Medical evidence Ellen Bury murder

[Fisherman]

Bloody huge dissimilarity.

I understand that she could have been a ripper victim, but setting a case depending on this very 7-8 months pregnant victim is not convincing.


The Baron

The fact remains that she had her uterus taken out. The type of killer who takes out uteri from women is rare in the extreme. We can of course tart hypothesizing about the underlying psychological reasons for taking the uteri out from Chapman and Jackson, respectively, but as I pointed out before we will be entering speculation country at that stage. And it is not a healthy place to be when looking at these matters.

It is furthermore not as if it is "only" about the uterus, is it? Both women had their abdomonal walls cut away in large flaps - a pretty hefty coincidence f it was two killers, seeing as it is a trait that is rarer than hen´s teeth. It more or less never happens.

But in Victorian London, two men engaged in this practice? In the same time period? And it just so happened that both victims were prostitutes? And lo and behold, both of them had their rings stolen and wrenched from their fingers - completely by chance?

If we suggest two killers for these women, we are suggesting the larget coincidence in criminal history. I won´t go there, I can say that much. It would be folly.

[The Baron]

The fact that she was 7-8 months pregnant is devastating on many aspects

Would a 7-8 months pregnant woman go prostituting ?!


I doubt it very much.


The Baron

[Fisherman]

The fact that she was 7-8 months pregnant is devastating on many aspects

Would a 7-8 months pregnant woman go prostituting ?!


I doubt it very much.


The Baron

How is it "devastating"?

Do we know that the killer sought out prostitutes? No, we don´t. It may well be that he sought out women on the streets late at night, and many of them were prostitutes for reasons easy to understand.

Would a pregnant woman prostitute herself? Some actually do. And some customers will pay more for the option. The world is a weird place. Moreover, it may well be that Jackson had no other means of getting money for food. In such a case, beggars cant be choosers.

The killer saw her on the street, made her an offer and she accepted it. It could have been for any type of sex, mind you.

And actually, we cant be sure that her pregnancy was easy to see. Many first birth givers stay remarkably slim although they are in an advanced state of pregnancy.

There is nothing devastating at all about it, I´m afraid. And it does not make a single one of the similarities go away.

[The Baron]

Caesarean surgery is not an easy task.

Surgeons used to make a vertical incision before, then they adapted for a horizontal incision approach, it is never an easy task, and I can see the difficulties the murderer had during this, that may explain the abdominal flaps he made.


The Baron

[Fisherman]

Caesarean surgery is not an easy task.

Surgeons used to make a vertical incision before, then they adapted for a horizontal incision approach, it is never an easy task, and I can see the difficulties the murderer had during this, that may explain the abdominal flaps he made.


The Baron

Nah. The killer didnt need to make a carefull Caesarean section, did he? He killed Jackson and he cut make any sort of cut he wanted to, staying as far away from care as he wished. Liz Jacksons belly was cut all the way from the vagina up to - and into - the sternum, producing an almighty opening through which he would easily have been able to take the uterus out. The abdominal flaps came AFTER that first incision.

Once again, you are speculating. All we actually KNOW is that the uterus was taken out, and it is therefore a parallel to what happened to Chapman. Leave the fantasy aside and embrace the facts!

[The Baron]

This uterus had a 7-8 months old Fetus, I will not forget this FACT.



The Baron

[The Baron]

Just to be clear here, Jackson could have been a ripper victim, but she was a 7-8 month pregnant, and I cannot rule out Bury the ripper depending on her case.


The Baron

[Fisherman]

This uterus had a 7-8 months old Fetus, I will not forget this FACT.



The Baron

Why would you? And how does it mean that it was not the same killer? As far as I can tell, it only means that the killer may or may not have been aware that Jackson was pregnant as he took up with her. Why on earth would we predispose that he would never, ever kill and eviscerate a pregnant prostitute? How can we know that he did not actually like the idea?

The game of coming up with alternative explanations is not a very useful one, and it is far too common out here. Let´s say that we find two women dead who have both had their throats cut, who have both had their right feet cut away and who have both suffered burn marks to their foreheads.

A knife is a common murder weapon, so that does not definitely link them.

Maybe one was killed by a foot fetischist and the other by somebody who had seen and disliked seeing her playing football.

