If a doctor was responsible for the murders.......................

[Limehouse]

Hi Limehouse,

available bodies: very good point indeed.

'possessed a strong degree of nerve to carry out the atrocities in the time and manner that he did (...)rules out the 'wandering lunatic' ': or perhaps the 'choice' was between the priorities of security or doing what he wanted/needed to, the latter being the winning one. I would also submit that the strong nerves might not have been something like 'boldness' as suggested sometimes; rather that the man perhaps wasn't at all careful.
the ruled-out wandering lunatic: yes, if we see it as literally someone wandering about with froth before his mouth. Not if he was able to maintain facade - as happens with the 'organised serial murderer'. Not if, perhaps, the drive and it's satisfaction was exactly the thing that enabled the facade of a more or less normal life - as long as it was satisfied.
Read Martin Fido's reply to the objections against 'his' suspect 'David Cohen', which were essentially what you say:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-cohen.html

It concerns the breakdown of control.

deviation from original theme: yes, sorry, happens at times with such a complex subject matter, but yes, one should return to the original question of a thread

Hi Sepiae,

Yes, generally I agree. His drive may well have been stronger than his sense of security. Agree totally about him probably being an 'organised' serial killer' . Thanks for the link. I'll certainly follow it up.

Nice exchanging views with you.

Limehouse

[Natasha]

Hi Natasha,

MK known to ripper: I know where you're coming from, Natasha, but I'd object that, although it might very much look that way especially after one asks oneself 'why' and connects it with hate, which we ourselves would normally direct at a person known to us, be it personally or by means of face, information, etc, I'd object that there is no other indication for this in the injuries other than what our emotions lead us to. It CAN very well be so, but it really needn't. So it's not that the amount, and nature, of the injuries indicate that victim and killer knew each other, it merely SEEMS that they indicate - and to you more than to me [pls excuse the capital letters, the italics here are a bit moody at times].
Keep in mind that before Kelly one could call the mutilations on Eddowes the most ghastly - were they not numerous and ghastly enough to make the same assumption? There are other explanation models for this, no less implying than following from the severity of mutilations that victim and perp knew each other.

silent entry: again, it MAY be she knew him and let him in. But given her part time occupation we also have to consider that she'd let in a complete stranger. If she let in anyone at all, that is.

noise: But a noise was heard, but 2 ear-witnesses at approx. the same time, a cry 'murder!'
I don't know enough about the exact nature of acoustics at Miller's Court back then, since it was poor housing one should think that people would hear a lot. That said, houses were not quite as easy for eavesdropping as cheap modern housing today. More importantly, both ear-witnesses didn't act on what they heard, stating that this sort of thing was to be heard often. Ofc we don't know whether what they heard was the voice of Mary Kelly. There is a good chance, though, as with a murder really happening. More to the point, if 2 people are not reacting on a shout of 'murder!' - what else would people ignore in terms of noise?

not buying opening means: I suppose such a thing could have in principle been confirmed even after the door was broken down - it depends on the state of the broken down door. But yes, it's indeed an important issue. If Barnett was telling the truth it would explain everything about it, however. I know locks that behave in this way myself.

scared of man: you appear to be conscious about the contradictions. Mainly we all would need more information, and this could only be coming from Barnett. You still need to make your case about Kelly possibly knowing her murderer... Also, why do you think he didn't reside in the East End?

heart-symbolism: the heart readily invites interpretation. Which is precisely why one should be careful with such. On the other hand, if you interpret it this way, why not the killer also? So I take your point. It's not a given, mind you.

staging/arm: that is if he was staging anything at all. I've read other posts expressing similar notions. Most of how all victims were positioned exhibit nothing else with certainty above them lying as one would expect, with the mutilations in mind. In Kelly's case much more was done, and with some deliberation, it seems. The decision has to be about whether anything was done with a later audience in mind or not [this also goes for the entrails placed over the shoulders with previous victims]. It's a heavy decision to make, as either possibility results in 2 very different pictures as motivation is concerned.
Do the details have meaning? For sure. Is it meaning to the perpetrator alone, or is it addressed meaning?
So, was there a message at all? It might look that way. It WILL look that way, to anyone encountering, but we do take things personally in this way. We read it, into it. And it might be difficult to think the killer wasn't thinking about those finding the scene. And yet it very well might be so.

placing: again, your observations and ideas from them revolve around a very practical approach... I'm getting at something here...
It's a bit like, 'if I was the killer, if I'd have been in that room, I would...'
Nononono - if you were in that room you'd be having tea with Mary. You wouldn't murder her in the first place. What you're doing is something very, very sane: you look at it and you work on a decision of what would make sense to you. As you said:
'Reasoning: I couldn’t definitely say what the ripper was thinking, I can only make an assumption using the evidence, and piecing everything together as I see it.'
Neither can I, definitely say what he was thinking. But the 'as you see it' might depend on how you look in the first place. It's why I was asking with such an emphasis about the handling. Take a step back and look at Mary's room again -
whatever the motive, who ever was there - doesn't it look monstrous to you, doesn't it look insane.
I suggest that the practical point of view, of 'this has been done because it makes sense this or that way', seen by the healthy, purely functional and practical eye of a sane, healthy person might not be enough to explain what might very well be what it looks like: a painting painted by insanity. Not without sense. But a sense that doesn't follow the same logic, the same [I]motivation[I].
I kept harking on the handling, because I want to suggest that there was more to it than mere practicality, i.e. handling as a means [taking the organ, transferring it, placing it somewhere] - that the handling itself was of importance to him, and so was the placing, at least of what was found underneath Kelly's head.

