the key

[Heinrich]

No the police had absolutely no evidence at all that BARNETT was in any way involved with MJK's murder. If you think there is evidence then let us know what it is.

There is more evidence against Joseph Barnett in the murder of Mary Kelly than anyone else, Bob, and I have gone over it earlier in this thread. Principally the evidence relates to motive (admitted rows with Mary Kelly's and her refusal to be controlled by him), means (familiar with filleting knives from his workplace), and opportunity (the ability to come and go at will at 13 Miller's Court).

Maria Harvey did not place Barnett at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder. She placed him at the scene the previous night, Thursday - MJK was murdered on Friday.

Mary Kelly was murdered on Thursday night/Friday morning, the very same time (not the previous night of Wednesday) when Joseph Barnett was the last person who admits being seen in her company by Maria Harvey.

[Sally]

Ah..

It was a representative of Mccarthy.

Mike

So McCarthy didn't attend himself? Interesting...

[Bob Hinton]

Really?

There is more evidence against Joseph Barnett in the murder of Mary Kelly than anyone else, Bob, and I have gone over it earlier in this thread. Principally the evidence relates to motive (admitted rows with Mary Kelly's and her refusal to be controlled by him), means (familiar with filleting knives from his workplace), and opportunity (the ability to come and go at will at 13 Miller's Court).



Mary Kelly was murdered on Thursday night/Friday morning, the very same time (not the previous night of Wednesday) when Joseph Barnett was the last person who admits being seen in her company by Maria Harvey.

I’m sorry that is not evidence, that is pure conjecture. Using your parameters anyone who had a quarrel with MJK during her lifetime, owned a knife or who had ever used one and had access to Dorset Street would be a viable suspect.

No MJK was not murdered on Thursday night Friday morning, unless the killer started cutting her throat at one minute to midnight on Thursday and completed the task at one minute past. All the reliable evidence points to her being killed on Friday morning, therefore the night of the murder would be Friday night. I’ve no idea why you’re bringing Wednesday into this. Please don’t try and rearrange the calendar – we had enough trouble when they did that last time.

I’m afraid this sentence “ when Joseph Barnett was the last person who admits being seen in her company by Maria Harvey.” Is gibberish.

[Ausgirl]

@Bob Hinton:

When you have a suspect it is wrong to find evidence that implicates him, that way you only look at the points that establish his guilt. You must try and exonerate him.

I just wanted to say thank you for that.

Wickerman, thanks also, for the correction on the hat & shirts. I did mean to say *hat and jacket* not 'jacket and coat'; posting while half asleep holds ill for clarity. Where was the coat (if it's not the same garment that was burned), by the way? I couldn't find any information on where it was in the room.

In any case, I really cannot see blood being the reason for burning those items. It makes absolutely no sense, in context with the crime scene.

It is interesting that the shirts were never recovered. Had Mary - desperate for her rent- sold them? I doubt it, seeing as she likely had more valuable items at hand, unless they were very fine shirts and worth more than a velvet jacket. But if the killer took them - why all three? So yes, quite possibly they were used on the fire.

Heinrich, it could equally be seen that Barnett was refusing to be controlled by Mary Kelly.

He wasn't the one bringing prostitutes into their home against his partner's wishes, or having sex with others, or spending the rent on drink (which why I assume a young, pretty prostitute was broke, unless she wasn't working all that often in that capacity). Seems to me that Kelly was fairly bent on doing exactly what she wanted, and is reported as stating that she couldn't stand him when he was home - perhaps she was stringing him along, using poor old smitten Joe as a rent machine and a bit of security until something better came along, rather than having any genuine feeling for him. Which would be more manipulative, imo, than Barnett's simple desire that she clean her life up.

[Heinrich]

I’m sorry that is not evidence, that is pure conjecture. Using your parameters anyone who had a quarrel with MJK during her lifetime, owned a knife or who had ever used one and had access to Dorset Street would be a viable suspect.