And maybe one was tortured while the other happened to fall asleep with her head on a stove?

It can ALWAYS be done, there is no exception to that rule. But the question is, when we have two women who have their bellies cut open all the way from sternum to pubes ( a VERY rare thing), who have their abdominal walls taken away in alrge flaps (an exceedingly rare thing, with almost no parallels at all), who havbe their uteri cut out (not an everyday matter by any means), who have rings stolen from their fingers (not the top priority for an eviscerator, is it?) and who are both prostitutes and living in the same town at the same time - should we really - REALLY - work from the assumption that they were probably killed by different men?

If so: WHY?

[Fisherman]

Just to be clear here, Jackson could have been a ripper victim, but she was a 7-8 month pregnant, and I cannot rule out Bury the ripper depending on her case.


The Baron

That´s your prerogative, of course. I reason very differently.

[Fisherman]

Let´s add a few things. What was it that set the Thames Torso murders aside from other dismemberment murders?

Exactly: the level of skill involved in the cutting. The killer was not an anatomist, but he was skilled in cutting up bodies. The idea that a mad doctor was afoot was always wrong but alluring. The skill lay in how he cut boldly, unhesitatingly and sweepingly. It was the kind of skill that could be expected to be found by for example a butcher, used to cutting up many animal carcasses with great speed.

And what was it Philips said about how Chapman had lost her uterus? The killer had been able to secure the pelvic organs with "one sweep of the knife". Boldly, unhesitatingly and sweepingly.

However, Chapmans killer was unable to take her head of with a knife. The vertebrae in the neck were notched deeply. The same applied to Kelly - it seemed the killer made another attempt in Millers Court, but failed.

And the Thames Torso killer, how about him? Could HE take a head off by way of knife? Yes he could, because he did so in the Pinchin Street case. However, Hebbert tells us that this was a progression, since before that, he had to use a saw to finish the job.

So until September of 1889, he could NOT take off a head by way of knife, it seems! Not in September of 1888 and not in November of the same year. Not even in the summer of 1889, although he had progressed in his knowledge at that stage, almost getting there. But it was not until September of that year that he made the breakthrough (excuse the pun).

Coincidences, coincidences...

Or not.

[Wyatt Earp]

In the real world serial killers exist, in the real world some of them are signature killers, and in the real world one of the tools that homicide investigators use to link murders to a common perpetrator is signature evidence. This type of evidence has been admitted into trials and has helped to secure convictions in countries around the world. Jack the Ripper is a classic example of a signature killer.

The reason that Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch looked at the Jack the Ripper case is that there had been uncertainty about which murders could be linked to a common perpetrator. Using the modern forensic technique of signature analysis, they determined that Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly could all be clearly linked to a common perpetrator. They also included Stride as a Ripper victim on the assumption that her murder was interrupted (an assumption I myself prefer not to make). Keppel and his team did not analyze the Ellen Bury murder in their paper. Why not? The Ellen Bury murder was not one of the Whitechapel murders, which was the focus of their article. It’s also quite possible that they were simply unaware of the details of this murder when they conducted their study.

In the view of Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch, neither the Alice McKenzie murder nor the Pinchin Street Torso case can be linked to Jack the Ripper’s signature. I’ve already provided some remarks of my own about why the McKenzie murder does not fit. These can be found in the appendix at the end of “The Bury ID” and also in the Bury website thread here on Casebook. It’s certainly very easy to exclude the torsos from Jack the Ripper’s tally as well. I think that Trevor, Sam, John Wheat and other posters have already done an excellent job of showing why the “Torso-Ripper connection” isn’t a believable one.

