Is Jack someone we have never heard of?

[HelenaWojtczak]

It depends on what you mean by "sane" and "rational." Not every psycho- or sociopath is a raving lunatic-- or even a Charles Manson. Some serial killers are very calm when they discuss what they have done. Jeffrey Dahmer seems downright introspective. Other people, like Ted Bundy, are egomaniacal, and speak as though they have rights other people don't have, like the right to take their rage out on people they don't even know, but they are rational enough to know that they shouldn't come out and say that.

"I feels good" is sort of a rational reason for doing something. Most people would prefer you think it through a little, and get to "It feels good, AND doesn't hurt anyone," but all normal people do some things just because they want to. Normal people even do things they know are wrong, and the reason we know that is so, is that they try to keep things a secret. They may tell you that whatever it was-- not turning in a wallet they found, and keeping the money in it, or cheating on a fiance before the wedding, was somehow not wrong, but the very fact that they were dishonest about it tells you they knew it was wrong on some level.

There isn't a dichotomy between "crazed killer," and "rational person." There's a continuum. JTR was probably somewhere in the middle. Rational and normal appearing, so that he didn't alarm people, and so that he didn't go around telling everybody what he did to women in his spare time, but psychopathic enough to enjoy murdering women and mutilating the bodies.

Sorry Riv, I find I can't agree with you at all.

I'm not saying the person comes across as a wild-eyed raving loony to those around him, but inside his mind he must be deranged.

They can be calm when they discuss it, yes, but they cannot give rational reasons for it, not like, for example, killing to shut someone up, or bumping off Aunt Mavis for her money.

Rippers and eviscerator types are driven to do things that you and me and other normal people cannot possibly do -- we'd baulk at it. We have a natural disgust of it. We'd have to have a gun aimed at our brains before we could do such things to another human being, and even then many of us would choose to die rather than rip someone's guts out with a knife. And if we did it, we could not live with ourselves, we'd have it on our conscience.

Many of these serial killers hear voices or say God made them do it, or they are trying to rid the streets of prostitutes etc.

To say "I feels good" is sort of a rational reason for doing something in relation to serially ripping open torsos and pulling people's insides out, so, sorry Rav mate, that is not applicable at all.

Helena

[Sally]

Hi Helena

I agree with you. To what extent can you envisage such a person living a 'normal' life? Do you think he had a job? A wife and family? Friends? I wonder if he was able to compartmentalise his life - perhaps he looked quite normal in many respects.

[Phil H]

There's something odd, IMHO, about the logic that says that one killer did all.

As I have said several times, in most discussions (bar this one evidently) the torso-killer and the Ripper have been perceived as two separate killers.

We know there were murderers before and after JtR - simple chance suggests that occasionally they must overlap.

Other wise you have the slightly humourous situation of someone saying to themselves - "I want to kill, but JtR hasn't come to an end yet. Better wait!"

There were other murderers around in London in autumn 1888 - we KNOW that. So why not open your mind to the possibility of two or more men doing the killings?

Phil H

[Phil Carter]

It depends on what you mean by "sane" and "rational." Not every psycho- or sociopath is a raving lunatic-- or even a Charles Manson. Some serial killers are very calm when they discuss what they have done. Jeffrey Dahmer seems downright introspective. Other people, like Ted Bundy, are egomaniacal, and speak as though they have rights other people don't have, like the right to take their rage out on people they don't even know, but they are rational enough to know that they shouldn't come out and say that.

"I feels good" is sort of a rational reason for doing something. Most people would prefer you think it through a little, and get to "It feels good, AND doesn't hurt anyone," but all normal people do some things just because they want to. Normal people even do things they know are wrong, and the reason we know that is so, is that they try to keep things a secret. They may tell you that whatever it was-- not turning in a wallet they found, and keeping the money in it, or cheating on a fiance before the wedding, was somehow not wrong, but the very fact that they were dishonest about it tells you they knew it was wrong on some level.


