Organised or Disorganised?

I enjoyed reading that math example too Christine...nice post.

To answer your question Frank, I dont know that he could have been as successful with other venues, different profile victims, or even modified attack/kill behaviours....I can only say that with the venues he did kill in, he seems to have had little trouble leaving the scene unseen.

Either he knew the areas streets and lanes like the back of his hands, even at night....or he had some ideas about how to leave certain areas discreetly. Im not sure that the victims always led.

Cheers Frank, Christine.

[FrankO]

If when you say "disorganized" you mean in a general sense, like describing my office, then you can make a case for Jack being organized or not.

Hi Christine,

Allthough I appreciate your posts too, I'm not such a big fan of FBI based profiling, as it seems to be based too much on statistics and too little on the actual individual case that is being researched.

To me, 'organized' means: aware of the possible consequences of your chosen action and taking precautions to prevent being held responsible for those consequences. 'Disorganized' to me means: unaware of the possible consequences and not taking any precautions. These are the two extremes, but there's a lot of room in between.

Using these two extremes, JtR wasn't completely 'disorganized'. If he was, it would have been sheer luck that kept him from being caught as the Ripper, and I don't believe that to be true. He was undoubtedly lucky, but not just lucky. Of course, this is just my take on it.

All the best,
Frank

[Jon Guy]

Very interesting post, Christine, thanks

[Christine]

Actually, we don't know that he wasn't caught. We do know that the police never arrested him and charged him with murder. But a family member may have caught him and sent him to an asylum, or he may have committed suicide, or he may have come so close to getting caught that he moved to America. And it's also quite possible that the police knew about this suicide or commitment, and simply decided to let the whole business rest at that.

If when you say "disorganized" you mean in a general sense, like describing my office, then you can make a case for Jack being organized or not. But there's no question that if you follow the list of organized and disorganized traits as used by profilers, that Jack is disorganized.

Disorganized

Vaginal rape (74%)
Overkill (70%)
Multiple sex acts (66%)
Beaten (61%)
Body left in isolated spot (54%)
Belongings scattered (47%)
Tease cuts (38%)
Bludgeoned (38%)
Clothing scattered (36%)
Object penetration (35%)
Improvised murder weapon (31%)
Manual strangulation (27%)
Violence directed at genitalia (23%)
Weapon left in victim (19%)
Facial disfigurement (19%)
Throat cut (19%)
Trail of clothing to murder scene (13%)
Ransacking (11%)
Genital mutilation (10%)
Body parts missing (10%)
Thoracic mutilation (9%)
Burns on victim (8%)
Abdominal mutilation (8%)
Innards extracted (6%)
Decapitation (5%)
Dismemberment (3%)

Organized
Victim alive during sex acts (91%)
Body positioned (75%)
Murder weapon missing (67%)
Multiple crime scene (61%)
Body concealed (58%)
Torture (53%)
Restraints (40%)
Body covered post mortem (37%)
Ligature strangulation (34%)
Firearm used (23%)
Tampered with evidence (21%)
Gagging (16%)
Bitemarks (5%)

Now part of the problem is that the dichotomy is artificial--all killers are both organized and disorganized, some lean one way, some the other, but the main point of the article by Canter, et al., is that any given organized feature is just as likely to be found with another organized feature as it is with a disorganized feature. So keeping all this in mind, let's look at Jack.

Disorganized
Overkill (70%)
Body left in isolated spot (54%)
Belongings scattered (47%)
Manual strangulation (27%)
Violence directed at genitalia (23%)
Facial disfigurement (19%)
Throat cut (19%)
Genital mutilation (10%)
Body parts missing (10%)
Thoracic mutilation (9%)
Abdominal mutilation (8%)
Innards extracted (6%)

So Jack has 12 of 26 hits, if I count correctly, including some very uncommon features like "innards extracted."

Organized
Body positioned (75%)
Murder weapon missing (67%)
Multiple crime scene (61%)

Only 3 of 13, and all quite common.

I said dismemberment was organized, and I was wrong. I apologize for this. I assumed the main reason someone would dismember a corpse would be to dispose of it without revealing its identity, but I guess the ick factor pushes this into the disorganized side.

The problem with all this is that there is no real dichotomy. The claim is that murders with a high ick factor (like Jacks') also reflect on the killer's life, that he is low IQ, has a family protecting him, doesn't have a regular job, stuff like that. All this is pretty questionable. Still, I find it hard to believe that someone who did this could have washed up and gone to work in a pie shop the next morning without someone so much as asking if he'd had a rough night.

[Jay Batsford]

Even if JTR had left clues the law was powerless to act on them there was no forensics to speak of at the time no finger printing no DNA no profiling the killer had to be caught in the act directly or leaving the scene of the murder directly and if they where suspected of the crime but weren't caught in the act the only way to get a conviction was to get the suspect to confess! How many murders do you think went unsolved when the police had so little to work with?

[FrankO]

I believe that if mutiple women were probably approached in the same manner, subdued in roughly the same way...before a knife is used, ... the throats of the victims are cut while they are unconscious or semi so, then to the mutilatation of the abdominal and groin area, often removing or physically taking some contents,... thats an ordered behaviour pattern being displayed.

Hi Michael,

I agree with you that his approach was rather methodical, or so it seems, which would be another more organized feature.

If a man set out to do those things and does accomplish them, not only that, he gets out of there and home without witnesses or leaving a trace of himself.....in my mind thats Organized behaviour...despite the sites and times.

Are you saying that JtR could have done what he did at any given time of day and at any given site without being caught?

All the best Michael,
Frank

[FrankO]

I would have to say he was organized; he did not leave anything behind to incriminate himself other than the body.

He left no clues of his identity.

He made sure that nothing incriminating was left behind.

