Bury the most logical Suspect

[John Wheat]

Bury is clearly the most logical suspect for being Jack the Ripper. So why isn't it done and dusted that Bury was Jack the Ripper?

[HelenaWojtczak]

Because other people think that their pet suspect is the most logical culprit.

Helena

[John Wheat]

Because other people think that their pet suspect is the most logical culprit.

Helena

True. Although Bury is not my pet suspect. Over a number of years I have looked at numerous suspects. All the major suspects I have compared and contrasted looking at the merits and problems with each suspect. And in my opinion Bury is the strongest suspect with the least problems. I first read about Bury in 2006 in Paul Roland's book 'The Crimes of Jack the Ripper'. Roland attempts to finger Jacob Levy however Bury is clearly the stand out suspect in his book and in my opinion remains the standout and most logical suspect.

Cheers John

[johns]

For me personally Bury was the Ripper... and that's it really. End of subject you might say.

I don't really talk about the subject much with work colleagues but if the topic ever arises and someone says "Oh it was a member of the Royal family" or "They never worked out who Jack the Ripper was" I just say "well it was William Bury. Bloke from Stourbridge. .. end of" and then if asked I offer further information.

My family and closest friends... well they know all about Mr Bury and the Ripper.

And because I live about 10 miles from Stourbridge people round here either say "Nah... can't be... bloke from Stourbridge... never" or "Oooh that's interesting do tell me more".

Why so confident? Well there's always that 1% chance it was A N Other but out of all the named suspects I've read about Bury towers above them in every regard.

Having said all that... If I found something that ruled Bury out of any or all the murders I would post it on here and admit I was wrong.

[John Wheat]

For me personally Bury was the Ripper... and that's it really. End of subject you might say.

I don't really talk about the subject much with work colleagues but if the topic ever arises and someone says "Oh it was a member of the Royal family" or "They never worked out who Jack the Ripper was" I just say "well it was William Bury. Bloke from Stourbridge. .. end of" and then if asked I offer further information.

My family and closest friends... well they know all about Mr Bury and the Ripper.

And because I live about 10 miles from Stourbridge people round here either say "Nah... can't be... bloke from Stourbridge... never" or "Oooh that's interesting do tell me more".

Why so confident? Well there's always that 1% chance it was A N Other but out of all the named suspects I've read about Bury towers above them in every regard.

Having said all that... If I found something that ruled Bury out of any or all the murders I would post it on here and admit I was wrong.

Hi Johns

I totally agree with you. I also think if Bury was a more glamorous suspect instead of a loser it would be case closed for the majority.

Cheers John

[Rainbow]

Having said all that... If I found something that ruled Bury out of any or all the murders I would post it on here and admit I was wrong.

Hello Johns

I can tell by reading your nice post that you are a good man..

A good family man such yourself will always find it horrible that a man beated his wife.. and much worse.. killed her!

I understand your feelings Johns, you are definitely right about this, such behaviour is not acceptable, disgusting, and not human.

You are a good man, and that is EXACTLY your problem!

We just cannot imagine, to which degree the evil inside someone can go..


This was not only your problem, it was also the problem of all the detectives who tried to solve the case at the time, they were good family men, they think healthy, and all these evil works look alike to them, something very bad ..

And thats why the Ripper won the game...

A jury that consists of wives, good family men and hard worker women will give a verdict of guilt in 10 minutes against Bury as the Ripper..

That is totally understandable... he was bad, he strangled his wife to death, and stabbed her in stomach, and threw her in a box that he played card on..

Such behaviour seems like the infinity to us..

But in fact ... there is worse...

Let me show you the path, you have to relax and refresh your brain...

Lie in bed, close your eyes, and go with your thoughts to that dark room, where the Ripper was alone with Mary Kelly..

Try to build a 3D scene of the crime in your head, and imagine how Jack was mutilating her into more than 100 pieces ..

Her meat was everywhere around and on the tables, imagine her face, they couldn't recognize her later except from her hair and ears..

Imagine her arms and legs, they were almost separated and a recent researcher suggested that the Ripper had used an axe to cut off the meet aside from the bones...

Her abdomen, there was nothing in place, all you can see is human organs splattered all over this small room..

That was Jack the Ripper, and this IS what he did when he got the chance and enogh time...

I know how you feel now, so , open your eyes , and go make yourself a cup of coffee..

