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

[Batman]

Again, can you tell me what victim was poisoned and whether Holmes engaged in eviscerations and/or dismemberments?

He poisoned 12-year-old Pearl Connor and butchered her.

He overdosed Julia Smythe on chloroform.

He gassed Annie Pitezel inside a murder vault.

Here are the mutilations.

http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/H.H._Holmes

Holmes varied in his victimology and M.O. His victims were usually employees, lovers, and hotel guests. Some of them were locked in soundproof rooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them. Others were taken to the "Secret Hanging Chamber", where they would be hanged by Holmes. Others were locked in a soundproof bank vault and left to suffocate. Others were taken to another secret room that was sealed up by solid bricks and could only be entered through a trapdoor in the ceiling; these victims were locked there and left to die of starvation and dehydration. After their deaths, Holmes would take the bodies to a metal chute or a dummy elevator leading to the basement, where most of them were dissected, stripped of their flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and sold to medical schools. Alternatively, Holmes would dispose of them in lime pits; incinerate the bodies; or use corrosive acid, poison, and even a stretching rack on the bodies.

The recovered pieces of people from that hotel in the basement. Hair, teeth, bones. Badly dismembered body parts. The exact figure of how many he killed there is unknown but we also know a lot of his 'guests' which are named in the book, never returned home again.

The book I referenced does his case better Justice.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Fisherman.

You seem to be dangerously close to advocating the old 19th Century concept of monomania.

"The Ripper cut open women."

"Ergo, he was a man with an urge to cut open women."

(No other urges...just that one urge).

"Therefore the answer is simplicity itself: look for a man with an urge to cut open women."

"Abberline, find me a man with that urge!"

How do you propose Abberline do that?

In reality, aren't you merely re-describing the known crimes of the Ripper--cutting open women--and then making it his monomaniacal all-in-all?

It allows no intelligent way forward. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry in East London could have this secret solitary "urge" and thus be is as good a suspect as a known psychopath--Klosowski.

So around and around we go all around the mulberry bush. 300 suspects and counting...

It's a neat way of leveling the playingfield, perhaps, but is it really an accurate way of describing the faulty brain chemistry of a psychopath?

Ted Bundy stole cars. Peter Kurten spent years in prison for theft. Robert Durst shoplifted. The psychopath doesn't shut off his brain chemistry like hot and cold running water taps.

There may be good reasons for ultimately being skeptical about the Klosowski theory, but poisoning his old ladies isn't one of them. It is hardly an alibi. It's no better an alibi than saying Kurten was a burglar.

All the best.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman.

You seem to be dangerously close to advocating the old 19th Century concept of monomania.

"The Ripper cut open women."

"Ergo, he was a man with an urge to cut open women."

(No other urges...just that one urge).

"Therefore the answer is simplicity itself: look for a man with an urge to cut open women."

"Abberline, find me a man with that urge!"

How do you propose Abberline do that?

In reality, aren't you merely re-describing the known crimes of the Ripper--cutting open women--and then making it his monomaniacal all-in-all?

It allows no intelligent way forward. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry in East London could have this secret solitary "urge" and thus be is as good a suspect as a known psychopath--Klosowski.

So around and around we go all around the mulberry bush. 300 suspects and counting...

It's a neat way of leveling the playingfield, perhaps, but is it really an accurate way of describing the faulty brain chemistry of a psychopath?

Ted Bundy stole cars. Peter Kurten spent years in prison for theft. Robert Durst shoplifted. The psychopath doesn't shut off his brain chemistry like hot and cold running water taps.

There may be good reasons for ultimately being skeptical about the Klosowski theory, but poisoning his old ladies isn't one of them. It is hardly an alibi. It's no better an alibi than saying Kurten was a burglar.

All the best.

Hi R J!

I am being a bit economical about how I describe the motivations that lay behind the Rippers deeds. Note, for example, how I am not fond of saying that he had an urge to eviscerate - for the simple reason that I´m not sure that he had such an urge. I would feel better about saying that eviscerations is one of the things that allowed him to reach his aim. I happen to think that cutting limbs away (to my mind, he was definitely the torso killer too) cutting a face away or opening up an abdomen were other examples of what rocked his boat in this respect, so to say; no single example was necessary but they could all represent, be part of, the concept to which he worked.
To me, the Ripper murders involve a "ritualistic" element - not ritualistic as in religious rites, but certainly involving an agenda that goes beyond the mere urge to cut.

Speculating that the Ripper may have given up on his agenda from 1888 in favour of turning a poisoner of partners in later years is something that I find very, very unlikely. Yes, theoretically it works - but so very many things that work theoretically fall short of adapting to practical circumstances, and I fear this is one such matter as far as I´m concerned.

