Domestic or lunatic?

[Sam Flynn]

Has this turned into an Edmund Kemper thread?

Hardly, Glenn - he's only been mentioned in a handful of posts, and then mostly with the intent of shedding some light on the Fleming scenario. Of course, if someone can be shown to have committed a "domestic" after first murdering and mutilating a series of complete strangers, I can see why that light might hurt your eyes

[Fisherman]

Come to think of it, Sam, among us placid Swedes there is actually a killer that applies to some extent here.
You will probably not have heard of Tore Hedin before. His killings took place in the early 1950´s, and Hedin still counts as one of the worst cases in Swedish criminal history. Here´s what happened:

Tore Hedin wanted to become a policeman. He never accoplished this, but he was drafted an an extra policeman, a less educated, voluntary police.

He began his killing spree by robbing the owner of a windmill, and burning the whole place down. Afterwards, he was one of the investigators at the place, throwing forwards suspects, and consoling the victims ageing father!

He used the money he had taken to impress upon his fiancée, and they were engaged. It did not hold up, though, and the girl wanted to break free. This resulted in Hedin beating her up. As a result of that, he was forced to leave the voluntary police force, and this in it´s turn was something he did not want his parents to find out about, since it would shame him.

So how did he solve the situation? He went to his parents home, and killed both his father and his mother with an axe, before setting fire to their house.

From there he went to the old peoples home where his ex fiancée worked, and killed both her and the woman who headed the home. This time too, he set fire to the house, leaving five elderly people to burn to death.

Hedin took his own life afterwards, by drowning himself in a nearby lake.

Hedin killed for money from the outset (although his first crime was burning a house down in the mid-size Swedish town of Kristianstad), and so he differs to a great extent from a man like Kemper. But some of the hallmarks are there, I feel, and I thought that it could perhaps be refreshing to mix all English-spoken serialists up with something more exotic ...

All the best,

Fisherman

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Hi ho Fisherman,

Indeed, Tore Hedin is fascinating case.
He is generally referred to as Sweden's worst mass murderer, though, rather than a serial killer. However, if we disregard the first murder - which was totally separate from the rest and occurred a year prior to the rest of his crimes - then the murder of his parents and of his fiancée and her boss later the same night, might make him a spree killer, since those two incidents were related and perpetrated a few hours after each other but still separate.

OK, I think I lost Fleming somewhere in all this...

All the best

[Fisherman]

Hi Glenn! Good to hear from you!

You write - with a subtle touch of irony, if I am not much mistaken - "OK, I think I lost Fleming somewhere in all this... "

I´m not so sure of that, Glenn. In fact, taking a closer look at things, Hedin may be a key to a possible solution involving Fleming that at least I had not thought of before!

Here it is: I have always had trouble with the differing characters of the first victims compared to the much younger and probably more attractive Kelly. And I have never been able to come up with a motive that has made any sense.
Maybe, though, Hedin offers a possible solution to that.

Let´s assume that Fleming was the Ripper. For some reason he enjoyed carving women up to pieces, and possesing their organs.

Of Kelly we know that she was truly fond of him, in spite of the fact that they had broken up. Your suggestion that it would owe to monetary issues is a sound one, I think; Barnett could offer roof over her head, and Fleming could not.

Now, women who are truly fond of a man, are generally not women who are abused and beaten up by this self same guy, something that has often been suggested in this case, due to the "ill-use" reference. Instead, they would in the normal case be returning sentiments that are there on behalf of the man they are involved with, would they not?

We know that Fleming gave her money and occasionally met with her. To me, this suggests strong bonds.

Fleming, it seems, was less and less able to provide for her or himself as time passed - his life took a downward turn that ended up in lunacy. And if he could not support Mary, it was because he could not find a job, something that could easily have been connected to beginning difficulties in his mental character.

Now, here is my suggestion: The asylum records state that Fleming suffered from delusions of persecution. Could it be that he was convinced that the game was up after slaying Eddowes?
If he was the man seen by Lawende, Levy and Harris, he may have been aware that somebody had, for the first time, gotten a good look at him. There is even the off-hand possibility that he actually knew one of these three men by sight, and thus decided that he would be hunted down.
Remember that if he suffered from deslusions of persecution, then he may well have been misjudged the chance that he would be given away to the police! Imagination may have played him a foul trick - that´s what happens when you suffer from such delusions.

