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

[Natalie Severn]

Norma, why haven't you written a book about SK? I know you are busy with another project now, but why haven't you written about him instead. Does anyone know if anyone is currently writing one? I might start a new thread.

Helena

Because I am not convinced about SK,Helena.This is partly because I have reservations about whether JtR was the murderer of Mary Kelly--- her ex, Fleming ,may reward further research here for example. If however SK's date of arrival in the UK were to be confirmed as June '87, the date Begg,Fido and Skinner suggest , in their latest A-Z, then my interest in SK might be rekindled enough to want to write about it.
Norma

[Errata]

It seems to me people here can't see the wood for the trees! You seem to think in such rigid boxes that you have to fit the identity of the ripper into pseudo scientific theories about the motivation and method of serial killers ,which lead you to ignore the salient fact that all the while in the heart of the locality in which the murders were committed in 1888 lives one Severin Klosowski aka George Chapman,a convicted murderer of women .

Well, personally I am not especially looking at science, pseudo or otherwise. I am looking at trends. I will not say it is impossible for Klosowski/Chapman to have been Jack the Ripper. But we have no other examples of such a radical shift in motive and method. We don't have other serial killers who have done this.

Now, everything is impossible until the first person does it. And it could be that Chapman was the first to change so dramatically. And I would have no quarrel with that. But (and this is not precisely a fair point but still a valid one) we have all of these serial killers who get caught because they DON'T change things up. Many who have said they were incapable of changing their style, despite the fact that police were closing in. It begs the question why would they not alter their methods if they were able to? And there could be any number of answers to that, but combined with no other known example of such a transformation, it makes a case for it being outside the ability of a serial killer.

There is quite a bit of compulsion in serial killers. Having quite a bit of personal knowledge of compulsions, I can say that if a serial killer could defeat the compulsion that caused them to kill in a certain way, to fulfill certain needs, then they would stop killing altogether.

But still, as much as I highly doubt Chapman as Jack the Ripper, I don't think anyone would be able to rule him out definitively.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Errata-will get back to you on this.Off to bed now as its late here!
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Many who have said they were incapable of changing their style, despite the fact that police were closing in.

And this is my point: neither the police / profilers/ criminologists have ever interviewed a serial killer or observed a serial killer 'in situ' -ie 'when the police were closing in' -they are always questioned after the murder ,so the interviewer has to accept the serial killers word that this is how it is and that he was driven by urges beyond his control.So we have to ask how reliable a serial killer's word really is when questioned by police/profilers /prison doctors and psychiatrists after the event,when s/he must be wanting to throw the most redeemable light on his or her actions.

[Natalie Severn]

[Sorry I got interrupted there] George Chapman never admitted anything,never confessed ----never even admitted to where he was born or what his real name was.He was,according to himself, George Chapman, born in America right to the end.He lied throughout his life ,changed his name and address every few months.
What is the body of evidence about these pathological liars,the serial killers? Why are we supposed to believe what they say when we don't believe anything else about them?How do we know that the ones who don't get caught are the ones who have changed their style? How do we know Jack the Ripper didn't get caught because he changed his style?

[Errata]

And this is my point: neither the police / profilers/ criminologists have ever interviewed a serial killer or observed a serial killer 'in situ' -ie 'when the police were closing in' -they are always questioned after the murder ,so the interviewer has to accept the serial killers word that this is how it is and that he was driven by urges beyond his control.So we have to ask how reliable a serial killer's word really is when questioned by police/profilers /prison doctors and psychiatrists after the event,when s/he must be wanting to throw the most redeemable light on his or her actions.

Well, I don't think I would believe anything out of any killer's mouth that was said before trial. I cannot imagine that truth would ever trump survival.

But there have been serial killers who have been unusually candid with interviewers years after the event. Edmund Kemper has some remorse, despite being a sociopath. He acknowledges that the women he killed didn't deserve that. He has been very open about his thoughts and reasoning. Ted Bundy cooperated with researchers, hoping to draw it out and postpone his execution date. I think his interpretations of his own actions are useful, although the last ditch effort to lead them to more victims likely is not. Otis Toole was such a profoundly damaged human being that to the best of my knowledge it never even occurred to him to not answer questions.