I can easily imagine a wife poisoner stealing a car, or shoplifting. I would not be amazed in the least if the Ripper stole at times, or if Chapman did - or the torso killer. If you can do what they did, it would be stupid to claim that they would refrain from moral or ethical or whatever reasons to steal. They all broke the ultimate taboo, and that means that they could break smaller ones too. So pointing out that Kürten burglarized is not something that should surprise us - but I don´t think it goes to show how a serial eviscerator and knife-cutter, involved in the most hands-on kind of murders is in any way likely to turn into a wife-poisoner ten years down the line. The comparison is not a useful one. It´s not about how someone who has killed in one way has proven himself able to kill in another - it´s about how the methods and victimologies differ too much to be even remotely likely to fit one sole man, both of them.

[Batman]

Speculating that the Ripper may have given up on his agenda from 1888 in favour of turning a poisoner of partners in later years is something that I find very, very unlikely. Yes, theoretically it works - but so very many things that work theoretically fall short of adapting to practical circumstances, and I fear this is one such matter as far as I´m concerned.

Canonically JtR finishes with Mary Jane Kelly. Non-canonically there are three more in 89 and two more in 91. Either way, it's either a dead stop with Kelly or a slow cooldown over a few years. However, it closes in 91 and it closes relatively quickly in comparison to many serial killers. So something happened to JtR. Where is the ripping? The Chapman view says, maybe he wasn't for a while and doing something else with his life like getting married a bigamist and having a new family for example. Trying to blend back into society maybe? I believe EARONS did this after his last known murder in 1986. Anyway if JtR he spent either from 88-97 not killing or 91-97 because 97 is the year he started poisoning (to our knowledge). That kind of pause is not unheard of in SKs.

[Sam Flynn]

I can easily imagine a wife poisoner stealing a car, or shoplifting.

Indeed, or anyone else for that matter, because car-theft and shoplifting aren't forms of murder. Killers may have any number of "extracurricular" criminal behaviours - and they often do - but I'm more interested in the manner in which they actually kill. Is it violent and rapid, or subtle and drawn out over months? This is what we're actually looking at when we consider the theoretical JTR-turned-poisoner.

[c.d.]

Somewhere in this thread the line between impossible and improbable seems to have gotten blurred.

Is it possible to switch from ripping throats to poisoning? Absolutely. No laws of physics are being violated.

Is it improbable that a murderer would switch from ripping throats to poisoning? The answer would seem to be yes but it is difficult to assess how improbable since the database we are looking to for answers is quite limited.

It is also possible that Chapman turned to poisoning for financial gain but found that he liked watching a slow death even more than a quick one. Seems a bit unlikely but we can't give the idea a definitive no.

c.d.

[Batman]

Indeed, or anyone else for that matter, because car-theft and shoplifting aren't forms of murder. Killers may have any number of "extracurricular" criminal behaviours - and they often do - but I'm more interested in the manner in which they actually kill. Is it violent and rapid, or subtle and drawn out over months? This is what we're actually looking at when we consider the theoretical JTR-turned-poisoner.

The whole reason why the subject selects murder is that is what satiates the emotional need which is behind the signature similarities. If it didn't satisfy the need they would not do it. So while car-theft and shoplifting aren't forms of murder, they in themselves may be sufficient to allow the subject to go for longer periods of time without the need to murder.

This is why BTK confounds the idea that JtR can't switch up his lifestyle to satisfy such violent urges. For 14 years Dennis Rader wasn't in a state of decompensation because of being unable to murder again. For 14 years he was functional and terrorizing a neighborhood at the same time without murdering anybody.

EARONS seems to have been on one big hiatus since the last CENTURY. We have yet to figure out what he was doing (if we ever will) but undoubtedly there will be something. He did have a family though, like BTK.

What does that say about such violent urges as lust murdering and serial rape homicides? That this idea they can't stop or go commit other forms of crimes to satisfy a need is longer tenable, (if it ever was before).

BTK and EARONS, not incarcerated during their breaks, not in an asylum, not dead. Alive and well and not murdering.

Basically conflating only murder with their particular emotional neesd to satisfy seems to be a mistake.

[Fisherman]

Canonically JtR finishes with Mary Jane Kelly. Non-canonically there are three more in 89 and two more in 91. Either way, it's either a dead stop with Kelly or a slow cooldown over a few years. However, it closes in 91 and it closes relatively quickly in comparison to many serial killers. So something happened to JtR. Where is the ripping? The Chapman view says, maybe he wasn't for a while and doing something else with his life like getting married a bigamist and having a new family for example. Trying to blend back into society maybe? I believe EARONS did this after his last known murder in 1986. Anyway if JtR he spent either from 88-97 not killing or 91-97 because 97 is the year he started poisoning (to our knowledge). That kind of pause is not unheard of in SKs.

Yes, serial killers can pause for the longest. But who of the ones who start out as firmly locked to a pattern of cuttings and eviscerations will return to their murderous habits a decade after having stopped - but with another method entirely? And another victimology? That is where I will not board this train, Batman. The ones I can think of who made long stops and then returned, all did so going about their killing in the same fashion as before the hiatus. To me, that tells the story.

