lack of sexual component in the Ripper's murders, as both Napper & Chase raped their chosen victims.

[Trevor Marriott]

I don't rule out the idea that the killer was some kind of paranoid schizophrenic. When I look at the state of Mary Kelly's corpse, you certainly get the feeling this was committed by a guy who had completely lost touch with reality. Although, I know Errata isn't convinced the Ripper was a schizo because someone like that wouldn't have been able to get away with the murders. I beg to differ. It's not like the Ripper wasn't a man living on the edge, killing in the locations that he did. Take 'BS Man', for instance, he was seen by no less than two witnesses accosting a woman outside a busy social club moments before her corpse is found. Hardly the actions of a smooth criminal, and yet he somehow got away with it.

I would compare the Ripper to two other serial killers & paranoid schizophrenics: Robert Napper & Richard Chase. Napper mutilated a woman and took part of her abdomen as a trophy, and Chase splayed open one of his victims and removed several internal organs. However, once again we come back to the lack of sexual component in the Ripper's murders, as both Napper & Chase raped their chosen victims.

I think it is wrong in any event to try to totally compare a killer like JTR with modern day serial killers, simply because there are so many influences that are open to the making of a modern day serial killer, which were not open to a killer 127 years ago, such as books, television, films, and the crimes of other serial killers.

But conversely we have modern day serial killers which are compared to JTR.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[John G]

I don't rule out the idea that the killer was some kind of paranoid schizophrenic. When I look at the state of Mary Kelly's corpse, you certainly get the feeling this was committed by a guy who had completely lost touch with reality. Although, I know Errata isn't convinced the Ripper was a schizo because someone like that wouldn't have been able to get away with the murders. I beg to differ. It's not like the Ripper wasn't a man living on the edge, killing in the locations that he did. Take 'BS Man', for instance, he was seen by no less than two witnesses accosting a woman outside a busy social club moments before her corpse is found. Hardly the actions of a smooth criminal, and yet he somehow got away with it.

I would compare the Ripper to two other serial killers & paranoid schizophrenics: Robert Napper & Richard Chase. Napper mutilated a woman and took part of her abdomen as a trophy, and Chase splayed open one of his victims and removed several internal organs. However, once again we come back to the lack of sexual component in the Ripper's murders, as both Napper & Chase raped their chosen victims.

Hi Harry,

I would agree with you, at least in part. To my mind the Whitechapel murders contain a number of organized characteristics, which is not suggestive of a schizophrenic serial killer. In fact, schizophrenic serial killers are extremely rare, although some individuals, such as Sutcliffe, have claimed to be mentally ill (in his case the jury rejected the argument that he was schizophrenic, presumably accepting the prosecutions argument that the crimes were sexually motivated.)

Nonetheless, the Robert Napper precedent, which I've referred to myself on occasion, is clearly significant, particularly as elements of his crimes appear highly organized (he was diagnosed with both schizophrenia and Asperger's syndrome.) However, the Robert Chase example I would tend to discount, as he was clearly very disorganized.

Overall, therefore, I would say a schizophrenic serial killer cannot be completely discounted.

[Errata]

I don't know how anyone can be sure there was not a sexual component to the crimes.

We can't possibly know. I fully accept there may have been a sexual component, but there wasn't rape. And the majority of serial killers rape. The majority of thrill killers and mission oriented killers do not. And so the fact that he didn't rape his victims may point to him being a mission oriented killer. It's not locked down or anything, but it might be an important distinction.

Errata, I'm a bit more clear on what your parameters are, thank you. I found your comments re juvenile killers interesting, as several mutilators I can think of right away have started killing/mutilating very young, not much older than Pomeroy really (Percy, Kemper & Dupas at 15, for eg.), but the aberrant behaviors in their early childhoods are quite analogous too. Maybe mutilators suffer a form of arrested development? ***In that, while they sexually mature and this obviously had an impact on them and their crimes, the mutilation component came first and is in itself a form of deep satisfaction that is not necessarily sexual, and may even be quite separate (though concurrent or associated later). I hope I'm making sense.

I'm not convinced that needs and impulses are any different in child (teenaged) mutilators than for adult mutilators..Percy was only 21 when they put him away for life. Kemper, too. They were Pomeroys, just a few years before that, and I don't think 4-5 years made all that much difference to their motives or their needs.

You're right, I don't think the essential motives or needs change all that much. But the habits do. And since we are working with a serial killer whose motives and needs are unknown, I feel like I have to try to keep the habits as similar as possible. For example, teenagers are terrible at dumping bodies. They just are. They also don't often have the ability to talk a victim into their car unless they are tagreting children, like Pomeroy. They just haven't lived long enough to develop certain skills that adults do develop. So since all I have to go on are actions, I need comparable killers to have developed on roughly the same track as the the Ripper. And the adolecents don't. It's a little like learning the piano. You want the 70 year old piano teacher, not the 12 year old prodigy. Not for how they play the piano, but for how they learned to play piano. Because the 12 year old did not learn in a way you can copy.