And this is where we apply "Lex Hedin": Feeling certain that his Ripping days were over, he may have decided to kill Mary Kelly to prevent her from gaining knowledge about his infamous alias. And when he kills her, he goes over the top, perhaps in a psychosis, and - significantly - when he goes for an organ to bring with him, he is only interested in the heart!

The usual lack of any scrap of evidence applies to this scenario, but that should not amaze anyone. It is, however, a scenario that I find quite credible throughout, and I have not come close to anything such in Flemings case before.

Anybody who would care to comment? Perhaps you,Glenn?

All the best, my friend! On a dreary, stormy, rainy day like this the thought of a beer in one of Helsingborgs pubs comes to mind. Perhaps you would take up on that, even if you should choose not to take up on my suggestion of a Fleming scenario?

Fisherman

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Hi Fisherman!

I see what you're getting at with the Hedin example - indeed - but I have to say that I don't believe for a minute that Fleming was Jack the Ripper. I think this very strange and exhaustive need to turn him into a serial killer is based on the all too common belief that only serial killers are capable of crimes like the one performed by Kelly's murderer. Personally, I don't see any valid reasons to construct any theories in such direction.

I am also a bit surprised over the following sentence:
"Now, women who are truly fond of a man, are generally not women who are abused and beaten up by this self same guy, something that has often been suggested in this case, due to the "ill-use" reference. Instead, they would in the normal case be returning sentiments that are there on behalf of the man they are involved with, would they not?"

I have to say that is totally erronous and untrue, since - and I think you know this as well as I do - that abused women often tend to defend and even have very strong emotional or passional bonds towards their abuser. That is what makes many domestic cases so difficult to understand. So of course abused women can be fond of men who abuses them - I have seen this numerous times and it is also a commonly known, although I admit illogical, phenomenon.
Furthermore, there is of course no need to attribute Fleming's (or John Evans') later paranoid delusions to anything concerning the Ripper murders, since such mental illnesses can appear without any valid reason at all.

But indeed, I'll gladly take you up on the beer in a local pub. The stormy, grey weather - which I find quite cosy at the moment - really invites to it, don't you think? You know where to find me.

All the best

[Fisherman]

Beer it is, Glenn; I will try and get hold of you later this week!

On the issue of Fleming as the Ripper and your objections, I´ll list them and deal with them:

1. "I think this very strange and exhaustive need to turn him into a serial killer is based on the all too common belief that only serial killers are capable of crimes like the one performed by Kelly's murderer."

Not in my case, it ain´t, Glenn; I readily recognize that the type of murder that Kelly represents could well be the work of a spouse who kills only once. No problems there! But what I am suggesting is that if Fleming was indeed the Ripper - something of which I hold no certainty whatsoever, I´m just theorizing here - then he would NOT have had Kelly on his striking list until he believed that he would be exposed as the Ripper.

2. "I am also a bit surprised over the following sentence:
"Now, women who are truly fond of a man, are generally not women who are abused and beaten up by this self same guy, something that has often been suggested in this case, due to the "ill-use" reference. Instead, they would in the normal case be returning sentiments that are there on behalf of the man they are involved with, would they not?"

I have to say that is totally erronous and untrue, since - and I think you know this as well as I do - that abused women often tend to defend and even have very strong emotional or passional bonds towards their abuser. That is what makes many domestic cases so difficult to understand."

Absolutely correct, Glenn; the failure to recognize this is what makes many a poster incapable of seeing the mechanisms I suggest as vital behind the Stride murder, so I am well aware of it.
But in this case I am not suggesting some sort of "folie d´amour", if you take my meaning. And it all owes to some extent to semantics (making me a sitting duck, should that be your wish). You see, I think that the kind of bonds that prevents a beaten woman from leaving her tormentor could be described as a distorted form of love - but in this case we are speaking of fondness! And to me, being fond of somebody points to a much more peaceful affection.
Be that as it may, there is no reason to forget that most affectionate relationships involve two people who DONT abuse and beat up on each other, and as has previously been shown, the term ill-use need not involve any physical violence at all - just as it may have been a lie on Kellys behalf when associating with Venturney. We simply don´t know.
But we DO know that there are similarities between for example Chapman and Kelly when it comes to removing the abdomen in flaps, perhaps - and I am only saying perhaps - indicating a relationship. And of course, the other well known common denominators are there, like the cut in the throat and the notches in the backbone. This all means that a very strong case always can be made for the same killer being responsible for both deeds!

