change in modus operandi

[Natalie Severn]

Hi defective detective,Mayerling, Corey 123 ,Errata,Pablito!

The old White Heart pub needs to be totally ransacked to look for his 'disappeared' Polish wife.

Well there could be just a muddle over the "disappeared" Polish wife.
At the conference , September last , Gareth Williams [Sam Flynn] spoke on Chapman.
Gareth said that according to the murder trial transcripts of 1903 regarding Severin Klosowski ,the witness Ethel Radin had testified that 15 years previously ,Klosowski had worked for five months in their barbers shop at 70 West India Dock Road .She also said he had gone there with his wife.Well 15 years previously means that this was in the year 1888.If this was when he arrived at Mrs Radin"s barber shop with "his wife" then that "wife" did disappear and I think Mrs Radin implied that she was Polish.
However, if this person was the Polish born Lucy Baderski,she and Klosowski were married at the end of October 1889 and they both went to live immediately after the ceremony at Severin"s address at 126 Cable Street where he leased it in 1888----probably sometime in the Autumn /Winter of 1888 because it made it into the Post Office Directory for January 1889 . Lucy"s brother also testified that Klosowski had been living at 126 Cable Street before his marriage to Lucy.
So its a mystery.The only time Mrs Radin and her husband ran a barber shop at 70 West India Dock Road,according to the Post Office Directory was during the year 1888 ie for the previous twelve months to the Cable Street period.But this West India Dock Road address needs to be double checked regarding his timeline.
Clearly,if he was at Mrs Radin"s in 1888 he wasnt with his Polish wife Lucy Baderski who he didn"t meet until August 1889 .
I wrote a long article on Severin Klosowski for Ripperologist and it is now here on Casebook under "Dissertations".Its entitled ."The Cable Street Dandy".
I would be interested to discuss it with anyone who might be interested in Klosowski as a suspect!
Best Wishes,
Norma

[Defective Detective]

David Berkowitz, the infamous Son of Sam, is typically pictured as walking around New York burrough streets at night with a pistol in hand looking to pop couples necking in their cars. To a large extent, this is true of his murders - but his first attempt, against a woman named Michelle Forman (she survived, but was put in the hospital), was with a knife, and she was in her home and not her car. That switch - from a personalized kniving to a far less intimate shooting - is just as dramatic as that between a knife and poison.

I have no problem at all reconciling Klosowski's later murders with the possibility that he was also Jack the Ripper. Look at it this way: his motive in those killers would have been completely different from the far more impulsive, far rasher state of mind he'd have been in. Which isn't to say that Chapman is the Ripper - he probably isn't - but he is to my mind by far the most viable of the named suspects.

What we need with this suspect is someone with the mindless zeal of a Patricia Cornwell who has money to spare investigating him. In particular I would say that the old White Heart pub needs to be totally ransacked to look for his 'disappeared' Polish wife. We know, roughly, the places he lived whilst in Whitechapel. If anyone were legitimately interested in him as a killer they could begin by conducting a far more sweeping investigation of Klosowski than has previously been given him.

[Mayerling]

There is an old "B" feature called (I think) The Old Man Who Cried Wolf, starring Lewis Stone (better recalled as Judge Hardy in the "Andy Hardy" series) where someone planning a killing purposely became a repeating confessor to crimes, so that when the actual crime he commits is uncovered and he "confesses" the police refuse to consider him more than a mental case or crank after publicity. I don't know if the Ripper ever "confessed" like that, but it could have been done in 1888. Fake confessions follow almost any well known criminal (for example after the Black Dahlia case). Recently there was an example in the Jon Benet Ramsay Case where a criminal in prison in Asia was shipped to Colorado when he hinted he was the killer (the authorities later had to let him go when his "evidence" of self-guilt seemed to collapse.

As for Chapman's comments - he certainly had a sadistic, sick sense of humor, but some of his comments are typical of many killers. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, while in Newgate Prison awaiting transporting to Australia, was visited by friends and acquaintances. Wainewright knew he was lucky to not be tried for killing three people with poison, and that policemen in the prison may have been listening to him at the time. Suddenly one of the visitors berated him for poisoning the lovely Helen Abercrombie, his sister-in-law, and asked what would make him do that. He looked at this fool, realizing that the idiot was expecting him to make a confessing remark that could lead to his hanging. "I don't know," Wainewright shot back, "Maybe her ankles were too thick." Wainewright was quoting an old Greek line of poetry, "I don't like women with thick ankles."

