our killer been local

[Tom_Wescott]

The killer went out of his way and put himself at great risk by slaughtering women in the open. By comparison, he was at little risk chalking a message. The message makes a good deal of sense when related to the murders, at least that's how I see it. But as a stand-alone piece of graffiti, it makes very little sense. If it's supposed to be anti-Semetic, then it does a rather poor job of conveying the message. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, wrote a rather lengthy letter to the police at the time of the murders, but on the advice of FBI profiler John Douglas, they ignored it. John Douglas is also the man who advised Ripperologists in the 1980's to ignore the graffiti (the same men who wrote the books that have caused all this doubt in recent years). When Ridgway was arrested in the last decade, he talked about the letter he wrote. It was legit! But there was nothing in it that was unique knowledge to the killer, nor was that Ridgway's intention. In the case of the graffiti, we have Eddowes' apron, so its akin to the Zodiac letter that contained a piece of victiim Paul Stein's shirt.

To have the apron piece laid down by pure coincidence under the most ambiguous piece of graffiti in all of London is to my mind far more of a stretch than to put the two pieces together into one piece of evidence. Particularly since both appeared in that spot within minutes of each other. That would be absolutely incredible. However, the graffiti being legit poses a problem for those who want to paint the Ripper with the brush of the anonymous East End schlub who was no different than any killer before or sense. This ideology is a product of the now largely discredited serial killer profiling movement of the 1980's and 90's.

Since no one was present to see the graffiti written, we have no solid answers. But if we ignore everything written in the last 125 years and just look at the contemporary evidence, what emerges is the likelihood that it was written by the man who killed both Stride and Eddowes.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Graham]

We have to bear in mind that the Graffito was discovered just a month after the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, the major suspect for which (at the time) was a Jewish cobbler called John Pizer. This man was known for violence against women, prostitutes in particular. He was a cobbler, hence his nickname of 'Leather Apron'. The popular suspicions around this man led to anti-Jewish demonstrations in the East End, although not on a major scale. To me, the reason why Arnold ordered the graffito to be be erased was that he feared an escalation of anti-Jewish sentiment in the area. Perhaps he felt he was doing Warren a favour - after all, most of the senior officers in the Met at the time regarded Warren with a degree of respect. Warren did visit the scene, and concurred with Arnold's decision regarding the message.

I have never accepted that the Graffito had anything to do with Jack The Ripper. More likely, it was written by someone with an imperfect knowledge of English and who had a genuine grudge against a Jew or Jews. I believe that the suggestion has been made that the Graffito was written by an accomplice of The Ripper with a view to throwing the police off the scent of the real murderer. I can't go along with this. However, DC Halse stated that he had peered into the doorway at about 2.15am and had seen no writing; probably because he had no means if illumination on him.

Interestingly, Insp Dew, who probably knew the streets of Whitechapel and their denizens better than any other senior office associated with the case, dismissed the Graffito as coincidence and nothing more. He also said in his memoirs that there were anti-Jewish graffiti all over Whitechapel at the time, including some written by person or persons claiming to be the Ripper.

Graham

Tom, our posts crossed. I can understand why it is tempting to link the Graffito with the same hand that killed Eddowes (and possibly Stride), but I don't think it's anything more than tantalising coincidence. The doorway into the Model Dwellings was dark, and possibly an ideal place for someone to sling a piece of bloody material as he hurried past. Or perhaps even into the Model Dwellings.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Graham,

If I recall correctly, Dew was a detective-constable in 1888 chasing after Squibby in Brick Lane and not a senior officer. The graffiti was a polarizing subject among police then as it is among us now. But a few things to keep in mind are:

1) None of the residents of the building recalled seeing it, so it was very recent.
2) Halse and Long didn't see it earlier. We can excuse this by darkness if we want, but they did not, and that should mean something.
3) Not only was the message ambiguous, but so was the writing. No two people saw the same thing, at least as far as the second word (i.e. 'Juwes') goes.

We have a chalk message appearing at the same time the apron half appears. All on the same night as two murders with strong Jewish connections (or, if my suggestion is correct, the second word does not say Juwes and is the anagram of the Berner Street club). We know that the Ripper was there, in that spot, at that time. We do not know or have reason to believe that someone else with a piece of chalk was there in that spot at that time writing a message.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Graham]

Yes Tom, I read you! This is the major problem with the Graffito - nobody saw it prior to PC Long. Which, of course, doesn't mean to say that it wasn't there - the doorway, in which there was a public sink, wasn't lit, so maybe old Long happened by with his bullseye fired up and casting its (surprisingly) bright beam into the gloom. Obviously, the apron came from Eddowes, so must have been tossed into the doorway by whoever killed her - unless, of course, you subscribe to the theory that she herself had used the portion of apron as a sanitary towel and had chucked it into the doorway herself as she passed by.