There isn't a dichotomy between "crazed killer," and "rational person." There's a continuum. JTR was probably somewhere in the middle. Rational and normal appearing, so that he didn't alarm people, and so that he didn't go around telling everybody what he did to women in his spare time, but psychopathic enough to enjoy murdering women and mutilating the bodies.

Hello Rivkah,

Good post indeed.
Anders Breivik has just been pronounced sane and of (by legal definition) sound mind.
His meticulous planning, execution of said plans and his total self belief in the anti-socialist way of 20th C life were SOME of the reasons why the opinion of sanity was arrived at.
Now we all know he lives coccooned in his own little meglomaniacal world, which for some spells out psycopath- and we all know he isnt 'normal', but the lawful definition is that he isnt mad.

His actions, it can be, and was, argued, were not the actions of a normal human being.
But if he had been found medically insane, by law, then technically he COULD have easily faked his sanity and have been released at some time in the future. This way he will never get out of prison, where he himself wanted to be, and from wheqe HE thinks he can play the martyr.

And no, there isnt a Home Secretary invented who will ever allow his release.

Best wishes

Phil

[Michael W Richards]

There's something odd, IMHO, about the logic that says that one killer did all.

As I have said several times, in most discussions (bar this one evidently) the torso-killer and the Ripper have been perceived as two separate killers.

We know there were murderers before and after JtR - simple chance suggests that occasionally they must overlap.

Other wise you have the slightly humourous situation of someone saying to themselves - "I want to kill, but JtR hasn't come to an end yet. Better wait!"

There were other murderers around in London in autumn 1888 - we KNOW that. So why not open your mind to the possibility of two or more men doing the killings?

Phil H

Hi Phil,

Im assuming that you mean 2 or more men doing all the killings, torsos included?

Well, for me its almost a certainty that more than one man was involved in the Canonical Group alone using only a small tidbit of evidence. Only one murder was committed by someone likely left handed. If you review the averages, you are talking about 1% of any population being truly ambidextrous, so, the right handed killer had a left handed accomplice, or a left handed man did it by himself.

I dont think its ever been helpful to place darkly discolored oranges in a plum basket just because thats the closest match by color. Liz Stride is the perfect example....had she been killed at any time before that Fall or after a long hiatus by the alleged Ripper, she would be seen as just another victim of urban violence. That she is killed not only during that Fall but also on the same night as someone else was "ripped" are the ONLY reasons she has been talked about for 120 plus years as one of Jacks.

Cheers Phil.

[Bridewell]

The ONLY Reasons

That she is killed not only during that Fall but also on the same night as someone else was "ripped" are the ONLY reasons she has been talked about for 120 plus years as one of Jacks.

That she was, like the other victims, killed with a knife
That the throat was targeted - as was the case with the other victims
That she was, like the other victims, a prostitute.
That she was, like the other victims, someone who was - or appeared to be - drunk.
That she was, like the other victim slain on the same night, killed in close proximity to a club frequented by Jewish men

These are also reasons which have been considered.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Bridewell]

Further to the above (Edit time ran out!):

It is the totality of these things which, to me anyway, suggests that Stride was an interrupted Ripper slaying.

I actually don't understand the argument which suggests that an intoxicated prostitute, killed by a knife wound to the throat on 'H' Division during the Autumn of Terror, on the same night as another murder has to be the work of a second killer. Perhaps that's just me.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Abby Normal]

I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility, if I was thinking along the lines of the torso murderer and the JTR being the same man. Dismemberment is normally for disposal reasons isn't it? It's a question of how can we distinguish between deliberate mutilation and mutilation that occurs as a result of dismemberment for disposal purposes (as I mentioned previously with a possible crossover between JTR's abdominal and organ curiosity and Elizabeth Jackson's murder). JTR would have mutilated his torso victims too I would think? In the Whitehall torso case the lower pelvis, and pelvic organs including the uterus were never found, it's easy to link this to JTR, but could it have occured simply as a consequence of trying to minimise a corpse for disposal?

hi Debra
Along with Whitehall case, EJ also abdominal mutilations, correct? So that's two right there that could be linked. did any of the other torsos have abdominal mutilations?