It is evidence to use the statements given at Mary Kelly's inquest and not at all conjecture, pure or impure, Bob. Not "a quarrel", Bob but a pattern of rows up to within a fortnight of the murder and probably on the very night itself. There is no need to go back to Mary's childhood and add to the list of suspects anyone who had had an argument with her. Not "access to Dorset Street", Bob, but the ability to come and go from 13 Miller's Court at will, until lately the shared address of Joseph Barnett and Mary Kelly.

No MJK was not murdered on Thursday night Friday morning, unless the killer started cutting her throat at one minute to midnight on Thursday and completed the task at one minute past. All the reliable evidence points to her being killed on Friday morning, therefore the night of the murder would be Friday night. I’ve no idea why you’re bringing Wednesday into this. Please don’t try and rearrange the calendar – we had enough trouble when they did that last time.

We do not know the time of Mary Kelly's murder; it could have been before midnight. Had she been murdered by Joseph Barnett at, say 2 a.m., that would be the middle of the night (Thursday) and, it would certainly not be taken to mean Friday night by any native English speaker. The night of the murder then, was indeed Thursday even if it was technically Friday morning and Joseph Barnett was with her then.

I’m afraid this sentence “ when Joseph Barnett was the last person who admits being seen in her company by Maria Harvey.” Is gibberish.

Actually, you quoted a clause, Bob, not a sentence and it appears you overlooked Post #482. It is unfair to members to be repeating the same information already posted in the thread.

...
Heinrich, it could equally be seen that Barnett was refusing to be controlled by Mary Kelly.

I do not believe that possibility matches the facts, Ausgirl, because Mary Kelly was already a prostitute when Joseph Barnett picked her up as one of her customers. He then tried to get her to quit her livelihood and her friends. That is manipulative whereas there is nothing to suggest that Mary Kelly was pressuring Joseph Barnett to change anything about his life, not even to get a job after he got himself sacked. She was prepared to get customers and provide for herself and him while he dossed about complaining about her lifestyle. I am prepared to believe that Joseph Barnett left her as he claimed but Mary Kelly would have been well within her rights to tell the possessive Joseph Barnett to get lost and might well have done so.

[Ausgirl]

Heinrich, without trying to saint or damn either of them - Barnett was remiss in losing his long term job for what might have been stealing, he probably could have made a better choice of partner than a girl he paid for sex the day before. He probably should've realised he was a mealticket sooner than he did. But he did not. This says to me that Joe wasn't very cunning at all.

If there were not a million possible ways to passively manipulate someone, too, I'd probably not be skeptical about Mary's sublime victimhood to the standover man you present Barnett as being.

"Keep me in cash or look what I'm forced to do" isn't out of the question. Maybe that was her way of making him leave, without the culpability of "I don't want you anymore". Who knows? I don't. But if we're going on sheer guesswork, it's just as, if not more, possible a thing as Barnett being the abusive ass you make him out to be.

Mary was happy to let Joe Barnett pay the rent as long as he wasn't there to annoy her. She couldn't stand the man, she openly admitted, but took his money anyway. Isn't that a -teensy- bit manipulative?

If he'd tried to get her quit a job like cleaning or sales work and threw a fit over her friends who had decent jobs too (and this is what men who are as controlling as you say Barnett was actually do) then sure, I'd peg him as a lot more likely to have flipped out enough to cut the flesh off her down to bone and slice her face to ribbons.

Mary -did- have other work, which Barnett (as far as I can tell) encouraged her toward. What he actually did complain about was her having sex with other men - and you know, if I was Barnett? I'd probably do the same, because hey, syphilis was a take-home bonus in those days, and there was a Ripper on the streets, never mind the 'sex with other men' part.

The only friends I -know- he complained about were prostitutes. Does it not make any sense to you at all that a man (whether he'd paid for sex at any stage or not) might not want to them in his home (which was what? all of one room?) or that he might think she could actually do better for friends, or that he might be concerned they'd lead her right back into a bad (and at the time particularly dangerous) kind of life?

I don't mean to become entrenched in equivocation over it - but to me there's very clearly not a lot of logic in depicting Barnett as a slavering bully and Mary as some sort of noble suffragette struggling for independence, given that what was -actually- documented about their relationship shows that she didn't give a damn what he thought or felt about her risk-taking - nor much of one for Barnett himself.