This is all quite aside from your experiment, sorry if I'm getting off track.

Anyway. There's no proof Jack never, ever raped anyone. And Dupas kind of proved that rapists can also commit non-rape mutilation crimes. And yeah.. nothing proves Jack wasn't getting a sexual thrill from rummaging in innards either.

Yeah, I got nothing on what Jack wanted. I was hoping this little experiment might shed light on it based on comparable killers, but I don't know.

Oh, almost forgot.. re the "wombs as objects of sexual fixation" thing -- I actually know a guy with a womb fetish, won't date women who can't menstruate or are infertile. Doesn't want to breed, as such. Just, the idea of fertile wombs is what gets him going and infertility turns him right off. I dunno why I never thought of him before, in context with the Ripper. But that's why I enjoy our conversations, there's always a gift.

**just to add: I definitely have never heard of anyone getting off while visualising a nicely functioning kidney though..

That's actually pretty common in some cultures where virility is considered the essence of manhood. It's not in American and British cultures, but some parts of the Middle East, some Mediterranean cultures, etc. the ability to sire children is what makes a man. Even if they don't do it. And in order to sire a child, you need a reproductively functioning female partner. So having a menstruating and therefor ovulating female allows a man to feel more like a man. It's not really considered a fetish, because it's more prevalent that the average fetish, but it can be a paraphilia if it causes significant dysfunction. Which it usually doesn't. But it is not uncommon even in our cultures for women who lose the ability to reproduce through menopause or injury, etc. to feel less desirable, and for their partners to find them less attractive. Some argue it's the biological imperative at work, I think it's a pheromone thing, but it happens. I mean, your friend is weird, but really in just a slightly more honest way than the rest of us.

[Errata]

I don't rule out the idea that the killer was some kind of paranoid schizophrenic. When I look at the state of Mary Kelly's corpse, you certainly get the feeling this was committed by a guy who had completely lost touch with reality. Although, I know Errata isn't convinced the Ripper was a schizo because someone like that wouldn't have been able to get away with the murders. I beg to differ. It's not like the Ripper wasn't a man living on the edge, killing in the locations that he did. Take 'BS Man', for instance, he was seen by no less than two witnesses accosting a woman outside a busy social club moments before her corpse is found. Hardly the actions of a smooth criminal, and yet he somehow got away with it.

I would compare the Ripper to two other serial killers & paranoid schizophrenics: Robert Napper & Richard Chase. Napper mutilated a woman and took part of her abdomen as a trophy, and Chase splayed open one of his victims and removed several internal organs. However, once again we come back to the lack of sexual component in the Ripper's murders, as both Napper & Chase raped their chosen victims.

It's not that I don't think he couldn't have gotten away with the murders, as much as I don't think that he would have kept that secret throughout his illness. I mean, extreme disorganization is it's own protection in a lot of ways. Look at Mullin. The only reason it took so long for him to get caught was because he was all over the place. Chase and Mullin are the templates of a disorganized schizophrenic serial killer (as much as that category even exists), and the Ripper was nothing like them. Now if he's psychotic and killing while lucid, well then it doesn't much matter if he spent part of his time psychotic, except for that whole secret keeping thing.

I also differentiate between horrifying and crazy. And I certainly know that crazy exists, but I also know that completely unfathomable, horrifying, and possibly even evil exists without crazy being a part of it. I think people are perfectly capable of making horrendous choices. And if it's a choice, it's not a mental illness. Wanting something despicable is not crazy. Wanting something despicable to satisfy the commandment of your pet parakeet who is the demon Azazel in pretty blue feathers... that's crazy. Being unable to stop no matter how much you may want to because if you stop you will die... that's crazy. Wanting to eat a uterus? Mysterious, disgusting, rare... not crazy. Not in and of itself. I'm crazy. I get a little nitpicky on the details because sometimes these discussions veer into assuming that anyone with a an illness can do this to another person. Well, I have an illness, and I don't want to do this to people. I don't do this to people, and I'm in no danger of doing it to people. Because there are choices. And serial killers almost always have choices. Spree killers might not, but serial killers do. The Ripper made choices. Which means sane enough for our purposes. At least in my mind.

[John G]

We can't possibly know. I fully accept there may have been a sexual component, but there wasn't rape. And the majority of serial killers rape. The majority of thrill killers and mission oriented killers do not. And so the fact that he didn't rape his victims may point to him being a mission oriented killer. It's not locked down or anything, but it might be an important distinction.



You're right, I don't think the essential motives or needs change all that much. But the habits do. And since we are working with a serial killer whose motives and needs are unknown, I feel like I have to try to keep the habits as similar as possible. For example, teenagers are terrible at dumping bodies. They just are. They also don't often have the ability to talk a victim into their car unless they are tagreting children, like Pomeroy. They just haven't lived long enough to develop certain skills that adults do develop. So since all I have to go on are actions, I need comparable killers to have developed on roughly the same track as the the Ripper. And the adolecents don't. It's a little like learning the piano. You want the 70 year old piano teacher, not the 12 year old prodigy. Not for how they play the piano, but for how they learned to play piano. Because the 12 year old did not learn in a way you can copy.