[Michael W Richards]

That she was, like the other victims, killed with a knife
1. That the throat was targeted - as was the case with the other victims
2. That she was, like the other victims, a prostitute.
3. That she was, like the other victims, someone who was - or appeared to be - drunk.
4. That she was, like the other victim slain on the same night, killed in close proximity to a club frequented by Jewish men

These are also reasons which have been considered.

Regards, Bridewell.

Hi Bridewell,They may be considered, but they hold little real weight.

1. People who attack with knives often attack the throat. Liz Strides was cut unlike any other Canonicals. Also, a third victim that night had her throat slit.
2. Its unclear why Liz was where she was, but prostituting herself seems by the physical evidence highly improbable.
3. Liz Stride had not consumed alcohol by the coroners report.
4. That 2 women were killed on the same night is coincidental, that 2 women were killed on the same night during a supposed series of kills by a lone assassin is really the argument there.

All the points suggested are circumstantial tidbits, but the really important bit of information when considering this murder as a Ripper killing is the one you mentioned in you next post...the "interruption". There is not one piece of circumstantial or physical evidence that suggests the killer intended to do anthing other than kill Liz Stride. Therefore, there is no evidence that supports that theory. Since that murder could have taken about 2 seconds, unless he cuts her as the cart pulls in, he would have had some time to at least prep his victim. Splay the legs, cut the skirt, at the very least, roll her onto her back.

She appeared "as if gently lain down".

If a woman was found murdered during BTK's reign of terror and she was not bound, tortured, then killed, it doesnt mean that he chose not to do that this time round. Or that he was interrupted before he could do his "thing". Canonical Victim 1 and Canonical Victim 2 were almost certainly killed so the killer could mutilate them post mortem, the severity of the throat cuts also suggest that fast bloodletting was desired. Indicating that the killer attempted to do his surgery with the minimum of blood. Thats planning...ahead. Thats intentional. Thats a man committed to accomplishing his goals. Thats focus. Thats methodology and signature in one.

That focus is only present in one other Canonical murder.

Cheers Bridewell.

[Jonathan H]

To Phil H

It's 'Montie', not Monty, due to a primary source.

Your tart jokes to one side, the timing of the entirely posthumous suspect, Montie Druitt's demise was very inconvenient and embarrassing from Macngahten's point of view (though not personally, rather institutionally) because the police had been, in effect, chasing a deceased maniac's 'ghost' for over two years, until he [privately] 'laid' him to rest.

Then what on earth to do ...?

Hence Mac's cheeky and mostly successful attempt, from 1898, to get the public to accept that the police knew at the time that Kelly was the final murder because, allegedly, the probable Ripper had to be either dead or imbecillic -- because no human mind could fucntion normally 'a single day' after Miller's Ct.

Jack the Ripper had to have stopped and was probably among some alleged 1888 suspects who no longer functioned, or were no longer alive. Thus the murderer's reign was spectacular and brief, and not protracted and inconclusive (at least until 1891 for Mac) as it actually had been for Scotland Yard.

This propaganda campaign was so effective that some police gratefully swallowed it too: Anderson for sure, Jack Littlechild by 1913, maybe Swanson by 1910, Smith, Abberline to some extent -- but not Reid.

[Errata]

Sorry Riv, I find I can't agree with you at all.

I'm not saying the person comes across as a wild-eyed raving loony to those around him, but inside his mind he must be deranged.