From a signature standpoint, the absence of mutilations in the majority of the Torso cases is inexplicable if these cases actually belonged to the Ripper. With the exception of the Stride murder, which may have been rushed, there is mutilation in each and every one of the Jack the Ripper murders, even with the first murder, the “learning murder” in the series, Tabram (there was supposedly a cut to Tabram’s genitals that was three inches long and one inch in depth—that was a deep, nasty, and no doubt deliberate cut). In each and every Jack the Ripper murder, again, Stride excepted, the victims’ legs were positioned in a degrading way. There’s nothing like that, however, in the Torso series (and there would have been nothing preventing the perpetrator from arranging the severed legs of a victim in a degrading way in the vicinity of the torso). And while there are some who would argue that dumping the torsos, heads and limbs was a form of “display” behavior, the pros who worked on the Ripper case said “no.” Of Jack the Ripper, Keppel et al. wrote “No efforts were made to hide or dispose of the victims.” In other words, they said that body disposal does not qualify as display behavior, in fact it’s the opposite of display behavior. These are three examples of why, from a signature perspective, the Ripper and the Torso man or men were different people. And remember, the Ripper was a signature killer.

Out of the entire pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain, there appear to have only been six murders that can be linked to the same, very rare combination of signature characteristics: Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly and Ellen Bury (see “The Bury ID” for why Ellen Bury belongs in this group). William Bury was convicted of one of these murders. If we knew absolutely nothing about William Bury other than that he was convicted of one of these murders, and that he was spatially and temporally proximate to each of the six murders, we would think that Bury was almost certainly responsible for all of them, again, because of the uniqueness of this combination of signature characteristics within the pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain.

Let’s be good detectives, though, and take a closer look at this William Bury to make sure that we have the right guy. Was he a copycat killer? No. There was no cut throat and there was no abandonment of the body in the Ellen Bury murder. In addition, the Ellen Bury murder can be mapped to Jack the Ripper’s signature in some subtle ways that we wouldn’t expect a copycat to reproduce.

What else do we know? Bury, even though he lived in Bromley-by-Bow, was spending leisure time in Whitechapel, having twice been spotted drunk there by James Martin, on one occasion inside and on one occasion outside a pub. For some guys, booze and hookers go together like peanut butter and jelly, and what do you know, William Bury had a recent case of venereal disease on his record, too. If a guy like Bury was getting drunk in Whitechapel, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine him being involved with hookers in Whitechapel, too. Bury had struck his wife Ellen in the face on a street in broad daylight, and so brazenly assaulting a woman in a public place was something that Bury was known to do. It's also worth noting that Bury aligns well with the eyewitness descriptions in the case. Two finger rings and a thimble of “very inferior metal” were found in a trunk in Bury's residence, and what do you know, Chapman had a couple of finger rings taken from her, and apparently a thimble, too, as none was found with her body and she would have been expected to own one, given the nature of some of her work. There’s this thing called the Goulston Street Graffito, which many believe was written by the killer, and by golly, there are chalked messages behind Bury’s residence that he apparently wrote, one of which in particular has the same markedly vertical structure as the GSG in Warren’s transcription. William Bury could have put Ellen Bury's body into the trunk in any one of a number of different ways. So what do we find? Victim on back, legs positioned in a degrading way, and head turned to one side, just as occurred in the two most recent of the canonical murders, Eddowes and Kelly. Amazing, isn’t it? And following the Ellen Bury murder, this William Bury guy burned some of his victim’s clothing in the fireplace, just as occurred in the Mary Jane Kelly murder. How about that?

In other words, yes of course we have the right guy.

The question before Ripperology right now is do we want to continue to pretend that the Ripper is unknown, do we want to continue with the adolescent food fight between rival suspects, do we want to continue to daydream that the Ripper is someone who’s yet to be named, or do we want to accept that an identification has been made in this case and that it’s now time to move the field forward in a more productive and responsible manner?

[Fisherman]

In the real world serial killers exist, in the real world some of them are signature killers, and in the real world one of the tools that homicide investigators use to link murders to a common perpetrator is signature evidence. This type of evidence has been admitted into trials and has helped to secure convictions in countries around the world. Jack the Ripper is a classic example of a signature killer.

The reason that Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch looked at the Jack the Ripper case is that there had been uncertainty about which murders could be linked to a common perpetrator. Using the modern forensic technique of signature analysis, they determined that Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly could all be clearly linked to a common perpetrator. They also included Stride as a Ripper victim on the assumption that her murder was interrupted (an assumption I myself prefer not to make). Keppel and his team did not analyze the Ellen Bury murder in their paper. Why not? The Ellen Bury murder was not one of the Whitechapel murders, which was the focus of their article. It’s also quite possible that they were simply unaware of the details of this murder when they conducted their study.

