Is Kosminski the man really viable?

[lynn cates]

giblets

Hello Phil.

"He started carving the family Yuletide Goose with relish aforethought.
You should see what he did with the giblets."

Hmm, that does make the gravy thick. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Phil Carter]

It's funny. In the descriptions of his thought process and behavior, he clearly spent some time delusional. But everything else he does tracks almost precisely with OCD. Not the hand washing kind, but like, scrupulosity. Even violence is not unheard of when people try to interfere with someone's rituals or behaviors to deal with their OCD.

I have a form of it, where I pull out my own hair (I know. It's gross. But I'm fine now) Which not only worried my parents because I was sort of mutilating myself right in front of them, but evidently pulling out one hair at a time has a peculiar noise that is VASTLY irritating to those around me. We'd be sitting around watching TV, and all of the sudden my mom would just shout "STOP IT!!! Or go upstairs. I can't take it anymore." And she would shout, because when I was 12 and it first started, she tried to grab my hands and pin them so I couldn't do it anymore, and I went absolutely nuts. I started screaming and head butted her in the face, almost breaking her nose. My sister tried a couple of time, but I was stronger than her so I would get a hand free and punch her in the face. Not because I was pissed, although I was. Because it was OCD, I felt like I was going to die if I didn't do it. And when they tried to stop me, it's like they were trying to kill me. I'd have pulled a knife on my sister in a heartbeat if my particular issue didn't actually involve the use of hands. Fortunately, my family are quick learners, and they haven't touched my hands since, despite the fact I actually stopped pulling my hair about 15 years ago. I guess I made an impression.

Which brings up why it's funny. If Kosminski was delusional or schizophrenic, then a lot of people think that explains how an ordinary person could do such things. It certainly would make him a lock for the police at the time of the murders. But I never thought Jack was crazy. If he wasn't delusional or schizophrenic, then a good many people would drop him as a suspect, because without the crazy there would be no accounting for him being the killer. But it would mean in my mind, that he actually could have been the killer, since his particular crazy doesn't preclude him from violence, stealth or anonymity.

Hello Errata.

You have my respect. OCD is a condition I know a fair bit about, as I work in the area of children with such diagnosies.

As honest and as thoughtful as your post is, I really must say that it is all supposition full of IF Kosminski was....

Trying to sufficiently review the exact mental strains of a man from over 100 years ago and give him a label, without any sort of professional diagnosis in person, and by studying insufficient and intermittant case papers of a man SUPPOSEDLY with the mental conditions you name, is rather pointless, imho.

People have suggested that Adolf Hitler was a contender for being a paranoid ADHD..Aspergers Syndrome even...which is autistically related of course.
Now I am far from being anywhere near an expert in the field, but I would have thought that if Kosminski was capable...and that is the key word here...capable....of murdering and slicing up women in a hatred or even in a controlled manner, something in 27 years of being locked up would have been revealed by the man himself.

And without a whisper of it... the case against him, I suggest, falls on its own petard.

You will also note, I hope, that some strains of Aspergers Syndrome itself is also connected to OCD..through the compulsion to collect, collate and digest every miniscule drop of information available on a favoured subject. Aspergers has a known strength in collector hobbies, for example. When one "hobby" is sufficiently filled up, a new one will be started. It can, in the worst of cases, lead to obsessive violence in a particular line too, until the hobby, or "craving" is filled.

I would not for one moment suggest however, that the Whitechapel Murderer had Aspergers Syndrome.

So as for Kosminski being this or that... I can see no revelation of his violence whilst incarcerated that would lead me to suggest he was a woman slicing maniac...calm or not.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Hello Phil.

"He started carving the family Yuletide Goose with relish aforethought.
You should see what he did with the giblets."

Hmm, that does make the gravy thick. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

"I kept a bottle of the brown stuff......" heh heh

best wishes

Phil

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

I don't think he would have been able to pick out Kosminski in a crowd of one. Which is a position that has very limited perspective, so he would rely on the judgement of others in order to make that kind of determination. In other words, he may agree that the Polish Jew was the killer, but it's not his theory.

I am not saying you are wrong, but I personally wouldn't make that assertion without proof. Because what little we have from him doesn't say "as my subordinates believed....".

He isn't offering a theory, either. He is offering a solution.

