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Originally posted by JeffHamm
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Hi Trevor,
You are sort of describing what is referred to as a "Commuter" pattern, where an offender travels away from their home range (areas that are associated with their normal day-to-day activities) to their crime range (the region where they commit offenses - but as I have issues with that notion, this, sadly, will not be short; sorry). The other pattern, referred to in the literature as the "marauder" pattern, are offenders whose area of criminal activity overlaps with their home range (the area of their day-to-day activities). Within the home range are locations referred to as "anchor points", which are the locations one tends to be connected with - so one's residence, one's place of work, the pub one may regularly frequent, church, school, recreation locations (gym/fishing spots/etc), and so forth. The underlying notion is that marauders will tend to offend in areas associated with anchor points, with their residence often being a strong anchor (but, it must be emphasized, not always! - This is one of the pet peeves I have with how spatial analysis gets presented to the public, it tends to over emphasize the idea that one is trying to "locate where the offender lives", which is not really the case. While the residence often does end up fairly high in the resulting profile, there are cases where the main offending anchor point is the offender's place of work (Dennis Rader, or BTK, for example, was more anchored to his work locations than his residence), or their favourite pub (Bruce McArthur, in Toronto, met his victims in the pub, and for his case the only locations one could profile was the last known location the victims were seen - and this produces a profile that highlights the area that includes that pub - this is in part why I think the JtR spatial analysis may not necessarily be focusing on JtR's residence, but might be suggestive of pubs he visited).
On the whole, though, far more serial killers fall into the marauder pattern than the commuter pattern. Moreover, many of the "commuter" serial killers are truckers, and their crime locations tend to be scattered along roadways (although there is the example of Angel Resendiz, the Railway Killer, who rode trains and killed along the rail lines). I've written and published an article on the "marauder/commuter" divisions, (Hamm, J.P. (2003). They might all be marauders, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law, 30(5): p632–654.) which suggests that the published rates of commuter patterns are probably vastly overestimated in many studies (and even despite my concerns on that, the general notion is that 80% of offenders are marauders and 20% commuters).
So, if we set my concerns aside, a commuter as JtR is the less probable pattern, but 20% is still something to be considered and one shouldn't set it aside. And the idea of Jack being a sailor was the notion proposed by the first "Ripperologist", Edward Larkins, who had made quite an effort trying to track the comings and goings of various cattle ships trying to tie them to the dates of the murders. I think, in the end, he required one consider at least 3 different ships (almost a different ship per event, but perhaps he was including more than the C5??) and had to speculate that his "suspects" were actually on those ships. Larkins got a bit of a reputation amongst the officials as being a bit of a pain actually.
In modern times, a commuter tends to distribute offenses very very widely, the notion of someone travelling to a particular location only to then search the area for victims is not something I can off the top of my head think of (I can, however, think of offenders who travel to a particular area or location because they know they can find victims there - such as those who go to red light districts to find prostitutes, or go to a specific pub to find victims, like Bruce McArthur did). These offenders, though, still tended to live relatively close to those locations (there was a UK fellow, though, who did travel into London to a pub to meet gay men in order to then kill them - I forget his name just now - and while he denied being gay himself, I have my suspicions that he was, and couldn't accept that about himself, and went to that pub on more than the occasions that he offended. That would mean the pub was part of his day-to-day life, even if a "secret life", and if so it then becomes a theoretical debate as to whether or not that location becomes part of his "home range".
And after all that, that brings us back to what you describe, a sailor who regularly travels to London, means that London is part of his "every day life", it's part of his work-life to be there, and so that means London is just another part his "home range".
Anyway, if JtR were a sailor, and he were only in London during the dates of the offenses, etc, that means at other times he's either at sea, or he's at another port. His "home range", therefore, would constitute London, his ship, and the ports he visits as part of his work (much like how Sutcliff's murders in Manchester reflect his work as a lorry driver, which took him there). The question then becomes, where are the disembowelling murders of prostitutes in the open streets but in other ports during that time? There is no reason why JtR, the travelling sailor, would limit his search for victims to just London, he would be searching where ever he is on land. But to my knowledge, there are no similar murders found in European ports (or anywhere else a sailor might end up, but given his round trip is around 2 weeks, I would expect a ship to and from Europe somewhere). I would expect at least one victim to be found elsewhere, and probably more, given he seems particularly successful given he would only have a couple nights to find a victim while in London - many serial killers prowl for weeks on end before the opportunity arises. Mind you, those serial killers are often targeting non-prostitutes (break and enter types), and those who target prostitutes usually just employ their services until the urge to kill returns, so I suppose their "success" rates are fairly high - I doubt it would be that hard to find a willing prostitute after all. But that just further raises the question of where are the crimes of a similar nature outside of London, particularly, in port cities? A "Jack the Tar", would be expected to kill at either end of his sailing journey, and yet, we have nothing of a similar nature elsewhere.
Now, none of that precludes "Jack the Tar", but to speculate that JtR spent some time in London and some time somewhere else does seem to require one put forth some sort of evidence that JtR actually was somewhere else. Pointing to the lack of crimes in Whitechapel hardly works, as one can point to the lack of such crimes anywhere else during that period to argue he wasn't anywhere else either! So either he ceased to exist altogether (I think unlikely), or perhaps he was like most local serials killers and just in between crimes.
As I say, I'm not saying it's impossible, and I'm not dismissing the idea entirely. obviously, we don't know what JtR was doing between crimes, so maybe he was on a ship or maybe he wasn't. All I know is that as far as I'm aware, there were no similar crimes committed in other cities that would suggest JtR was elsewhere, and without being able to place him elsewhere, odds are that he was still in London.
- Jeff
The point I made is that the geo profiling which has been referred to and it is not the first time it has been used, is that we simply do not know enough about the killer or who he was to be able to say conclusively that he lived with the boundaries of Whitechapel and to do so in my opinion is a very blinkered approach and clearly it is being used to identify suspects that lived with the boundaries of Whitechapel.
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