[Phil H]

Ausgirl

You make a very articulate case for Barnett having been a complaisant lover and not dangerous, but it is as suppositional as the case for him having been the killer.

However, there is an important difference. We don't NEED a case for ruling him out - unless wholly evidential - since the police did that at the time.

What some of us (probably in differing ways, to differing extents and with different motivations) are seeking to do is to say "let's NOT be so quick to rule Joe Barnett out because there are some reasons for thinking he might be a possible candidate - (he gets several "ticks in the box" against standard criteria for being a killer, including one of the last to see the victim; a recent partner, knew the layout/domestic arrangements; may have had the key; could have gained access etc). We KNOW that that case is weak and that Joe was ruled out at the time, but still....

A suppositional case is no use to us, it does NOT address the point about taking Joe seriously and unsentimentally (your case it seems to me is full of emotion and sentiment) to see where it takes us. It is speculative, but positively so.

Som well-written though ity was, I tregret that your post held nothing of value for me.

Phil

[Ausgirl]

Phil - I don't think it's supposition to suggest that if one is to suppose things about a suspect - or a victim - and there's actual record of what was said and done between them, it might make for more sound reasoning to take all of those records into account rather than casting out the bits which don't suit.

Heinrich is supposing that Mary was manipulated by Barnett, who was a control freak and therefore more likely to be the sort of man to have committed her murder.

I'm pointing out that there are facts and statements on record which strongly indicate that Mary was more so the manipulative party in their relationship, as shown in her general attitude toward Barnett. So I am supposing that Heinrich has chosen not to examine those statements.

On the other hand, I have not come across any statements which irrefutably indicate that Barnett was irrationally controlling in the manner Heinrich insists he was. In the records I have read, Barnett's behaviour and character seem more generally gormless than malevolent.

So, therefore, it seems to me something of an injustice to suppose that Barnett was 'controlling' and 'manipulative' and therefore the type of character who might have murdered and mutilated a woman he clearly cared for.

Of course, records which demonstrate Barnett being habitually and psychotically controlling and manipulative might indeed exist, in which case I'll probably change my mind and write something emotional and sentimental about that, too.

[Phil H]

My difficulty with most of the information we have about Joe Barnett (and for that matter MJK herself comes from Joe Barnett!!

I'm not sure he need have been so "gullible" as he is represented. At least one writer believes the evidence support Barnett as manipulative in using the murders and newspaper reports (which HE is said to have read to her) to try to keep Mary off the streets.

My problem is that, although I don't really believe he did it (MJK's murder, that is, I certainly don't think he was JtR), we know so little about him. We can paint a rosy picture and assume that because he appears to have led a blamesless life henceforth, as some here have done, or we can conclude he may have struck out once in a crime of passion and we have no idea of his internal life thereafter (i.e. whether he was filled with remorse or not).

Barnett's guilt would, in my view, make a lot of things easier - explain the gap between Eddowes and Kelly's death (there would be no direct relation between the crimes); resolve the key and access issues; explain why Kelly gave the killer access and/or remained sleepy in bed; perhaps help to resolve the time of death (later rather than earlier?). But I am not asserting, as I have already said, that he did it.

Sorry if my emotional and sentimental reference was a shade inappropriate.

Phil

[curious]

he probably could have made a better choice of partner than a girl he paid for sex the day before.

Do we know for sure that is what happened?

Apparently the night she was killed, she dressed up in her black velvet coat and bonnet and went about looking respectable. Only after she was seen returning home alone did she go out, dressed differently, to prostitute herself.

Perhaps she picked up guys who wanted to take care of her and lived with them. That probably created a better life for her than she could create for herself.

It seems that she had lived with three different men: a Morganstone, another Joe and Barnett.

That appears to me as though she was trying to leave prostitution.

Joe was apparently trying to help her not have to engage in work she hated, from her own words.

So, do we know for sure that Joe was a client that first time they met? Because we know her past and that she was one of the prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper, WE jump to that conclusion. But what did she tell Barnett that first day? What did they really do?

Did Joe ever discuss the details?

