Is Kosminski the man really viable?

[Chris]

he displays himself in public withour seølf control...

If you mean he masturbated in public, there's no evidence that he did that.

[Phil Carter]

A lot of discussion is going on as to what Aaron Kosminski would have been like in 1888. We of course donīt know, since not a iota has been dug up about this exact period of his life.

Hello Christer,

That's half the problem...this man has never shown violence of a criminal kind...because he was never charged with an offence that even remotely touches murder.

We have a man who walks his dog incorrectly. He starves himself out of some sort of self clensing idea, he displays himself in public withour seølf control...but wielding a knife and attacking women?..Not a sniff of it. One threat, which we know not the details of, against his sister, isn't exactly what most would call a pattern of violence.

We can only go on what we have.

The police had nothing on Aaron Kosminski connecting him to the Whitechapel murders. And until someone can produce some sort of official document of such like.. it will stay that way.

Aaron Kosminski is an innocent man in connection with the Whitechapel murders.

best wishes

Phil

[Errata]

There are two flaws in your 'ranting' logic: a) we don't know Kosminski's state of mind in 1888 b) a ranting man could have been capable of commiting these murders.

I think people are led down the path, an incorrect path, where they assume that this individual was a silent assasin planning his moves with calculating precision. He could quite easily have been an opportunist who was clearly unhinged to the mildly discerning eye. My money's on the latter.

The mitigating factor in my mind is not what the killer did. It's how often he did it. No single event in human behavior is really impossible. It's why the first rule in the art of looking awesome is that if you somehow pull off an extraordinary feat of strength or agility, don't try it again. It won't happen. I could see a raving madman getting away with one of those murders. I could even see him committing a second, but the chance of getting away with it again sort of decreases exponentially. I cannot imagine that no one notices a lunatic in the area four or five times.

The thing about a ranting loon is that well, they rant. They mutter. They talk to themselves and to people who are not there. They are delusional. Hallucinatory. Sometimes paranoid. That's a physical, chemical issue. It doesn't just turn off on command, and you can't sort of gut your way through it. I think a lot of people think it's like being drunk, where if you really work at it, you can sort of pull yourself together. It's not. It's almost elegant in it's simplicity. A binary state. Delusional, or not. Hallucinatory, or not. No in betweens, no working on it, no shortcuts. A lot of people can't even feel one state or the other coming. Schizophrenics learn clues, learn their behaviors to be able to predict when the next loss of reality is going to occur, but they don't often feel it. Just like you learn to look both ways before crossing a street, and when a car is to close or too fast to get across, but you don't feel the car until it hits you. Which isn't to say that people with these problems don't go into remission. They do. But you know what gets them every time? What triggers their disease again? Stress. And while someone in these states can certainly kill, the whole ranting thing puts a big neon "Crazy" sign over their head, and it's hard to think no one noticed it. A crazy man is flamingo in a flock of sparrows. Especially then, people noticed. And it's hard to think that someone who eventually loses all touch with reality doesn't talk about it. Although being crazy is a good cover. I'm kind of surprised there wasn't a rash of Jack confessions in the 1890s.

[Fleetwood Mac]

However, none of the other officials agreed. In fact, some were just as convinced it was Druitt or Chapman. And, Kosminski wasn't put away until 1891. And he didn't die until 1919. And would someone really refuse to testify against a serial killer simply because he was a fellow jew? That alone sounds fishy and antisemitic.

My doubts about Kosminski as the killer are mostly behavioral, though. As said before, this killer was able to think on his feet and carry on a conversation. I don't think Kosminski, as described, could do that. He would be seen as a very bizzare character at the least and a probable lunatic. The man we are looking for was able to walk around and blend in. A man ranting to himself as he ate out of the gutter would have raised a red flag.

Yeah, the idea that they disagreed keeps coming up.

But that's only half of the story.

No other suspect was identified (unless you want to include Grainger/Grant); no other policeman stated that the suspect would have hanged.

That statement is a strong one, I'm sure you'd agree.

And then you're left with the following: either someone was confused/mistaken/lying, or this really is the best suspect going.

There are two flaws in your 'ranting' logic: a) we don't know Kosminski's state of mind in 1888 b) a ranting man could have been capable of commiting these murders.

I think people are led down the path, an incorrect path, where they assume that this individual was a silent assasin planning his moves with calculating precision. He could quite easily have been an opportunist who was clearly unhinged to the mildly discerning eye. My money's on the latter.

