Let's narrow down some Ripper 'facts'

[Abby Normal]

Great posts Caz, Hunter, Garry!

Hunter
This talk of anatomical knowledge got me wondering about the medical book thing also as i had posted earlier. If JtR was fascinated with the insides of the female body (and it seems he was) i wonder if he could have got his hands on an anatomy book of some sort?

This thread delivers.

[caz]

Good post Garry. This makes a lot of sense to me. But be careful when suggesting we can know anything at all about the killer's 'motivations' from his known actions. I'm not sure even such killers themselves quite grasp what causes them to take the monumental step of acting out their most extreme fantasies in often frightfully risky situations and circumstances.

More than this, his known actions cannot tell us what he didn't do for a living, any more than they can tell us what he did do, or where he came from to get his criminal jollies. For all you know his motivation could have included a compulsive obsession to target only Spitalfields unfortunates (as Colin Ireland would target only gays frequenting one specific pub in Fulham).

All we can say is that serial poisoners don't have to be chemists or physicians, and knife murderers don't have to be butchers or surgeons. But they could be.

Love,

Caz
X

[DVV]

I'm doomed then... football, rugby, many little injuries, bits of skin gone here and there. Looks like I'll be haunting this plane.
Mike

I'm in touch with Evangelists and born-again punks in Ethiopia. They can save your soul for cheap and accept credit cards. Or you'll be floating over Tajikistan till the end of times.

[Garry Wroe]

Excellent post, Hunter.

[Garry Wroe]

I sometimes wonder whether we are attempting to justify "Jack's" actions in some way, as if to say it was not his fault, he could not control himself … Or, are we suggesting these potential causes because we wish to elevate him in the annals of crime to make him more like our modern sexual serial killers?

I think it's far simpler than that, Jon. Many appear incapable of associating the grotesque injuries meted out by Jack the Ripper with a 'normally' functioning human being. The logic appears to be that since the mutilations evidence more than a hint of madness, so the killer must have been in some way unhinged. Thus we have the leap from mutilations to paranoid schizophrenic.

It seems to matter not that we have many modern examples of perfectly sane killers who committed similar such crimes, nor that the Ripper’s victim and crime scene control were utterly inconsistent with a psychotic offender.

It is often argued that Jack the Ripper left few if any clues. This, however, is a fallacy. Whereas we lack DNA or fingerprint evidence, and indeed any description that might be construed as absolutely reliable, we do have an abundance of psychological clues which tell us a great deal about this man’s methods, motivations and mental state. On this basis it is inconceivable that he suffered from the kind of mental disorder that would have severely impaired his capacity to plan and execute these killings, much less retain absolute control over at least four successive victims at locations which were far from ideal for his intended purpose. Whatever his identity, Jack the Ripper was not suffering any significant degree of psychosis. Most likely, he was an Arthur Shawcross-type individual who was perfectly sane and acting upon a longstanding sexually orientated fantasy centring on the evisceration and general destruction of women.

In short, he was a paraphiliac, not a paranoid schizophrenic.