Did Hutchinson Really Behave Like A Serial Killer?

[caz]

The idea that the police would inevitably have arrived at his doorstep even if he hadn't come forward is a total non-starter.

Hi Ben,

You do talk some rot. Ireland only went to his solicitor because he recognised himself on the cctv footage shown on the bloody news and knew everyone who knew him would say: "Oh look! I wonder what Colin from Southend is doing on the tube with that poor man who was murdered!"

Not exactly comparable with Mrs Lewis seeing some man watching the court, then Hutch turning up at the cop shop to say: "Hi! I was there that night watching the court" and the police not even apparently connecting the two, is it?

Why did I mention Papazian, along with Ireland? Killers who both dreamed up a deliberate campaign, picking their location and specific victim type way in advance, and who had crystal clear ideas as to how to translate their fantasies into physical action?

Ooooh, that's a toughie. Couldn't be because you posted this pile of ill-informed crap, could it:

Originally Posted by Ben
...the nonsensical view that serial killers dream up a deliberate campaign, picking their location and specific victim type way in advance…

…They'd have their fantasies, but often only the haziest of ideas as to how to translate that into physical action.

Ah, but most perilous of all is when we argue, unconvincingly, for the exclusion of a given example of a serial killer behaving precisely as theorized for an unsolved murder, whilst at the same time delivering up demonstrably flawed examples in a transparent attempt to bolster their own theory for the same unsolved murder.

Ah, you're beginning to see where you have been going wrong then.

Unlike you, I have no theory to bolster, apart from believing that none of the named suspects is remotely likely to have been the murderer of Mary Kelly or any of her less marketable sisters.

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

Now then. Imagine that all rabbits are deadly poisonous to eat except one variety - a very rare and tasty one called an SK rabbit.

Your argument requires one to believe that some intrinsic factor exists that makes the SK rabbit different from the others, Caz. Which is fine, at least as far as hypothetical rabbits are concerned. However, in the real world, no such intrinsic factor exists - and I can't see that the analogous "intrinsic factor" that makes certain offenders immune from capture exists either.

As I've said before - cos it's true - all caught offenders were once uncaught, and there is no earthly reason to suppose that those who manage to remain uncaught are intrinsically different, as a population, from those who eventually do get buckled. In this population there will be clever ones, and less clever ones. Some clever ones get captured, some don't. Some non-clever ones get captured, some don't. That's life (or eleven years with good behaviour).

[Ben]

You do talk some rot.

And you do talk a lot of polluted stinking filth.

It is entirely up to those who maintain that they know Hutch really behaved like one to support such a bold claim with fully documented examples that are a fair and reasonable comparison, taking all the case evidence into account.

Fortunate it is, then, that nobody ever claimed that Hutchinson "behaved like a serial killer". It has been observed that his actions and movements render him a legitimately suspicious character in this particular murder, and by extension, the other murders in the series. The only incentive behind bringing up the examples I've mentioned is to pulverize the gauche objections to his candidacy on the grounds that a he wouldn't come forward as a false witness if he was the killer. All I have to do is mention other serial killers who came forward as witnesses and out the window goes that particular objection.

We only know that he made no fatal moves, no fatal mistakes, no fatal errors of judgement.

The implication here seems to be that uncaught serial killers must be brilliantly evil masterminds by virtue of their evading justice, and that all the caught ones must therefore by less intelligent or organized by comparison. This is an obvious fallacy. You have absolutely no idea how many "mistakes" JTR made. He could have made more errors of judgement that any one of his captured counterparts, but had the good fortune to continue killing in spite of those errors.

Ireland only went to his solicitor because he recognised himself on the cctv footage shown on the bloody news

Just as I contend Hutchinson went to the police because he recognised himself in a crucial piece of eyewitness evidence that was very much in the bloody news. That's a colossal "Oops" for anyone silly enough to attempt to invalidate the comparison. It is, in fact, perfectly comparable with the Lewis sighting.

Why did I mention Papazian, along with Ireland?

Ooh, I dunno, maybe because you wanted to insinuate your silly and transparent preference for Maybrick as a suspect into a discussion about Hutchinson? And it is transparent. "Oh, look, here's an example of someone who wrote a diary expressing his intention to become a serial killer with a campaign! Just like Sir Jim". Too bad Papazian wasn't a serial killer. Too bad he wouldn't have been a commuter serial killer even if he followed through with his intentions. And no, Colin Ireland did not "pick his location" in terms of the murders and disposal of the bodies, and no, he did not have crystal clear ideas as to how to translate his fantasies into physical action. Unless you've some form of evidence that he planned to burn people's testicles with a lighter well in advance of his campaign?

Unlike you, I have no theory to bolster

I don't believe you.

[caz]

Hi All,

I thought it about time I popped back into Hutch Land to see how the regulars were getting on. As it’s been several months since I last visited this thread I hope I won’t be accused by anyone of obsessive stalking.

Your argument requires one to believe that some intrinsic factor exists that makes the SK rabbit different from the others, Caz. Which is fine, at least as far as hypothetical rabbits are concerned. However, in the real world, no such intrinsic factor exists - and I can't see that the analogous "intrinsic factor" that makes certain offenders immune from capture exists either.

As I've said before - cos it's true - all caught offenders were once uncaught, and there is no earthly reason to suppose that those who manage to remain uncaught are intrinsically different, as a population, from those who eventually do get buckled. In this population there will be clever ones, and less clever ones. Some clever ones get captured, some don't. Some non-clever ones get captured, some don't. That's life (or eleven years with good behaviour).

Hmm, it seems you misunderstood my hypothetical rabbit tale, Sam.

The intrinsic factor that made my SK rabbit ‘different from the others’ was the fact that it was the only edible one, while all other rabbits were deadly poisonous to the hunter. In human terms, the hunter would be the policeman and the intrinsic factor making SK human different from all other humans is that he kills - repeatedly. The only way for the policeman to hunt down SK human is if this rare specimen obliges by leaving a fatal clue to his murder habit.

Your original analogy didn’t work because hunting rabbits to eat doesn’t generally require you to select the right rabbit - and only the right rabbit - from a field full of identical ones. And the policeman (unless he was from the West Midlands in the 70s) wouldn’t normally blast away happily with a shotgun in a crowded place in the hunt for one guilty individual. So my own analogy referred to the hidden differences between the wanted rabbit/man and all other rabbits/men, which are only exposed by the former making a fatal mistake.

I wasn’t trying to suggest that uncaught SK human is ‘intrinsically’ different from the buckled variety, much less that this would make him ‘immune’ from capture. But there’s no getting away from the fact that you can only shoot a rabbit that comes within range of your gun. And you will only know that it’s the right one - the edible variety - if it carelessly leaves you a clue. Just as the runt of any litter is intrinsically more vulnerable to its natural hunters than the strongest (that’s life too, isn’t it?), the chances of not ending up in the buckled statistics must surely be greater for the strongest offender, physically and mentally, than for the weakest. It just needs to be kept in mind that all serial offenders are not going to be equally vulnerable to capture.

[Quote by caz:
'We only know that he made no fatal moves, no fatal mistakes, no fatal errors of judgement.']

The implication here seems to be that uncaught serial killers must be brilliantly evil masterminds by virtue of their evading justice…

Not at all, Ben. That’s your inference, not my implication. I implied just what I wrote, that Jack did nothing fatal, ie nothing that the police were able to pick up on and use to identify him as the murderer of any of the Whitechapel victims.

You have repeatedly tried to imply that Jack may have communicated directly with the police, giving them all sorts of deeply suspicious signals, all of which they either failed to pick up on or were unable to do a sodding thing about. You talk as though they had absolutely no ways or means in 1888 of ever charging and convicting a killer like Jack, no matter who he was or what he may have said or done to make himself a very likely suspect in your modern eyes.

[Quote by caz:
'Ireland only went to his solicitor because he recognised himself on the cctv footage shown on the bloody news']

Just as I contend Hutchinson went to the police because he recognised himself in a crucial piece of eyewitness evidence that was very much in the bloody news. That's a colossal "Oops" for anyone silly enough to attempt to invalidate the comparison. It is, in fact, perfectly comparable with the Lewis sighting.

Were you completely away with the fairies when you wrote this? Anyone who knew Ireland and watched the news that day would have been able to identify him beyond all doubt as the man who was travelling home with the latest victim on the night of his murder. Hutch wasn’t even seen with Mary, and you have no proof that the man Lewis saw was Hutch, nor that she would have recognised him again anyway, let alone been able to provide a positive identification. Even if by some miracle she had suddenly remembered who the lurking man was, and knew him as George Hutchinson, it would only have been her word against his if he had denied being anywhere near the court and insisted she was mistaken. After all, what is it you keep saying about the police being powerless to do anything if his alibi had been “walking around all night”?

You can’t seriously find the two situations in any way comparable, never mind ‘perfectly’. What did Lewis do to confirm her sighting and make it remotely comparable with the Ireland cctv footage? Whip out her digital camera and get a close-up of Hutch and Mary going into the court together? Get real.

The rest of your post merely exposes your inability to distinguish between my interest in why someone once thought Maybrick would make a cracking Jack and a personal ‘preference’ for him as a suspect, even though I’ve told you enough times that he really shouldn’t be regarded as a suspect at all.

It’s funny, but you never accuse me of having a ‘silly and transparent preference’ for Hutch as a suspect, because of my similar interest in why you think this poor wretch makes such a cracking Jack.

Love,

Caz
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[Ben]

As it’s been several months since I last visited this thread I hope I won’t be accused by anyone of obsessive stalking.

I wouldn't say obsessive.

You’re still completely wrong, though, if you think that uncaught serial killers are somehow “superior” to their captured counterparts in any fashion. It doesn’t remotely follow that the Great Uncaught have remained so because they never made any significant errors of judgment. It’s just as likely that they were responsible for a similar degree of clumsiness and error to the growing number of identified serial killers, the only difference being that their missteps did not result in capture as it did with the latter bunch. It was simply the case in 1888 that a serial offender was more likely to get away with his mistakes given the inexperience of the contemporary authorities with regard to both serial crime and policing in general.

So I’m afraid the idea that Jack was any less careless than the majority of captured serial killers is completely untenable.

The distinction between a “fatal” and a “non-fatal” error is also a misleading one. Presumably, an act of carelessness only becomes “fatal” if it results in the offender’s capture, and yet in the vast majority of cases, the fatality or otherwise of the misstep is unlikely to be something over which the offender can influence any sort of control. For example, was it particularly skilful on Jack’s part to get away with the Chapman murder without Cadosch venturing an investigative peek over the fence or a resident of #29 Hanbury Street open a rear-facing window? No, it would be nearer the mark to say that he was careless and lucky – lucky that his act of carelessness did not become "fatal". Had luck not been on his side that night, or at Mitre Square when George Morris decided to forgo his customary smoke outside, there is every chance he’d have ended up as yet another captured serial killer.

I’m not suggesting that Jack’s evasion of capture can be solely attributed to luck, but it clearly played a significant role, as did the inexperience of the police when it came to serial killers. Rabbit analogies aside, there is absolutely no reason to think that he gave himself any fewer opportunities to be caught than the majority of identified serial killers.

“You talk as though they had absolutely no ways or means in 1888 of ever charging and convicting a killer like Jack, no matter who he was or what he may have said or done to make himself a very likely suspect in your modern eyes”

No, I’m just correcting the mistaking impression that the police of 1888 MUST have regarded X or Y as suspicious, so they MUST have investigated him thoroughly, and MUST have cleared him as a consequence, and all the evidence for this MUST have been lost over time. It involves so many unacceptably speculative leaps that you end up dismissing a legitimate suspect for no good reason at all.

“Hutch wasn’t even seen with Mary, and you have no proof that the man Lewis saw was Hutch, nor that she would have recognised him again anyway, let alone been able to provide a positive identification.”

