Bloody Tourists

[Scorpio]

Does anybody believe that the marauder model, derived from the circle theory of geo profiling, a likely scenario?. If you are not familiar with the term, i will provide a simple explanation; circle theory states that a criminal stands a high chance of living within an area, roughly the centre, circumscribed by there crimes, and the maurader model offers an explanation for this phenomenon.
After considering the circle theory, an obvious positive correlation was evident which makes the scenario most unlikely to my mind. As an individuals range in criminal activity increases, so the probability of the individual bieng based within an area circumscribed by those crimes inevitably increases. I argue that Probability is certainly connected to range and that a criminal like JtR who had a very small range was thus probably not living within such a small area. I find the commuter model more persuasive as the area circumscribed by the crimes, while being small, was a notorious red light district, and a beacon to any man with at least a small amount of disposable income, which i believe JtR possessed and a compulsion to visit, as i would consider JtR to be a down at heel sex tourist. Given the limitations on Victorian inner city travel, i do not believe JtR came very far, i would guess one or two miles was the maximum, which is still close enough i believe to have reasonable local knowledge.
Share your thoughts, Scorpio.

[caz]

I pretty much agree with this reasoning, Scorpio.

A man living or working right there could have more easily expanded his killing zone as the streets closest to him got hotter, and would have been well advised to do so, while a commuter might have found it more difficult -- and less necessary -- to move operations from the few main streets targeted.

It would also neatly explain why they kept drawing blanks with their local enquiries, if he was used to diving in and out of this small area where vulnerable women could be found on their own at night, doing whatever they could to beg or earn a crust. No fear of house-to-house searches if he wasn't there; no fear of anyone local recognising him from witness descriptions if he wasn't local himself.

One of the usual arguments against a commuter is that the killer wouldn't have stuck to offending in the same small area unless he had no choice. It always conjures up a vision of a man with his foot nailed to the floor, still compelled to have his knife at the ready for any lone female who happened past. But the killer did have the choice, wherever he was, to put his knife away at any time the going got too tough for him.

Saying that the killer was more likely to be found living among his victims than anywhere else is like arguing that a bank robber is more likely to be found living within easy reach of the bank he has robbed than out of town. Surely his priority is whether security is lax enough, the pickings are likely to be worth the risk and he can get in, out and away without anyone recognising him or being able to identify him later; not whether he can see the place from his front door.

Love,

Caz
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[Fisherman]

Well, Scorpio, it is certainly an interesting theory- we know full well that the story of serial killers is riddled with guys harbouring a fascination with the red light districts; Sutcliffe, Hansen, Ridgway - the examples are abundant.
Two things, though, stand in the way for an acceptance on my behalf of Jack joining these ranks.
To begin with, if the red light districts were really magnetic to him - then what was he doing on Berner Street on the day Liz Stride died? Of course, since I am a fervent denier of Liz belonging to the canon, such a problem could be overcome in a manner that leaves my pet theory with a big bonus!
Alas, the other pointer is not as easy to explain if Jack was the kind of commuter you suggest - the Goulston Street apron! This is as good a sign as we are ever going to get of Jack being a local. From the eastern venue of Mitre Square, he headed right back into the heart of Whitechapel after cutting Eddowes. Of course, we can reason that he was just passing by on his way further east, and if we make this assumption, we are still left with a scenario where he probably did not do Stride - why take the risk of doubling back through the very area in such a case, an area swarming with the police?
At any rate, my own guess is that he did not kill Stride, explaining why he did not know that heading east afterwards was extremely dangerous. He only killed Eddowes, and he discarded the apron on his way to his bolthole, situated in the very middle of the Whitechapel murders.

The best,
Fisherman

[Scorpio]

Caz, i am so glad someone agrees and has a little common sense.
Love Scorpio.
Fisherman, i am not sure Berner St was to upmarket for streetwalkers.None of the witnesses seemed particularly shocked by her presence when it was obvious she was not loitering in the street with various men, outside of a workingmens club at closing time, out of sheer boredom. But I am far from convinced that Stride was killed by the same man as Tabram,Nicols,Chapman,Eddowes and Kelly, so yes, why would he be detered from passing through an area which was reacting to an earlier crime he had no knowledge of?. The return journey he made does suggest a familiarity with this area, but that does not mean that he lived there. I might make use of a local park, which i am quite familiar with, as a shortcut, but i do not live in the park.
Scorpio.

