Documentary: Jack The Ripper: Has Christer Holmgren discovered the killer's identity?

[Fisherman]

Describes me to a T.

The fourth one.

Begins to sound like a conspiracy (he said, quietly shuddering). So not Brittan, not Mumford, not Tomkins, but...?

[MrBarnett]

Begins to sound like a conspiracy (he said, quietly shuddering). So not Brittan, not Mumford, not Tomkins, but...?

There were three (possibly four) Tomkins's hanging about Whitechapel in 1888. So perhaps it was more of a family affair than a conspiracy.

I'm still digging away (see from post 356 onwards):

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=6311&highlight=Ellis&page=16

BTW, I have a copy of the 1874 Slaughterhouses Act on order from the Parliamentary Archives. I'll post the relevant sections over on the HB thread, just for interest not to reignite the debate.

[Fisherman]

There were three (possibly four) Tomkins's hanging about Whitechapel in 1888. So perhaps it was more of a family affair than a conspiracy.

I'm still digging away (see from post 356 onwards):

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=6311&highlight=Ellis&page=16

BTW, I have a copy of the 1874 Slaughterhouses Act on order from the Parliamentary Archives. I'll post the relevant sections over on the HB thread, just for interest not to reignite the debate.

Okidoki. Reading.

[Fisherman]

It took me five minutes to conclude that Henry T of Winthrop Street fame was not the killer.

Reading on...

[MrBarnett]

Because he would have been too young in 1873?

Is it safe to assume that similar injuries must be caused by the same man and not by different men with a similar professional background?

[Fisherman]

Because he would have been too young in 1873?

Is it safe to assume that similar injuries must be caused by the same man and not by different men with a similar professional background?

Yes, because he was 14 in 1873, you are correct!

If the injuries are similar from case to case, then just as you say, that could implicate two killers and a common professional background. I completely agree, although I would point out that dismemberment killers are very, very rare creatures. And meticulous and exact dismemberment cutters are rarer than henīs teeth.

Anyhow, my agreeing with you over the possibility of two killers with similar backgrounds should tell you that the cutting work alone is not what I ground my take on. It is instead something quite different.

But letīs take it from the beginning!

The 1873 torso as well as the 1880īs torsos was cut with great skill. The joints were opened up and the limbs separated from the body there, something that Debra Arif tells us was not a common thing in dismemberment cases, referring to Guy Ruttys work.

So thereīs the initial correlation.

In all cases, with the possible exception for one (I beleive), there was muscle contraction speaking about how the bodies were cut up in quite close relation to the deaths of the victims. This holds true for the 1873 torso as well as the 1880īs torsos. And that is therefore correlation number two - the killer/s were eager to get to work after having killed, implicating that the dismemberment itself was part of or instrumental for the need to kill. Certainly, these bodies were cut up while still warm, and the medicos in the 1873 case opened up for the possibility that the separation of the body could have commenced while the victim was still living.

In the 1873 case as well as in the 1880īs cases, there was what appears to be superfluous cutting, made for the sake of cutting alone. I will expand on this:
Liz Jackson had her right leg severed at knee height. But her left leg was left complete. If the killer deemed it useful to dump a whole leg in the Thames in the case of the left leg, then why would he sever the right leg before duming that one in the river?
To me, that looks like he severed the right leg because he wanted to do so. In addition to this, Jacksons right hand was clipped off, while the left one was not. I reach the same conclusion here - he wanted to cut a hand off from the body, and went for the right one.
In the 1873 case, the right arm was severed at the elbow. The left arm was left intact.
And he cut off both feet.
Here is the third correlation: Superfluous cutting of the limbs. And I fail to identify from what background two killers could have come who would engage in this practice.

The fourth correlation is the one that is by far the most telling one, though. But it does not link the 1873 torso to the 1880īs torsos. It links it to the Kelly murder in November 1888. And it tells us what the killer came for and where his inspiration can be found.
Can you see it?

A hint can be found in what Dr Galloway said after his initial examination of the Rainham torso:
The legs and thighs had been removed with a perfectly straight cut.
All cuts were perfectly clean, leaving no signs of jaggedness.
The cutting was made in an exceedingly skilful manner.
It could only have been made by a person with a very intimate knowledge of anatomy.

Galloway even words the exact thing that I believe is instrumental to understanding the driving force behind the killings:
"These body parts have been removed with skill, not simply torn off to hide a murder."
So the skilful cutting itself was the motivation or part of the motivation. It was as if the killer was showing off. Why would he do that, only to then discard the parts in a way that would make it possible for the meticulous work to get lost to the world, by floating them down the river? Because, I would suggest, once he was done with his work, it no longer had any prolonged meaning to him. The body parts had gone from representing something justifying a very meticulous and exact cutting, into becoming useless waste.

This too is a pointer in a very clear direction, I believe.