In the view of Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch, neither the Alice McKenzie murder nor the Pinchin Street Torso case can be linked to Jack the Ripper’s signature. I’ve already provided some remarks of my own about why the McKenzie murder does not fit. These can be found in the appendix at the end of “The Bury ID” and also in the Bury website thread here on Casebook. It’s certainly very easy to exclude the torsos from Jack the Ripper’s tally as well. I think that Trevor, Sam, John Wheat and other posters have already done an excellent job of showing why the “Torso-Ripper connection” isn’t a believable one.

From a signature standpoint, the absence of mutilations in the majority of the Torso cases is inexplicable if these cases actually belonged to the Ripper. With the exception of the Stride murder, which may have been rushed, there is mutilation in each and every one of the Jack the Ripper murders, even with the first murder, the “learning murder” in the series, Tabram (there was supposedly a cut to Tabram’s genitals that was three inches long and one inch in depth—that was a deep, nasty, and no doubt deliberate cut). In each and every Jack the Ripper murder, again, Stride excepted, the victims’ legs were positioned in a degrading way. There’s nothing like that, however, in the Torso series (and there would have been nothing preventing the perpetrator from arranging the severed legs of a victim in a degrading way in the vicinity of the torso). And while there are some who would argue that dumping the torsos, heads and limbs was a form of “display” behavior, the pros who worked on the Ripper case said “no.” Of Jack the Ripper, Keppel et al. wrote “No efforts were made to hide or dispose of the victims.” In other words, they said that body disposal does not qualify as display behavior, in fact it’s the opposite of display behavior. These are three examples of why, from a signature perspective, the Ripper and the Torso man or men were different people. And remember, the Ripper was a signature killer.

Out of the entire pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain, there appear to have only been six murders that can be linked to the same, very rare combination of signature characteristics: Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly and Ellen Bury (see “The Bury ID” for why Ellen Bury belongs in this group). William Bury was convicted of one of these murders. If we knew absolutely nothing about William Bury other than that he was convicted of one of these murders, and that he was spatially and temporally proximate to each of the six murders, we would think that Bury was almost certainly responsible for all of them, again, because of the uniqueness of this combination of signature characteristics within the pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain.

Let’s be good detectives, though, and take a closer look at this William Bury to make sure that we have the right guy. Was he a copycat killer? No. There was no cut throat and there was no abandonment of the body in the Ellen Bury murder. In addition, the Ellen Bury murder can be mapped to Jack the Ripper’s signature in some subtle ways that we wouldn’t expect a copycat to reproduce.

What else do we know? Bury, even though he lived in Bromley-by-Bow, was spending leisure time in Whitechapel, having twice been spotted drunk there by James Martin, on one occasion inside and on one occasion outside a pub. For some guys, booze and hookers go together like peanut butter and jelly, and what do you know, William Bury had a recent case of venereal disease on his record, too. If a guy like Bury was getting drunk in Whitechapel, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine him being involved with hookers in Whitechapel, too. Bury had struck his wife Ellen in the face on a street in broad daylight, and so brazenly assaulting a woman in a public place was something that Bury was known to do. It's also worth noting that Bury aligns well with the eyewitness descriptions in the case. Two finger rings and a thimble of “very inferior metal” were found in a trunk in Bury's residence, and what do you know, Chapman had a couple of finger rings taken from her, and apparently a thimble, too, as none was found with her body and she would have been expected to own one, given the nature of some of her work. There’s this thing called the Goulston Street Graffito, which many believe was written by the killer, and by golly, there are chalked messages behind Bury’s residence that he apparently wrote, one of which in particular has the same markedly vertical structure as the GSG in Warren’s transcription. William Bury could have put Ellen Bury's body into the trunk in any one of a number of different ways. So what do we find? Victim on back, legs positioned in a degrading way, and head turned to one side, just as occurred in the two most recent of the canonical murders, Eddowes and Kelly. Amazing, isn’t it? And following the Ellen Bury murder, this William Bury guy burned some of his victim’s clothing in the fireplace, just as occurred in the Mary Jane Kelly murder. How about that?

In other words, yes of course we have the right guy.