Take away a sociopath's reason to lie, and generally they don't bother. If they can get something out of it, they will lie. But after all the trials and appeals, well, they just don't care what other people think. They are not emotionally connected to the victims, so they won't downplay the event, and the only reason they even cooperate with researchers is to get out of their cell every once in a while. But they don't care what the researchers think, and they aren't going to try and make themselves look better. When they get bored, and they do, they stop talking.

Although it's worth separating out "urges they cannot control". They can control the urge to kill. They choose not to. Trying to claim that they couldn't help themselves during a trial is just going to get them laughed at. But when they choose to kill, it is to fulfill a specific desire. Essentially matching an image in their head. It's the same as rapists and sadists. So if he gets off on cutting a man's head off and keeping it in the freezer, and that's his fantasy, he is not going to strangle and then rape a woman. It doesn't fulfill the desire.

[Errata]

What is the body of evidence about these pathological liars,the serial killers? Why are we supposed to believe what they say when we don't believe anything else about them?How do we know that the ones who don't get caught are the ones who have changed their style? How do we know Jack the Ripper didn't get caught because he changed his style?

Well, first off, not all serial killers are pathological liars. And sociopathy and pathological lying is pretty rare. Pathological liars tend to be pretty invested in what other people think of them.

The answer to your question is, we don't know. Not really. As far as Jack the Ripper goes. To the best of our knowledge, here in the States, we don't have any unnoticed serial killers. We don't know who the Zodiac was, but we know he existed. Here in my home state theres a serial killer who has been at it for about 15 years now. And we know that because of a pattern in missing persons. And rumors. But no bodies have been found. Just a couple of small parts.

I suppose the question then would be, why would a killer change his style? Why would a guy who feels the need to mutilate prostitutes and take organs switch to poisoning his "wives" and taunting their friends and family about it? Serial killers tend to not just want people dead, they want them dead in a certain way. And they go for the ideal. So what would cause the ideal to change? Clearly the mutilation thing was working for Jack the Ripper, or he wouldn't have persisted past the first victim. So what could cause him to say "no I don't want that anymore, I want the slow silent death of poison".

I honestly can't think of anything. It would make more sense for him to move and continue the mutilations that to stay and change methods. So since I can't answer the question, I have to doubt it.

[Mayerling]

A plague on all...

I don'ttink Chapman did it.

However, I am not impressed by the "serial killer's do not switch modus operandi" theory either. Chapman (and I have said this before) was known to have a gun in his bar. No doubt it was a safety precaution from robbers, but it meant he knew how to use a gun. However it is not like knowing how to use a knife. But then, being a Polish barber surgeon, Chapman would have known how to use a knife too.

In the 1870s there was a serial killer for profit in England named Henri Pineux (better recalled "Comte de Tourville"). Except that all of his crimes were tied to marrying and killing for money, his victims died from poisoning, pistol shots, and even throwing one off a cliff. He even tried to burn down his house to kill his infant son by his first wife (to clear his title to he boy's estate). If that could be done by a serial killer he could change his modus operandi very easily if he wanted to.

Then why not Chapman - as pointed out by several of you there is a lack of solid evidence (except Abberline's quote) that Chapman was a real suspect for the Ripper in 1888 And his three victims from 1897 to 1902 wer all living with him as his current wife.

Abbeline's comment about Chapman is also aggrevating. Apparently whenever he failed to find his man, if someone else found a usable substitute he said the same thing. In 1885 a police chief inspector was shot and killed near Romford. There were two arrests (on man was executed at the time) but the suspected killer escaped. Later that year there was a social sensation when a mansion was broken into by a gang of four men (the Netherby Hall Case). Eventually three were located, and when Abbeline (not involved in that case) saw them, he said they had caught the previously uncaught killer of the police chief inspector.

I find it hard to swallow that kind of "post facto" identification in the 1880s. Even with Abberline's reputation for a memory or faces.

