Bury's move to Dundee

[Aethelwulf]

I'm slightly concerned about deviation from the original post which posed a good question.
but If this did actually happen as berry wrote, and 2 detectives did go up to Dundee and they were convinced that he was probably the ripper. What would have happened when they got back to London?

As what happened in the Yorkshire Ripper case and the people who worked on that, they were swamped with work load and potential lines of enquiry, they had to deal with hundreds potential suspects and they had tunnel vision over the Jewish suspect just as the west Yorkshire police did over the north eastern issue.

And our Victorian detectives did not have the benefit of the work that has gone into understand these kind of sexual killers, it was before Douglas and Keppel and all the rest of them who contributed.

So these 2 detective's bosses probably listened and shrugged their shoulders, they probably said well he's not a Jew and he didn't confess and what have we got?

But now we have benefit from the modern analysis, and it turns out that Bury is exactly the kind of man who would do this and how rare this sexual mutilation is and how unlikely it was that two such men would be in the same place at the same time.

Mind you that torsol killer troubles me

Couldn't have put it better.

What if Bury just stonewalled? Said nowt? What if, when questioned, he just said he was at home in bed with his wife on the dates in question? What would the two officers had done? As I've said, they obviously thought it worth their while to hear his final words. Neither Bond nor Phillips saw the body. As for Aberline's silence, I suspect an experienced officer like him probably put a lot of stock in opinions from face-to-face questioning. All he had to go on here was the two officer's report. If they had nothing, he had nothing. Bury is forgotten.

[Guest]

Yes that and also if you put yourself in his shoes, he knew he had nothing to gain from confessing, and he knew he would likely have gotten a serious kicking and he would have too, damn right, this is 1888 we're talking about

[Guest]

1889 but you know

[Aethelwulf]

Now could either of these been Bury's signal to do a runner? Both questioned and released 22nd/23rd of Nov 1888. Not saying they either of these was Bury, but I think it would've been something like this that made him think his time was up:

Arrests in Whitechapel.
Shortly before six o'clock this morning, Mr. McCarthy, the landlord of the house where Kelly was murdered, seized a suspicious man in Dorset-street. A police-constable searched the man, and found a long knife on him. The man said he used it in his business. He was allowed to go.

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
AN ARREST
The Press Association says:- A man was arrested in the East end early this morning under very suspicious circumstances. Between one and two o'clock a woman, who was in company with a man in a narrow thoroughfare near Brick lane, was heard to call "Murder!" and "Police!" loudly. At the same moment the man was seen making off at a rapid pace. He was pursued with several streets by the police and detectives who have lately been concentrated in considerable numbers in the neighbourhood, and was captured near Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton's brewery. The man is reported to have drawn a knife and made a desperate resistance, but he was eventually overpowered and conveyed to Commercial street station.

The first one is interesting - the FBI profiles states that JtR would probs revisit his crime scenes. Hard to believe this man was just released on such a flimsy explanation.

Thinking about it, when was JtR's luck most likely to run out? Surely the month after Kelly when there must have been a huge number of police about and women most vigilant. Just around the time Bury sells his horse and cart and probably stopped going into Whitechapel.

[Harry D]

Abusers often like to isolate their victims geographically and socially from their family and friends. The further north they went, the more easily controlled Ellen would be, and the less chance she would leave him.

[Ms Diddles]

Yes that and also if you put yourself in his shoes, he knew he had nothing to gain from confessing, and he knew he would likely have gotten a serious kicking and he would have too, damn right, this is 1888 we're talking about

One thing I had wondered about was whether by confessing to the Whitechapel crimes at the last gasp (once the appeal was rejected), Bury would have postponed his immediate date with the hangman.

Would they have kept him alive for a bit longer to interview him and investigate further?

The thought sounded quite good rattling around in my head, but as I type this I'm thinking, nah, they'd have strung him up regardless (and potentially miscalculated the drop to ensure a difficult exit)!!

[Guest]

Both these are interesting, are there any physical description given in these reports. Height age etc, I find when I search that British library newspapers some reports are better than others, much is repetition but there are some gems.

If anything else it shows how many suspicious incident were happening. If only we knew the whole story.

Wild, please may you provide the source that confirms when bury sold his horse? So to be sure if that date. As it seems critical to me.

Now i imagined that horse went earlier, it was on its way out from neglect and maltreatment, I keep thinking of the report of that horse falling down on mile road, and the recovery of the knife, I recall it was soon after the double murder but I may be wrong. It was very sharp but made blunt, policeman found it after helping. It was the route back to spanby road
.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Couldn't have put it better.

What if Bury just stonewalled? Said nowt? What if, when questioned, he just said he was at home in bed with his wife on the dates in question? What would the two officers had done? As I've said, they obviously thought it worth their while to hear his final words. Neither Bond nor Phillips saw the body. As for Aberline's silence, I suspect an experienced officer like him probably put a lot of stock in opinions from face-to-face questioning. All he had to go on here was the two officer's report. If they had nothing, he had nothing. Bury is forgotten.

We know that a modern police force knows far more than the Victorian police of course but can we assume that they would be so naive as to have been unaware of the possibility that a wife (or any relative) might lie to protect her husband? Surely an actual murderer like Bury would have seemed (pre-questioning) the best suspect that they’d had so far? Alarm bells must have been ringing so might we not ask why didn’t they use Anderson’s witness?