Even if the Graffito had been photographed I honestly don't think this would have shed a lot of light upon the mystery. As Dew said, there was anti-Jewish graffiti all over the place. (Yes, you're right - Dew was only a DC in 1888, but nevertheless had an excellent knowledge of the East End - or so he claimed).

Really, would someone who had just committed a horrendous murder (and possibly a slightly less horrendous one not long before) stop and chalk up a strange message on a wall in a darkened doorway? To do so, he must have been carrying a light, and must have been an amazingly cool character.

As I said, I believe it to be tantalising coincidence.

Graham

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Graham. You interpret it as 'tossed'. I and many of the contemporary police interpret it as 'placed'. And yes, of course someone like the Ripper would chalk a message. Why not? And why was that graffiti not witnessed by the many residents of the building coming in and out? It would literally have been impossible for them not to have seen it. One needs hardly any light to see white chalk on black dado. As for him carrying a light, you think that only because you suppose the doorway was very darkened. I don't know why you think so. In fact, I'd say if someone could so easily chalk up a message it must not have been dark at all.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Graham]

Hi Graham. You interpret it as 'tossed'. I and many of the contemporary police interpret it as 'placed'. And yes, of course someone like the Ripper would chalk a message. Why not? And why was that graffiti not witnessed by the many residents of the building coming in and out? It would literally have been impossible for them not to have seen it. One needs hardly any light to see white chalk on black dado. As for him carrying a light, you think that only because you suppose the doorway was very darkened. I don't know why you think so. In fact, I'd say if someone could so easily chalk up a message it must not have been dark at all.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Yes, but it was never established precisely when the message was written, and it is now, and almost certainly was then, impossible to do so. It may well have been chalked up in the twilight of the autumn evening. We just don't know. Even white chalk on a black wall is impossible to see in the absolute absence of light, and I think you really have to understand that the streets of the East End of London were DARK. Totally dark. Except, maybe, for the odd pinpoint of light from a window, and perhaps the occasional dim street gas-light. Why should the doorway be lit? And by what means?

I am, to be honest, at a loss as to why you apparently think that the doorway was lit, when there really was no reason why it should have been. To light the doorway would have cost money, for a start.

The Graffito could well have been seen by many residents of the Model Dwellings coming and going through the doorway, and it is highly likely that their reaction to it was "Yeah, another crazy message, whatever". That is, they had seen so many similar messages chalked up in the vicinity that they couldn't have cared less. Like the "Thatcher Out" messages I remember seeing on walls in my home town in the early 1980's - after a while I never even noticed them any more.

One thing that does occur to me, that perhaps supports the idea that the Graffito might have been chalked up quite soon before Long found it. Had a Jew, someone who perhaps lived in the Model Dwellings, seen it, he may well have erased it. Unfortunately, we don't know if any Jews actually lived there.
Or if some did, maybe they were as blase about pointless graffiti as the Gentiles of the time.

Can you give me another example of a serial killer chalking messages on walls?
OK, the Zodiac scrawled messages on the car-doors of his victims, but not quite the same thing. Don't think Bundy or Sutcliffe indulged in such graffiti.
But I may be wrong - I'm sure you'll correct me if I am.

Graham

[Wickerman]

In a situation where time is of the essence, if a killer is going to take the time to make a point, then he is going to make the point clear. Otherwise he is wasting his time.

To my mind the graffito was always unrelated.

[pinkmoon]

In a situation where time is of the essence, if a killer is going to take the time to make a point, then he is going to make the point clear. Otherwise he is wasting his time.

To my mind the graffito was always unrelated.

Our killer has just committed two murders in a very short space of time he then decides to chalk a message on a wall and he makes no attempt to mention his very recent deeds makes no sense .When you take away the sensationlism and apply some common sense did our killer write that message I very much doubt it.Also wouldn't some nice fresh human organs dumped under it make things a little bit more exciting and create a lot more hatred towards the Jews.

[Ginger]

Can you give me another example of a serial killer chalking messages on walls?

The Manson Family come to mind. IIRC, they wrote messages in blood (and carved them into the flesh of at least one victim) hoping to start a race war.

Edit: Also William Heirens, who wrote "For heaven's sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself." at the scene of one of his murders.

[pinkmoon]

The Manson Family come to mind. IIRC, they wrote messages in blood (and carved them into the flesh of at least one victim) hoping to start a race war.

Edit: Also William Heirens, who wrote "For heaven's sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself." at the scene of one of his murders.

Wouldn't our killer have a perfect opportunity to stir up hatred against the Jews if he deposited the organs he had just removed from his last victim underneath his message.

[Lechmere]

The placement of the apron points to a local killer because the movement - Berner Street, Mitre Square, Goulston Street – suggests a return to his residence in the direction from Mitre Square to Goulston Street to wherever.
If you wish, you can add in the requirement for a localish ‘bolt hole’ where he went after the Eddowes murder and before placing the apron.

The counter idea – that he could have been non local but had been hiding in an alley way waiting for things to quieten down doesn’t make sense. Why had he headed east? Also the hue and cry would have gained strength in that area the longer he waited.