[Fisherman]

The book I read on H.H.Holmes was The Devil in White City by Erik Larson. We are going back to a time during 1890s, so the evidence would be somewhat like what evidence we have for JtR but much less because Holmes sold cadavers on which is why many bodies were not recovered and he also burned people to ashes, some alive. It describes the floors of his murder castle with the gas chambers and the pieces of bodies found in the basement.

I am reading up a bit on Holmes, and I find that he seems to have been somebody who enjoyed killing and who was eager to take economic advantage of it.
I also think he may have been something of a phantasist; he spoke about victims that have not been established ever to have lived, let alone to have been killed by Holmes.
In the Lindberg/Decker book "Chicago by gaslight", they write that Holmes SAID he poisoned Pearl Connor, Emily van Tassel and Minnie Williams. "Said"? Was it ever established that these people did die from poisoning, or is Holmes´ word all we have for it? He also claimed to have poisoned people who seem not to have been found, like Dr Robert Leackock. And he claims to have poisoned people like Gertude Connor, who apparently grew suspicious of Holmes when staying in Chicago. She moved back to Iowa, where she came from and mysteriously died there - but I don´t think it was established that she died from poisoning. And she was far from Chicago when dying.

All in all, a lot is left hanging when we deal with this character, it seems. If he was a mixture of a serial killer and a mythomaniac, he will be hard to map, I think we may agree on that.

The one thing i will say about him if he did what he said he did, is that he was all over the place throughout his killing career, choking, battering, gassing, poisoning, burning and torturing away. He mixed it all up all the time, and never locked on to one single method of killing.

The Ripper never changed his method - it was the same thing from beginning to end. Chapman never did either. In that respect, they are very different animals than the man Holmes claimed to be.

I can see how a serial killer may engage in teting different types of killing out of curiosity; which method hurts more, which gives the greater satisfaction. Kürten is - as so often - the prime example. But we must keep in mind that it is a rare thing to do. Not many serialists have been revealed as Jacks-of-all-trades in this respect. Heirens is another possible example.

What does apply to Kürten, though, is that although he changed murder types, he never changed victimology. Chapman supposedly did. That makes a very tough case even harder to defend for you, Batman.

Finally, it seems that Holmes never killed "intimately", meaning that he never stabbed people to death. Apart from some cases where he supposedly hit people on the head he stepped back and let poison, gas, suffocation etcetera do the job for him. It was only after death that he dissected bodies which allowed him to aquire skeletons for sale. It also seems he on occasion hired people to dismember for him.

I don´t see anything at all like the Ripper in him. Chapman is a better likeness, on the whole.

[Batman]

Yes, serial killers can pause for the longest. But who of the ones who start out as firmly locked to a pattern of cuttings and eviscerations will return to their murderous habits a decade after having stopped - but with another method entirely? And another victimology? That is where I will not board this train, Batman. The ones I can think of who made long stops and then returned, all did so going about their killing in the same fashion as before the hiatus. To me, that tells the story.

Are the non-canonical victims JtR victims?

Is Stride?

Where does he go after what he did to Mary Jane Kelly?

[Sam Flynn]

That this idea they can't stop or go commit other forms of crimes to satisfy a need is longer tenable, (if it ever was before).

That was never contested, however whether such "extracurricular" crimes constitute a sublimation of a need to kill, or whether such activities are independent manifestations of a damaged personality, is a moot point. Rader strikes me as a complete knob, the type who could have "terrorised" people before, during and after the point at which he became BTK. Likewise Bundy, I seem to recall, was already committing petty crimes before he started killing.

Whether these non-homicidal crimes were substitutes for murder or not, the evidence that such killers change from committing one qualitatively different form of murder to another remains rather thin on the ground.

[Sam Flynn]

Where does he go after what he did to Mary Jane Kelly?

... probably not slipping powder into his girlfriend's tea over a prolonged period until she finally died.

[Batman]

... probably not slipping powder into his girlfriend's tea over a prolonged period until she finally died.

So what would he do then?

[Fisherman]

Are the non-canonical victims JtR victims?

Is Stride?

Where does he go after what he did to Mary Jane Kelly?

1. We don´t know.

2. We don´t know.

3. We don´t know.

Its a matter of personal opinion, and it is up to each and every one to decide for themselves how much the evidence, the presented and the held back, is worth.

My own stance goes like this:

1. Yes, there are non-canonical victims that are victims of Jack.

2. Yes, Stride was killed by Jack.

3. After Mary Kelly, he goes on torso killing, which satisfies more or less the exact same urges within him as did the Ripper killings.

Regardless if I am correct or not, it still stands that a serial killer coming from eviscerations and gut rippings is totally unlikely to embark on a second serial killer career ten years after, this time as a poisoner.

Sorry, but no fraying the end of the cloth will change that.

[Sam Flynn]

So what would he do then?

Die, get jailed for another crime, get committed to an asylum, or simply stop.