The question before Ripperology right now is do we want to continue to pretend that the Ripper is unknown, do we want to continue with the adolescent food fight between rival suspects, do we want to continue to daydream that the Ripper is someone who’s yet to be named, or do we want to accept that an identification has been made in this case and that it’s now time to move the field forward in a more productive and responsible manner?

I congratulate you on your certainty that "we have the right guy".

It´s just sad that the right guy is the wrong guy.

There are so very many things that are wrong in your post that it is hard to know where to begin. Regardless of what choice I make, I will always return to this line:

"It’s certainly very easy to exclude the torsos from Jack the Ripper’s tally as well."

... so let´s begin right there!

No, it is not easy to exclude the torsos from Jack the Rippers tally. Denying the implications within the Chapman/Jackson comparison is a totally unsound thing to do. It is decidedly NOT "being a good detective" to do so. There are no two cases of two eviscerating serial killers at work in overlapping time periods in any city or area - unless it´s the Ripper and the Thames Torso killer. Who are doing the exact same things to their victims in many a case. Abdominal flaps, anybody? Uteri extractions? Cuts from sternum to groin?

You lament that Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch did not look at the Ellen Bury case, indicating that you think they would have embraced it if they were given the chance and declared Bury the Ripper.

However, many other experts have looked at the Bury case - and ruled her out.

I could lament that Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch did not make a comparison between Jackson and Chapman, and I could say that they would certainly have identified a common killer if they did. But I don´t do that. I simply point to the similarities, one rarer than the other, and I let people make up their own minds. I rarely qoute what I think experts would have said if given the chance as evidence of why I would be correct.

That should do it, as far as I´m concerned, and I will not comment on the rest of your post, other than by thanking you for the humorous suggestion that the Thames Torso murders would have involved chopped off legs arranged in a sexually suggestive position if he really was the Ripper (and no, not all Ripper victims except Stride had their legs arranged in a "degrading" way - Nichols´ legs were slightly apart, and not even the Victorians were able to make sure that their legs were pressed tightly together as they fell dead down on the ground!).

In a way, I think we may seem to be one of a kind to many posters out here - you are besotted with Bury and I am besotted with Lechmere, as far as many posters will have it, I suppose. The two really big differences will be that I make a much better case based on the facts (sorry, but there you are) and that you are more likely to produce extremely long posts with the hope to wear me down. My guess is that you will succeed in that department and fail in the other.

Now I really need a good nights sleep. You make sure to stay away from the O K Corral and have a good night´s rest, you too!

[The Baron]

In the real world serial killers exist, in the real world some of them are signature killers, and in the real world one of the tools that homicide investigators use to link murders to a common perpetrator is signature evidence. This type of evidence has been admitted into trials and has helped to secure convictions in countries around the world. Jack the Ripper is a classic example of a signature killer.

The reason that Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch looked at the Jack the Ripper case is that there had been uncertainty about which murders could be linked to a common perpetrator. Using the modern forensic technique of signature analysis, they determined that Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly could all be clearly linked to a common perpetrator. They also included Stride as a Ripper victim on the assumption that her murder was interrupted (an assumption I myself prefer not to make). Keppel and his team did not analyze the Ellen Bury murder in their paper. Why not? The Ellen Bury murder was not one of the Whitechapel murders, which was the focus of their article. It’s also quite possible that they were simply unaware of the details of this murder when they conducted their study.

In the view of Keppel, Weis, Brown and Welch, neither the Alice McKenzie murder nor the Pinchin Street Torso case can be linked to Jack the Ripper’s signature. I’ve already provided some remarks of my own about why the McKenzie murder does not fit. These can be found in the appendix at the end of “The Bury ID” and also in the Bury website thread here on Casebook. It’s certainly very easy to exclude the torsos from Jack the Ripper’s tally as well. I think that Trevor, Sam, John Wheat and other posters have already done an excellent job of showing why the “Torso-Ripper connection” isn’t a believable one.