[Errata]

So you Errata the Casebook poster are potentially violent but Kosminski the police serial killer suspect was just misunderstood and incapable of acting out?

Oh I don't think he was incapable of acting out. And he probably did a time or two. I would just need more than a single threat to consider someone violent. When I physically lashed out at people, it's because they were grabbing my arms trying to force my hands down. And I get why, but people didn't understand that that was the equivalent of trying to force my head underwater. When someone is convinced something terrible will happen, or they will die if they don't do something, getting between them and that compulsion is like getting between a bull and a cape. But in a peculiar way it's self defense. I never hit someone because I was angry, or even because they touched me first. I did it because I had to make them stop what they were doing. It's excuse, but once I was free, I left the room, or the house. I didn't persist once they let me go.

Consequently, I can see his sister trying to get between him and his delusion. Trying to make him eat, or make him bathe, and she wouldn't stop until he picked up a knife to hold her off, and told her if she tried to do it again, he would kill her. He didn't feel the need to be violent, and he didn't feel the need to hurt her, or I imagine he would have. But he needed her to stop whatever it was she was doing. And of course I don't know that's what happened, but it's pretty common. It's both a common phenomenon and a common reaction. To be frank, the families and friends of people with mental illnesses have a very hard time respecting our needs. Especially when those needs are harmful, like self mutilation or self punishment. They don't understand that they can't help us. They don't have to support injurious behavior, but they can't interfere either. Strangers are easier. Strangers don't care what we do. I never wanted to hurt my parents. And once they got the idea that they could not try to physically restrain me without consequences, and stopped trying, I never did. But every time they grabbed my hands, it felt like they were killing me.

It's not something I really expect anyone to understand, but (and I have admitted this before) it makes me feel sorry for the guy. Oddly enough, even if he was the Ripper I would feel sorry for him. But I look at this statement about threatening a sister with a knife, and I see that first of all, he didn't do it. And in theory he had every chance to if he wanted to. Second, he wasn't immediately thrown out of the house. No one called the cops, and he wasn't admitted to an asylum that very night. Which would be the logical behavior of a family who was just legitimately threatened by one of it's own. It seems like, rightly or wrongly, his family just kind of rolled their eyes at the incident, and it wasn't until a good bit later when they could no longer support him that they put him in a workhouse.

So it's not so much that I trust my judgement on what happened that day, but I trust his family's judgement, and they didn't do a lot except I think start moving him into his brother's house.

[Fisherman]

Whoever came up with the idiotic expression "clean as a whistle"...?



Kosminski, anybody? Parallels? Yes?

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

I can imagine you would wish me to drop the subject, I would if I was you.

Let's clear some things up.

1) You stated clearly that Watkins had a whistle. I said he did not. Watkins himself stated he did not yet you still maintain he did due to the erronous website.

2) I then informed you that whilst the City police had whistles for special ops Beat PCs did not. Again you stated clearly I was talking out of my arse.

3) I, Yes I, obtained evidence from the City of London Police archives stating that whistles were to be issued to all PCs from 1889, a year after the murders. Thus proving I was correct and you were poorly informed.

The bottom line is that despite contemporary witness statement and regulation book (which I'm surprised you didn't pick up on) you still maintained I didn't know what I was on about. You really should make sure you know what you are talking about before making sure false and misleading allegations that City beat PCs had whistles.

Ýou were wrong. I proved it.

End of.

Now you can get back to topic.

Monty

[Dr. John Watson]

Now John,

Your truth is of the economical kind.

You had incorrect photos and documents dragged up from the internet.

I had a contemporary reports and documentation sourced from the force concerned and their archives.

You forced nothing. I stated the truth, you dismissed, I pointed out your were incorrect, you provided internet based evidence, I maintained you were wrong and proved it as you admit.

Monty

C'mon Monty, let's at least be honest. My sources included the City of London Police web site, with its history and photos of early police equipment, along with listings on two historic auction sites with close-up photos of genuine City of London police whistles with manufacturers names and numbers stamped on them, clearly indicating date of manufacture - so let's get real. You admitted then that yes, there may have been whistles supplied to the City prior to 1888, but they weren't issued to the P.C.s, which I found hard to swallow. Finally, after I brought it up months later, you got some help and dug up a single memo that proved your point, which I conceded as soon as I saw the document. My evidence would have convinced any jury, but your contemporary document trumped my secondary sources. You didn't have that document when you were calling me a liar, so you were going on fumes alone then. Hopefully you've learned a lesson, which is: Everyone is entitled to an opinion so long as they don't assert it as proven fact; if they do, they can expect to be challenged to "prove it."

