change in modus operandi

[Natalie Severn]

All true, Norma, of course.

I guess I have trouble picturing the killer as a great seducer and womanizer.

Hi Dave, I agree that murderous intent was unlikely to have preceded the relationships, but it's still an unusual change in victimology, since there was nothing to have prevented him from continuing with his presumed earlier method of dispatch beyond the steps he took to make it more difficult.

Regards,
Ben

I am having trouble with this too Ben,but it "appears" to be so.I dont think he was quite right in the head mind,so if he was completely locked up in his own world, others may have only been perceived in the black and white terms of what they could do for him.And if they failed to be of any use and became quarrelsome, he decided they had to be exterminated for his own safety and well being.I would imagine he was pretty difficult to live with so his "wives" may well have nagged him .

Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

yes, good post Natalie

he was a rolling stone that gathers no moss... and the Ripper left Whitechapel too, he gathered no moss either.... but we need proof

Thanks Michael.I am going out now but look forward to more discussion about this oddball Klosowski!

[Malcolm X]

Chapman seemed to live in a dreamworld and unable to stick to anything..just look at all the jobs he had, and he didn't qualify as a surgeon... he gave up for some reason.

it could be that he never found the right career that suited him and he chose totally the wrong employment, thus he never settled/ got fed up with his work quickly and hence moved on... probably got bored with his women too.

in this way he's similar to Tumblety, a poser/ bullshitter and never settling anywhere for long.

i expect he got most annoyed if a woman mentioned this to him..i.e called him a failure in life.. or nagged him to pay the bills etc, anyone that upset his ``dreamworld``.... but he was hardworking/ successful compared to other migrants.. very much so, but just not the right career for him and this probably niggled him....whatever the case, Chapman had money; that's for sure.

add to this:- probably an inferiority complex and thus a need to boost his self-asteem way too much and maybe he realised that he was an ugly wretch/ slight build/ marked, pitted face...not a man's man... this was all in his mind, because what makes people like you is your personality.

so in Chapman's darker moments lurked a strong resentment of life/violent hatred that others noticed and maybe a deep hatred of prostitutes too... maybe a prostitute laughed at him years ago..this festered in his mind...............i dont know, maybe.

my guess is that, considering his strong sexual appetite, that he was out very late at night searching for women.... this i can almost guarantee you, or a peeping Tom etc....he would almost definitely have had what it takes to stalk women.... a real shifty character

so we have speculation and suspicion but no direct link to the Ripper.. only a poisoner that might have switched his M.O to avoid arrest.

[Malcolm X]

in addition, the Kelly murder looks too crazed and imbecilic to be a Chapman, he studied surgery/anatomy etc and would've seen loads of post- mortems/ operations/ owned loads of books etc..``coals to Newcastle`` yes, he's more of a torso killer.

but if he was a knife killer..i also vision him as a vicious stabber only, driven by hatred, but the Ripper is totally different, there's something more going on here..something we're missing.

i think with the Ripper, that we're right back to square one... we're studing the murders in far too much detail, and thus getting bogged down, i think we're missing the basics and the reasons why he killed.

[protohistorian]

All true, Norma, of course.

I guess I have trouble picturing the killer as a great seducer and womanizer.

Hi Dave, I agree that murderous intent was unlikely to have preceded the relationships, but it's still an unusual change in victimology, since there was nothing to have prevented him from continuing with his presumed earlier method of dispatch beyond the steps he took to make it more difficult.

Regards,
Ben

The only explanation necessary is that he found a method he liked better. To an outside observer, It will not make sense. This guy did lots of stuff that makes no sense to us. Respectfully Dave

[Natalie Severn]

I agree with Dave over it not being possible to understand, from the point of view of reason or logic,the mind and motivation of Severin Klosovski.
When he took over the lease of Cable Street,he was onto a very good thing.There were lots of Irish dock workers around that area and in those days barber shops were open from 7am ---7pm so he could have made quite a packet.

Michael X-
Regarding his behaviour---- what we know he did was move from one place to another,frequently---latterly he ran three pubs in three years.
Its curious how he changed from work as a barber to become a publican, because he must have made money as a barber.Maybe running a pub gave him more freedom and anonymity.He probably met more women in the pubs too.

[protohistorian]

I am having trouble with this too Ben,but it "appears" to be so.I dont think he was quite right in the head mind,so if he was completely locked up in his own world, others may have only been perceived in the black and white terms of what they could do for him.And if they failed to be of any use and became quarrelsome, he decided they had to be exterminated for his own safety and well being.I would imagine he was pretty difficult to live with so his "wives" may well have nagged him .

Best
Norma

The change in modus and victimology would be a consequential reaction to diminishing enjoyment from rippings. One characteristic of sociopaths is a high degree of variability. We should not be surprised by changes within the criminal expression of such people, we should be shocked at stability. Respectfully Dave

[perrymason]

With all due respect to both you Nats and David....all we do know is that he did kill women a few years after the Ripper murders in dissimilar fashion, and that its quite possible that he had a "condition" for the lack of a more precise term, one that may have existed when he lived in the immediate area, and at the time, of the Ripper killings.

There is no smoking gun, bloody knife or arrowhead found to suggest that whatever the condition was, it may have been seen through violent bloody acts in 1888.

At least we can put actual knives in some suspects hands....a straight razor would be appropriate I think, maybe even some shears....but there is nothing that ties him in any way to that type of act, or those Ripper Acts in particular.