Insanity is incredibly hard to quantify. The US legal definition is unreasonably harsh, given that a death penalty is often involved. The legal definition, and only the legal definition of insanity involves knowing the difference between right and wrong. Many insane people know the difference. Many sane people don't, or get caught in grey areas. So the legal definition is only used in an instance where culpability has to be measured. And applies nowhere else.

Basically, there are all kinds of crazy. A person can be psychologically deranged, emotionally deranged, morally, physically, socially, and then there is the notable "Other" category. Kosminsky by all accounts was psychologically deranged. He had physiological brain issues coupled with emotional issues in a sort of classic combination. And he was insane. Serial killers aren't necessarily insane in any kind of classical sense. Some have delusions, and thats a concrete sign of psychological or emotional problems. Some have a history of drug use or head injury that probably caused a physical reaction causing insanity, such as scar tissue or lesions. These are the guys who tend to be less creepy because we can look at them and immediately label them as mad, and then not have to think about it anymore.

But a lot of serial killers fall into the "other" category. I mean, they're serial killers, so probably not right in the head. But Jeffrey Dahmer killed because of shame and control issues. He had delusions, but they didn't make him kill. What he did is NOT normal. But it isn't insane either. It made perfect sense, if you accepted certain premises. He was not illogical, he was not rabid, he was perfectly sane except for that killing and eating people part. Charles Manson wasn't even a little crazy. He was shrewd and calculating. We think of him as some crazy serial killer, but if you described the crimes the Manson Family committed, but said it was a bunch of LA gang bangers instead, insanity would never cross your mind. At best guys like these can be considered socially insane. They just don't see things the way we do. Their cost/benefit analysis is completely different than ours, and they don't require social acceptance in the same way. Kind of like my cat. She kills critters when she isn't hungry, she plays with them, tortures them, presents them to me in a gruesome display. But she's not insane, she's a cat. She has a different worldview.

Speaking from personal experience, insanity is all consuming. Technically I'm not crazy, I just visit every so often. But it is pervasive. There is no part of your life that crazy doesn't touch. Someone who has it together for 80% of their life is not crazy. If you only bust out into crazy for a couple of hours a week, you aren't crazy. You are other. Psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers are not technically human. Being human means behaving like a human, and part of behaving like a human is to care deeply about fitting into the social structure around you. You obey laws, mores, folkways, because you do not wish to incur social punishment. I'm not going to insist that we are better than sociopaths et. al., but we are fundamentally different in how our brain works. There are things they don't care about, and can't care about, even if they wanted to. Again, like my cat. She knows that the bloody gifts she brings me upsets me. And it seems to bother her that it upsets me, but she doesn't stop. She physically can't care about that. That part of our brain does not exist in cats. And it doesn't exist in sociopaths either.

Serial killers often have some excuse for their behavior, such as hearing voices or whatever. Most of the time it's crap. The assertions rarely last past their trial. They kill because they want to. There might be a compulsive element to it, but we are capable of resisting compulsions if we choose. They kill because it does something for them. It in fact feels good. That they choose to ignore the social contract and do it despite it being illegal and unacceptable doesn't mean they are crazy. It means they choose to do it anyway. And they'll say god told them to do it when a jury is listening, but they will laugh about it later. They aren't really crazy. But they aren't really people. To us that looks like crazy. But it's really just an alternate brain pattern they can't alter if they try. Which doesn't mean it isn't their fault, but it's a bit like a rabid dog. If you can't cure it, and you can't control it, you have to destroy it.

[RivkahChaya]

To what extent can you envisage such a person living a 'normal' life? Do you think he had a job? A wife and family? Friends? I wonder if he was able to compartmentalise his life - perhaps he looked quite normal in many respects.

Did you ever read Ann Rule's book The Stranger Beside Me, about her friendship with Ted Bundy, before he was arrested for murder for the first time? There doesn't seem to be a word for the degree to which she was astounded to find out that this person she knew had been accused of such a thing. Apparently, she didn't believe it at first, but once confronted with incontrovertible evidence, she ran to the bathroom to throw up.