No Tom, someone somewhere is afraid that if we take the big broom out and use it... somehow Ripperology would be no more. It "has to" be kept going. The three ringed circus of MM, DSS and SRA. And not a jot of EVIDENCE between them.

I'd love a hint at who Mr. Big is.

It's clear from what we have read about Anderson and Swanson that they would not have offered what evidence they had in a public forum. We're lucky we even have the Marginalia.

[Phil Carter]

I'd love a hint at who Mr. Big is.

It's clear from what we have read about Anderson and Swanson that they would not have offered what evidence they had in a public forum. We're lucky we even have the Marginalia.

Hello Robert,

Yes, running Ripperology however, isnt a one man job...

all by agreement, I reckon...HAHAHA!..or?


Hope you are well.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil H]

The three ringed circus of MM, DSS and SRA. And not a jot of EVIDENCE between them.Correction - no SURVIVING evidence.

They may have had a file of the stuff. The absence of evidence is not, as archaeologists and historians have it, the evidence of absence.

Phil H

[Phil Carter]

The three ringed circus of MM, DSS and SRA. And not a jot of EVIDENCE between them.Correction - no SURVIVING evidence.

They may have had a file of the stuff. The absence of evidence is not, as archaeologists and historians have it, the evidence of absence.

Phil H

Hello Phil H,

Then I suggest we study such evidence when it is produced.

Until then, as things stand, we have no file and cannot presume that there was one. Let alone assume.

We can only guess there MAY have been one. There may NOT have been one. Impasse. All supposition on something that isnt known to have ever existed is pointless.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil H]

Well you use your methods, I prefer the tried and tested approach. It avoids false conclusions.

Phil H

[Errata]

So as for Kosminski being this or that... I can see no revelation of his violence whilst incarcerated that would lead me to suggest he was a woman slicing maniac...calm or not.

best wishes

Phil

Really it's sort of a comment on people saying that certain kinds of crazy do this, while certain kinds of crazy don't. Or even that he has to be crazy in order to do it.

For example, I don't think that schizophrenics don't kill, or aren't serial killers. Clearly they do, and are. But when people fear schizophrenics, any schizophrenic, it kind of cracks me up because I just want to say "No, no. He's more afraid of you than you are of him" Like it's child afraid of a mouse or something.

But I don't think a schizophrenic committed THIS crime. There's a lot of sneaking, and stealthiness, and keeping it together and general forethought involved in these crimes, that the average untreated schizophrenic is not too good at.

So the things that make most people think that this kind of crazy makes a good serial killer, I think makes a lousy serial killer. It seems like the ones people are afraid of are not really the ones to be afraid of. If you ask me who I fear more, a schizophrenic or someone with borderline personality disorder, I'd pick borderline every time. In a lot of ways, and I'm also talking about myself, crazy is a lot like wild animals. It's not the ones you can see that you have to worry about. It's the ones that sneak up on you and ram your car for dating their ex-boyfriend five years previous and you haven't heard from him since, you have to worry about. For instance.

The cops thought that the Ripper had to be someone who was thoroughly mad. And I get why, but that's almost never true. And maybe Kosminski was insane, and maybe he wasn't. For him to be a suspect it only really matters if that's why he was singled out. But if we are talking about a guy who cracked under stress and became delusional, then Jack the Ripper he is not. Whoever did this was aware, alert, in full knowledge that his actions were unacceptable, and sensible. And there's lots of mental illnesses that don't impair that in the slightest. Delusional is not one of them. So in a way, it matters what was wrong with him. But can I diagnose him? God no. I just like to throw things out there now and again.

[Tom_Wescott]

best wishes Tom..am glad you brought up the most important point of all.
It's weak hogwash being protected.

Yikes, I didn't say that at all.

To Fish, Sir Bob, and Phil C, as the only people to reply to my post...I agree with some of what each of you said, but I'm afraid I may have been taken a bit out of context. I wasn't arguing Koz's position as a suspect. I've said time and again that he IS a contemporary and viable suspect. My comment was specifically referring to the behavior of many of the modern commentators, such as ourselves, but NOT the Kozminski advocates OR the vocal Koz protagonists. Those that pompously claim to be 'anti-suspect' and venomously attack anyone who dares to try to conduct research and offer speculation, INCLUDING against other contemporary suspects, such as Druitt and Le Grand, but offer only a pass to Koz. Is it because he fits their preconceived notion of an 'unknown local man' better than the other suspects? Or is it because their buddies are in the Koz camp? A little of both?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Phil Carter]

Dr Batty Tuke

Hello all,

You know, the medical question surrounding Kosminski's mind has been promoted and even bleated out in support for his candicacy of being a killer.

