William Bury website

[Wyatt Earp]

Thread for discussion of material on the William Bury website. http://williambury.org/ (my thanks to Howard Brown for mentioning my website at JTR Forums).

Praise (both reasonable and unreasonable) and blame (reasonable only) both accepted.

The Stride murder is currently being discussed here on Casebook. I have three posts on the website related to the Stride murder.

For a plausible explanation of why Stride’s body wasn’t mutilated, see my post “Bury and the Stride Murder.” http://williambury.org/blog6/2017/11...stride-murder/

For a plausible explanation of why different knives were used on Stride and Eddowes, see my post “Two Knives and the Double Event.” http://williambury.org/blog6/2018/01...-double-event/

And to learn just how well William Bury aligns with the description given by Israel Schwartz, see my post “Schwartz and Eyewitness Memory.” http://williambury.org/blog6/2018/11...itness-memory/ (anyone here looking for a broad-shouldered man?)

Visitors to the website will also find the full text of a number of historical documents: the official trial notes from Bury’s trial, the Ellen Bury medical reports prepared by both the prosecution and defense medical teams, and the letter in which Bury confessed to murdering his wife.

If you haven’t been to the Bury website before, I hope you'll consider taking a look.

[Sam Flynn]

Excellent work, Wyatt. Nice looking site, and very informative.

[Wyatt Earp]

Thank you, sir.

[Abby Normal]

Very nice wyatt

[John Wheat]

Great website Wyatt. Very good work.

[Wyatt Earp]

Thanks guys. By the way, Bury's bones turn 160 in May. If any of you missed it, Sue Black, who oversaw the mock retrial of Bury, and who had Bury's cervical vertebrae in her custody, left the University of Dundee last summer and is now an administrator at Lancaster University. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...ntral-43988631

[Busy Beaver]

Good website. Are you going to let us know how Bury is connected to Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly? Or are you planning a book to reveal this? I'm interested in the Stride theory, now you have to show the Bury link with the others to make me more convinced!

Cheers
Busy Beaver

[Harry D]

Thank you Wyatt. Here are my comments, re: Stride's murder:

Prostitutes would have been more cautious than usual.

Not necessarily. Beggars can't be choosers. Prostitutes still had to eat, drink and find a bed for the night. Unless he was frothing at the mouth and scraping two butcher knives together, I doubt they were that picky.

All of this suggests that she had a baseline level of comfort with him and that he was not a complete stranger to her.

I'm a little confused because this contradicts the previous statement. If Stride was familiar and comfortable around this punter, why was she struggling with him in the street?

… given that Stride was a prostitute and Bury appears to have been a user of prostitutes,

Bury was far from the only purveyor of prostitutes, and we lack proof that Bury visited whores in the Whitechapel area. He may have operated closer to home.

If Stride could ID him, that would have been a problem, as the police would then have been able to conduct an investigation of him

Why would Stride ID him? Prostitutes aren't in the habit of cooperating with police, particularly over something like a minor street scuffle. She would most likely deny or downplay what happened to withhold the fact she was soliciting that night.

I'm not convinced about Schwartz's account, I'm really not. There's something about it which doesn't add up.

[Wyatt Earp]

Good website. Are you going to let us know how Bury is connected to Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly? Or are you planning a book to reveal this? I'm interested in the Stride theory, now you have to show the Bury link with the others to make me more convinced!

The signature evidence shows that the same person murdered Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly and Ellen Bury. Since we know who murdered one of these women, we know who murdered all of them. As a reminder, signature evidence is admissible in court and has been used to help secure convictions of serial killers. It is not like graphological evidence, which cannot be trusted and has routinely been excluded from trials. Members of the community should keep these facts in mind and not dismiss signature evidence as unreliable "profiling."

[Wyatt Earp]

Not necessarily. Beggars can't be choosers. Prostitutes still had to eat, drink and find a bed for the night. Unless he was frothing at the mouth and scraping two butcher knives together, I doubt they were that picky.

I'm a little confused because this contradicts the previous statement. If Stride was familiar and comfortable around this punter, why was she struggling with him in the street?

She evidently did not want to service him that night. Perhaps she was waiting for someone else, perhaps she was unhappy about some previous engagement with him. There are multiple possibilities.

Bury was far from the only purveyor of prostitutes, and we lack proof that Bury visited whores in the Whitechapel area. He may have operated closer to home.

At Bury’s trial his former employer James Martin provided testimony which suggested that in June, 1888, Bury had gotten drunk in a pub in Whitechapel. At roughly the same time, Bury contracted a case of v.d. Bury obviously could have picked up his case of v.d. somewhere other than Whitechapel, but if he was getting drunk in Whitechapel, it seems reasonable to suggest that he could have been using prostitutes there as well.

Why would Stride ID him? Prostitutes aren't in the habit of cooperating with police, particularly over something like a minor street scuffle. She would most likely deny or downplay what happened to withhold the fact she was soliciting that night.

I expect Bury would have been concerned about Stride identifying him either out of her unhappiness about the incident, or because the police might have pressured her to do so.

[Single-O-Seven]

I very much enjoy your William Bury website and regularly check in to see if you've updated it. I find your discussions and analyses interesting.

I do think WHB is the best suspect there is. Signature analysis may be our best hope of solving (or coming close to an answer) the JTR murders. And WHB is undoubtedly the only one who can be confirmed as demonstrating himself as a murderer with the same signature as JTR. That's quite telling. Add that to the fact that no hurdles and shuffling of times/locations need to be performed to suggest he was in the East End throughout the JTR crimes. We know he was there, just as we know he pulled a lot of BS to get himself out of there at the end of the spree. All of these details cannot be convincingly stated for any one else.

While it is still - and may always be - conjecture, the known evidence and rational analyses of the case fit best with WHB, IMO. Why so much effort and emphasis is placed on suspects who require leaps of logic and the bending of evidence to paint them as JTR is beyond me.

I'd like to think research may uncover further and even better evidence/details about WHB. Perhaps you could do an entry on your website outlining missing details in Bury's history, and where our best chances of finding such information may lie? This may spur on researchers to start looking in the right places, and more holes in the story of WHB might get filled in.

[c.d.]

"I expect Bury would have been concerned about Stride identifying him either out of her unhappiness about the incident, or because the police might have pressured her to do so."

Identify him how? By name or description? How likely is it that the police would have said "a woman engaging in an illegal activity has been pushed and disrespected in Whitechapel. Well not on our watch. Drop all other ongoing investigations (including all other crimes) and focus all your attention on catching this man."

Could the police have thought the BS man could have been the Ripper if he had walked away and been reported by Stride? Sure. But so could every man that pushed a woman or slapped her or made some drunken remark that the whores got what they deserved. Other crime and misogyny didn't stop in Whitechapel during the Ripper murders. There were only so many police to conduct investigations. They had to pick and choose on what leads to pursue.

c.d.

[Single-O-Seven]

What you say is likely true - the police might not have thought the matter a big enough deal to connect with JTR and Eddowes' murder. But Stride's attacker may not have thought so. He may have panicked and, before moving on, considered it in his best interest to make sure Stride couldn't ID him if it came to that.

In any case, I think the argument irrelevant. I feel her attacker killed her with the intent of fulfilling his needs, but was interrupted or became too nervous and fled before he could go further with it.

[c.d.]

Hello Seven,

Even if he eliminated Stride as a witness he was still seen by Schwartz and Pipe Man.

c.d.

[Single-O-Seven]

Very true! Which is why I think the witness elimination angle is irrelevant anyway.