Can George Chapmam reform himself to being a calculating poisoner seven years later?.

[FrankO]

Disassociation par excelllence I would say.

Disassociation from a previous life, an identity? Yes - or at least, a conscious attempt at it. But disassociation from a personality? I wouldn't say that. And that's what I was referring to by 'change'.

All the best,
Frank

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Franko,

The point is that there is nothing, as in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, which prevented Chapman from switching to poison. You can site psychological profiling out the wazoo if you want but that does not change the fact that Chapman was quite capable of doing so. You and others might consider it a leap (and I agree it is a leap) but we can't discount the possibility. Other posters in the past have presented cases where there was a major change in M.O. No one can predict with absolute certainty what another human being will do.

As for Sugden he states (p. 465) "George Chapman could have been Jack the Ripper. We have uncovered nothing to eliminate him from our inquiry. And he fits the evidence better than any other police suspect. But that does not make him a strong suspect."

c.d.

Well, yes. . . I like fish and usually have that when I go to a restaurant. But I might have steak next time.

However, whether we like it or not, Chapman used poison time and again, as did another Ripper suspect, Thomas Neill Cream. The Ripper used a knife time and again. This suggests that the persons responsible for the murders these men were suspected of.... Chapman, Cream, and the Ripper... were different people.

In addition, Chapman enquired about obtaining poison through Wolff Levisohn who testified at his trial. This strongly suggests that the use of poison was his chosen modus operandi. We have nothing to suggest that he used a knife in the East End in any crime. The only suggestive piece of evidence, if you can call it that, is that he threatened Lucy Baderski with a knife. But he didn't kill her with that knife, and as far as we know he never used a knife in a violent manner against anyone.

Best regards

Chris

[c.d.]

Just so I am making myself clear, what I object to is someone making a psychological argument that Chapman could not have switched to poison and stating in effect that that somehow translates into a physical argument. Meaning that it simply could not have been done. That is what I disagree with. Unless someone can prove that poison did not exist in that time period or that it was only available in Tibet or cost millions of dollars then Chapman could have readily obtained it and used it. Now if you want to argue that that goes completely against his psychological profile, I am in sympathy with that. I agree that it does seem to go against what we know of him. But don't equate a psychological argument with a physical one cause it just ain't so.

c.d.

[FrankO]

I haven't been talking about change in M.O., and I haven't discounted Klosowski as the Ripper. Like Sugden, I think he's the least unlikely among the named suspects. If you don't want to believe in the psychological angle, then that's fine with me, and I'll leave it at that.

Cheers,
Frank

[c.d.]

Hi Chris,

Even if you ate fish every day of your life, there is nothing to prevent you from ordering a steak.

We don't know enough about Chapman to say whether or not he used a knife.

c.d.

[FrankO]

The only suggestive piece of evidence, if you can call it that, is that he threatened Lucy Baderski with a knife. But he didn't kill her with that knife, and as far as we know he never used a knife in a violent manner against anyone.

Hi George,

It may also be argued that this episode was just another one of Chapman's manipulative, sick 'jokes'. He didn't need to hide the knife under his pillow to be able to cut her head off, and he could have killed & buried her at any other time after that, if he really wanted to.

All the best,
Frank

[c.d.]

Hi Franko,

As I stated numerous times, I do believe in the psychological angle but that does not make it physically impossible.

I think you are taking Sugden out of context, my reading of it is that he thinks Chapman is the best of a bad bunch of suspects.

c.d.

[Natalie Severn]

Disassociation from a previous life, an identity? Yes - or at least, a conscious attempt at it. But disassociation from a personality? I wouldn't say that. And that's what I was referring to by 'change'.

All the best,
Frank

Hi Frank,
but to erase all traces of your previous self,to deny to everybody-even your wife, all knowledge of who that self is ,is surely a disassociation from your innermost self---or an attempt at it---and he kept all this up right to the very end--saying he had no idea who this 'Severin Klosowski ' was and that he had never 'met' him.

[Natalie Severn]

Or as a former psychologist recently wrote on these boards:

What happened Frank...was he struck off or something?

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Abby Normal.

But I still cant rule out SK because of the difference in MO and sig. To me the fact that he is a man that is capable of serial murder of women(along with the other things that rule him in) makes him a viable candidate.

