Team Jack

[martin wilson]

What to do about Caroline Maxwell? she never backed down from her evidence of seeing Mary Kelly,and there is another explanation for why someone would be sick in the road, no one in the local pubs said they had served her with drink that morning, cited as a reason that Mrs Maxwell was mistaken, not that Mary may have been lying.
She was 5' 7" stout and fair complexioned (in some reports) remind you of anybody's description?

[lynn cates]

good

Hello Damaso.

"Interestingly, I made guy #1 the knifeman on Chapman and Nichols, guy #2 the knifeman on Eddowes"

Keep up the good work.

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

The "Beltway snipers" were not father and son. They were an adult, John Allen Muhammad, and a minor, Lee Boyd Malvo. The adult was a US citizen, while the minor was not, and apparently at some point, the mother of the minor returned to her own country (Jamaica), and left her son Muhammad. Malvo was about 14 then.

Muhammad told people that Malvo was his son, and he did have children elsewhere, in the custody of his ex-wife, so no one questioned him. Whether he actually used forged papers, his own son's birth certificate, or simply told people that Malvo was his son, and no one ever questioned him, I don't know, but I think he did it because Malvo was here illegally, and his mother was expecting to return, and either she had paid Muhammad, or had a relationship with him, not because Muhammad was delusional, and actually believed Malvo was his son.

[Damaso Marte]

Closest analogue I can think of would be the "Beltway Sniper" in Washington DC...turned out to be a father/son duo. Father was a trained sniper, son was not. Many of the survivors of that killing spree were shot by the son, who was not properly adjusting and hit people in non-lethal zones.

Analogous differences in skill could account for perceived differences in skill supposedly seen in the C5. I think you lose that with a top man and bottom man hypothesis.

[RivkahChaya]

Well, here's a possibility: "Jack the Ripper," or, the killer of 3-5 women in Whitechapel in the fall of 1888 was a two man team, but separately, they each had other victims.

If you look at the relationship between Henry Lee Lucas, and Ottis Toole, you see that something like that is possible. Their "style" together is nothing like what either of them did separately-- in fact, Lucas probably actually killed just one person on his own, nevermind what he confessed to (pretty much everyone who knows much about his case, and is in any sort of position to have a valid opinion, such as someone in law enforcement, or psychiatry, agrees that he kept up his confessing, because it bought him a lot of privilege in prison, and kept him from execution).

Toole, on his own, did a lot of sort of messy things that weren't like the things he did with Lucas, and the Adam Walsh case was finally closed a few years ago, when police had some satisfactory evidence that they felt would have convicted Toole, were he still alive, though, he'd been on the suspect list almost from the start, there was just nothing to arrest him on, and then he left the jurisdiction, making the investigation difficult.

Also, the Hillside Stranglers, who were cousins, had apparently never killed anyone before they killed together, but IIRC, one of them was a suspect in some unsolved stranger rapes, and they both had assault arrests.

Assuming something like this for the sake of argument, whatever it was that they felt unsatisfied alone, they may have finally satisfied, after being "Jack the Ripper" for a season, and then, as killers, gone their own ways. Working together may have been some sort of evolutionary step for each of them separately. Or maybe they parted over a disagreement that had nothing to do with the murders-- it could have been over money, for example. Anyway, they may each have had other bodies, but separately, different enough from the Ripper crimes that the police never made a connection.

I'm just playing along-- I'm not married to this theory, and if someone says "Wait!-- it isn't possible because of X," I won't be terribly surprised, or even disappointed.

But I do think that probably some kind of fixed thinking has kept people from the answer. There have always been preconceptions, whether they were about the lives of "fallen" women, or other Victorian idea about 'toffs and what have you, or later needs to cram the Ripper either into psycho-analytic, psychiatric, or even forensic theories.

Also, you never know what science may give us. No one could have predicted DNA testing proving the courts made a mistake in 1913, in the Bobby Dunbar case, 91 years after the fact, and nearly 40 after "Bobby Dunbar's" death. I mean, I don't think Patricia Cornwell proved that Walter Sickert killed anyone, but I think her evidence makes a very good case that he wrote one of the letters. So, in the lifetimes of many people who post to this board, there may be something new in forensic science that none of us ever imagined, that will give us an answer.

[Errata]

I was thinking more top man and a bottom man. Top man likes the act of killing, and rips the throat apart for reasons only known to him. He would be the emotional and excitable one. Bottom man is squeamish about actually killing, for any number of reasons including doubting his success. He's the necrosadist. He's the one who carves the women up, who takes organs. He's more cerebral, not emotionally excitable. They can literally work at the same time.

And theres really no reason for them to be spotted together, although it was not terribly uncommon for a prostitute to go off with two customers if another prostitute wasn't available. One would walk off with the victim, one would follow.

I can't think of a single problem that a pair of killers wouldn't clear up. Even why these murders were never solved. I feel like I should buy this scenario.

