Team Jack

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

Hullo Lynn and all.

Sorry for delay. Gots questions about Pipeman location? Gotta go to work so later. Where was Pipeman? It on a map would be super-sweet. Wink wink nudge nudge.

[lynn cates]

no agreement

Hello DLDW. Thanks.

Actually, even THAT cannot be agreed upon. Was he on the east or west side of Berner?

Sorry squire. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

It doesn't bother me that none of these murders were witnessed, for example. That I understand. I don't understand the dichotomy between knife skills and a lack control.

I don't see much of a problem, if you think that he either had a vestigial conscience, or a strong desire not to get caught, and so waited until the "need" to kill was overwhelming. It probably affected his control, the way not eating for several days will make a person dive into food with both hands, even though they usually have neat table manners.

[Errata]

I don't see much of a problem, if you think that he either had a vestigial conscience, or a strong desire not to get caught, and so waited until the "need" to kill was overwhelming. It probably affected his control, the way not eating for several days will make a person dive into food with both hands, even though they usually have neat table manners.

Yeah, but I don't mean shaky. Clearly he was, and that's understandable. Even if he had no conscience he still has under a lot of stress. It's like there's a point in your development where your growth outstrips your spatial sense, so you literally don't know where the end of your arms are? It's like that, but with a knife. When he uses the tip he's fine. When he works with more of the center, its like he has no idea what the other end of the knife is doing.

Like he's trying to cut her nose off, and he cannot spatially compute that he is going to hit bone with the tip before he gets through the nose. And he evidently works at it a couple of different ways before giving up and just cutting lower on the bridge. Now I'm like that. Granted I haven' tried it on a face, but as an artist and general theater needs provider, I do a ton of work with an exacto or a small dagger. Give me a bread knife and I'm a moron. So a somewhat more severe form of the same familiarity I have with knives is the only thing I have come up with yet that explains the oddities. But it's not perfect, so I''m still looking. For example, when I'm not thinking, I will try to carve a turkey with the tip of the blade. I just automatically do that. I would expect him to do the same, were he like me. But he doesn't. He tries to use the appropriate part of the blade and is just bad at it.

Someone in the anatomical knowledge thread compared it to ripping open a pumpkin to find a puzzle piece. It's not a bad analogy. I would say it's like ripping through the wrapping on a present like a toddler, but then taking meticulous care to remove the toy. Which as anyone who has ever been a child knows, it is possible to just rip a Barbie (or whatever) from the box, twist ties and all. And most kids do. So why didn't he, especially when he clearly had no care for the wrapping? It didn't save time to be that... messy. It certainly did not improve his odds of removing the organs he wanted intact. It's not frenzy. It's just... amateurish. It's like one guy opened these women, and then he stepped aside to let the guy who is good at it remove the organs. Like a dad who lets his son open a deer, but then he steps in to do the actual cleaning.

It's just weird. And fortunately there aren't a lot of comparisons to be made. When it all comes down to it, there are very few serial killers who take internal organs. Externals, yes. Internals not so much. So it's hard to get a feel for whats normal in this situation. But with the few examples we have, it seems odd to even get into the body that way at all. Chikatilo's victim whose uterus he removed evidently looked like an Alien burst from her chest. He literally just stuck his arm in and pulled it out. So clearly the way Jack cut into these women mattered or they would not have been as organized as they were. But not enough to be orderly about it? That's the odd part. The very incision shows that it is important, but the hash he makes of it says it's not.

The whole thing is very contradictory. Something will show skill, but the skill that you presumably have to have in order to have that first skill is apparently missing. Something is important, but it's not. Something is easy, but at the same time difficult. Crap knife skills on the outside, good ones on the inside. Very good spatial awareness in a dark abdominal cavity, very bad spatial awareness on the face. Doesn't bother to cover the victims, but doesn't unclothe them in the one easy way. He cares very much about throat. He cares equally for the uterus. Which is unusual. But one is savage and one is clinical. The women are posed, but not for any ritualistic or even aesthetic purpose. The only things he is consistent about is that he is very good at acquiring and subduing his victim, and he is very good at getting away unnoticed. Everything else is the Tale of Two Jacks. Figuratively if not literally.

[Rya]

Yeah, but I don't mean shaky. Clearly he was, and that's understandable. Even if he had no conscience he still has under a lot of stress. It's like there's a point in your development where your growth outstrips your spatial sense, so you literally don't know where the end of your arms are? It's like that, but with a knife. When he uses the tip he's fine. When he works with more of the center, its like he has no idea what the other end of the knife is doing.

Like he's trying to cut her nose off, and he cannot spatially compute that he is going to hit bone with the tip before he gets through the nose. And he evidently works at it a couple of different ways before giving up and just cutting lower on the bridge. Now I'm like that. Granted I haven' tried it on a face, but as an artist and general theater needs provider, I do a ton of work with an exacto or a small dagger. Give me a bread knife and I'm a moron. So a somewhat more severe form of the same familiarity I have with knives is the only thing I have come up with yet that explains the oddities. But it's not perfect, so I''m still looking. For example, when I'm not thinking, I will try to carve a turkey with the tip of the blade. I just automatically do that. I would expect him to do the same, were he like me. But he doesn't. He tries to use the appropriate part of the blade and is just bad at it.

