Does anything rule Bury out?

[Harry D]

To Harry

I should have started my last post with supposing Bury was the Ripper.

Hello, John. My post wasn't aimed at you specifically, it was more of a general criticism of the preconceived notions we have about the Ripper. Any information we have on the cunning and intelligence of our man remains inconclusive and I don't think we can say with any certainty that he wouldn't have acted self-destructively at some point. Some serial killers can end up behaving in a way that begs for them to be stopped. How do we know this wasn't Bury's moment?

[Errata]

To Errata

Are you sure Bury just wasn't used to dealing with a dead wife. Supposing Bury was the Ripper he could just leave the scene with the canon's but with his wife things would have been different. Suddenly Bury's got a body to deal with. What is strange is that he left the body in the trunk for days. Perhaps Bury tried to get rid of the body but wasn't able to. at the end of the day you're I.Q. of 95 is from just guesswork.

Cheers John

I'm absolutely positive he had no idea how to deal with a freshly minted dead wife. Whether or not he was the Ripper. But the sad fact is that 3 women are murdered by their husband or boyfriend very day in the US. So more than 1000 men every year are faced with the fact that they have just killed their wife. And about 30% of them get away with it. So what separates the people who can act in their bests interest under adversity and those who can't?

Smarts really. They frame someone else, the body is never found, they use fame or connections, some of them argue self defense. They can come to a workable solution very quickly. Some people are good in emergencies. Some aren't.

Bury is in no way unique. But the fascinating thing about him is that there is no coherent effort anywhere. Doesn't get ever part of her out of the apartment. Doesn't stage the scene. Doesn't run and change his name. People fail doing these things all the time. But they try. He doesn't. Like he can't even get the first part of an idea out. Fight, flight or freeze. Everyone does one of those three. He froze. Big time. Worst I've ever heard of in fact. Hours, maybe days staring at that box, and he can't come up with a single plausible idea. Folded like a lawn chair. And that's more than just panic. Panic lasts maybe 30 minutes tops. Then it's just fear. Panic in a real neurochemical sense blanks the mind. Fear shouldn't. In facts it's supposed to aid cognition, not destroy it. People are predictable in fear. But he isn't. It's odd. Possibly not at all relevant, but interesting.

The IQ guess is just a guess. But an educated one. It is 5 to 15 points lower than average depending what test you are using. So clearly not in any way handicapped. But physical abusers almost never clock above 120. There is a certain kind of truth in the idea that people use their fists when they can't use their words. He was not highly educated, nor was he particularly well read. He did not spend time bettering himself in that area. He did not have any particular curiosity. Bright but uneducated usually means the person educates themselves through reading and experience. He didn't do that. And Intelligence tests look for executive function. The ability to plan, execute, put together disparate pieces of information to find a solution. It's not just the murder that highlights a lack in that arena for Bury. It's not something he was good at in any part of his life. Below average, but not by a lot. IQ of 95.

[John Wheat]

Some serial killers can end up behaving in a way that begs for them to be stopped. How do we know this wasn't Bury's moment?

To Harry

Absolutely this could quite easily be Bury's moment.

Cheers John

[Mrsperfect]

Are you guessing Bury's IQ please? He had a lovely hand for letter writing and forgery. He planned Ellen's demise before he left London, (empty crate scenario). Have you considered he was suffering from a venereal disease also? I don't know how quickly it advances to the brain when untreated. He drained Ellen of nearly all her inheritance too...... so he was a broken man.

Regards Eileen

[John Wheat]

To Eileen

Well Errata is guessing Bury's IQ.

Cheers John

[Errata]

Are you guessing Bury's IQ please? He had a lovely hand for letter writing and forgery. He planned Ellen's demise before he left London, (empty crate scenario). Have you considered he was suffering from a venereal disease also? I don't know how quickly it advances to the brain when untreated. He drained Ellen of nearly all her inheritance too...... so he was a broken man.

Regards Eileen

In order,

1: Yes. And putting him at slightly below normal is nothing surprising. No one is arguing that he was some kind of evil genius, and it's fairly common for killers to score slightly below normal. I'm not insulting him.

2: I don't think penmanship is an indication of intelligence, unless you want to make correlation between know geniuses and their handwriting, none of which was "lovely". Tesla, Einstein, Vidal, Kissinger, all had unintelligible scrawl.

3: Or he needed a crate to sail to Australia, and then didn't go. And you did need a crate to sail to Australia, so it has the benefit of being reasonable.

4:Yes

5: 6-10 years is the average, though taking into account viral loads which may or may not apply, I imagine it could happen in as little as three. But the physical symptoms are catastrophic, and usually rule someone out as a killer. Terrible shaking, trembling, loss of balance, loss of motor skills, inability to sleep, etc. all preceding mental signs of decline like loss of memory or delusions.

6: I think a "broken man" is a very romanticized view of a user and abuser.