Did they meet one day and she really "worked" him about how wonderful he was, how handsome he was, everything that makes a guy feel great and love the woman who makes him feel that way.

Then, when they met again the next day they decided to live together.

So, are we the ones making the leap that he was her client, when that may not have been the case.

Do we have any real evidence either way?

curious

[Heinrich]

...
This says to me that Joe wasn't very cunning at all.

I do not believe it was a necessary prerequisite for Mary Kelly's killer to be cunning.

Mary was happy to let Joe Barnett pay the rent as long as he wasn't there to annoy her. She couldn't stand the man, she openly admitted, but took his money anyway. Isn't that a -teensy- bit manipulative?

She appears to have humored him until he became a dead weight and issued her with an ultimatum. This is not manipulation on the same scale if at all.

If he'd tried to get her quit a job like cleaning or sales work and threw a fit over her friends who had decent jobs too (and this is what men who are as controlling as you say Barnett was actually do) then sure, I'd peg him as a lot more likely to have flipped out enough to cut the flesh off her down to bone and slice her face to ribbons.

Women neither require nor deserve patronizing approval from any man about their work or friends.

The only friends I -know- he complained about were prostitutes. Does it not make any sense to you at all that a man (whether he'd paid for sex at any stage or not) might not want to them in his home (which was what? all of one room?) or that he might think she could actually do better for friends, or that he might be concerned they'd lead her right back into a bad (and at the time particularly dangerous) kind of life?

No one forced Joseph Barnett to hook-up with Mary Kelly, knowing her to be a prostitute but having done so gives him no authority to control her life.

...
However, there is an important difference. We don't NEED a case for ruling him out - unless wholly evidential - since the police did that at the time.

The Metropolitan failed miserably to protect Mary Kelly or the other Whitechapel victims and they also failed to catch any killer. My confidence in their professional judgment when the released Joseph Barnett does not match yours, Phil.

... "let's NOT be so quick to rule Joe Barnett out because there are some reasons for thinking he might be a possible candidate - (he gets several "ticks in the box" ...

More than anyone else.

We KNOW that that case is weak and that Joe was ruled out at the time, but still....

Stronger than you give credit for, Phil.

...
Heinrich is supposing that Mary was manipulated by Barnett, who was a control freak and therefore more likely to be the sort of man to have committed her murder.

Not so much supposing as making sense of the evidence, Ausgirl.

I'm pointing out that there are facts and statements on record which strongly indicate that Mary was more so the manipulative party in their relationship, as shown in her general attitude toward Barnett. So I am supposing that Heinrich has chosen not to examine those statements.

I have read your interpretation, Ausgirl, and I have answered all your points. I am not persuaded by your reversal of roles in the relationship Joseph Barnett had with Mary Kelly.

I have not come across any statements which irrefutably indicate that Barnett was irrationally controlling in the manner Heinrich insists he was.

Although Joseph Barnett made unreasonable demands on Mary Kelly, he was neither irrational nor psychotic but assuredly a sociopath.

My difficulty with most of the information we have about Joe Barnett (and for that matter MJK herself comes from Joe Barnett!!

Yes, indeed, Phil. Yet he admits to rows with Mary Kelly about her lifestyle and refusing to give her money on the night of the murder. He incriminates himself with several aspects of his testimony.

... although I don't really believe he did it (MJK's murder, that is ...

If not Joseph Barnett, Phil, whom do you believe did kill Mary Kelly and why?

[Ausgirl]

Hienrich posted:

I do not believe it was a necessary prerequisite for Mary Kelly's killer to be cunning.

No. But it would be, to being a sociopathic control freak, who could -let's say - slaughter his common law wife, set up an alibi, and then blithely speak lie upon lie to police immediately after.

Women neither require nor deserve patronizing approval from any man about their work or friends.

In Victorian England, they assuredly did.

You're pasting modern feminism over entrenched Victorian social mores, which to me seems an ill fit. The man was, ideally, the head of the house, the end.

Although Joseph Barnett made unreasonable demands on Mary Kelly, he was neither irrational nor psychotic but assuredly a sociopath.