3. "Furthermore, there is of course no need to attribute Fleming's (or John Evans') later paranoid delusions to anything concerning the Ripper murders, since such mental illnesses can appear without any valid reason at all."

Of course, Glenn. But if Kelly was killed by a man who was the terror of London, and who was anxious not to let her find out about it - the way Hedin killed his parents out of shame for his deeds - then the mixture of delusions of persecution and mania is a very, very compelling one, and one that fits the bill very neatly. And the fact that Flemings plasterer´s occupation goes down the drain starting somewhere about the time of the Ripper deeds is likewise much interesting, I think.

I have a feeling that those beers won´t go down silently...

The best, Glenn!

Fisherman

[Cap'n Jack]

You swedes and turnips do my head in, attempting to apply murder cases from your own barmy communities where you only see sun light for half a year, and to get at alcohol you have to take a ferry to the Fatherland.
You bastards designed the Volvo to cause accidents.

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

I have a feeling that those beers won´t go down silently...

Hahaha.

Well, I think many of those point - especially regarding the alleged similarites in mutilations - have been debated over before so I will only stick to a couple of them:

-- I do think trying to theorize about the definiton of Kelly's 'fondness' of Fleming is arguing about semantics. In those days and in such environments, relationship could get rather rough and I expect that the 'tough love' Mary Kelly might have been subjected to could have done very little to destroy her fondness for Fleming.
Of course there is also the possibility that Mary Kelly's fondness of him really was all about the fact that he gave her money, and that she really didn't care for him more than that although she tried to give another impression to him and her closest friends.

I don't like speaking ill of the dead - and of course I could be wrong - but I see Mary Kelly as very manipulating, as someone who tried to sit on two chairs at the same time. Which is why she continued to live with Barnett even though she doesn't appears to really have cared about him - her relationship with Barnett was probably all about money and getting a roof over head (while it no doubt was more to him).
people are often speaking of Mary Kelly being 'romanticized', and I think it's important to remember that Mary kelly was a prostitute and as such most likely a rather tough woman, who did everything in her power to survive. And probably used people - preferably men - along the way.
And as I said - it is my belief that she had to pay for it in the end.

-- Just one last point about Hedin.
It is important to remember that Hedin's motive for murdering his parents was not because he felt 'ashamed' of his crimes himself, but in order to save THEM from the shame (at least that is how he reasoned in his own mind) when he realized that there was no turning back. I fail to see that in the presumed Ripper-Fleming scenario.

All the best

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

You swedes and turnips do my head in, attempting to apply murder cases from your own barmy communities where you only see sun light for half a year, and to get at alcohol you have to take a ferry to the Fatherland.
You bastards designed the Volvo to cause accidents.

Firstly, mr Spanish Brandy,

We have sun light just as long as every other country - don't insult your own intelligence by falling for ignorant, stupid myths.

Secondly, Volvo is a safe car.

All the best

[Fisherman]

Hello again, Glenn!

Good ol´Cap´n Jacks words on us Swedes about going to the Fatherland to get alcohol do not apply in my case - I find it intoxicating enough that Fleming CAN be fitted into a credible scenario, supported by numerous other cases showing similarities on important points. Up til yesterday, I did not find that credible.

In itself, it means that I shall have to give it all some afterthought before rushing into something that may hold no water at all (let alone alcohol). But weighing it all together, I will say that Fleming is moving up my list of possible Rippers at an impressing speed.

That said, I have always held the wiew that the Ripper´s name still awaits mentioning.

On the issue of what fondness meant in the case of Fleming/Kelly, I will merrily admit that we have little chance of knowing. But as long as there was a strong bond between the two – at least if you asked Fleming about it – I will settle for any variety.

Glenn, when we have discussed Kelly, you have always held the conviction that this killing displays many factors that tally well with a domestic slaying. Your guess has been that the man who killed Kelly knew her intimately, if I have understood you correctly.
You are a cautious man, Glenn, and thus you will normally not name suspects, but I know that you favour Fleming over Barnett in the Kelly case, and I also know that you see a possible motive in Kellys rejecting Fleming and taking up with Joe number two instead, since he earned a better wage. Please correct me if I am wrong!