Hi BW,

What clues are you thinking of? What clues would the police of 1888 have needed to have a chance of catching him?

All the best,
Frank

[BLUE WIZZARD]

In my opinion as to whether Jack was organized or disorganized.

I would have to say he was organized; he did not leave anything behind to incriminate himself other than the body.

He left no clues of his identity.

Even though Jack worked fast, I believe that he was not in anyway panicked or stressed at any time while working on his victim.

He made sure that nothing incriminating was left behind.

If Jack was disorganized he would have been caught.

BW

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Jon.

Dismembering a body is considered organized because it makes it harder to ID the victim and is part of disposing of the evidence. Some of the torsos were never identified, if I recall correctly, which would of course make it impossible for the police to question acquaintances about the victims' last hours. In general, the organized killer plans his crimes in advance, considers the choice of victim in advance, plans a location for the crime, and plans how to dispose of the evidence.

However, as discussed in the study I linked to above, there isn't really a dichotomy--the killer who dismembers his victims turns out to be no more likely to plan his location in advance than the average killer. However, the torso killer certainly seems to be planning ahead much more than Jack. He must have had a private place where the victims were taken, for example.

In the Thames torso series, the only body that was identified was that of prostitute Elizabeth Jackson.

Chris

[Christine]

Do you mean the Torso killer was organised because he had a place to dismember the body ?

Because the Torso killer hid the I.D. of the body we can also consider that there was a link between killer and victim.

Already we have two facts about our organised killer.

Facts not applicable to our disorganised killer who picked up strangers, and left them where they were killed.

Hi Jon.

Dismembering a body is considered organized because it makes it harder to ID the victim and is part of disposing of the evidence. Some of the torsos were never identified, if I recall correctly, which would of course make it impossible for the police to question acquaintances about the victims' last hours. In general, the organized killer plans his crimes in advance, considers the choice of victim in advance, plans a location for the crime, and plans how to dispose of the evidence.

However, as discussed in the study I linked to above, there isn't really a dichotomy--the killer who dismembers his victims turns out to be no more likely to plan his location in advance than the average killer. However, the torso killer certainly seems to be planning ahead much more than Jack. He must have had a private place where the victims were taken, for example.

[Jon Guy]

To display the characteristics of organized in 1888, the killer would act much more like the torso killer, making victim i.d. as hard as possible. Instead of burying he would engage in other behaviors that would reflect his understanding that being caught for murder was a fatal proposition.

Do you mean the Torso killer was organised because he had a place to dismember the body ?

Because the Torso killer hid the I.D. of the body we can also consider that there was a link between killer and victim.

Already we have two facts about our organised killer.

Facts not applicable to our disorganised killer who picked up strangers, and left them where they were killed.

Hi gents,

Frank and Monty, maybe my position isnt established properly...Im not neccesarily saying there should be a Canon with Polly, Annie and Kate. And venue choices and time allocations might have been just fine with him if he had his wits about him,...in fact its possible he might have liked the fact his acts were publically displayed. It might have been part of his goals for all we know.

I believe that if mutiple women were probably approached in the same manner, subdued in roughly the same way...before a knife is used, ... the throats of the victims are cut while they are unconscious or semi so, then to the mutilatation of the abdominal and groin area, often removing or physically taking some contents,... thats an ordered behaviour pattern being displayed. I believe the killer that everyone now calls Jack was a man who behaved like I suggest above on all of his murders.

I believe 2 key signatures are there....that he subdues the women before a knife is used, meaning that he physically engages the victim with hands or some other implement or tool,...and that he is focussed on mutilations in specific areas of the body, and perhaps organs within that same area.

If a man set out to do those things and does accomplish them, not only that, he gets out of there and home without witnesses or leaving a trace of himself.....in my mind thats Organized behaviour...despite the sites and times.

Setting of objectives, demonstrated preference to attack scenarios and commencements, specific sequenced non-varied actions resulting in a victim that is dead or dying and has bled much of her fluids out and is therefore a less messy subject to execute his experiments on.

For me personally, I see Polly and Annie being in a group together almost certainly....and seemingly in contradiction to my point above, but not......I think he was interrupted with Polly, and thats why he moved from the front of buildings to the back of them with Annie.

Cheers fellas

[Monty]

All in all, to me that would constitute 'mixed' based on only 3 victims, allthough I'd put him a bit closer to 'disorganized' than 'organized'.

My stance as well Frank.

Monty

[FrankO]

Based on a supposition that the 5 deaths in the Canon were his and his alone........I agree 100% Monty. I do think its possible to determine an answer to the question...but not with a Canonical 5.

Hi Michael,

I don't agree with you there. Based on only Nichols, Chapman & Eddowes we could say that JtR was disorganized in the sense that he took huge risks doing what he did out in the streets, but that he was organized in the sense that he struck when and/or where there were few to no people about in the street and most people were at least trying to sleep, he was able to not give himself away until the moment he actually struck, that he worked very swiftly, that he seems to have used his knife in such a way that he didn’t get all covered in blood, that he seems to have kept an eye and ear on his surroundings so that he was on his way before anyone walked into the scene and that he didn’t stick out between the crime scenes and his home. And perhaps to a lesser extent, he apparently was able too keep such a low profile in between murders that, unlike many others, he wasn’t suspected.

All in all, to me that would constitute 'mixed' based on only 3 victims, allthough I'd put him a bit closer to 'disorganized' than 'organized'.

All the best,
Frank

I think this threads title is slightly misleading.

The reason being is that, in my humble and non-educated opinion, Jack was mixed. He has traits that belong in both camps.

Monty

Based on a supposition that the 5 deaths in the Canon were his and his alone........I agree 100% Monty. I do think its possible to determine an answer to the question...but not with a Canonical 5.

Best regards Monty...nice to see you.