I'm sorry, I don't see any proof at all of sociopathy. I see how he might not fit into your (modern) ideals of how a man should treat women, re my comment above, but I cannot see 'sociopathy' anywhere. If there were reports from Mary's friends - which one might expect after a heinous murder - pointing to his being cruel or uncaring, then I'd have to rethink it. But there's nothing at all, aside from the fact that he behaved according to the general social values of his day and insisted that she quit being a whore. He did not stop her seeking other kinds of work or other kinds of friends, as a sociopathically possessive man would likely do.

As to his reading her the stories: what's to say that she didn't want them read to her? Perhaps she couldn't read?

Phil, no worries. I'm a poet. I sometimes get flowery and impassioned, even when talking about facts.
I agree, Barnett's guilt would tie things up almost neatly. Almost. But to make him appear to be guilty - it seems to me at this point - requires a deal too many suppositions and stretching of the available information to fit. As curious points out, we don't even know for sure if Joe -was- a client prior to their moving in together.

I've read more on other suspects, at this point, but I think my next port of call is to see what, exactly, was said about Barnett and Mary by other people compared to what was said by Barnett himself. If he was a sociopathically possessive man, as claimed in this thread, there ought to be some rather obvious inconsistencies between the two - if there's enough statements to go by.

I'm not arguing for his innocence so much as objecting to some of the reasoning for his guilt put forward.

curious: that was an interesting post. I wish I was familiar enough with the case information to be able to comment properly; I ought to go research a bit before I do. Good point, though, about it being assumed that Barnett was a client. All he said, I think, was that they met in a pub and moved in together the next day -?

[Phil H]

Heinrich, you made some comments on my previous piost:

I said that "We don't NEED a case for ruling him out - unless wholly evidential - since the police did that at the time." To which you replied:

The Metropolitan failed miserably to protect Mary Kelly or the other Whitechapel victims and they also failed to catch any killer. My confidence in their professional judgment when the released Joseph Barnett does not match yours, Phil.

Your view of the Met is your own, and I don't really care whether you agree with me. However, you missed my point, which was that the argument (at least so far as i am concerned) is not whether Joe didn't do it -as OTHERS argue that the police dismissal of him as a suspect rules him out - BUT that we now need to look again carefully at him as an individual, hence my emphasis should be on why he is a suspect.

If you read my post, a response to Ausgirl, you will see that I was making a specific point, NOT generalising.

I said earlier: "... "let's NOT be so quick to rule Joe Barnett out because there are some reasons for thinking he might be a possible candidate - (he gets several "ticks in the box" ... " To which you replied:

More than anyone else.

Is that really true? It depends of course on whether we are discussing Barnett as a possible JtR or as the potential killer of MJK only. As "Jack", Barnett, for instance, does not meet the criteria of being referenced by Melville Macnaghten, nor is he referenced by name or implication by Anderson, Swanson or Littlechild. Other than briefly and to be dismissed by the Met officers at the time.

I do NOT for a moment believe or contend that Barnett was JtR. I believe he should not be dismissed as a possible murderer of MJK, for the reasons I have given.

You refer to my statement: "We KNOW that that case is weak and that Joe was ruled out at the time, but still.... " To which you replied:

Stronger than you give credit for, Phil.

Is it? Surely the "evidence" against Joe is entirely circumstantial as many posters here on Casebook have pointed out. I would also suggest that there are too many uncertainties about the death of Kelly to make absolute statements (timing, her movements, the lock, the fire even whether the body was that of MJK).

I wrote: "My difficulty with most of the information we have about Joe Barnett (and for that matter MJK herself comes from Joe Barnett!!" To which you replied:

Yes, indeed, Phil. Yet he admits to rows with Mary Kelly about her lifestyle and refusing to give her money on the night of the murder. He incriminates himself with several aspects of his testimony.

Incriminates? Surely not - it all depends on how you read the evidence and on how reliable press reports are.

Finally, I commented: "... although I don't really believe he did it (MJK's murder, that is ... " You asked the question:

If not Joseph Barnett, Phil, whom do you believe did kill Mary Kelly and why?

I think trying to pin blame on an individual for anything in the JtR case, given our present knowledge, lost evidence/files, the lapse of time etc etc is "neither big nor clever" as they say! We should surely have grown out of that.