Jeff

[corey123]

Hello Errata,

And it is obvious that this killer wasn't amung that group.

[Errata]

Hello Nats,

Good to know. The suggestion that he would want to get caught kind of blows my mind. I understand that when a serial killer is caught, they are relieved and pysically ill, but they would do anything at all costs to keep their fantasies at play.

However, this does not play in some factors like stupidity(Neil Creme lol) or just plain rage, sort of like spree killers. Of coarse, they usually end up taking their own lives in the end as well, just another point to prove that killers don't want to be caught.

Ok, my rant is over.

Actually there is a tiny subgroup of serial killers who turn themselves in. Most notably Edmund Kemper.
Like 2 %.
The reasons are varied.

aaaaaannnnd FIGHT!

[Natalie Severn]

Well Pablito I wish you the very best! Please do keep me updated on it!
Cheers,
Norma

[Pablito]

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=1066

Thanks. Just saw it, Norma. A technology institute now. Well there's no better place to try out the latest in police technology... coming at it from the angle that this was once a wife murderer, and any research into a 100 year old murder case could make their property a place of historical interest. Also they are less likely to swear at me, but they'll probably be a bit freaked out and just think im a nutter, which i can live with. I might draw up a letter and see where it goes - probably nowhere, but hey, all avenues must be explored

ATB,
P

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Pablito,
If you scroll down the main Klosowski thread here you will come to a thread entitled "The Crown....".Mark Ripper took the photo actually and he rediscovered it in Southwark when others had thought it was demolished and as you will see its apparently no longer a pub.
Klosowski wasnt there for very long.He was still at The Monument when he met Maud Marsh but he set fire to it in December 1901 moving to The Crown with Maud on December 25 1901,also in Southwark.He may have burnt down the Monument Pub to hide something sinister as well as claim insurance money on it! He and Bessie had lived there before he poisoned her in February 1901.I would imagine he could have been up to something between her death and meeting Maud Marsh in August 1901.Trouble is he never stayed long anywhere!
Best
Norma

[Pablito]

Hi Norma,

Can't think of a way of doing that without being sworn at and thrown out of the pub!

Just thinking in the long term, it might be in the interests of the pub owner, i.e adding historical interest to the pub to get him/her interested. Or somehow getting the local media interested in the Crown's association with Severin, but coming at it from the angle of a wife poisoner, rather than mentioning anything about JTR... and then after all that hardwork... we will probably discover nothing as he either dumped dismembered bodies in the Thames or left them under arches according to our theories. But that's the only way to be sure there is nothing there. After all, other serial murderers have to have their ex - properties scanned so why not him? Well, i'll answer my own question: because he's been dead for over 100 years and so the police will think theres no point! Ah, well it was worth a shot.

Wasn't he married whilst he was at the Crown? Can you send me the link to Rob Clack's photo?

Cheers, P

[Natalie Severn]

[QUOTE=Pablito;149354]Hi Nats,

Hope you are well. I think the two of us discussed the thing about police digging up his properties before over email and I think what the police are using now in the case of Tobin is called a 'scanning machine', which detects layers of earth that have been unusually disturbed or irregularities under the ground, in the concrete etc.

The Cable Street property is gone but it may be an interesting idea to see how many of his properties still survive during the periods in which he was a single man, which wasn't very often i grant you. What about his property in West Green Road, that still there? Hope you are well.
Pablito/[QUOTE]

Hi Pablito,
The Crown is still there in Southwark and I think it was Rob Clack who posted a photo of it.But how on earth would one go about requesting a scan?
Good to see you posting again.
Cheers,
Norma

[Pablito]

scanning machine

Hi Nats,

Hope you are well. I think the two of us discussed the thing about police digging up his properties before over email and I think what the police are using now in the case of Tobin is called a 'scanning machine', which detects layers of earth that have been unusually disturbed or irregularities under the ground, in the concrete etc.

The Cable Street property is gone but it may be an interesting idea to see how many of his properties still survive during the periods in which he was a single man, which wasn't very often i grant you. What about his property in West Green Road, that still there? Hope you are well.

