John Douglas´ Profile

[Siobhan Patricia Mulcahy]

So lets play, Profile the Ripper.

"There were nine killings in the series. How many are likely to have been slain by the same hand, that of the man we now call Jack the Ripper?
Popular report at the time credited him with all nine. But detectives and surgeons who worked on the case held widely divergent views.

At the extremes Inspector Reid attributed all nine murders to the Ripper and Superintendent Arnold felt that he was responsible for no more than four, apparently those of Nichols, Chapman, Stride and Kelly." (p.357)


The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is, if Profiling is objective, as opposed to subjective, which do we include/exclude and why?

Regards, Jon S.

Hi Jon S.,
So the number of victims could have been four or five or six or nine depending on which source you refer to. What with the contradictory witness statements, missing evidence and dispute over the number of JtR victims, no wonder the case was never solved.
Though the double slaying on the one day does leave it open to question whether both were by JtR's hand, I'm going for the five well-known cannonical victims. The other murders didn't have quite the same m.o.

[sdreid]

It looks like Nichols and Chapman were the only ones all those agreed on and Nichols had no organs removed so that leaves us with an extremely small sample.

The Book of Lists includes Jackson to make a top 10.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon S.,
So the number of victims could have been four or five or six or nine depending on which source you refer to. What with the contradictory witness statements, missing evidence and dispute over the number of JtR victims, no wonder the case was never solved....

Hi Siobhan.
I didn't seriously expect to open up an exchange on Profiling the Ripper, the post had a percentage of tongue-in-cheek criticism attached to it.
Essentially, I was suggesting what a pointless excercise it is.

I have just a little disdain for Ripper Profiling, not Profiling in general, Profiling can actually be quite usefull.
When Profiling is applied today, especially in the most celebrated (read - successfull) cases, the Profiler is not presented with a wide range of corpses potentially attributed to an equally wide range of killers, or handfull at best.

In most, if not all cases, where Profiling is applied, the crimes/bodies are already determined as a 'group' (by Signature, M.O. or Victim Typology) - to be the work of one killer.
Profiling does not segregate victims into groups, the Victim Group has to be applied first, then the Profiler is brought in.
In these situations Profiling is considerably easier to apply, with a greater chance of success.
In cases where a group of victims cannot be so divided, or cannot be determined as a whole to be the work of one killer, the Profilers cannot apply their guidelines. This is the situation with the Whitechapel Murders.

Regards, Jon S.