The issues here are, to my mind, to establish whether MJK was a victim of JtR - as was almost universally argued and accepted for decades; or whether she was a one-off "domestic.

IF the latter, then I believe the likely killer was Not a punter or client, but an intimate acquaintance, and I would nominate three (like Melville Macnaghten) as possible candidates - Joe Barnett, Joe Fleming and Joe's brother, Dan. I think all three knew Mary well enough for her to let them into her room and also perhaps to dose or sleep in their presence. All three could have known about or purloined the key or the alternate means of access, the presence of all three could have gone unnoticed by others - routine can equal invisibility after all.

I have , however, concluded that there is sufficient reason for me to doubt that MJK was a victim of "Jack" (as is my position on Stride) but I am far too old a bunny to rule out that that position could change. So I try to juggle several balls at once and keep an open mind.

I repeat, therefore, that I don't claim, allege or aver that Barnett killed MJK, I don't want to see him ruled out at this stage.

Hope this explains my position,

Phil

[curious]

curious: that was an interesting post. I wish I was familiar enough with the case information to be able to comment properly; I ought to go research a bit before I do. Good point, though, about it being assumed that Barnett was a client. All he said, I think, was that they met in a pub and moved in together the next day -?

Ausgirl,
That's all I've read as well. They met in a pub, then met the next day and moved in together.

I have not read anything that allows us to know that she was working as a prostitute when she met Barnett, or if she was hunting something more long term.

Having been single for many years, I have watched the dance between the sexes for a long time and I can tell you for a fact that people differ greatly in their ability to see through someone "working" them. Some men can be led along by their "you know"s by the biggest bi-tches in the world because they don't see through the giggles, "you're so wonderful" "you're so handsome" lines used to land them (women too by the way. Some can't see a line the size of an anchor cable) Others can see and recognize the lines, then decide whether to participate or avoid the pit.

However, as you so correctly pointed out Ausgirl, the times were very different from today's world when there is actual employment for women. I have noticed that many women even a generation ago were taught to "manage men" in such a way that he comes to believe an idea was his own. When women had no legal control, or in cultures where they still have no control, they have found ways to take some control of their lives and circumstances.

Now, looking at what appears to be Mary's pattern of living with men, she seemed to be a prostitute when she had no other choice.

Mrs. Carthy even said she went to live with a man Mrs. Carthy believed would have married her.

Kelly appears to have wanted to NOT be a prostitute.

So, in order to pick up a nice man, I'm guessing she made herself into the "nice girl" she wished she was or wanted to be. Now, she probably explained her circumstances in such a way that made some big strong men want to rescue her. (Seen it done all the time! Never had enough sense to do it myself because it seems so dishonest. But had it been a matter of survival in a very different time, who knows?)

Some of the nicest guys in the world marry the biggest bi-tches -- and keep supporting them and sometimes adoring them. Silliest thing I've ever seen.

I don't see Joe or Mary Jane as horrible users of the other, but two people doing the best they could in very difficult circumstances. And yes, perhaps he tried to use the newspaper stories to keep her in at night and off the street. In light of what happened, seems that would have been in her best interest. Parents try to teach their children to stay away from fire and other harm. Husbands and wives use little "tricks" to try to get their spouse to do what they want -- it beats nagging. I've never seen a relationship where such things could not be picked up on, even by the most happily married.

Also, earlier on in this thread, I proved that Barnett was not a sociopath. He did not have the main characteristics (I had to research it) -- in trouble with the law before he was 15 and for the rest of his life was the major one, and I don't remember the rest, but I posted four characteristics that prove Barnett was not what Heinrich insists on labeling him. Which according to the research is a term no longer used . . .

And Phil H -- thanks for the post apologizing for the inappropriate comment. It made me chuckle (I'm glad I was at work at the time the earlier one was made and you redeemed yourself before I got too riled.) :-)

[curious]

The issues here are, to my mind, to establish whether MJK was a victim of JtR - as was almost universally argued and accepted for decades; or whether she was a one-off "domestic.

Or something else . . . there are more than two choices.