So I took a little look at contemporary views in the British Medical Journal.
This view, from 17th November 1888, stands out.


It reads..
Dr Batty Tuke contributes an article to the Scotsman in which he combats the view that the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders is an insane person.
He concludes

"it would not be hard to imagime the comission of an isolated act of this character by an insane person, but the whole circumstances of the commission of these crimes, save one. are outside insanity. If they have been committed by a lunatic, his is the case which, in this country, is without parallel or precident. I have said that the circumstances of these crime is outside insanity, save one; that circumstance is, of course, the horrible nature of the act; but are we to deduce insanity from the revolting nature of the crime alone when all the other circumstances point away from it? Why should we underestimate the power of strong human wickedness and overestimate that of weak human insanity? For my own part, I can more easily see these crimes being the result of savage wickedness than insane mental action. The is a conciousness in the first idea which there is not in the second. Moreover, there is an incentive to wickedness productive of crime analogous to those now under consideration, which only those very intimately aquainted with the dark records of medical jurisprudance know of. This is not the place to speak of it, and I only allude to it in order to indication that there are incentives to crime unappreciable by the great mass of the community."

Now that raises some very interesting thoughts and imho, should be taken great notice of...on many fronts.


Hope it interests.

best wishes

Phil

[Wickerman]

Thankyou Phil.

"...For my own part, I can more easily see these crimes being the result of savage wickedness than insane mental action."
Dr. Tuke.

There are a handful of us who have been backing that horse from day one...
It is encouraging to see it was a contemporary view.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

... I've said time and again that he IS a contemporary and viable suspect.

A contemporary suspect, to my mind, is one who was suspected during the spate of the murders. It has yet to be established that this was the case with Kosminski.
Even Druitt was not a contemporary suspect, had he not committed suicide we'd have no reason to think we would ever have heard of him. Even a century later there is still nothing to connect him with the crimes.

Those that pompously claim .....

Tom, there's a degree of pomposity in many of your own posts, how you like to play the role of tutor to other members, purportedly "setting the record straight", and especially when your own opinions are challenged.
Who was it said, "you reap what you sow"?

Here endeth, etc. etc...

And have a great weekend Tom.
Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

Now I am inordinately fond of Dr. Batty Tuke. AND his name is Batty Tuke, which makes me extra fond of him.

To be fair, Anderson never says the suspect was insane. Which if the suspect was in fact Kosminski, seems kind of a glaring oversight. I can't imagine that a claim of violence against women and the whole eating trash out of a gutter thing would not have been worthy of comment, even in vague terms. Such as "The suspect was insane."

To be fairer, Swanson never says that suspect was insane. But the whole Seaside Home identification thing was theoretically done because he couldn't be formally questioned due to his insanity. So it's sort of alluded to in a weird way. Also his eventual disposition in a loony bin sort of points to it.

Now, if he could not be formally questioned because he was insane, I'm not entirely sure how both men avoided mentioning it. Anderson is clearly doing a little tease with the whole "we solved it but I can't tell you" thing, and insanity could be a major clue, so I get that part. How does Swanson not mention it? He names names, but doesn't mention the crazy? That's weird right?

I'm not saying it means something, it just seems odd. Because Aaron Kosminski was at least sometimes, nuttier than a fruitcake so to speak. Given what they knew at the time, I don't see how they could fail to see that as relevant. Thus worthy of mention.

[Phil Carter]

Thankyou Phil.

"...For my own part, I can more easily see these crimes being the result of savage wickedness than insane mental action."
Dr. Tuke.

There are a handful of us who have been backing that horse from day one...
It is encouraging to see it was a contemporary view.

Regards, Jon S.

Hello Jon,

It's the sad truth that whatever is thrown in the way of the Kosminski candicacy, even if it stares people straight in the face.. the show MUST go on.

Maybe NOW, with this view that carries contemporary medical opinion and weight... perhaps now the towel will be thrown in the ring.

I somehow doubt it though.

Somebody will come up with something to keep the wobbly wheel on the wagon. And it doesnt take a genius to work out the reasons why either.

best wishes

Phil