The graffiti supposedly appeared to be fresh. The buildings were only a couple of years old so it is likely that they were clean.
When it is considered that earlier that night the killer had been disturbed by a Jewish man, adjacent to a club that would have been regarded by locals as Jewish in character and presumably had not fulfilled himself and so required a second victim, the accusatory nature of the graffiti is perfectly explicable.
Again this suggests a degree of local knowledge.

Saying that the graffiti can’t have been written by the killer just because it was ambiguous or not entirely clear in its meaning is something of a non-starter. It implies that we – non psychopathic serial killers (hopefully) - can read the mind of a deeply disturbed person, almost at the moment when he will have been most disturbed. I would suggest that it is unrealistic to expect some sort of scrawl saying ‘I killed the bitches’ or something similar.

As for the level of lighting, we can’t really be sure how dark it was that night in that location. We know that Mitre Square was pretty dark and yet the killer performed a fairly intricate mutilation at speed.
Most police at the scene seemed to think that the killer was responsible so they clearly thought it was possible that he could have seen what he was doing.

I don’t know why Tom says:
‘the graffiti being legit poses a problem for those who want to paint the Ripper with the brush of the anonymous East End schlub who was no different than any killer before or sense. This ideology is a product of the now largely discredited serial killer profiling movement of the 1980's and 90's.’

I think the killer as probably responsible for the graffiti and I favour an anonymous local culprit. I would also dispute that the ‘profiling movement’ has been discredited, although I’m not totally sure what Tom means by this.

PS – I have never heard it said that there was a public sink in the stairwell.

[Bridewell]

The Possibility That Long Was Mistaken.

I think too much credence is given to the notion that there was an inordinate length of time between the Eddowes murder and the placing of the apron piece in the passage leading to the New Model Dwellings. That view is wholly dependent on the accuracy of Pc Long's recall.

Long says that the apron piece was not there when he made his previous round at 2.20am - but was he as certain of that as he claimed? Even if he was that certain, was he actually right?

When he found the apron section he says that "Above it on the wall was written in chalk, 'The Jews are etc'". Yet when the coroner questions him about this graffito, he replies, "I could not say whether they were recently written". Why couldn't he if he was there only 30 minutes previously, when the one was so close to the other? Did he check the area thoroughly or not?

Either Long was observant or he unobservant. He can't have been both. How is he certain that the apron piece wasn't there previously, but simultaneously uncertain as to whether or not the graffito had been recently written? The graffito was above the apron; the apron was beneath the graffito which may, or may not (Long doesn't know)have been there at 2.20am. There is, to my mind, every possibility that the apron piece was there but that Long failed to see it, for whatever reason. Much more likely that it was there and he didn't notice it, than that the killer stayed on the streets within 400 yards of the murder site for an hour or more in possession of incriminating evidence.

Witnesses can be certain they are right and yet be mistaken; police witnesses are not exempt from that possibility. The most likely scenario, I think, is that the killer was a local man who was able to get off the streets to a safe location within a very short time of each murder. The apron piece was dumped, either because it had served its purpose or because the killer feared that he was in danger of being caught with it in his possession.

[Wickerman]

The placement of the apron points to a local killer because the movement - Berner Street, Mitre Square, Goulston Street – suggests a return to his residence in the direction from Mitre Square to Goulston Street to wherever.

But how do you know he was not looking for victim No. 3?

Remember PC Spicer's story of who he found, where he found them, and on this particular night?
Police records must have been full of beat constables pulling in suspects off the street, are we correct to ignore this particular claim?

The graffiti supposedly appeared to be fresh.

I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to determine this, and if this killer was the author, why write so small?
Aren't messages typically broadcast 'loud' across the wall?, not squeezed onto a couple of bricks, like a whisper.

[Tom_Wescott]

There's no difference between the organs and the apron. It delivers the same message. And there shouldn't be an assumption that he was trying to blame the Jews for anything. As for serial killers writing graffiti, there's a bunch of them, but such discussion presupposes the Ripper was a common serial killer. As for influences for this action I can think of two:

1) Following the Chapman murder there were two rumors circulating - that of a 'double event' (i.e. a second victim was found), and that graffiti written by the killer was found near the crime scene. Neither happened, but miraculously, they did occur following the end of Chapman's inquest.

2) The year before the Ripper murders the first Sherlock Holmes story appeared and was instantly popular. It involved a murder and a mysterious and ambiguous piece of graffiti written in chalk.

Either or both of these would have been the Ripper's inspiration.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Graham,

I don't suppose the entryway was lit up. But if there was enough natural light for the constables to suppose they would have seen the graffiti had it been there, and there was enough natural light for it to have been written in the first place, then it reasonably follows that it wasn't pitch black out. It was almost black in the passageway of Dutfield's Yard because the passageway was so narrow that the buildings blocked out the moon, but apparently this wasn't the case in Goulston Street.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott