change in modus operandi

[protohistorian]

Hi Nats and David,

I like and respect both of you as always, but see no reason to pretend I believe a viable and probable suggestion is that Severin killed in very bloody public fashion.. and stuck his hands in the warm cavities he makes 3 times taking internal matter, and not much later in life changed that habit to become one of maliciously and incrementally killing women who werent unfortunates by slipping them poison.

I think what is being done is to believe that the acts that Jack the Ripper was accused of fit into a serial killer profile of men that were arrested and convicted of their deeds since perhaps what...the 1930"s? When were the first noteworthy samples of serial killers first on paper as study material?

A killer who kills is not complicated at all....the motive if revealed usually makes perfect sense and is general "madness" or something else easily understandable like robbery, lust or anarchistic perhaps. These murders....the 3 I believe were committed by one man or the same 2 or more men, ...are just the exposed iceberg....what was beneath them has a myriad of possible answers including that their death was for anarchistic principles. Something that you might try to forge a link with his later publican role if promoting Severin.

He was one of three named, and thought to be chief suspects, a poisoner and a man who kills himself a week or so after Marys death and leaves no hint of any guilt in a suicide letter, and a petty thief who it turns out...was in jail at the time.

Its a grim testimonial to the senior investigative personelle, and has now fostered some resentment from you 2 for my saying so.

That means I meant no disrespect, and I should concentrate on threads that to me, are seeking evidence of a bloody murderers life. Someone who I believe would have committed offenses with his knife(s) before the Ripper killings.

Best regards.

There is no disrespect here Michael, we appreciate your concern. By the logic above Ted Kazinsky should never have been considered for the unabomber. The mode of killing is a function of the killers unique mental construct, and as such always unknowable to us. We have what captured killers say was the motivation, but like all caught criminals, they say what they expect to be positively interpreted. Sociopathic individuals always reach a point of diminishing return in their crimes, this is because it is tied to how they percieve them, and with familiarity, comes disappointment. This worldview does not allow for traditional logic because it based on dysfunctional value systems. When we see risk averse behaviors and neck wounds that look as if severing the head was the intent, you might want to consider the neighborhood sociopath who in 1891, was threatening to cut off heads. Since the goal of Ripperology is to formulate an understanding of these killings, and it cannot bring a suspect to justice, we are in no way bound by the sensibilities that apply to current crimes. Respectfully Dave

Hi Nats and David,

I like and respect both of you as always, but see no reason to pretend I believe a viable and probable suggestion is that Severin killed in very bloody public fashion.. and stuck his hands in the warm cavities he makes 3 times taking internal matter, and not much later in life changed that habit to become one of maliciously and incrementally killing women who werent unfortunates by slipping them poison.

I think what is being done is to believe that the acts that Jack the Ripper was accused of fit into a serial killer profile of men that were arrested and convicted of their deeds since perhaps what...the 1930"s? When were the first noteworthy samples of serial killers first on paper as study material?

A killer who kills is not complicated at all....the motive if revealed usually makes perfect sense and is general "madness" or something else easily understandable like robbery, lust or anarchistic perhaps. These murders....the 3 I believe were committed by one man or the same 2 or more men, ...are just the exposed iceberg....what was beneath them has a myriad of possible answers including that their death was for anarchistic principles. Something that you might try to forge a link with his later publican role if promoting Severin.

He was one of three named, and thought to be chief suspects, a poisoner and a man who kills himself a week or so after Marys death and leaves no hint of any guilt in a suicide letter, and a petty thief who it turns out...was in jail at the time.

Its a grim testimonial to the senior investigative personelle, and has now fostered some resentment from you 2 for my saying so.

That means I meant no disrespect, and I should concentrate on threads that to me, are seeking evidence of a bloody murderers life. Someone who I believe would have committed offenses with his knife(s) before the Ripper killings.

Best regards.

[protohistorian]

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.

Fair enough, I believe it is such narrow interpretations that allow people lack jack to escape. Respectfully Dave

[Natalie Severn]

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.

Hi Mike,
Klosowski was a killer and he was executed for serial murder and he is down in the Post Office directory as having lived in Cable Street close to at least one murder site in 1888-we dont know yet exactly when in 1888 but at some point before December 2nd 1888 for certain .
These days when a killer is caught investigations are pretty thorough and the police interview such killers regarding other unsolved murders/rapes etc.This was either not done or not done very thoroughly---such as digging up the gardens of his various pubs ,although some police,including Abberline did consider him a likely ripper candidate.
At the time of his murder trial,it was reported in the Daily Chronicle of 23 March 1903 that Klosowski"s real wife, Lucy Klosowski made a startling statement:she states that on one occasion,when she had a quarrel with her husband,he "held her down on the bed and pressed his face against her mouth to keep her from screaming.At that moment a customer entered the shop immmediately in front of the room,and Klosowski got up to attend to him.The woman chanced to see a handle protruding from underneath the pillow.She found to her horror,that it was a SHARP AND FORMIDABLE KNIFE.which she promptly hid.Later,Klosowski deliberately told her that he meant to cut her head off,and HE POINTED TO A PLACE IN THE ROOM WHERE HE MEANT TO HAVE BURIED HER.She said,"But the neighbours would have asked where I had gone to," "Oh" retorted Klosowski,calmly,"I should simply have told them YOU HAD GONE BACK TO NEW YORK".
It was this statement that led police to "have considerable doubt whether the full extent of the criminality of Klosowski had been nearly revealed by their recent investigations,remarkable as they were in their extent".

[protohistorian]

Thats true enough. The nature of Severin's malfunction is cumulative, there is therefore a suggestion of such behavior, but that is as far as it goes. My intent thus far has merely been to demonstrate his viability as a suspect, with particular reference to independently established understandings of behavior. I was/are gobsmacked by people who insist methodological difference is a disqualifying characteristic. Respectfully Dave

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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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

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]

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

[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.