Now I agree, let's get off this and get back to the topic at hand!

Friend John

[Fisherman]

How about returning to the topic? Or else, Errata served me a nice entrance line: "Cross at your peril."

But sensibly barring this gentleman from the conversation, how about putting a different angle on things?

A lot of discussion is going on as to what Aaron Kosminski would have been like in 1888. We of course donīt know, since not a iota has been dug up about this exact period of his life.

But if we canīt look at that end of the stick, why not try the other? Kosminski was incarerated, turned over to Colney Hatch and from there on to Leavesden. Over the long stretch of years, he describes a downward spiral, generally speaking. He ends up as a man isolated from his surroundings, mumbling to himself, incontactable, living in his own world. There is - very generally speaking - a progression in his erratic behaviour, taking him further and further away from sanity, delving into utter darkness. It is there from the beginning, but in smaller doses. Maybe it is cyclic to itīs nature, the cycles finally joining up at the edges.

The question is: are there any parallels? Other serialists that have taken leave of the world and their senses, drifting into a selfcontained inner universe of no logic at all, losing all contact with the outer world?

Many serialists have moved on to become rolemodel inmates, like Gein, Dahmer and, I believe, Shawcross. Others too, surely. Some have been very dangerous and violent even when in custody, like Panzram for example.
But do we know of any serialist who have taken the same journey, roughly, as Kosminski? Men like Chase, for example, how did they fare in custody?

Surely, one has to weigh in that the environment and the forms of treatment may have helped to conclusively push Kosminski over the edge, I donīt know. But do we have parallels?

Who knows out there?

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

Now John,

Your truth is of the economical kind.

You had incorrect photos and documents dragged up from the internet.

I had a contemporary reports and documentation sourced from the force concerned and their archives.

You forced nothing. I stated the truth, you dismissed, I pointed out your were incorrect, you provided internet based evidence, I maintained you were wrong and proved it as you admit.

Monty

[Dr. John Watson]

Most humourous John,

You are as correct about Phil as you were on the whistles.

And I beg to differ, I'm very annoying. Especially to those who are all hot air and puffed on their own false importance.

Monty

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE [sound of hot air escaping from Monty's kettle!]

Yes, I was wrong about the CP whistles, but at least I had photos and documents to back up my opinion; turns out you had no evidence at all to support you until I forced you to dig up the proof months later. But that's all in the past and I've forgiven you. Now be nice. Friends?

John

[Monty]

Most humourous John,

You are as correct about Phil as you were on the whistles.

And I beg to differ, I'm very annoying. Especially to those who are all hot air and puffed on their own false importance.

Monty

[Dr. John Watson]

Oustanding.

You offend and then threaten me?

Seriously, you are some piece of work.

Monty

Monty, I'm afraid I'm going to have to blow the whistle on you, my friend. For one thing, I really think you're whistling the wrong tune here in going after Phil . . . or perhaps whistling in the dark would be more accurate. Like a tea kettle whistling for attention, you can become a bit annoying. Well, you're whistling up the wrong tree in this case. You should calm down, wet your whistle at a friendly pub, relax, enjoy life, and "whistle a happy tune" on your genuine, bona fide, documented post-1886 London City Police whistle!!!

Jester John

[Monty]

Lets get back to the topic.

Apologies to all.

Oustanding.

You offend and then threaten me?

Seriously, you are some piece of work.

Monty

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

You joke, but I've gotten violent when people insist on trying to stop some aspect of my mental illness. In my case, only when touched (for the OCD) but anytime someone tells me to "Cheer up" or "Just don't think about it" in reference to my Bipolar, the urge to knock their teeth out is overwhelming. Like "Oh! Just stop doing it! That totally never occurred to me! Thank you Dr. F@cking Phil."

The mentally ill don't have boundaries. We have Berlin Walls. Lots of signs, clear warnings, easy to avoid if you pay the slightest amount of attention. Cross at your peril. The results aren't always violent, but they are always bad.

So you Errata the Casebook poster are potentially violent but Kosminski the police serial killer suspect was just misunderstood and incapable of acting out?