[Fisherman]

Scorpio:

"i am so glad someone agrees and has a little common sense"

... as opposed to ...?

"I am not sure Berner St was to upmarket for streetwalkers."

By the looks of it, Scorpio, it was at least in no way part of the ordinary red light district - which you seem to agree with me was the magnet for him. And there would have been quite enough streets with "unfortunates" to choose from in the more traditional hunting grounds.
Moreover, if he had lived south of Whitechapel High Street, it would have been an odd route to take from Mitre Square, ending up on Goulston Street for the ditching of the apron - reasonably he was heading north, not south, on Goulston Street. So the odds are that he did not live in the Berner Street area or south of it - making it an odd venue to look for prostitutes to kill.

"The return journey he made does suggest a familiarity with this area, but that does not mean that he lived there"

Actually, it suggests no such thing in itself. But if we are to buy your theory, Scorpio, we need not look north, west or south, since we know that he opted for a clear-cut eastern route from Mitre Square. So it´s either a case of a local resident or somebody who lives further out east. Unless, of course, he was not headed for home after Mitre Square at all, but since the reasonable assumption must be that he was A/ satisfied and done for the night, and B/ to some extent bloodied and quite possibly carrying around a kidney and half a uterus, I think the most credible thing to opt for is that he was heading for his bolthole.

...and in the choice inbetween local resident and eastern traveller, I remain steadfast amongst those who lack common sense, and choose the local resident scenario.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Agreed all round, Fish, and I too am more than a little troubled by the suggestion that those who subscribe to the considerably more popular and generally accepted "marauder" model are thought to be light on "common sense", especially when their ranks include the expert practitioners and pioneers of geographical profiling such as Kim Rossmo.

Experience from other serial cases has surely demonstrated that the commuter type offender (adjudged to be "rare" according to a study conducted by David Canter and discussed in his book "Criminal Shadows”) usually has not only the transformational means to "commute" on a grander, i.e. vehicular scale, but the foresight and prudence not to keep commuting into the same very small region when the risk of capture is increased (on that small concentrated locality) after each murder. In serial cases in which the murders or rapes are committed within easy walking distance of each other, the offender almost invariably has a base within equally easy walking distance of them. That needn’t place him for certain within the area circumscribed by the crimes, but he was very likely to have lived a very short walking distance away.

I’d be especially wary of preconceptions such as the killer having “at least a small amount of disposable income”, which may well be wrong, or that the area in question was a “notorious red light district”. This simply wasn’t the case. The sorely missed Sam Flynn conducted some impressive research on this topic and concluded that prostitution ran rampant throughout London, and that there was an even denser concentration of it around Stepney to the east. It wasn't the prostitution mecca that if it often assumed to be. Prostitute killers tend invariably to be prostitute killers, but “sex tourist”? Probably not, in my view. Stephen Wright lived in the red light district, was a familiar face to the prostitutes, and was hardly that aloof from them socially. I’d suggest that we’d be looking for something akin to the Victorian equivalent, although in the latter case, the majority population comprised the working class poor, and I see no reason to conclude that he belonged to loftier ranks, either socially or financially.

It would be particularly dangerous to assume that the police's lack of success on the house-to-house front had anything to do with the killer living outside the search area, since this again would argue against experience garnered from other serial cases in which locally based offenders have continued to slip the rader despite being under the noses of the police the whole time. In the area in which Jack operated, this would have been especially easy with so transient a population and doss houses allowing their occupants to slip in an out at all hours.

Best regards,
Ben

[Scorpio]

Fisherman, i feel that JtRs eventual destination was East of Mitre Square, but after successfully comitting three similar crimes, and these include the Chapman murder, which also included the removal of body parts from the crime scene, i dont feel he was under any real degree of stress after departing Mitre Square since he was calm and collected enough to stop and write a message, so i dont think a gentle thirty or forty minute walk would bother him.
Scorpio.

[Fisherman]

Okay, Scorpio - let´s just say that there are a number of disagreements inbetween us, writing messages, strolling gently through a Whitechapel that was buzzing like a police beehive and all.

Who knows, maybe one of us is correct.