None of that invalidates either the suggested comparison with Hutchinson or the motivation for Ireland coming forward. The latter came forward as a witness because he feared that incriminating evidence could link him to the crime, crime scene or victim. He realised he’d been seen, so he lied about his connection to those three things. He pretended he was there for a different reason, and invented a “suspect” to deflect suspicion away from him. Other serial killers have resorted to similar tactics for similar reasons, and there are elements of Hutchinson’s behaviour that more than entitle the suspicion that he may have been one such serial killer. The motivating factor is often fear of capture – sometimes the fear will be immediate and pressing, and in other cases, there is less cause for concern, but they do it anyway. Either way, the perceived legitimacy of the fear, or lack thereof, is not a good reason for invalidating what is so obviously an apt comparison.

Your argument seems to be that Hutchinson didn’t need to come forward with a self-legitimising lie designed to deflect suspicion away from himself, but nor did Colin Ireland or John Eric Armstrong in Detroit (who wasn’t caught on CCTV). Nobody held a gun to their heads and forced them to behave in such a fashion. They resorted to the same strategy despite the fact the legitimacy of their “fears” weren’t on a precisely equal footing (how unusual it would be if they were!).

“It’s funny, but you never accuse me of having a ‘silly and transparent preference’ for Hutch as a suspect, because of my similar interest in why you think this poor wretch makes such a cracking Jack.”

But rarely do any of us hear you say anything even vaguely critical of either the diary of Maybrick’s candidacy. Whenever you join a Maybrick thread, it’s invariably to counter the criticisms, and yet the opposite occurs whenever you delve into Hutchville. The only consistent elements are the combative, patronising tone and the illogical nature of the defence/criticisms.

All the best,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

So my own analogy referred to the hidden differences between the wanted rabbit/man and all other rabbits/men, which are only exposed by the former making a fatal mistake.

Ah, that rather depends on whether one believes that most serial killers (or most stew-bound rabbits) possess a significant hidden difference, Caz - which I don't. I'd be very surprised if criminals (or rabbits, etc) possessed a "catchability" attribute that wasn't distributed more-or-less normally throughout a population, and shared equally by non-criminals.

[Sam Flynn]

Now then. Imagine that all rabbits are deadly poisonous to eat except one variety - a very rare and tasty one called an SK rabbit. Nothing to tell them apart except that the SK secretly goes for a regular detox which keeps him edible.

Now, that assumes that two factors - "poisonousness" and "inevitable detoxing" - are "inherited" simultaneously, and that one outcome is mandated by another. Applied literally, it would mean that "serial-killing" and "catchability" go hand in glove. That's circular, Caz, if not spherical (in the Churchillian sense ).

[caz]

Ah, that rather depends on whether one believes that most serial killers (or most stew-bound rabbits) possess a significant hidden difference, Caz - which I don't. I'd be very surprised if criminals (or rabbits, etc) possessed a "catchability" attribute that wasn't distributed more-or-less normally throughout a population, and shared equally by non-criminals.

Hi Sam,

I would think that a penchant for repeatedly murdering people was a rather 'significant' hidden difference, compared with never harming a fly. But maybe that’s just me.

Until a serial killer is caught he is generally presumed to be relatively harmless by those who associate with him. I still maintain that some serial offenders are by nature going to possess more “catchability” than other serial offenders. That’s obviously apart from external factors like luck (good or bad) and detective skills (abysmal or brilliant).

Now, that assumes that two factors - "poisonousness" and "inevitable detoxing" - are "inherited" simultaneously, and that one outcome is mandated by another. Applied literally, it would mean that "serial-killing" and "catchability" go hand in glove.

Nope, I don’t get that one at all. You still seem to have assumed something I wasn’t actually saying. I had to use the poison analogy to give one of your rabbits (ie the serial killer you are actively hunting) a significant but 'hidden' difference from every other rabbit in the field (ie everyone who isn’t the serial killer), which would need to be exposed before you could safely tuck in (ie hang the bugger).

Ergo, the only rabbit you can hunt down and consume (and the only man you can hunt down and hang) is my cute little edible SK bunny (eg Robert Napper or Jack the Ripper - one caught, one not). If you try to eat any other rabbit (or try to convict anyone other than Napper or Jack for their respective crimes, eg Colin Stagg or Hutch )) you will poison yourself (or ruin your police career).

That’s all I was getting at. Am I making myself any clearer now?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Brace yourself for a long one, Ben.

You’re still completely wrong, though, if you think that uncaught serial killers are somehow “superior” to their captured counterparts in any fashion.

Well that’s fine then, because I don’t think that, which should have been crystal clear from this:

I wasn’t trying to suggest that uncaught SK human is ‘intrinsically’ different from the buckled variety, much less that this would make him ‘immune’ from capture. But there’s no getting away from the fact that you can only shoot a rabbit that comes within range of your gun. And you will only know that it’s the right one - the edible variety - if it carelessly leaves you a clue. Just as the runt of any litter is intrinsically more vulnerable to its natural hunters than the strongest (that’s life too, isn’t it?), the chances of not ending up in the buckled statistics must surely be greater for the strongest offender, physically and mentally, than for the weakest. It just needs to be kept in mind that all serial offenders are not going to be equally vulnerable to capture.

In short, of course I don’t think all uncaught serial killers are “superior” (a word I did not use, so why did you imply that I did by using quote marks?) to all identified ones. It’s a simple matter of degree and taking everything into account. To put it simply enough for you, if Simple Simon hangs around his murder scenes with dripping knife and body parts peeking out of his pockets, while Clever Clive is always away on his toes and all cleaned up before you can say “Who’s the twat then?”, who do you think is the twat then?

It was simply the case in 1888 that a serial offender was more likely to get away with his mistakes given the inexperience of the contemporary authorities with regard to both serial crime and policing in general.

Then Jack had no earthly need to go anywhere near the cop shop, because he’d have known he was a different animal and not your average 1888 villain and that the police would be out of their depth. How could he possibly lose, as long as they couldn’t find him with any incriminating evidence, given that nobody had actually seen him attacking a living soul? At the very worst, some woman saying she was sure it was him looking up the court that night? Hardly enough to hang a man for murder, any more than Carrie Maxwell’s certainty was enough to put Mary outside the court the next morning.

…I’m just correcting the mistaking impression that the police of 1888 MUST have regarded X or Y as suspicious, so they MUST have investigated him thoroughly, and MUST have cleared him as a consequence, and all the evidence for this MUST have been lost over time. It involves so many unacceptably speculative leaps that you end up dismissing a legitimate suspect for no good reason at all.

Yes, but for Hutch even to be a legitimate suspect, let alone Jack himself, the police MUST NOT have come across any information, at any time, that along with discrediting his account showed that he could not have been there at the critical time (eg if someone saw him elsewhere that night, like Romford) or that he was incapable of being the killer himself (eg some physical handicap that couldn’t be reconciled with the level of violence, or some obvious feature that didn’t tally with any of the eye witness testimony).

We don’t know for sure what it was that made Hutch slip so quickly and so completely off the radar. What convinced the police that he could not help with their enquiries after all, in any way? Right there you have a gap in the information which you have to fill in very limited and specific ways with your own speculation, merely to allow him suspect status.

Only one link in your speculative chain has to be rotten and the case against Hutch falls apart. There is only one scenario where he is guilty: he kills Mary after being spotted by a witness, goes to the cops to lie about his involvement, lies again to the papers and is discredited, and is then allowed to slip away because nobody finds his behaviour suspicious enough, or they could do bugger all about it anyway (including, apparently, sticking him in front of the witnesses, or at the very least charging him with wilful obstruction).

There are many more scenarios where Hutch is innocent of murder but chooses to give his belated witness account, for one of several perfectly plausible reasons. So make no mistake - you still have all the work to do here.

…the suggested comparison with Hutchinson or the motivation for Ireland coming forward. The latter came forward as a witness because he feared that incriminating evidence could link him to the crime, crime scene or victim…

Blimey, how many more times are you going to repeat what you now know to be misleading information, to make your comparison appear less weak? Ireland went to a solicitor (not the police: he avoided them like the plague and remained silent for weeks after they came to him) because the whole country had seen incriminating evidence with their own eyes that did link him, directly and unequivocally to his latest victim, on the poor sod’s journey home to his untimely death. He had become the prime suspect for a series of murders overnight, so he had no choice but to prepare a believable account, in anticipation of the inevitable knock on the door, of why he was travelling home with this victim if it wasn’t to kill him, just like the others had all been killed in their own homes by someone they had let in after a night out at the same Fulham pub. But of course he failed to make it believable and the police held on like grim death until they got the goods.

Nothing remotely like that happened to Hutch in 1888 to force him out of the woodwork and into the cop shop. The police had no suspicions about him before he came forward and there is nothing to suggest that a failure to do so would have produced any. He wasn’t even seen with Mary. Ireland, on the other hand, must have allowed himself to be seen with his last victim by scores of tube passengers that day, but that couldn't have worried him a jot until he made the tv news and knew he had to act.

…rarely do any of us hear you say anything even vaguely critical of either the diary of Maybrick’s candidacy…

What’s this ‘any of us’ crap? You’re not being a hypocrite, are you, appealing to some mythical silent majority, when you condemn the practice in others? If you had actually read my contributions to that topic with any intelligence, you’d know that I don’t defend the diary, and certainly not its author for turning Sir James into Jack. It was a horrendous thing to do, whoever it was. But I am entitled to challenge any claims (in any direction) regarding its date or authorship that are not supported by the available facts or actually conflict with existing evidence.

Obviously it’s not supportable to claim that the date at the end of the diary is correct or that Maybrick was the author, but unless you were fibbing about reading my diary contributions you must be aware that almost nobody tries to claim that, and the last one I saw doing it was sent packing - by me, as it happens. At least he didn’t hang around after I suggested he was full of it. So where were you when the job needed doing? Not a secret diary supporter, are you?

By far the largest number of unsupportable claims come from the modern hoax conspiracy theorists, perhaps because there are more of them, or maybe they are more confident as a group when it comes to airing strong convictions without the necessary proof. At the other extreme, the very vocal diary 'believers' are very few and far between (or dead), while those in between tend to be happy just exchanging ideas, asking questions and speculating, without stating their opinions as fact. None of that is my fault - I just go wherever I suspect that people are filling gaps in the evidence wantonly or inappropriately.

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

That’s all I was getting at. Am I making myself any clearer now?

Indeed, Caz, but you still seem to be "welding" the attribute of "more-prone-to-being-caught" to a certain type of killer. It's still a teleological argument, and I still can't see why on earth that should be the case .

Ergo, the only rabbit you can hunt down and consume is my cute little edible SK bunny

"The only rabbit I can hunt down and consume"? I appreciate that we're talking metaphorically here, but where did that "Law of Nature" come from, and why should one suppose that - in realising the metaphor - it applies to a certain flavour of killer more than it would to any other criminal?

[caz]

Oh Sam, you still misunderstand me. It must be my fault.

Let's make it one very ordinary criminal then, versus everyone who is not that one very ordinary criminal. It's exactly the same comparison as far as my analogy is concerned. I'm talking about the trail back from a specific crime (or series of crimes) to the person responsible - let's call him Bertie Burglar - that may or may not eventually expose him as the culprit.

The better the Berties of this world are at keeping their trails hidden, the more difficult it will be for Harry Hunter to distinguish them from anyone else in their community. My point is that you can't go around shooting anyone in the hope that a certain Bertie Burglar will be among them. So your analogy of shooting rabbits in a field - any rabbit that comes into view (ie non-offender, serial offender or any other offender), because they're all the same and delicious to eat - didn't work. Bertie will be doing his best to avoid your gun, but as long as he blends in with the crowd you won't know who to shoot and you can only shoot Bertie.

You can only identify a Bertie (or an edible rabbit in a field of poisonous ones) if he fails to keep the trail from his crime scene hidden (or the trail from his special detox clinic), and even then you have to have the luck or skill to find it and follow it.

Love,

Caz
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[Ben]

Would this be the fourth Hutchinson thread you’ve followed me onto and revived this week?

“To put it simply enough for you”

What is it with certain people and their bizarre misconception that if you make a demonstrably flawed observation “simply enough”, it is somehow rendered more persuasive? This seems to be your MO of late: advance an illogical argument, and then accuse anyone who recognises its inherent weaknesses of “misunderstanding” you. You’re even patronising Gareth now. The notion that Jack the Ripper was the “Clever Clive” in your equation fails to embrace both the element of luck and the inexperience of the investigating authorities in 1888. Both of them played a significant role in the killer’s evasion of capture – especially the former, unless you’re arguing that he was so brilliantly clever and organized that he could predict the bowel movements of Albert Cadosche or anticipate George Morris altering his smoking routine.

Your concept of “catchability” only reinforces your lack of knowledge and familiarity with other serial cases. The serial killers that have been captured to date can be placed along both extremes of the organisation or “cleverness” continuum, and there are plenty of shades of grey in between. It simply isn’t the case that the clever ones always escape and the clumsy ones always get caught. Edmund Kemper and Ottis Toole aren’t exactly on a par with one another intellectually, and both were caught. Jack was lucky not to have been caught – the crime scene evidence tells us as much. There have been other, ostensibly “cleverer”, serial killers who did not experience that same luck, probably because a more sophisticated police force prevented it.

“Then Jack had no earthly need to go anywhere near the cop shop”

He had no earthly “need” to murder a handful of prostitutes either.

He may have wanted to, however, and the same may well have applied to any decision he might have taken to approach the “cop shop” to legitimise his presence and play the innocent witness card, deflecting suspicion elsewhere in the process. Nobody’s suggesting he was compelled to do so any more that Colin Ireland or John Eric Armstrong were. Nobody put a gun to their heads. These individuals simply perceived an advantage in doing so, and if it appealed to their egocentric desire to get one over on their pursuers, a pre-emptive move would seem all the more enticing. Hutchinson would have “lost” if other witness were reintroduced, along with Sarah Lewis, to look him over. If they all identified the same individual, the game could well have been up, and it may well have been in the interests of preventing this outcome and getting his version of events in first that his police-contacting efforts were directed.

We have the luxury of knowledge that none of the potentially incriminating witnesses (Lawende, Schwartz etc) were being used in a suspect-spotting capacity at that time.

Hutchinson did not.

“Yes, but for Hutch even to be a legitimate suspect, let alone Jack himself, the police MUST NOT have come across any information, at any time, that along with discrediting his account showed that he could not have been there at the critical time (eg if someone saw him elsewhere that night, like Romford) or that he was incapable of being the killer himself (eg some physical handicap that couldn’t be reconciled with the level of violence, or some obvious feature that didn’t tally with any of the eye witness testimony).”

Oh, I’ll cheerfully settle with that.

In other words, unless we posit the existence of lost-to-history reports and decide for ourselves what they must have said, Hutchinson remains a legitimate suspect? I think that makes perfect sense, and if it’s all the same to you, I intend to carry on avoiding the trap of conjuring up hoped-for evidence and insisting that it must have existed once upon a time, not in the interests of buoying Hutchinson’s ripper candidacy, but for the sake of maintaining a responsible approach to history.

You’re right, we don’t know for certain what specific factors led to the apparent discrediting of his Astrakhan description as a viable ripper sighting, but then you have the audacity to suggest that I’m using “my own speculation” to explain why this might have been the case, whereas in fact, you’re relying on your own acutely specific brand of speculation to try and remove his suspect status. The fundamental difference here is that you are positing the existence of imaginary evidence in an effort to prevent him from being considered a legitimate suspect, whereas I’m highlighting the very absence of Hutchinson-exonerating evidence to keep him in the running. Your statement above is the height of hypocrisy. If you have any evidence to justify the unacceptable inference that a discredited witness automatically equated to a discredited suspect, then provide it. Give us that mythical, imagined Romford alibi that you’re hoping to invent out of nowhere. Piss or get off the pot, and if you can’t provide that evidence, stop relying on lost/imagined/hoped for evidence to justify your exclusion of Hutchinson as a viable suspect.

“including, apparently, sticking him in front of the witnesses, or at the very least charging him with wilful obstruction”

How could they prove he was “wilfully obstructing” anything (without your conjured up reports that you hope existed once upon a time), and where’s your evidence that any suspect was “stuck in front” of more that one witness?

“There is only one scenario where he is guilty”

I recall someone else coming up with this very same ludicrous concept on the old archived message boards, and it struck me as absurd then as now. It was Gareth, I recall, who dealt with this spurious piece of nonsense when it was first advanced, and basic mathematics was all that was required to demolish it and, by extension, instruct the obstinate and embarrassingly ill-informed in common sense. It goes like this: Hutchinson is either guilty or innocent of Mary Kelly’s murder. There are plenty of scenarios associated with the guilty premise, and there are plenty of scenarios associated with the innocent premise. The hypothetical, and potentially infinite number of guilty scenarios (including minor variations) doesn’t “gang up” against the hypothetical and potentially infinite number of innocent scenarios, and vice versa. There’s always the possibility of “rottenness” in any of those scenarios, but you’ve failed to expose any such thing in my proposed version of events, and whenever you try, you usually end up exposing your ignorance. Unfortunately, your unattractive and wholly undeserved egocentricity often prevents you from conceding as much or taking the time and effort to read up on the topic.

“Blimey, how many more times are you going to repeat what you now know to be misleading information, to make your comparison appear less weak?”

Blimey, how many more times are you going to repeat your specious and illogical objections to the proposed comparison as though they’re remotely likely to carry weight? It makes not a scrap of difference whether he approached the police or his solicitor. By approaching the latter, he knew full well that the matter would eventually attract the attention of the police, and if he didn’t have a solicitor to speak of, he may well have been forced to cut out the middle man, just as Hutchinson did – who, for obvious reasons would not have had a solicitor. The fact of the matter – which you’re attempting with fevered determination to obfuscate – is that Colin Ireland injected himself into the investigation in order to both vindicate his presence and deflect suspicion elsewhere. If you’re claiming he had no choice but to do so, you’re either lying or delusional, or both.

You manage to miss the point again in truly spectacular fashion. Serial killers have approached the investigating authorities under the guise of witnesses irrespective of the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their fears. Your argument seems to be that unless the anxiety or “fear legitimacy” levels are constant with each serial case brought up for comparison, then any parallel with Hutchinson is invalidated. Blissfully for both history and the truth, you have been disabused of this fallacy whether you’re prepared to accept it or not. John Eric Armstrong injected himself into the investigation for self-preservation purposes, and he was not spotted on CCTV.

Out the window, then, goes your claim that a serial killer only comes forward of his own volition if he had “no choice” but to do so, which after all, is a ludicrous concept. Nobody forced Colin Ireland to approach the police under the guise of a witness. Nobody forced him to come forward and pretend he was there for innocent reasons. And nobody forced him to invent a suspect for the purposes of deflecting suspicion in a false direction. This is precisely what other serial killers have done, and like it or not, it’s a viable explanation for Hutchinson’s behaviour in the aftermath of Kelly’s murder. Other factors may have prompted Hutchinson to come forward that extended beyond mere need. As you should have learned from your research into this topic, serial killers have resorted to this and similar tactics out of sheer bravado, as well as a desire to keep appraised of police progress.

“What’s this ‘any of us’ crap? You’re not being a hypocrite, are you, appealing to some mythical silent majority, when you condemn the practice in others?”

Well, I’m a Be-Done-By-As-You-Did sort of bloke, and if that means lowering myself temporarily to your deplorable standards of discourse, so be it. My observation was that you rarely say “anything even vaguely critical of either the diary of Maybrick’s candidacy” especially in terms of its presentation. You seem inordinately fond of expressing grudging admiration for the author, not because of his or her determination to cast Maybrick in the role of the ripper, but because you’ve convinced yourself that whoever was responsible must have been fiendishly clever, and that’s precisely the trap you fall into when discussing the identity of Jack the Ripper. You just don’t want a boring, drab solution to anything. You harbour a bizarre aversion to both working class lucky rippers and crap hoaxers, so much so that you get the “screaming abdabs” whenever anyone suggests that you may have been mistaken.

Oh, and mine was longer.

[Sam Flynn]

Edmund Kemper and Ottis Toole aren’t exactly on a par with one another intellectually, and both were caught.

That, Ben, is a very good point. One could go on:

Shawcross/Bundy; Kurten/Shipman; Brady/Swango; Sutcliffe/Cream; West/Mudgett...