From a signature standpoint, the absence of mutilations in the majority of the Torso cases is inexplicable if these cases actually belonged to the Ripper. With the exception of the Stride murder, which may have been rushed, there is mutilation in each and every one of the Jack the Ripper murders, even with the first murder, the “learning murder” in the series, Tabram (there was supposedly a cut to Tabram’s genitals that was three inches long and one inch in depth—that was a deep, nasty, and no doubt deliberate cut). In each and every Jack the Ripper murder, again, Stride excepted, the victims’ legs were positioned in a degrading way. There’s nothing like that, however, in the Torso series (and there would have been nothing preventing the perpetrator from arranging the severed legs of a victim in a degrading way in the vicinity of the torso). And while there are some who would argue that dumping the torsos, heads and limbs was a form of “display” behavior, the pros who worked on the Ripper case said “no.” Of Jack the Ripper, Keppel et al. wrote “No efforts were made to hide or dispose of the victims.” In other words, they said that body disposal does not qualify as display behavior, in fact it’s the opposite of display behavior. These are three examples of why, from a signature perspective, the Ripper and the Torso man or men were different people. And remember, the Ripper was a signature killer.

Out of the entire pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain, there appear to have only been six murders that can be linked to the same, very rare combination of signature characteristics: Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly and Ellen Bury (see “The Bury ID” for why Ellen Bury belongs in this group). William Bury was convicted of one of these murders. If we knew absolutely nothing about William Bury other than that he was convicted of one of these murders, and that he was spatially and temporally proximate to each of the six murders, we would think that Bury was almost certainly responsible for all of them, again, because of the uniqueness of this combination of signature characteristics within the pool of murders committed in Victorian Britain.

Let’s be good detectives, though, and take a closer look at this William Bury to make sure that we have the right guy. Was he a copycat killer? No. There was no cut throat and there was no abandonment of the body in the Ellen Bury murder. In addition, the Ellen Bury murder can be mapped to Jack the Ripper’s signature in some subtle ways that we wouldn’t expect a copycat to reproduce.

What else do we know? Bury, even though he lived in Bromley-by-Bow, was spending leisure time in Whitechapel, having twice been spotted drunk there by James Martin, on one occasion inside and on one occasion outside a pub. For some guys, booze and hookers go together like peanut butter and jelly, and what do you know, William Bury had a recent case of venereal disease on his record, too. If a guy like Bury was getting drunk in Whitechapel, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine him being involved with hookers in Whitechapel, too. Bury had struck his wife Ellen in the face on a street in broad daylight, and so brazenly assaulting a woman in a public place was something that Bury was known to do. It's also worth noting that Bury aligns well with the eyewitness descriptions in the case. Two finger rings and a thimble of “very inferior metal” were found in a trunk in Bury's residence, and what do you know, Chapman had a couple of finger rings taken from her, and apparently a thimble, too, as none was found with her body and she would have been expected to own one, given the nature of some of her work. There’s this thing called the Goulston Street Graffito, which many believe was written by the killer, and by golly, there are chalked messages behind Bury’s residence that he apparently wrote, one of which in particular has the same markedly vertical structure as the GSG in Warren’s transcription. William Bury could have put Ellen Bury's body into the trunk in any one of a number of different ways. So what do we find? Victim on back, legs positioned in a degrading way, and head turned to one side, just as occurred in the two most recent of the canonical murders, Eddowes and Kelly. Amazing, isn’t it? And following the Ellen Bury murder, this William Bury guy burned some of his victim’s clothing in the fireplace, just as occurred in the Mary Jane Kelly murder. How about that?

In other words, yes of course we have the right guy.

The question before Ripperology right now is do we want to continue to pretend that the Ripper is unknown, do we want to continue with the adolescent food fight between rival suspects, do we want to continue to daydream that the Ripper is someone who’s yet to be named, or do we want to accept that an identification has been made in this case and that it’s now time to move the field forward in a more productive and responsible manner?

With the exception of Mackenzie and her excluding from the serie, I hate to say it, but you have a good case there.

Could you elaborate why Mackenzie was not considered a ripper victim and Tabram was ?!


Bury was not a starter to me till I read the detailed medical report of Ellen's sexual mutilation, I even wonder why Bury's guilt believers hadn't use that argument before, and I don't know now how I can get my head around all of this.

The man who attacked Stride is no different than Bury I agree.


Was Bury a member of a gang?! That may explain the Mackenzie murder after Bury.