I'll open a new thread in a bit that deals with this question, and others.
I'll attach a bit of a musing about the whole question of what the word 'pathological' might mean in this context, don't know what I'll call the threat yet, just look out for the so far only thread by me if you're interested.
It'll also be about some of the approaches here on the board, basically about whether or not we have access to something so different and perhaps 'incomprehensible' - I noticed that more often this approach is present: what is the most logical to ME. In other words, how much sense can I drain from what we call insanity by approaching those question with the logic of sanity.

Hi Sepiae

You make some very good points. In particular approaching the scene from a different angle, rather then seeing it through sane eyes. I guess the best way would be to analyze other serial killers.

Using your theory that maybe the killer wasn’t known to Kelly. Could it be possible that someone was setting Barnett up? Maybe to make the murder look like that of a crime of passion. They may have been mad at him for something

Noise, oh murder: the neighbour's couldn’t decipher weather the noise came from inside, rather that it came from outside, so I decided to deliberately leave that out. I started a thread on the subject of 'oh murder', questioning why someone who was about to get murdered would shout this out, rather then shout out an expletive. A few weeks after I posted that thread I came across a court case where the victim (case has nothing to do with JTR) had shouted 'oh murder' and 'help' and this made me think that it could be quite possible that the scream came from Kelly. The neighbours took no action so I guess they have heard all this before and believing it to be of no importance. What other things would have been ignored? Good question. If Kelly was in the habit of bringing men home, then I guess the neighbours, especially Prater, would rather block out hearing things of a sexual nature.

Scared of a man: I feel that if Kelly feared someone she wouldn’t be hanging around in an area where this man resided, I suspect she would have moved to put distance between her and this man. The fact that other women were being murdered makes me wonder why Kelly wouldn’t have made a connection with this man she was scared of and the murders. Having said that I guess he couldn't have been perceived as a threat to her life, or maybe Barnett was lying, or if Kelly did tell Barnett, she may have been lying.

[Limehouse]

Could you explain your reasoning for this? I'm not sure why that would preclude those particular types of suspect. You could easily flip your point around and argue that only a madman would've risked targeting his victims in public places when a local bobby was never too far away.

Hi Harry,

I am perfectly certain that the killer was deranged. However, I would rule out the type of suspect who wandered about muttering to himself and openly picking food out of the gutter simply because I do not think this type of person would be able to carry out this type of killing in the kind-of controlled fashion that he did. What I mean by this is the swift execution of the act followed by escape.

As for the 'tortured individual' (what I mean by that I suppose is the way that Druitt is described or the 'sick vet/medical student)) I just think that this is a melodramatic image of the killer conjured up by the Victorian imagination to 'excuse' what might have been an upper class or upper middle class killer.

I'm probably not making any sense at all but to put it simply, I see JtR as someone rather like Peter Sutcliffe. That is, a local man who knew the area well, who blended into the background most of the time and who possessed a certain degree of supressed anger that could be directed quite efficiently towards the destruction of an individual. The only real problem with this is, of course, that Sutcliffe carried his atrocities over a much longer period of time and sometimes varied his MO.

[Natasha]

Just returning to the original theme of the thread for a moment - there was no need for doctors to murder to obtain body parts to study. Bodies were readily available for research. Additionally, it would be illegal and unethical to say the least.

I agree with other posters that there is a strong element of anger in the killings. The killer, in my opinion, would have also possessed a strong degree of nerve to carry out the atrocities in the time and manner that he did, particularly in the case of Chapman and Eddowes. This, for me, rules out the 'wandering lunatic' or 'tortured individual' suspects. I would bet that if the Ripper had friends or family, they had no idea what he was up to.

Hi Limehouse,

I agree that if a Dr did do it, then the question of the Hippocratic Oath would be compromised. I have mentioned in this thread that if a medical student had done this, then perhaps (s)he may have been a poor student interested in the medical field. I suspect people of a lower class could not have gained employment within an industry above their class. So having said that, that would mean this person wouldn't have access to organs etc and may not have been part of a medical school or wasn't working in the medical field. I am not 100% on this theory, it's just a suggestion.

I agree that a wandering lunatic was not responsible for these crimes as they would have been caught. These people are not organised. cannot separate reality from fantasy and would have had a hard time concealing this. Where else the ripper was organised, and has not been caught for these crimes. I'm not ruling out mental health issues (it's obvious something wasn't right with him) but I don't think the classic schizophrenia, for example features as the drive behind the ripper's murder spree.

The ripper was indeed a brazen risk taker, and I do think that perhaps his family/friends would never have guessed that he was involved in these crimes.