Murder, or even proven Dementia alone doesnt quite expose the full Iceberg of a JtR type....with Severin I do not see complexity in his occupation or choice of his known murder weapon. He was caught poisoning....something that leaves itself indelibly etched on organs. The Ripper left no trace of his medium specifically...could be anything from a Bowie Knife to a straight razor like I suggested....and therefore, no trace of himself at all. Those are more complex acts...and would require someone very sharp on his feet. Does he strike you as "sharp" at all...not calculating, but reaction oriented sharp?

Cheers Nats, Dav.

[protohistorian]

It depends on your standard for evidence. I would submit that the modern corpus of knowledge on sociopathy, in conjunction with known behavior of Severin, leads one inexorably to the question of when Severin's pathology became fatal. In a matter of years after the rippings, our man makes threats convincing enough to force a woman to flee across the ocean. The threat involved a secreted knife, suggesting familiarity enough with that weapon that it was preferred, as it was not a revolver under the pillow. We know that sociopathy is long in onset, so the possibility of fatal pathology onsetting with Mrs. Spink is next to nil. I readily admit that it is not conclusive, but it must be a consideration unless one is willing to dismiss years of scholarship into this poisonous worldview. To say that Mrs. Spink was the first is to do precisely that. I am not willing to do so. Respectfully Dave

[Natalie Severn]

Unless a murderer such as Chapman was caught in the act,as he was by the 2nd opinion of a doctor attending Maud Marsh, there is no way of telling what trail of hidden homeless women"s bodies he may have left buried in his travels around Hastings,New Jersey and the London pubs he ran.
It is my suspicion that his method of choice was the knife,but that he was very careful not to get caught with a knife in his hand.I think that whenever it was in 1888 that he got hold of the Cable Street barber shop,that was the moment he knew he could remove evidence in secret,and that was when he could have got himself bloody and noone noticed!Mary Spink said to her friend that he had a Black bag----and what was in it was secret---but we dont know what was in it.
When he saw the manhunt that was on to catch Jack,thats when he stopped
his street killing/mutilating spree. in WhitechapelBut I doubt,if once he had started to use the knife ,that he ever completely stopped ----ie if JtR was Chapman, because the knife filled a particular need of his.But Dave may well be right.He could have just grown tired of ripping.

[Sam Flynn]

We know that sociopathy is long in onset, so the possibility of fatal pathology onsetting with Mrs. Spink is next to nil.

I don't see that that should be the case at all, Dave. Everything has to start sometime, and there's no reason to suppose (still less assert) that Klosowski had acted out his murderous impulses before Spink's death.

[protohistorian]

The level of sociopathy Severin demonstrated at trial does not onset suddenly. He demonstrates multiple corrupt value systems, this also would not onset suddenly. Respectfully Dave

[Sam Flynn]

The level of sociopathy Severin demonstrated at trial does not onset suddenly.

Can you provide a source that supports that assertion, Dave? I only ask, because Klosowski (as Jack) would have perpetrated the atrocious "Ripper" murders at the tender age of 22. Were those murders a case of "sudden onset" pathology? If so, it was a mighty spectacular one.

[Natalie Severn]

This is a good point Sam.But to some extent Dave and I are arguing differently.I perceive Klosowski as having the same sort of mental illness as Robert Napper,who has been diagnosed by several psychiatrists as having paranoid pschizophrenia.
Napper fantasised---and still fantasises about being an immensely important person who has won the Nobel peace prize etc .He murdered both Rachel Nickel---outdoors,and Samantha Bisset ---indoors, some 15 years ago in the most horrific manner-one a sudden frenzied stabbing-it seemed uncalculated , the other a very calculated affair with maps drawn out and careful notes to himself made prior to the killings and his intentions made quite clear.He stalked her ,tricked her to letting him indoors and then killed Samantha Bisset and her child and mutilated Samantha in the style of Mary Kelly.
He was able to avoid detection over Rachel for many years [15years in total ]and only DNA evidence linked him to it as he resolutely refused to confess even though he was in Broadmoor by then for the other killing.

I dont know how old he was exactly at the time,but he could only have been in his early twenties when he began all this.
Of particular noteworthiness here is that the police are currently investigating him for a series of unsolved murders in London going back many years.
I think Klosowski could well have been such a killer,constantly on the move from shop to shop,district to district,and latterly, London pub to London pub,all the time cleverly covering his tracks,and quite possibly using poison to dispose of his wives ,safely as he thought,so that he could get on with his real business of killing and mutilating.We have no evidence of these other murders,but then many murders have probably not come to light that have involved young homeless people of which there were large numbers in Victorian London.

I also think Dave could be right,the fundamental pathology could be sociopathy with him cleverly building up these mobile contingency and concealment plans-as with his poisonings ,which gave him space and variety of opportunity .True they appear to have culminated in wife poisoning, but I suspect these poisonings were to enable him to carry on with what he really wanted to do rather than an end in themselves.Chapman seems to have been altogether more calculating a killer than the opportunist sociopath whose track is usually littered with unplanned ,chaos and confusion.

[perrymason]

As long as anyone posting knows that there is in fact, no evidence that links Mr K to any act with a knife or blood involved, the speculation on his "issues" fair.

Just as long as you dont contend that there are signs of his requiring or using a Ripper style outlet, or acts that have nothing in common with slowly poisoning someone.

I would think if there is one absolute requirement when assessing individuals for maladies that take violent form..its the evidence that suggests they actually committed them.

There is none here.

Cheers all.