It is getting damn complicated


The Baron

[The Baron]

Why would you? And how does it mean that it was not the same killer? As far as I can tell, it only means that the killer may or may not have been aware that Jackson was pregnant as he took up with her. Why on earth would we predispose that he would never, ever kill and eviscerate a pregnant prostitute? How can we know that he did not actually like the idea?

The game of coming up with alternative explanations is not a very useful one, and it is far too common out here. Let´s say that we find two women dead who have both had their throats cut, who have both had their right feet cut away and who have both suffered burn marks to their foreheads.

A knife is a common murder weapon, so that does not definitely link them.

Maybe one was killed by a foot fetischist and the other by somebody who had seen and disliked seeing her playing football.

And maybe one was tortured while the other happened to fall asleep with her head on a stove?

It can ALWAYS be done, there is no exception to that rule. But the question is, when we have two women who have their bellies cut open all the way from sternum to pubes ( a VERY rare thing), who have their abdominal walls taken away in alrge flaps (an exceedingly rare thing, with almost no parallels at all), who havbe their uteri cut out (not an everyday matter by any means), who have rings stolen from their fingers (not the top priority for an eviscerator, is it?) and who are both prostitutes and living in the same town at the same time - should we really - REALLY - work from the assumption that they were probably killed by different men?

If so: WHY?

Because there are enough dissimilarities that makes me understand if she wasn't a ripper victim.

You think we are looking for alternative explanations, no, we don't know the first explanation in order to look for alternatives.

Jackson could have been killed by a different hand, She wasn't found on the street with her throat cut and her clothes rised and her abdomen cut open and her private parts mutilated and her legs apart, and she was 7-8 months pregnant.

Nichols hadn't suffered any organ removal, and neither Tabram or Stride or Mackenzie, now you will bring the alternative explanations not I.

And again, Jackson could be a ripper victim, I just cannot rule out Bury depending on her case.



The Baron

[John Wheat]

"" Medical Report regarding death of Ellen Elliott or Bury

We hereby certify in soul and conscience, that on the morning of Monday 11th February 1889 we examined at the instance of the Procurator Fiscal for the Dundee district of Forfarshire, in the mortuary attached to the cemetery at Constitution Road Dundee, the dead body of a woman said to be that of Ellen Elliott or Bury.

External Appearance
The body was that of a woman apparently about 30 years of age, 5 feet 1 ˝ inches in height, well-made, but poorly nourished. The body was quite cold. Rigor Mortis was still present but not marked. Post Mortem lividity, which was of a bright red colour, was well marked on the back of the trunk and arms. There was some greenish discolouration of the right side of the abdomen.

Head
In the front hair were five curl papers. On both sides of the face were bloodstains which presented a striated appearance, as if they had been wiped with a dry cloth. There was some clotted blood in both nostrils. A small stream of blood trickled across the cheek from the right side of the mouth. The eyeballs were soft and slightly congested, corneae dull, pupils equal and of medium size.
About half an inch above the right end of the left eyebrow was a circular bruise about a third of an inch in diameter. Over the bridge of the nose was a small incised wound penetrating the skin only, half an inch in length, running obliquely downwards from right to left.
There was a mark of constriction around the neck passing in front between the hyoid bone and the larynx, and maintaining this level all the way round with the exception of almost two inches on the left side of the neck where it tended slightly upwards. The whole of the face and neck above this line was congested.
There was slight lividity of the lips, but no protrusion of the tongue. From the centre of the neck the first five inches of this mark to the left was brownish red and hard, and the rest of it was pale in the centre and congested at the edges. It varied in width from an eighth to a third of an inch. About an inch and a half from the middle line on the left side of the neck, was a similar mark joining that above described – three quarters of an inch in length, and running downwards and outwards. It was at the juncture of these two lines that the first mentioned tended slightly upwards.
About three quarters of an inch above this line, below the angle of the left lower jaw, were two small bruises each half an inch in length.