Yeah, I got nothing on what Jack wanted. I was hoping this little experiment might shed light on it based on comparable killers, but I don't know.



That's actually pretty common in some cultures where virility is considered the essence of manhood. It's not in American and British cultures, but some parts of the Middle East, some Mediterranean cultures, etc. the ability to sire children is what makes a man. Even if they don't do it. And in order to sire a child, you need a reproductively functioning female partner. So having a menstruating and therefor ovulating female allows a man to feel more like a man. It's not really considered a fetish, because it's more prevalent that the average fetish, but it can be a paraphilia if it causes significant dysfunction. Which it usually doesn't. But it is not uncommon even in our cultures for women who lose the ability to reproduce through menopause or injury, etc. to feel less desirable, and for their partners to find them less attractive. Some argue it's the biological imperative at work, I think it's a pheromone thing, but it happens. I mean, your friend is weird, but really in just a slightly more honest way than the rest of us.

Hi Errata,

If he was a mission orientated killer do you think this strengthens the possibility that he was mentally ill? I would also note that Sutcliffe claimed to be mission orientated, i .e. actiing on divine instructions, and this was accepted by the psychiatrists who diagnosed him as schizophrenic. Nonetheless, there was evidence of a sexual component to his murders, even though he denied this, and he didn't rape any of the victims, and the psychiatrists conceded that if he was driven by a sexual motive then he wouldn't be schizophrenic. And the jury obviously disagreed with the psychiatrists' diagnosis as they convicted him of murder.

[John Wheat]

We can't possibly know. I fully accept there may have been a sexual component, but there wasn't rape. And the majority of serial killers rape.

Of course Jack may have raped on days off from serial killing, he may have raped women earlier in his life or he may have sexually abused his wife etc.

[Errata]

Hi Errata,

If he was a mission orientated killer do you think this strengthens the possibility that he was mentally ill? I would also note that Sutcliffe claimed to be mission orientated, i .e. actiing on divine instructions, and this was accepted by the psychiatrists who diagnosed him as schizophrenic. Nonetheless, there was evidence of a sexual component to his murders, even though he denied this, and he didn't rape any of the victims, and the psychiatrists conceded that if he was driven by a sexual motive then he wouldn't be schizophrenic. And the jury obviously disagreed with the psychiatrists' diagnosis as they convicted him of murder.

It does. Frankly most mission oriented killers are usually at least a little bit mad. And many of course fly right past that goalpost into effing lunacy. It depends on the mission frankly. If he's out to eliminate prostitutes one by one (a problematic argument I know) then that's rational as far as the reasoning goes. No delusion involved, no apparent psychosis. If he is hearing from higher power that he has to do this... it might not be schizophrenia, but it's definitely delusional (with the assumption that god does not in fact want women murdered). The problem is lots of people pick up a single delusion somewhere along the line, and it isn't schizophrenia, which is a very specific neuropsych disorder. Most of those single delusions just make people racists or something. It doesn't make them kill. But delusions can be spectacularly intense, and someone having one cannot make decisions based on rationality. So yeah they might kill. Depends, as they say, on what the voices are saying. Practically speaking, people who hear voices are about 300 times more likely to kill themselves than others. But those who are simply dealing with abberant beliefs and not commanding voices don't have more leeway per se, but their interpretation of certain truths can be loose.

[Errata]

Of course Jack may have raped on days off from serial killing, he may have raped women earlier in his life or he may have sexually abused his wife etc.

Sure. But a majority of serial killers rape their victims. In fact it looked like about half of the people who were raping and killing were killing so they wouldn't go to jail for the rape. These guys are really serial rapists who learned how to not leave witnesses. And there's a lot of those guys. Jack isn't that guy. Whatever he does in his free time, he doesn't bring it to work apparently.

[GUT]

It does. Frankly most mission oriented killers are usually at least a little bit mad. And many of course fly right past that goalpost into effing lunacy. It depends on the mission frankly. If he's out to eliminate prostitutes one by one (a problematic argument I know) then that's rational as far as the reasoning goes. No delusion involved, no apparent psychosis. If he is hearing from higher power that he has to do this... it might not be schizophrenia, but it's definitely delusional (with the assumption that god does not in fact want women murdered). The problem is lots of people pick up a single delusion somewhere along the line, and it isn't schizophrenia, which is a very specific neuropsych disorder. Most of those single delusions just make people racists or something. It doesn't make them kill. But delusions can be spectacularly intense, and someone having one cannot make decisions based on rationality. So yeah they might kill. Depends, as they say, on what the voices are saying. Practically speaking, people who hear voices are about 300 times more likely to kill themselves than others. But those who are simply dealing with abberant beliefs and not commanding voices don't have more leeway per se, but their interpretation of certain truths can be loose.

I'll go a step further and say that at the time of the killing, most killers are a little bit mad.