Pablito

Hi Macknnc,
I am sure its true to say Klosowski aka Chapman didn"t " want to get caught ", but he certainly appears to have taken risks---sometimes making stupid jokes to his "wive"s" friends ---like Bessie"s anxious friend,Mrs Painter ,who called daily to see her ,saying that Bessie was already dead ---[while he was all the while poisoning her]--and when she went up to see her finding her still alive .At the end finally telling her friend that she was "much about the same" when she had actually been lying dead since the previous day.[Sugden]
Not long after Bessie"s death on 7th February 1901, when he had managed to bury her without arousing suspicion, he was single again for several months ---its a pity the police didnt look in the Thames or at least dig up his garden and take a look under the floor boards to see if there were any other victims.Today they would--- they are doing so with serial killer Tobin even going back to the 1960"s.So a search at least of his batchelor days in 1888 around the time he entered his address in the East End Post Office Directories as 126 Cable Street .
By August 1901 he had found a victim in a newly appointed barmaid in his pub, 18 year old Maud Marsh, who he was ready to dispose of by August the following year.He began more amorous shenanigans with another newly appointed barmaid in his pub in Southwark but when she reminded him he had a wife,Chapman snapped his fingers at her and said,"Oh,I"d give her that and she would be no more "Mrs Chapman"!
So here,are two examples -and Maud"s sister and mother gave other examples of similar incriminating remarks he made .Not really the safest thing to do to avoid arousing suspicion I wouldn"t have thought.

Norma

[Jason]

I think the Chapman murder was extremely risky and heres why. If that yard was known to ladies as a suitable place for business, who is to say that when he went in there with her that he didnt know that someone else was already using it for business ? if it were so dark then he must have wondered whether while he was going about his business that there was the possibility that someone was either already in the yard o could enter with a client at any given moment. Given that there was only one way in, and one way out, that was a massive risk.

[Rubyretro]

but he did take more chances than Chapman...for an example, killing with people likely to come by any second...

I actually don't agree with you..

Chapman was killing people that he knew and he was obviously linked to..and he killed them at home.

JtR killed strangers, in public places. There was no link to himself at all.

Whilst public places seem more dangerous at first sight, if we actually look at each murder site, then they weren't so very dangerous as they appear :

Polly -the first, and probably not so planned (if at all). Jack was quick -and he had a clear view of anyone approaching, and plenty of room to escape.

Annie -I believe fully Van der Linden's assessement that she was killed more like 4.30 am (which agrees with the doctor), and in a dark and private yard,
impossible to see from the upper windows of the house. He would have had the advantage of surprise on anyone walking in from the corridor.

Liz -the yard was so dark, that a club member had to feel his way along the walls to get back into the club. Jack was near the gates and could get out quick if he heard noise from the street..as he did when Diemschitz arrived.

Kate -he probably knew the time that the Policeman would pass, and that Maurice wouldn't investigate, and there were different entrances to the Square -and again it was very dark with lots of space to move in.

MJK -it was a private room and the girl lived alone (I'm sure that he knew).

He could have been caught out by a bit of bad luck -but I think that he planned and put 'luck' on his side as much as possible..and finally the proof of the pudding etc..

He was never caught, and we still can't know who he was for sure..

[macknnc]

"Wanting' to be caught, not caring if he was caught and so on...bad phrasing on my part...Of course the Ripper did not want to caught..

but he did take more chances than Chapman...for an example, killing with people likely to come by any second...In fact, this is what apparently happened with Stride..Three of his five victims, Nichols, Stride and Eddowes were discovered within minutes...(seconds in Stride's case) Even Chapman, not found for more or less an hour, was killed in fairly heavily traveled area and the Ripper knew people would be coming into No. 29's yard at any moment..

Chapman's 'chances telling people his wife was getting better, or getting worse then sending them up to see her where they found the poor woman in the exact opposite condition he had described, I attribute more to a sick sadistic sense of humor..

[corey123]

Hello Nats,

Good to know. The suggestion that he would want to get caught kind of blows my mind. I understand that when a serial killer is caught, they are relieved and pysically ill, but they would do anything at all costs to keep their fantasies at play.

However, this does not play in some factors like stupidity(Neil Creme lol) or just plain rage, sort of like spree killers. Of coarse, they usually end up taking their own lives in the end as well, just another point to prove that killers don't want to be caught.

Ok, my rant is over.