So it seems that at least once in history, yes, someone did pull that off.

Hi Phil,

Im assuming that you mean 2 or more men doing all the killings, torsos included?

How certain is it that all the torso murders were done by the same person? Since dismemberment has so often been part of disposing of a corpse, just as a matter of convenience, it seems to me that it would be easy to mistake several corpses as coming from the same hand, if dismemberment were considered the outstanding feature-- which understandably, it may have been. However, how much was noted in regard to things like tool marks-- were surgical saws, carpenter's saws, or hatchets consistently used? I really don't know that much about them.
[quote]Well, for me its almost a certainty that more than one man was involved in the Canonical Group alone using only a small tidbit of evidence. Only one murder was committed by someone likely left handed. If you review the averages, you are talking about 1% of any population being truly ambidextrous, so, the right handed killer had a left handed accomplice, or a left handed man did it by himself.[quote]What percentage of the adult population in 1888 would have attended either public or private school, or had a private tutor of some kind, who would have been concerned about handedness? I had a grandfather who was born in 1905, and ended up being truly ambidextrous as a result of starting out left-handed in school, but being forced to switch by some, although not consistently, and not made to use his right hand at home. I remember he could right his first name with his left hand, and his last name with his right hand at the same time. Interestingly, his left and right handwriting looked different, as though from two different people, even though they were both in the same style of script. He was a newspaper reporter, so he wrote notes a lot, and often switched hands back and forth to avoid getting a cramp in one hand.

Another thing he did was transfer his razor from one hand to the other when shaving, and I don't know many men who do that. My father said he did it even back when he used to use a straight razor. He could carve meat at dinner with either hand as well, switching the knife depending on whichever hand was more convenient.

He spent 12 years in a public school, which for someone born in a not-so-wealthy family was a bit unusual. He was Jewish, but not from a Yiddish-speaking family, so he didn't go to a private Jewish school like a lot of other Jewish kids where he grew up.

I don't know how much schooling it would take to force someone to use the non-dominant hand so much that he would become truly ambidextrous, but left-handed people don't have a gene for being left-handed, while 90% of right-handed people have a right-handedness gene (people without the gene have even chances of becoming left- or right-handed), so maybe it is easier for a leftie to ease into ambidexterity than it would be for the majority of right-handers.

As an added note, though, non-dominance (that is, not showing a hand preference, which is different from true ambidexterity, because some non-dominant people use a specific hand for a specific task regularly), I know from working in special ed., is associated with learning disabilities and developmental problems, including the kind of prefrontal lobe problems that cause social learning issues you see in high-functioning autism. A lot of those kids in special ed. had difficult births, or were premature, and wouldn't have survived if they had been born in 1860. It's just interesting to note that if JTR really did show some kind of mixed dominance, it certainly doesn't rule out the possibility that he had an organic brain problem, or birth injury that he survived-- or even a head trauma when he was very small.

I read a journal article, in an ink & paper journal, which I can't now locate, by a psychiatrist who had investigated the subject of abuse continuing from parent to child, to the next generation. He had some patients who had been abused, and were concerned about becoming abusive parents, but his clinical experience did not bear out the common wisdom (in the 1980s) that abused children grow up to abuse their own children. However, he found that while most abused children did not abuse their own children, a larger percentage did so than non-abused children.

He got a grant to study the phenomenon, and also to look at abusive parents who had not been abused as children. He found that almost to a person, abusive parents had suffered a head injury as children. Many of the abused children had experienced the head injury as a result of abuse-- being hit in the head, or thrown against a wall-- while the non-abused children had been in car accidents, mainly. Some had been in bicycle accidents, and one had fallen out of a tree.

At the time of the article, the doctor had done a preliminary study of violent inmates, and discovered that many of them had also had head injuries as children, although he had not done enough research to determine whether they already were violent-- picking fights at school, that sort of thing-- making a head injury likely in the first place.