Trunk
There was an incised wound in the centre of the abdomen extending downwards from the umbilicus for four and a half inches. It penetrated the abdominal cavity, and through it protruded part of the omentum and about a foot of intestine, part of which was dry and black from exposure to the air. This cut was ragged towards the lower part.
Commencing at the inner end of the fifth right costal cartilage was a cut running downwards and to the left for seven and a half inches. This was quite superficial, with the exception of the last inch, where it penetrated through the skin into the muscular layer of the abdomen. Half an inch to the right of this, and running parallel to it, was a similar cut five inches in length and superficial throughout. Two inches to the right of, and commencing on a level with the umbilicus was an incised wound three quarters of an inch in length and penetrating through to the muscular layer. From the lower end of the wound opening into the abdomen, on the left side were several superficial cuts little more than penetrating the cuticle, and running down to the pubis.
Running downwards from the centre of the pubis to the outer side of the left labium was an incised wound 2 ˝ inches in length penetrating the skin and fat. On the inner side of the right labium was a wound 2 inches in length penetrating the skin. Beginning about an inch behind the anus was an incised wound running forwards and to the left into the perineum, and dividing the sphincter muscle.
At the lower border of the ribs on the left side in the nipple line were two abrasions each an inch in length.
The edges of all the wounds described were everted and marked throughout by a line of capillary haemorhage, and we are therefore of opinion that they must have been inflicted during life or very shortly after death, while the body still retained its warmth and vital elasticity. The other injuries described were all of recent origin. There were other two (sic) cuts on the abdomen – one two inches to the inner side of the right anterior superior iliac spine and the other at an almost corresponding level on the opposite side. They were each about half an inch in length, running downwards and inwards and penetrating to the muscular layer. These were free from any trace of haemorhage.
There were a few dried coagula in the left groin. There was no other appearance of blood in this region, except at the lower part of the left side of the abdomen and the upper half and inner side of the left thigh and this presented the appearance of having been partially removed by washing.

Upper Extremities
On the outer side of the left shoulder was a bruise three quarters of an inch in length. An inch and a half behind this was a circular abrasion a third of an inch in diameter. On the inner side of the left elbow were two irregular bruises about half an inch in length and a slight cut little more than penetrating the cuticle On the knuckle of the right mid finger was a scooped-out abrasion an eighth of an inch in diameter.

Lower Extremities
On the right trochanter was a bruise about an inch in diameter and somewhat irregular in shape. These injuries were all recent origin.
On the front of the right leg, about three inches below the lower border of the patella were four small lacerated wounds communicating with the tibia. At this point there was a comminuted fracture of both bones of the leg but there was no haemorhage into the muscle and surrounding structures. We are therefore of the opinion that this fracture must have been caused a considerable time after death.

On cutting into the mark around the neck in various parts of it we found extravasations of blood into the skin and subcutaneous tissue. This was especially marked on the right side where was a well marked effusion of blood into the platysma muscle.

Chest
Heart. The heart was examined in situ. Both cavities were empty. There was a considerable quantity of dark coloured fluid blood in the pericardial veins.
Lungs. Both lungs were congested and on their anterior surfaces were several small punctiform haemorhages immediately beneath the pleura especially in the lower lobes
The mucous membrane of the Larynx, Trachea and Bronchial Tubes was congested. There was some bloody mucus in the Larynx and Trachea, and bloody frothy mucus in the Bronchia.

Abdomen
The abdominal organs were normal. There was some dark fluid blood in the lower part of the cavity.

Head
There was some ecchymosis into the left temporal muscle just above the ear about an inch in diameter. The membranes of the brain were deeply congested, but the substance of this organ was itself normal.

From this examination of the body we are of opinion that the immediate cause of death was asphyxia produced by strangulation, and that deceased had been dead for from three to six days

C .Templeman MD
A.M.Stalker MD

Dundee
February 11th 1889 ""



This is Mind blowing!

Wasn't Bury a sexualy insane murderer?!

Isn't that a sexual mutilation in the full sense of the word?!



I favour Kosminski as a suspect, but how can anyone counter the argument that Bury Was Jack the Ripper?!



The Baron

Hi Baron

I agree with what you are saying here. However Bury will in all likelihood be overlooked by many as he is one of the least glam Ripper suspects. Also others will overlook Bury for there own silly suspects such as Lechmere. Only a lunatic would have Lechmere as a preferred suspect to Bury. But there you go. In my opinion the case against Bury is strong. And no one has come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why Bury isn't the Ripper because non exists.

Cheers John