This has all lead you to see Kelly as a one-off, unconnected to the other killings, meaning that if Fleming DID do Kelly, it would be very hard to explain why he did the others first.

But what if there was no willing and no motive at all to kill Kelly from the outset?
If it was all about jealousy, one must say that Fleming took his time! On the other hand, if he was the Ripper, and only decided to kill Kelly to spare her the shame, THEN we find ourselves with a very plausible timeline.
It would explain why Kelly disresembled the other victims.
It would explain why there were great, great similarities inbetween the killings (I know that you find the notches in the backbone of both Chapman and Kelly a distressing factor).
It would provide us with a killer who moved to the Victoria Home in August.
It would give an intriguing answer to the question why a killer who normally looked for organs from the abdominal cavity suddenly went for the heart instead.
It would create a scenario where the killer believed that he was found out - only to later evince that he suffered from delusions of persecution.
It would explain why Kelly was found in her undergarments, lying on her bed - as if she had gone to bed with someone she knew.
It would give us a killer who very probably knew all there was to know about the latch and lock mechanisms of the door of number 13 Millers Court.

We do not even need to have him killing Kelly because he did not want to shame her - maybe he crept down into her bed that night, convinced that he had been spotted and recognized as the Ripper, and that the game was up.
Maybe he desperately tried to explain it all to her in that bed, whereupon she was terrified and told him that she wanted him out of her life. That would leave us with the oldest motive in the world (if I can´t have her, noone else will), plus it would leave us with time enough for her to cry out "Oh, murder!" and try to fend his attack off.

Turning the timetable and the events this way, recognizing that Kelly was not an intended victim at all, offers us the possibility to fit Fleming in as the Ripper in a very compelling manner, I feel.

One of the things that can flaw it all, is of course if the Seaside Home identification did take place as some belive it did, with Lawende pointing out a man of Jewish descendance. But that identification has left many a Ripperologist baffled, and there seems to be very little certainty about the details involved, so I don´t see it as to much of an obstacle, at least not as it stands.

Tell me, Glenn - or anybody else on the boards - are there any other major flaws around? Or could Fleming have been the Ripper along these lines?

The best, Glenn!

Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Cap´n Jack writes:

"You swedes and turnips do my head in, attempting to apply murder cases from your own barmy communities where you only see sun light for half a year, and to get at alcohol you have to take a ferry to the Fatherland.
You bastards designed the Volvo to cause accidents."

Last week, Cap´n, I returned from Denmark - not the Fatherland - with a cartrunk full of nice wine. So you are close to being spot on there!
As for my sentiments about Britain, us Swedes love that country to bits. Started with the vikings, I believe!

All the best, Cap´n!

Fisherman

[Bailey]

Hello again, Glenn!

One of the things that can flaw it all, is of course if the Seaside Home identification did take place as some belive it did, with Lawende pointing out a man of Jewish descendance. But that identification has left many a Ripperologist baffled, and there seems to be very little certainty about the details involved, so I don´t see it as to much of an obstacle, at least not as it stands.

Fisherman

Then of course there's the point (I had originally typed fact, but of course we can't be sure of that, can we? I am learning...) that regardless of who was identified and by whom, that person may not necessarily have been the Ripper. After all, whichever witness it was did not (at least to our current knowledge) witness a murder, just men standing with - possibly assaulting, but not killing - women. So while there may have been an ID of the man seen with Eddowes or tussling with Stride, that man was not necessarily the killer. And even if he was Stride's killer, he may not be Jack...

B.

Hey look, I'm a constable now!

[Fisherman]

Bailey writes:

"...regardless of who was identified and by whom, that person may not necessarily have been the Ripper."

Correct, of course, Bailey. That has to go into the equation too. Incidentally, the man (B S man) who tussled with – and who perhaps/probably killed – Stride, was not the Ripper in my book. But just like you say, there is a possibility that cannot be discounted that she met with more than one aggressive man that day.

Probabilities is what it boils down to, never certainties ...

All the best, Bailey!