I wish I could find this article again. If anyone else has seen it, please let me know.

[RivkahChaya]

Insanity is incredibly hard to quantify. The US legal definition is unreasonably harsh, given that a death penalty is often involved. The legal definition, and only the legal definition of insanity involves knowing the difference between right and wrong.

Just for the record, for non-US people reading, the legal definition of insanity does vary from state to state a little. In some states not being able to assist in your own defense makes you insane, although you can be held indefinitely in a mental institution, if that is the case, and will always be the case. Even if you were sane and sober when you committed the crime, if by the time you are arrested, you are unable to assist in your own defense, you will never actually be tried, just kept institutionalized, theoretically with the goal of getting you well enough for trial, but for some people, that won't happen.

Also, what the insanity defense is varies. There is no generic "temporary insanity" anymore, although there are some defenses that are situation-specific, and amount to it, such as the "battered woman's defense." Some states don't even have "not guilty by reason of insanity." They have "guilty but mentally ill." Under GBMI, you are sentenced after trial, and go to a psychiatric facility, where you are credited one day of time for every day of treatment, and cannot be released until a doctor says so. You get no "good time" extra credit, as you would in prison, and if doctors don't think you are well, you could be in the facility much longer than you would be in prison.

Once you are declared well enough to be released, if you don't have enough days to finish out your sentence, your case is reviewed, and you may get probation for the rest, or you may go to prison at that point.

Guilty but Mentally Ill is of absolutely no benefit to anyone but the truly ill, who would be quite vulnerable in prison, and who are in genuine need of treatment.

Also, for what it's worth, juries almost never find someone Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, but they very often do accept Guilty but Mentally Ill.

[Wickerman]

The M.O. changes but the signature does not.

Mr Vanderlinden pointed out on another thread the difference between a serial killer’s ‘M.O.’ and his ‘signature’. Drawing on criminal profiler John Douglas’s work, the M.O., he explained, is the ‘HOW’ of a series of murders, the method used to carry them out. The signature, however, is the ‘WHY’, and that is entirely dependent upon the psychological needs of the murderer. Therefore the HOW (the M.O.) of a series of murders can change due to circumstances, whereas the WHY (the signature) cannot change, because the psychology of the killer doesn’t change.

Wolf is rarely ever mistaken but with so many professional profilers giving their opinions, there are bound to be differences somewhere.
I'm not sure how we can determine a "why", the "why" is generally the motive which is not always obvious.

I had read that the M.O. (essentially 'by what method') would be the knife, as opposed to a gun, or a rope, or poison.
Tabram & Kelly were killed with the same M.O., the knife. However, the signature is how the knife is used.
Therefore, Tabram and Kelly bore different signatures.

Regards, Jon S.

[curious]

what do you think of the idea that if JtR and Torso Murderer are the same person it may be due to the fact that the torso murders were done when the killer could kill in his home and the JtR murderes were ones where he could not?

I know the question was addressed to Debra, and i am no criminologist...

but has any known killer ever operated in such a way - having two MOs for different situations?

It doesn't ring true to me.

Phil H

Until today, I would have agreed with you, Phil.

However, I have spent the day reading about Tommy Lynn Sells, a "serial" killer awaiting execution in Texas.

He killed women, children, men, by slitting their throats, shooting them, bludgeoning them to death -- he adapted to fit the situation over a period of nearly 20 years.

"Dead men tell no tales," was his motto.

He left one young girl alive, accidentally. He thought she was dead.

She was determined to bring him to justice. Then, once arrested, he could not shut up talking about all the others.

But he was careful about fingerprints and was never suspected in any of the murders -- but he was totally unstable, moving back and forth across the country.

He panhandled, but did not really work. Married a couple of times, was arrested a few times. stole cars and just killed whoever got in his path.

Anyway, there were no similarities in his crimes to connect them.

curious