Someone in the anatomical knowledge thread compared it to ripping open a pumpkin to find a puzzle piece. It's not a bad analogy. I would say it's like ripping through the wrapping on a present like a toddler, but then taking meticulous care to remove the toy. Which as anyone who has ever been a child knows, it is possible to just rip a Barbie (or whatever) from the box, twist ties and all. And most kids do. So why didn't he, especially when he clearly had no care for the wrapping? It didn't save time to be that... messy. It certainly did not improve his odds of removing the organs he wanted intact. It's not frenzy. It's just... amateurish. It's like one guy opened these women, and then he stepped aside to let the guy who is good at it remove the organs. Like a dad who lets his son open a deer, but then he steps in to do the actual cleaning.

It's just weird. And fortunately there aren't a lot of comparisons to be made. When it all comes down to it, there are very few serial killers who take internal organs. Externals, yes. Internals not so much. So it's hard to get a feel for whats normal in this situation. But with the few examples we have, it seems odd to even get into the body that way at all. Chikatilo's victim whose uterus he removed evidently looked like an Alien burst from her chest. He literally just stuck his arm in and pulled it out. So clearly the way Jack cut into these women mattered or they would not have been as organized as they were. But not enough to be orderly about it? That's the odd part. The very incision shows that it is important, but the hash he makes of it says it's not.

The whole thing is very contradictory. Something will show skill, but the skill that you presumably have to have in order to have that first skill is apparently missing. Something is important, but it's not. Something is easy, but at the same time difficult. Crap knife skills on the outside, good ones on the inside. Very good spatial awareness in a dark abdominal cavity, very bad spatial awareness on the face. Doesn't bother to cover the victims, but doesn't unclothe them in the one easy way. He cares very much about throat. He cares equally for the uterus. Which is unusual. But one is savage and one is clinical. The women are posed, but not for any ritualistic or even aesthetic purpose. The only things he is consistent about is that he is very good at acquiring and subduing his victim, and he is very good at getting away unnoticed. Everything else is the Tale of Two Jacks. Figuratively if not literally.

I assume you're talking about the Eddowes murder here, and not the others, since we know so much more about what Kate's injuries looked like and how the cuts were actually made.

I think the whole thesis you're working out here about the killer's peculiar aptitude with his weapon(s) is very interesting, and, as I've read previous posts of yours where you've discussed your view of Eddowes's injuries, I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more comment. To some extent, I agree with you, and it conforms to my own view of the killer as a uniquely self-made and self-trained mutilator killer.

On the other hand, I don't know that, with regard to Eddowes, all these external cuts were carelessly sloppy--sloppy yes, but not always carelessly so. And this is where we've disagreed in the past about some of Eddowes's injuries: I think the deep cuts on the inside of each thigh were quite deliberate, you seem to think they were slips; I think the vertical incision in the abdomen gets messy where it ought to, where the combination of clothing, denser subcutaneous tissue, fascia and muscular structures, combined with a rapidly degrading blade edge, all started to defy him. He may have been losing his leverage at this point as well. With respect to the facial mutilations, its true he mucked up severing the nose, but then he makes these oddly neat incisions through the eyelids, which were not sloppy at all. Perhaps he simply had a short fuse--one of those people who has the capacity for detail but who becomes agitated very easily. In any case, we shouldn't say that all of his organ removals were super neat either; the Eddowes' uterus was a pretty clean, if incomplete, piece of work, but the Chapman pseudo-hysterectomy was a big butchery, if in fact it was just the uterus he was after in that case.

I also think your discussion of using knives is interesting, and we probably underestimate the killer's practical skill given the sort of weapons he was confined to using. For me, trying to use a long bladed knife to do something as exact as excising the fundus of a human uterus without damaging the surrounding organs would be a disaster; the longer the blade tip is from my index finger, the less control I have over it. We're told the killer "carefully" removed the left kidney, by which I assume Brown meant that he got it out cleanly and intact; for me, using an eight inch blade for that would be like using a meat cleaver to pop an oyster from its shell.

But I'm not following the significance of this discussion on the "team jack" concept: are you saying that you think two men were doing the mutilations together? Just in Eddowes' case, or in other cases?

[Digalittledeeperwatson]

Hullo Lynn.

Hello DLDW. Thanks.

Actually, even THAT cannot be agreed upon. Was he on the east or west side of Berner?

Sorry squire. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

West side seems logical? If Pipe/Knifeman was on the East side, the same side as IS, he would have had to have walked/ran right by him. I was wondering how far South of Dutfield's he was? On another thread someone posted a map of the railway arches and they are far away. IS would've turned a few corners and passed his previous residence to get to any of them. I'm not buying IS running all the way from Berner to a railway arch. And no need for the mistranslation arguement people, it has been noted. Hence Pipe/Knifeman. Something that keeps making me laugh is BS man. That really just might be the case. Too much hinky stuff to just dismiss everything. No conclusions though. If IS was telling the truth about what he witnessed, then there is a good possibility he was being chased by a Knifeman. Or at least chased off. Implications for pondering. And if it was a Knifeman then that might explain running so far away.