You mean you want to ignore the great differences between the M.O.’s, Signature’s and psychopathologies of the Whitechapel Murderer and Severin Klosowski and to just rely on the fact that they both killed women (which, in fact, is the only thing they have in common). That, as I have pointed out, is the simple layperson’s opinion on what is a complex psychiatric question. I’ll stick with the experts opinion.

CD.

“Sorry, but if you preface the question with "could" then the answer is yes. It all boils down to a question of possibility versus probability. I am not aware of any profiling expert who is claiming that this somehow would violate the laws of physics like traveling faster than the speed of light. And if you insist that what Chapman did is not possible, where is the proof of that? Is there some sacred text somewhere stating this?”
CD, Casebook poster (? expertise).

“…there is no way a man hacks apart five or six women, lies low for ten years with no one noticing anything about him, then resumes his homicidal career as a poisoner, who, along with bombers, are the most cowardly and detached of all murderers.
It just doesn’t happen that way in real life.”
Special Agent John Douglas (FBI expert in serial killers with 25 years in law enforcement).

See my comments above to Abby Normal.

As for Abberline, we don't know everything on which his opinion was based.

Abberline actually gave the Pall Mall Gazette detailed reasons as to why he had come to suspect Severin Klosowski to be the Ripper and, as I have said, proved that he didn’t know what he was talking about. For example, Klosowski didn’t live under the White Hart Pub at the corner of Whitechapel High Street and George Yard during the murders. There was no attempt by an American medical man to buy uteri. The Ripper was not an expert surgeon. There was no series of Ripper-like murders in the US when Klosowski lived there.

Even if it was simply a gut feeling, he was present at Chapman's trial.

At the time of Klosowski’s trial Abberline was retired and living in Bournemouth. There is no evidence that he attended the trial and why would he? He didn’t come to suspect Klosowski until the opening day of the trial.

His opinion was shared by Godley and Neil, two other Scotland Yard detectives.

Where, exactly, does it say that Godley shared Abberline’s opinion on Klosowski? I have seen nothing to support this. Neil certainly wrote that he thought Klosowski was the Ripper but, again, his reasons, which are similar to Abberline’s (possibly even taken from Abberline’s Pall Mall Gazette interviews) are equally worthless. Neil can’t even get Klosowski’s name right and parts of his book are fiction which he peddles as fact.

Sugden also supports Chapman as a candidate for being the Ripper.

So what?

Wolf.

[FrankO]

As I stated numerous times, I do believe in the psychological angle but that does not make it physically impossible.

But what psychological angle would that be, c.d.? I'm honestly interested, because I don't understand that if you believe it, you'd so strongly press the point that 'there is nothing, as in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, which prevented Chapman from switching to poison.'

I think you are taking Sugden out of context, my reading of it is that he thinks Chapman is the best of a bad bunch of suspects.

I don't think I am. In fact, a couple of posts back I think I wrote about the same as you do here. That is, if by 'bad bunch of suspects' you mean that this bunch doesn't contain one all too good suspect.

All the best,
Frank

[c.d.]

Hello Wolf and Franko,

Wolf - Are you saying that John Douglas is the ultimate authority on what someone (let alone a serial killer) will or will not do? Can you give me any physical reason why Chapman could not have switched to poison?

Franko - Again, you are making the argument that what Chapman did was improbable but implying that it was also impossible which is simply not true.

c.d.

[FrankO]

Hi George,

Sorry Chris, of course I meant to write 'Chris' there.

[Natalie Severn]

I dont have a Sugden to hand but can anyone confirm the accuracy of the quote from this 2003 post in which Wolf's so called 'expert' seems to contradict himself?

Joseph
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, May 16, 2003 - 5:15 pm:
Wolf, John Douglas of the FBI in Sugden's "Complete History" has to disagree with your John Douglas about the M.O. He says, "some criminologists and behavioural scientists have written that perpetrators maintain their M.O., and that this is what links so called signature crimes. This conclusion is incorrect. Subjects will change their M.O. as they gain experience. This is learned behavior." (461-462-new edition)
Are we both talking about the same John Douglas. I got my info from Sugden. The problem is, where did you get your info?

[FrankO]

Franko - Again, you are making the argument that what Chapman did was improbable but implying that it was also impossible which is simply not true.

Again, c.d., I don't think it was impossible. OK? Nothing is impossible. What I am saying is that I think it's improbable that Chapman was the Ripper. And if something is improbable to anybody, then it matters less whether it was possible or not to that somebody.

Frank