Jef

[Natalie Severn]

To Errata

Well in the end Bundy appears to have just said what they wanted to hear to postpone his execution.
What I am saying is that the body of evidence that explains a serial killer's motivation does not amount to much and almost all of it depends on what they have to say about their crimes which may not be the truth.
You speak a fantasy informing the killing.What if some serial killers have multiple fantasies? Robert Napper appears to have received a number of 'commands' pertaining to his various fantasies.Some were to be performed in the open air,some indoors.Some were planned to the last detail others much less so .Some were about mutilation of women or mothers, some about the sexual violation and murder of the child some about frenzied stabbings.Others about capturing women and raping them on the banks of the Thames but not killing them---and there were quite a number of these.
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Jef. I must bone up on this case you refer to because its quite important
-and instructive,
Norma

[Errata]

In the 1870s there was a serial killer for profit in England named Henri Pineux (better recalled "Comte de Tourville"). Except that all of his crimes were tied to marrying and killing for money, his victims died from poisoning, pistol shots, and even throwing one off a cliff. He even tried to burn down his house to kill his infant son by his first wife (to clear his title to he boy's estate). If that could be done by a serial killer he could change his modus operandi very easily if he wanted to.

Jef

(This is in response to you as well Natalie)

Firstly, the Comte de Tourville was not a serial killer as much as he was a multiple murderer. He was a con man. He killed to complete his cons. More like a Mafia hit man than say, a Ted Bundy.

People like Napper obviously start chipping away at what we think we know about serial killers (which as you rightly pointed out, isn't much). Which is why the whole thing is still an evolving science. We know that MO's can change. Zodiac's did, Napper's did (though that may be a slow evolution rather than a change) Even Bundy's MO changed occasionally. So they tried to nail it down further, saying that MO's can change, signatures do not. And a signature is the psychological element to the crime. Actions, props, or staging that fulfills the murderer's needs. So one could say that the Zodiac always left proof behind, be he had a need for recognition. Bundy had a need for sexual violence and control. To the point that necrophilia became a part of his method.

Of course, when someone is crazy, just about everything goes out the window. If voices tell you what to do, it becomes less about what you need and more about obedience. Most people who hear voices assume that they come from a power greater than themselves. Clearly there are schizophrenic serial killers. One of the great questions is do they kill because they are schizophrenic, or are they killers who happen to be schizophrenic? No one knows. But the human mind is very predictable in some ways, and no schizophrenic has a delusion that forces him to do something he absolutely does not want to do. It may force him to do something silly or unpleasant, but he always has to be willing.

I would say Napper clearly had mommy issues, and clearly was trying to make a statement about childhood. I don't know if he was commanded to kill these people, but if he was he was willing. He is a perfect example of a slow boil. Someone who starts small and very very slowly works his way up. Thats why I think it was an evolution rather than a change. He would get comfortable with certain aspects of his fantasy before progressing.

If someone is following the commands of voices, even then the signature does not change. It is merely very well hidden. No matter how or where he kills, he always kills for the simple reason that he was told to do so. And we are not so certain of the brain as to guess why someone might be ordered to do it 100 different ways. I think it is likely that every fantasy he may have is incorporated, whether it be a fulfilling one or not. It would not surprise me that a schizophrenic's voices may have the same lack of organization as the schizophrenic himself.

So then what do you look for? I don't know. I have never heard of a serial killer whose sole purpose was destruction. Like someone who hates women so much, that he wants them all dead, and it doesn't matter how. Jack the Ripper chose his victims for a reason. He never got a servant girl on her way to work, so I think he specifically wanted prostitutes. And He didn't prolong their deaths, so that wasn't the part he was interested in. Whatever his reasons, they centered around the pelvic region. It could have been a sex thing, a procreation thing, a mommy thing, a revenge thing, who knows. But that was his thing.

Now, if poisoning girlfriends was also his thing, I would expect that to be occurring at the same time as the Ripper killings. These guys are not known for moderation and self control. And poisoning girlfriends is an entirely different thing than just poisoning women in general. It's personal, it's revenge oriented, it's sadistic. But women weren't disappearing from Chapman's life in 1888. I feel like if he had two separate needs, he would feed both of them. He would not just feed one, stop, and several years later feed the other. It's a level of calculation that does not fit with a compulsion. At least in my mind.

[HelenaWojtczak]

I just want to say that both Errat and Norma make excellent points here and I am enjoying the discussion greatly, though I feel ill equppied to join in, other than to say I can't imagine that anyone who had the mentality to do what JtR did would have the mentality to stop doing it in case he got caught.