Fisherman

[Ben]

Back from hols, and I've thoroughly enjoyed digesting and chewing over the last few pages. Some interesting ideas floatin'.

Cheers,
Ben

[caz]

Fleming's height was 5 foot 7, although the entry was 6'7" (sic) - the "sic" naturally present to indicate an error.

Hi Ben,

Hope you enjoyed those hols. I’m still trying to catch up after mine!

Although I’m not for one second trying to make a case for Fleming being a whopping 6 foot 7, you have to be careful when interpreting sic. It is merely used to indicate that this is literally how the figure (word, name and so on) appeared in the primary source. It doesn’t invariably indicate a known error, nor indeed a knowledge of the correct information. In other numerical contexts a mere sic would be totally inadequate for correction purposes. How would we know, for instance, if 7 minutes past 6 o’clock [sic] was telling us that the time was actually 7 minutes past 5 o’clock?

Sic is also used to indicate an apparent mistake, or to suggest there may be doubt over the accuracy of the original, in the absence of a proven resolution either way. In fact I don’t think the person putting sic after Fleming’s height would have known that the man was in reality 5 foot 7; it would have been an educated guess on their part, just as it is on ours. The problem is that sic can also be attached unwittingly to a genuine anomaly, eg one of the tallest (or shortest or heaviest) men alive in the LVP, whose vital statistics will look highly unlikely when faithfully recorded. Where does that leave all the genuine extremes if they are all put down to clerical errors?

Another problem is that if the original scribe could make a Fleming Giant out of a Mister Average, by writing 6’ instead of 5’ (figures which can look very similar but make a big difference when it comes to height), he could even more easily have written 7” in mistake for 1” or 11” (7 looks similar to 1, and seven rhymes with eleven), in which case the real Fleming in stockinged feet could have measured 5 foot 7, 5 foot 11, 6 foot 1 or 6 foot 7, or pretty much anything in between.

Venturney's reference to ill-use on Fleming's part on the grounds that Kelly was living with another man point very strongly in the direction of physical abuse, but how often and how severe we don't know.

What about the possibility of verbal and mental abuse, in the absence of anyone witnessing any actual slapping around? If he turned up one minute pressing money on Mary, then showed up the next to slag her off for taking it off him and then accused her of all sorts of other imagined wrongs, because he had already begun to delude himself about their relationship, she could well have felt ill-used by the mentally fragile man he was soon to become, while retaining her original fondness for the man she met.

I’m afraid I agreed with Dan over the contemporary examples of ill-use that Fisherman provided. I don’t understand which ones you thought were related to actual physical violence and why. Could you elaborate? As far as I could make out, the woman had ill-used the man by jilting him and he was doing a Jack Point, and none of the others had any violent connotations either.

In any case, it seems to me that anyone considering Fleming as a reasonable suspect for Mary’s murder has to get their act together and decide whether they want him to be a physically violent domestic abuser who kills Mary in a rit of fealous jage that produces a fair old mock-up of a genuine ripper crime that had everybody fooled at the time; or a cool, apparently harmless, under-the-radar serial mutilator, who went on, after making Mary his final act, to be recognisably mentally unstable.

I do appreciate that a killer can suffer from any mental condition that can afflict a non-killer, without it necessarily being a cause of their murderous behavour, or manifesting itself while the behaviour is going on. But I don’t believe anyone could have committed the ripper crimes - all at night and in relative privacy and quick succession - while in the throes of a mental illness and been able to retain total anonymity. Two mutilators, one for the older victims and one for Mary, is really stretching things in my view.

If we are to look away from the rest, Fleming really is the most convincing suggestion mentioned for Kellys death, no doubt about it. But when we bring the other victims on stage, we are faced with something quite different from a domestic scenario. And if we accept that the same killer is responsible for all the killings (Stride aside, as usual...), we are left with something that resembles crime fiction if we try to nail Fleming as Jack. If someone tried to force-feed me a plot like that in a crime novel, I would use said novel for toilet paper.

I think you were right here, Fisherman, although you were also right to reconsider when Kemper was mentioned. However, his example is not strong enough to sway me when it comes to putting any of Mary’s associates in the frame as Jack. We may as well start looking for other associates of Polly, Annie and Kate, who could well have ill-used them at some point, or been in some sort of institution, and add them to the list of potential rippers.

Love,

Caz
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