[Aethelwulf]

We know that a modern police force knows far more than the Victorian police of course but can we assume that they would be so naive as to have been unaware of the possibility that a wife (or any relative) might lie to protect her husband? Surely an actual murderer like Bury would have seemed (pre-questioning) the best suspect that they’d had so far? Alarm bells must have been ringing so might we not ask why didn’t they use Anderson’s witness?

what i meant was Bury is in custody being questioned, he says on the nights of the murders he was at home in bed with his wife, she is dead and can't say otherwise. He had what was, essentially, an untestable alibi. What would the police say to that - not sure what they could do if Bury was just uncooperative.

[Abby Normal]

Come to think of it there was another torsal murder that happened in the west midlands in 1880 something which I found trawling through the newspapers, that I don't think the torsal people have clocked yet, funny enough because it's probably close to were bury would have been at the time, not that I'm suggesting anything, but it is of interest recently so now I must remember to upload that on that other thread about that torsal murders

whats a torsal?!? ; )

[Guest]

And another thing about bury not confessing, I spent a lot of time drinking in London pubs, and I mean proper working class drinking pubs in the east and south east , and I noticed that Londoners take banter to a level far above what I'm used to coming from my provincial midlands town,

these guys are all shits and giggles and jolly japers and they rip into each other mercilessly,

But on a few occasions I saw what happened when they all got riled up when something happened, maybe the sport or the news, and I saw what they are like then united in anger.

I can imagine what these people would have been like during the autumn of terror, and what they would have said they would do to the ripper if they caught him, after a few gins and what the police would do as well, and bury would have heard all this.

Is it any wonder that bury threw the newspaper down?
i suspect that bury was terrified of being caught, and so would most people.

But in the cold morning air after the noise is gone, the scorpion is still a scorpion as the frog will say.

[caz]

I'm slightly concerned about deviation from the original post which posed a good question.
but If this did actually happen as berry wrote, and 2 detectives did go up to Dundee and they were convinced that he was probably the ripper. What would have happened when they got back to London?

As what happened in the Yorkshire Ripper case and the people who worked on that, they were swamped with work load and potential lines of enquiry, they had to deal with hundreds potential suspects and they had tunnel vision over the Jewish suspect just as the west Yorkshire police did over the north eastern issue.

And our Victorian detectives did not have the benefit of the work that has gone into understand these kind of sexual killers, it was before Douglas and Keppel and all the rest of them who contributed.

So these 2 detective's bosses probably listened and shrugged their shoulders, they probably said well he's not a Jew and he didn't confess and what have we got?

But now we have benefit from the modern analysis, and it turns out that Bury is exactly the kind of man who would do this and how rare this sexual mutilation is and how unlikely it was that two such men would be in the same place at the same time.

Mind you that torsol killer troubles me

Hi Wiggins,

The Yorkshire Ripper may be an unfortunate example for general comparison purposes because, along with the likes of Fred West and Dr Harold Shipman, he didn't kill his wife.

Are there many cases where a convicted serial killer has included his wife among the victims? I can't immediately think of one apart from Bury, if the presumption is that he 'saved the best for last', after effectively practising on several anonymous women on the streets of Spitalfields. If he had killed Ellen down south, between other murders, I could have seen that as a way of getting hers considered to be another 'stranger' killing. But this is very different.

I wouldn't rule him out as a ripper suspect, but I certainly wasn't convinced by one of Bill Beadle's arguments, when he spoke at a Whitechapel Society meeting, that the victims' first names would have resonated with Bury, influencing his selection process. I could not imagine how that would have worked in practice.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Abusers often like to isolate their victims geographically and socially from their family and friends. The further north they went, the more easily controlled Ellen would be, and the less chance she would leave him.

But that would explain the move without needing Bury to have fled because the ripper investigation was getting too close for comfort.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

One thing I had wondered about was whether by confessing to the Whitechapel crimes at the last gasp (once the appeal was rejected), Bury would have postponed his immediate date with the hangman.

Would they have kept him alive for a bit longer to interview him and investigate further?

The thought sounded quite good rattling around in my head, but as I type this I'm thinking, nah, they'd have strung him up regardless (and potentially miscalculated the drop to ensure a difficult exit)!!

Unless, Ms D, he could have convinced them he was stark staring mad, as Peter Sutcliffe had some success with.

Confessing to being Jack the Ripper could have been seen as an utterly insane move, whether he was or he wasn't.

Love,

Caz
X

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Hi Wiggins,

The Yorkshire Ripper may be an unfortunate example for general comparison purposes because, along with the likes of Fred West and Dr Harold Shipman, he didn't kill his wife.

Are there many cases where a convicted serial killer has included his wife among the victims? I can't immediately think of one apart from Bury, if the presumption is that he 'saved the best for last', after effectively practising on several anonymous women on the streets of Spitalfields. If he had killed Ellen down south, between other murders, I could have seen that as a way of getting hers considered to be another 'stranger' killing. But this is very different.


X

Reg Christie.

It's likely his wife knew all about his crimes and he killed her for perhaps more practical reasons, which is an argument that can be made for Bury killing Ellen.