[Cogidubnus]

So far, nobody has directly addressed all the points in post #2...I'm sorry but brutal wife-killer though he was, (which is what makes him an interesting contemporaneous person), he's not actually your actual opportunistic and reactive person is he?

Just a dumb brute of a wife-killer who thinks he's better than he is, but at the end just surrenders himself to fate...

[John Wheat]

he's not actually your actual opportunistic and reactive person is he?

Just a dumb brute of a wife-killer who thinks he's better than he is, but at the end just surrenders himself to fate...

To Dave

How do you know this? Bury may have reacted to something Ellen did by murdering Ellen. How do you know Bury was dumb? At this point it's only a guess? Even if he was dumb it hardly rules him out as Jack. I don't think many people believe Jack was some sort of criminal mastermind. Surely Jack was some sort of ordinary thuggish loser and Bury was an ordinary thuggish loser.

Cheers John

[gnote]

To Dave

How do you know this? Bury may have reacted to something Ellen did by murdering Ellen. How do you know Bury was dumb? At this point it's only a guess? Even if he was dumb it hardly rules him out as Jack. I don't think many people believe Jack was some sort of criminal mastermind. Surely Jack was some sort of ordinary thuggish loser and Bury was an ordinary thuggish loser.

Cheers John

I haven't seen anybody in this thread refer to Jack as a "criminal mastermind". That seems to be something you are latching on to.

We know the ripper killed women on the streets in the largest city in the world with regular police patrolling and got away with it. There's good reason to believe he could have and was interrupted on more than one of these occasions.

At the very least this is somebody who was very daring and could handle immense pressure. It does not sound like the type of person Bury was.

[John Wheat]

I haven't seen anybody in this thread refer to Jack as a "criminal mastermind". That seems to be something you are latching on to.

We know the ripper killed women on the streets in the largest city in the world with regular police patrolling and got away with it. There's good reason to believe he could have and was interrupted on more than one of these occasions.

At the very least this is somebody who was very daring and could handle immense pressure. It does not sound like the type of person Bury was.

To Gnote

I mentioned Jack as a criminal mastermind as others have referred to Bury as dumb as if that would effect his chances of being Jack. The idea of Bury being dumb is unfounded and secondly the idea of being dumb effecting his chances of being Jack is again unfounded.

You mention Jack being very daring and Bury not being daring have you any evidence of this?

Cheers John

[Wyatt Earp]

OK I'll put my head over the parapet...

(a) he didn't cut her throat - JtR did

(b) he employed a ligature - JtR didn't

(C) his abdominal mutilations, such as they were, seem tentative if not imitatory

(D) Does he leave her posed on the street? No he attempts to pack her into a wooden box, breaking her leg in the process...

(E) He's not quick witted - he hangs around for almost a week as if wondering what to do...christ all he had to do was have a shave and catch a train...any train, headed anywhere...this was maybe the last generation that could make a trace-free fresh start - Cadosche did...this guy could've...and didn't...

(F) far from any escape strategy or even hasty risk taking, he eventually wanders down to the local copshop and effectively (though Wyatt Earp denies it) hands himself in...

Is this not enough?

Dave, I would not be surprised if the police who blew it with Bury in 1889 made just this kind of misguided assessment.

[Wyatt Earp]

Are you guessing Bury's IQ please?

Eileen, no one knows what Bury's I.Q. would have measured out to be, including Errata.

It does not take much intelligence to be a murderer. The best evidence that Bury was intelligent enough to murder women is that he was convicted of murdering a woman.

[Wyatt Earp]

At the very least this is somebody who was very daring and could handle immense pressure. It does not sound like the type of person Bury was.

Among the many adjectives, not all of them flattering, that could be used to describe Bury's decision to go to the police with that story in an effort to bluff his way out of his predicament, one of them would be "daring."

After murdering in Whitechapel, Bury could simply walk away from a crime scene and sink back into the crowd. He could not do that in Dundee without, in his view, instigating a national manhunt for himself as Jack the Ripper. The situation in Dundee was different and this has to be taken into account in assessing his behavior.

[gnote]

You mention Jack being very daring and Bury not being daring have you any evidence of this?

Cheers John

Not just daring, but handling immense pressure. Family member or not his actions after murdering his wife don't sound like work of somebody cold and calculating. (let alone an experienced murderer)

[Cogidubnus]

Dave, I would not be surprised if the police who blew it with Bury in 1889 made just this kind of misguided assessment.

So prove to me irrefutably that the police "blew it" in 1889...even at this distance in time those Dundee cops seem pretty shrewd and thorough to me...

And while you're at it, explain why this erstwhile JtR, (who can escape in microseconds from Bucks Row or Mitre Square), didn't move from the spot for a week after the crime...a bloody week...no sort of paralysis, breakdown or disintegration can explain the contrast between this and prior JtR behaviour.

Bury's behaviour from the time of the murder onwards only begins to make sense to me if the crime he's commited is far more traumatic, far more mentally devastating, than anything he's done before...