And let us go back to Bury, that poor man who killed his wife while he was drunk, and spent nights thinking what he should do, till he finally went to the police, was convicted and confessed to his guilt and payed his life for it...

He had all the time in the world, to do whatever his sick imagination want, where there was no fear of someone looking from the window, or another one suddenly opening that damn door .....

Nothing you can compare to Kelly's murder, or even to Eddowes murder, which took place there, outside, under the eyes of all kind of policemen and people that were patrolling the streets that night...


They couldn't catch the Ripper because they were not looking for him, they were good family men such yourself Johns.. they were looking door to door for zombie-like persons who escaped from asylums, or criminals, some of them were even prisoners in other lands...

But a worker man , who speaks to them, and try to help them will be always outside there calculations.........


Bury was a good man comparing to the Ripper.



Rainbow°

[GUT]

But then I've seen much worse than eithe Bury or what someone did to MJK.

[Fisherman]

What need to be taken into account is that we are not speaking of a onedimensional matter only here.

There is one level at which Bury is a more logical Ripper than anybody else. And that level is the one where we look for identified people who perpetrated a crime that was reminiscent of what the Ripper did. In that category, Bury is the best bid. He did kill a woman, and he did cut her abdomen open. That is a rare combination of things to do, only the very fewest do it.

If we had no other knowledge, and judged on this only, then Bury would be a very interesting man indeed.

Alas, we do know a lot more than this.

We know that the victim was Burys wife, and domestic murders are simething totally different from the murders of strangers. And stranger murders are what serialists more often than not engage in.

Looking at the abdominal wound, it was described as a "wound beginning 1½ inches from the pubis and extending upwards for 4 ½ inches". That is not a wound that lends itself favourably to a comparsion with what the Ripper did. He cut all the way from pubes to sternum, opening up wounds of 15-20 inches.

The Ripper also took out organs from the opened up abdomens. In the Nichols case, he did not, but it can be argued that he was disturbed and did not have the time to do so. The following cases show clearly that organharvesting was the agenda or part of it. Bury did not do this, and in itself, that is a powerful argument for him not being the Ripper, since we know that he had the time to do so with Ellen Bury.

The Ripper victims were also bled, each and every one of them, by opening up the neck vessels. This never happened to Ellen Bury.

These are the anatomical facts only. Other matters can be added, like how the Ripper left his victims on display whereas Bury hid his wifes dead body in a box, but overall, the anatomical matters are what should rule the decision. And here, there is one thing and one thing only that speaks for Bury - the opening of the abdomen. There is nothing else that counts on the score; the opening up of the abdomen is the one and only thing that carries a partial resemblance to what the Riper did. And that resemblance is only partial, since the wound is totally different and since it was not made to extract organs.

To make things worse, there IS a very clear contender for the Rippers role, but in this case a man who has gone unidentified - the so called Torso killer. He cut hs victims the exact same way the Ripper did, from pubes to sternum, in a number of cases. He took out organs, just like the Ripper did. And just like the Ripper did in two cases, the Torso man also cut away the abdominal wall in a few large panes from his victim in one case.
It was also said about both the Ripper and the Torso man that they could well have anatomical expertise, and this suggestion was in both casses led on by how the medico making the suggestion was very impressed by tle level of skill involved in the knife work.

So here we DO have a parallel that lends itself to an identification, decisively much more so than the Bury case does. The Torso man seems to have preyed on strangers too, just like the Ripper, he displayed his victims, just like the Ripper, he killed prositutes, just like the Ripper and last but not least, he bled his victims by cutting their necks, just like the Ripper.

He therefore is first in line for an identification with the Ripper, and the next man in line on anatomical grounds, be that Bury or anybody else, is a very, very, very long way behind.

But could not Bury have been BOTH the Ripper AND the Torso man? No, he could not, since the last two torso victims were claimed after Bury had been exectuted for the murder of his wife.

This effectively means that Bury must be moved down the list. He cannot possibly be the most logical bid for the Rippers role. He can at best be number two, and way behind the number one - the Thames Torso killer.

What remains? What more is there to name Bury the Ripper, apart from the anatomical implications? Well, it is said that Bury arrived in London in late 1887, and that he left London after the murders. The idea is that he fled.

