Tweet
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.
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.
Sink the Bismark
Comment