[Cogidubnus]

Hello Dig

Yes I think it's possible pipeman was on the West side, for the reasons you mention...I suspect he emerged just as IS was beginning to cross the road diagonally from east to west - If Schwartz was a nervous man, this alone may have startled him...it might also suggest he fled turning right (away from BS) down Fairclough Street and Backchurch Lane. Sounds like he might have fled incontinently past his own dwellings if he reached the railway arch!

However, just to confuse things, wasn't the Nelson on the North-East side of the Berners/Fairclough junction (per the map on P125 of CSI Whitechapel anyway) with the Board School on the North-West side. Now vide Brown a chandlers occupied one of the other quadrants - not sure which because although Brown had to cross the road, Im not sure exactly what half of Fairclough Street No 35 was in...anybody know? And was a beerhouse on the remaining corner in 1888?

We don't know that Pipeman was actually Knifeman - that only comes in the Star report and as others have pointed out it might be either a mistranslation or a piece of press spicing-up...on which basis there is surely still the possibility that what Schwartz thought was a pursuer might've been another frightened soul fleeing for his life...

All the best

Dave

[lynn cates]

price too high

Hello DLDW. Thanks.

"West side seems logical?"

At one time, that was a given. Only recently have some plumped for the other side.

"I'm not buying IS running all the way from Berner to a railway arch."

And very little else, in my opinion.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

directions

Hello Dave.

"I suspect he emerged just as IS was beginning to cross the road diagonally from east to west"

Was it not west to east?

"it might also suggest he fled turning right"

Left perhaps? Would not a right turn lead him straight to PM?

"wasn't the Nelson on the North-East side of the Berners/Fairclough junction (per the map on P125 of CSI Whitechapel anyway) with the Board School on the North-West side."

Other way round. And I believe they closed at 9.30?

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

Sorry Lynn, got my compass directions reversed...had just spotted that and was about to correct when the power went off - just our street but a 3 hour plus power cut!

Walking up the West Side, crossing from West to East...I've always assumed from Swanson's account that Pipeman was approaching from the opposite side of the road from Dutfields Yard (ie the East side)...And yes the Nelson was the North West quadrant, the Board School North East.

So James Browns late supper chandlers is presumably one of the Southern quadrants...I was trying to elicit which, so that perhaps we'd have a clue from whence BS appeared? Perhaps he'd been in the shop buying tobacco...

All the best

Dave

[Cogidubnus]

Incidentally, I just came across an interesting page on the Backchurch Lane area here:-

http://www.stgite.org.uk/media/backchurchlane.html

Fairclough and Berners do get several mentions, and there are pictures too...

All the best

Dave

[Wickerman]

Sounds like he might have fled incontinently past his own dwellings if he reached the railway arch!

Hi Dave.

Thats the real conundrum isn't it.

The address written by Swanson (22 Ellen St. Backchurch Lane), was it Schwartz's former address, or his new address?
Schwartz went to Leman St. on Sunday afternoon, so had his wife managed to make the move over Sat. night, or not?

When the Star write, "...and ran him to earth in Backchurch-lane.", are they referring to a new address actually in Backchurch Lane, or is this the Ellen St. address?

Then we read, "...from their lodgings in Berner-street to others in Backchurch-lane.", once again, the question is which one refers to the Ellen St. address?
Ellen St. was at the bottom of Berner St, but across the road, however the postal reference appears to be Backchurch Lane.

Finally, we appear to have Schwartz running past the Ellen St. address, so where was he headed, if not towards his new lodgings?

Is there anything straight forward in this damn case?

[Jon Guy]

Hi Jon

Perhaps, rather wisely, he wasn`t leading them straight to the front door of his new lodgings.

[Cogidubnus]

Perhaps, rather wisely, he wasn`t leading them straight to the front door of his new lodgings.

That's possible I suppose Jon G...

When the Star write, "...and ran him to earth in Backchurch-lane.", are they referring to a new address actually in Backchurch Lane, or is this the Ellen St. address?

Then we read, "...from their lodgings in Berner-street to others in Backchurch-lane.", once again, the question is which one refers to the Ellen St. address?
Ellen St. was at the bottom of Berner St, but across the road, however the postal reference appears to be Backchurch Lane.

Hi Jon S

or maybe the Star was displaying just a modicum of sense by saying only that he'd moved to the Backchurch Lane general area, and not explicitly mentioning Ellen Street...as you say, even Swanson refers to "Helen Street, Backchurch Lane"

Perhaps even, No.22 was reasonably close to Backchurch Lane?

Nothing straightforward!

All the best

Dave

[Errata]

But I'm not following the significance of this discussion on the "team jack" concept: are you saying that you think two men were doing the mutilations together? Just in Eddowes' case, or in other cases?

I don't think two men did the mutilations together, but I can see the argument, and It answers some questions. And in all cases, not just Eddowes. I'm not one of those people who thinks that only the theories that ring true with me are going to be the answer. So despite the fact my gut says it was a single killer, I'm exploring the idea that it was two working side by side.