Arriving in London in late 1887, is arriving after the Torso man claimed the Rainham victim. So Bury looses out in that end to. And he does not arrive weeks only before the Ripper sage, he arrives at least a full half year before it starts.

So did he flee afterwards, then? Well, he left London for Dundee on the 19:th of January, more than two months after the Kelly deed.
And did he change his identity when doing so, the way one might have expected a fleeing man to do? No, he did not.
So if he believed that the police were onto a William Henry Bury as the probable Ripper in November of 1888, it seems a strange thing to do to embark on a ship (the Cambria) from London Docks sailing for Dundee under your own name, and to sign into lodgings in Dundee under that same name when arriving.

The least he could have done would be to call himself Cross or something like that, so that he covered his tracks. But he did not, and I can only conclude that he was not fleeing at all. People were moving into and out of London by the thousands each week at this time, and Bury was in all probability no different from the rest of these people. He had lost his job, and had found new work in Dundee for both himself and his wife. It seems like a very ordinary thing to me.

So keep Bury on the list, by all means, but let´s be a bit rational when assessing him. He seems a improbable Ripper to me - and an impossible one if the Torso man and the Ripper were one and the same. And frankly, it seems a done deal, going on the anatomical implications only. There is more, but I am saving that for a rainy day...

[Harry D]

What other named suspect performed a 'Ripper-like' murder who can be definitely tied to the East End during the autumn of terror?

What's that? None? Then Bury remains the best of the bunch.

[Rainbow]

Ellen's murder is NOT a ripper-like murder, if so then Mackenzie's is a ripper-like murder too, and also that, will kick Bury out of the suspect list...

Move on...



Rainbow°

[Fisherman]

What other named suspect performed a 'Ripper-like' murder who can be definitely tied to the East End during the autumn of terror?

What's that? None? Then Bury remains the best of the bunch.

Yes, he does, and I said so: Amongst those NAMED he is the one who comes closest.
But since there is another, unnamed, man who comes a country mile closer, Bury is moved down the list.
And since this other unnamed man killed in late 1889 too, Bury disappears from the list over plausible contenders. His candidacy hinges on the non-candidacy of the Torso man, and that is not going to happen until somebody proves that the Torso man and the Ripper could not be one and the same.

The similarities between the Ripper and the Thames torso killer rewrite the map totally. It´s a new day, Harry.

[Harry D]

Ellen's murder is NOT a ripper-like murder, if so then Mackenzie's is a ripper-like murder too, and also that, will kick Bury out of the suspect list...

Strangulation, deep post-abdominal and facial mutilations. McKenzie's throat had been stabbed and dragged, not slashed as per previous victims, and her mutilations were superficial. You'll retort that Ellen Bury's throat wasn't cut at all, but there wasn't the same necessity to silence the victim in this case as there was on the crowded streets of Whitechapel.

[Rainbow]

If strangulation is enough to silence the victims, why to bother cut the throat at all...

Tabram's throat was also stabbed several times... 9 times !

Using the knife is more Ripperish than strangulation, which was not always the case in all the C5..

and after he strangulated her to death, what did he do, inserted his knife a little in her abdomin...?!

The man who turned Kelly into a thousand pieces will be satisfied by such a cut ?!

No need for a throat cut, but need just to make such a little abdomin cut ?!

A facial mutilation ?! was Ellen's ears, eyelids or nose even cut as that we saw on Eddowes and Kelly ?! you must be kidding...

At least there is a doctor's report who examined Mckenzie and who positively testified it was the work of the same hand.



Rainbow°

[Rainbow]

The best thing that you can do with Bury, is to play card with him...


Rainbow°

[Fisherman]

Strangulation, deep post-abdominal and facial mutilations. McKenzie's throat had been stabbed and dragged, not slashed as per previous victims, and her mutilations were superficial. You'll retort that Ellen Bury's throat wasn't cut at all, but there wasn't the same necessity to silence the victim in this case as there was on the crowded streets of Whitechapel.

Strangulation is an extremely common method of killing when it comes to domestic affairs. I would guess that it os by far the most common one. It is therefore of very little interest in this issue, not least since it is not something we know happened to all Ripper victims.
That leaves you with the abdominal cut and the facial mutilations. The cut to the abdomen, 4 1/2 inches long, we have had described. But I have not seen the facial mutilations you speak of described, Harry. Could you expand on the subject, please?