[Damaso Marte]

I don't know if you guys are familiar with "National Write a Novel Month", but it's something we have in the United States, promoted over Facebook, where each November amateurs try to write an entire novel in the month of November.

A few years ago, when I was still in college, I tried to write a novel, the premise of which was Jack the Ripper as a two person team. I abandoned it when it came time to study for finals. I was, if anything, insecure about how unrealistic the prospect of a two-person serial killing team was...but yes it would tie up some things nicely. Interestingly, I made guy #1 the knifeman on Chapman and Nichols, guy #2 the knifeman on Eddowes...years before I knew that there were people out there who seriously considered Eddowes to be done by a different hand. I was aware of the possible discrepancies between the man seen with Chapman and the man seen with Eddowes, though.

Anyway, I agree with everyone who said that a team is statistically unlikely and also more likely to be caught. Additionally, Ripper murders are famous for their silence and I think two cooks can spoil that broth...as possibly happened if Israel Schwartz was telling the truth.

[RivkahChaya]

Sorry; I'm in the "Stride wasn't a JtR victim club." As far as Kelly, yes, but that wasn't the very last sighting of her, was it? I don't suppose that matters as much, though, if we are talking about a pair; one significant thing about a pair is that they probably chose their victims together, so it was probably a process, and not a spur of the moment "whoever will go with me" thing.

[Wickerman]

1) No witness sightings of any victims with two men, or a man and a woman, just prior to the murders.

I'm not sure that's true in the case of Elizabeth Stride.

We also have the claim by Mrs Kennedy in seeing Kelly with a man and a woman outside the Britannia about 3:00 am.

[Bridewell]

1) No witness sightings of any victims with two men, or a man and a woman, just prior to the murders.

I'm not sure that's true in the case of Elizabeth Stride.

[RivkahChaya]

"It's statistically unlikely," is the usual answer, in that pairs of killers are rarer than single killers, although pairs are not unknown.

However, something to keep in mind is that stats are based on people who have been caught. Any stats on one vs. two killers in serial killings that are unsolved would be based only on very recent incidents, where there was DNA evidence, and then, because you can't prove a negative, it would be fairly easy to see when there had been two killers, but a partner could be "invisible" from the point of view of evidence.

I will say that the crimes seem intuitively to be done by one person, though. Here are the best reasons I have off the cuff:

1) No witness sightings of any victims with two men, or a man and a woman, just prior to the murders.

2) The fact that the killings took place over such a short time-- each individual murder, I mean. If there were two people, I'd expect that each one would want to get his licks in, so to speak, so each only had half the time with each victim. I suppose if the partner mostly got off by watching, and maybe also functioned as a look-out, you have a quite plausible scenario, but that sounds more like an episode of Criminal Minds than anything in real life. Even in real-life man/woman pairs, where the woman mostly watched the actual crime, she usually was the one who lured or procured the victim, and often restrained her.

3) The more people involved, the more chance that eventually, someone talks, and it seems no one ever did. A lot of serial killers go down because they can't help bragging, and I would suspect that might be even truer of someone who is willing to share the initial experience.

4) This one is completely emotional on my part, but I just have a gut feeling that there's something very sad and lonely about the crimes. I just don't feel like they were a shared experience. Of course, I have been wrong before.

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

I'm seeing a good argument for it. So why don't I believe it? Earlier conditioning?

It's less likely. Pure and simple. Yes earlier conditioning is there, but there are many factors that could be why the murders have the differences that make people think multi killers. It's good and healthy questioning. Conclusions that people come to are not sometimes though. Exhaust all possibilities and then go with what's most probable. If you were working the case at the time. I should say 2-3 people at the most for the main murders that are focused on. Probably unconnected. Not by a large margin given the small amount of data that exists though.

[Errata]

Okay, I asked because I know I get pretty single minded when running down a theory. It was equally likely there was some obvious bit of evidence I was forgetting.

There are certainly more cases of single serial killers that duos. But in this case I am thinking of a pair that works together for the most part. Not three or four random murders, but a Hillside Strangler type scenario. Of course pairs are rare outside rape or torture fetishes, but think of Leopold and Loeb if they they had a mutilation fetish. A dominant and submissive, really more a mentor and an apprentice. One is the "Killer" one is the "Mutilator". One concentrates on the throat, the strangling the overkill cut throats. One concentrates on the abdomen. And if they don't always kill together, then you get throat injury murders and abdominal injury murders that half fit "the Ripper", but not quite because they weren't working together.

I'm seeing a good argument for it. So why don't I believe it? Earlier conditioning?

[Stewart P Evans]

All...

All the notions on this thread remain speculation.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Lechmere,

Agreed. But this only pertains if we are actually dealing with an instance of serial crime.

Such a notion still remains hearsay.

Regards,

Simon