I just want to make one point though.... There is another big difference in the MO, apart from slashing versus poisoning.

It seems to me that Jack the Ripper did not care if he was caught or not. Look at the way he did the killings mostly in the open, in several cases where anyone could have spotted him either from a window or by approaching on foot. He seems to me to have been completely reckless and was only not caught because of sheer good luck.

Chapman on the other hand went to great pains not to be caught. Instead of pushing his girlfriends under a trolleybus, drowning them in the bath or suffocating them with a pillow, all of which would have brought him under immediate suspicion, he tried his darndest to make it look like natural death -- and TWICE he got away with it. If he'd left it at that, he could have lived to a great old age. He only got caught on the third.

The one thing the killings had in common was that they were needless, senseless killings of women for no apparent motive.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

It seems to me people here can't see the wood for the trees! You seem to think in such rigid boxes that you have to fit the identity of the ripper into pseudo scientific theories about the motivation and method of serial killers …

This is one part of the Casebook that always leaves me scratching my head: laypersons, and I’m not just singling out Norma here, who believe that the opinion of experts, usually in the medical field, should be ignored because they go against the conventional wisdom of non experts. Personally I find this indefensible.

If some actual evidence could be produced that in any way supports Klosowski’s candidacy for being the Ripper that would be one thing but as there is no actual evidence we are left with statements like this:

“which lead you to ignore the salient fact that all the while in the heart of the locality in which the murders were committed in 1888 lives one Severin Klosowski aka George Chapman, a convicted murderer of women.”

Yes, convicted some several years later of poisoning three “wives” but not convicted of any Ripper-like murders. What about James Kelly? We know he was in the East End of London from around the end of June till sometime in either November or December, 1888, and he murdered his wife by stabbing her in the neck with a knife. Or William Henry Bury who also lived in the East End during the Whitechapel Murders and who murdered and mutilated his wife? Shouldn’t they be listed well above Severin Klosowski on the suspect list? Or should there actually be more evidence than mere proximity and murderous intent (which are actually the bare minimum requirements)?

One of the things ignored here is that Klosowski wasn’t just a murderer who did away with some nosy and inconvenient women, nor did he murder because circumstances forced him to it, he was a serial killer who killed using poison. He didn’t, apparently, murder for gain but for whatever thrill he got from slowly killing his victims. Let me remind everyone that this is what this board is all about: could a serial killer of the ripper/stabber kind (using a knife to quickly kill, cut and then mutilate and remove internal organs) change and become a serial killer who used poison (a slow, clean, and sadistic way to kill his victims)? The answer is no.

Wolf.

[Abby Normal]

Abby Normal.



Several experts in crime and criminal psychology who have written on the subject that’s who.

You, and most other posters on this site, fail to take into account the rare psychopathology that makes up the type of serial killer known as a “ripper/stabber.” These individuals are driven to do what they do for various complex psychological reasons. The Whitechapel Murderer, who ever he was, murdered, mutilated, posed the bodies of his victims for shock value and then walked away with trophies stuffed into his pockets. Murder, in this case, seems only to be an ends to a means – mutilation of the body and the collection of body parts. He did it because he had to do this in order to satisfy his aberrant psychological needs and he needed to increase the mutilations after each victim for the same reason. By the end of the murders his mental state would, apparently, have been breaking down and those around him would have likely noticed his mental deterioration. The Ripper, after all, was not sane or normal mentally. This does not fit with Severin Klosowski.



Auto theft is not the same as murder let alone serial murder let alone serial ripper/mutilation murder. The carjacker, presumably, wasn’t compelled by his dark, inner demons to steal cars and to steal them in a particular psychologically satisfying way. You have also used M.O. here to try and make your point but have left out Signature. What if the carjacker always painted a large X in red spray paint at the scene of his crimes. This didn’t help in stealing the cars in any way and in fact it was a dangerous waste of time. If the second series of carjackings were completely unlike the first and the signature was also absent then it is highly probable that any detective would conclude that the first series of carjackings were not perpetrated by the same individual as the second.

Wolf.

Hi Wolf
Thanks for the reply. Good post and interesting points. 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.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Wolf
Thanks for the reply. Good post and interesting points. 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.

Exactly,
Norma