The best,
Fisherman

[Roy Corduroy]

Good afternoon Scorpio,

I find the commuter model more persuasive.

William Bury fits your profile. He lived nearby, out the high road during the time the murders were commited. When he moved to Dundee, the murders stopped.

down at heel sex tourist

That's him alright. He caught VD, probably from a prostitute. He wasn't a working man, instead swilling down his wife's inheritance at pubs.

In fact, Bury seemed to be a tourist for life, never joining the mainstream. Right before coming to the East End in 1887 he was selling pencils at Snow Hill, Manchester. (pictured)



Roy

[Scorpio]

Roy, after marshalling my thoughts on JtR, i have found that Bury fits my own amateurish profile quite well. I mentioned him in another thread i started called " I shant quit ripping".
Scorpio.

[Scorpio]

Hi all, thanks for your replies,. I would like to state that i do not doubt the marauder models validity, but due to numerous factors i just cannot accept it as very likely in this case.
Ben, thanks for reiterating the point i made in the opening thread, JtR probably did not travel very far to the crime scenes. I feel i need to qualify my original statement a bit, since the term " commuter " seems to suggest a more sophisticated operator to you than it does to me. The individual i envisage feeds very much at the bottom of Commuter ocean. He is man who certainly does not commute on a grand vehicular scale, does not posses much foresight, and less prudence.
Scorpio.

[macknnc]

Well one thing to keep in mind is that far on foot today is quite different than far on foot was in 1888. Granted the Victorians has hansoms, and various other conveyances but still, for the vast majority of Whitechapel residents, travel was on foot, each and every day. The idea of hopping into the family auto go a mile to a store and back simply didn't exist. A Whitechapeller in 1888 probably thought nothing of a 5 mile walk..something not many do today as a regular thing..

I'm a historical re-enactor and have been one off and on for over 30 years..and one thing we find on a regular basis is that is a mistake to assume a modern mind set when trying to reconstruct the past! You can't think 2010 when trying to understand Whitechapel in 1888!

[caz]

The thing is, Whitechapel in 1888 was a damned good place to kill and get away with it, but a pretty rotten place for the poor to live.

We have a rare animal here -- an 1888 serial killer -- and this one didn't make any fatal mistakes, making it dangerous to assume he behaved like the majority of those who end their days in prison or at the end of a rope.

He originated somewhere, took what he wanted from Whitechapel and disappeared again. Why is it so likely that this man had no choice but to live or work there too? Was he so feeble that he could not have offended his way out of Whitechapel, assuming he was there before he began murdering?

Love,

Caz
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[Errata]

Well, there is one good logistical argument for JtR having more than a tourist's knowledge of Whitechapel and environs.

If he didn't, he'd have just killed the person who knew the way back.

Whiteschapel was a warren of poverty. Alleys were as viable as streets, and all the buildings were weathered to look almost identical. All the yards looked alike. It was dark, with weird pools of light under the lamps. Signs would not really be readable much less illuminated. It's not like getting lost in Manhattan. It's like getting lost in Manhattan's sewers. Dark, featureless, mazelike, and things trying to kill you around every 3rd corner. Even JtR had to worry about gangs thugs and bouncers (oh my!)

So you pick up someone who takes you somewhere quiet, which means twists turns and alleys, and then you kill them. Presumably without asking them how to get back to the nearest identifiable spot when you are done. If you don't know the area, you might get back to where you picked her up, but who knows how much wandering around it took to find her in the first place. You could maybe literally retrace your steps, assuming you remember them, but then you aren't getting out till the sun is well up. Or you could stand in a street and hope a Hansom comes, assuming they come. Ever.

"Excuse me ma'am, but before we get started, could you show me where we are on this map?"

[caz]

Hi Errata,

Look at the map. All the murder sites were just off the main roads where the killer could have picked up, or been picked up by each victim - and pretty much in a straight line from those roads too.

Unless he was blind, had his eyes closed or had an even worse sense of direction than me, he'd have been back on the nearest main road and away in seconds, if he wasn't already familiar with 'unfortunate' territory.

I suspect he had always used such women for rough sex before graduating to more violence and eventually nothing but the violence. The only difference in 1888 was that the woman didn't always walk away from the encounter.

Love,

Caz
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