The Apron

[mariab]

We cannot “understand“ them emotionally, since we're (hopefully) healthy and no sociopaths, but we can certainly figure out their motivations and how their minds work.

[Chava]

As Ally points out, if you're just wiping your hands, you discard the cloth asap. It's incriminating evidence. But the description of the apron does not suggest that's what the killer is doing. There would be smudges everywhere, not just a wodge of blood in one corner. I'm sticking to my guns here. I think he cut himself and grabbed a piece of cloth and wound it round. Deep finger cuts can bleed like the devil. I remember once cutting myself while making dinner, and the damn thing bled profusely for at least ten minutes and kept on seeping for hours. I went through 4 band-aids because they wouldn't stick on the finger owing to the blood flow. I'll bet anyone who cooks on a regular basis can attest to that. As well, a deep cut can leave a blood drop trail unless you stanch it fast. Those blood drops would point to where the murderer had run off to. He's quick-thinking and quick-acting. He keeps his head in emergencies. He realizes he's cut himself and does something about it fast.

As for whether he comes prepared to take his souvenirs, I believe he must. There's no suggestion he took anything off Chapman's body to carry away the bits and bobs he took from her. And shoving them into his jacket pocket wouldn't be a very efficient way to carry on given now much they would bleed into the cloth, and then the cloth would start to stink and draw attention even after the said bits and bobs were removed.

[Lechmere]

Chava - I don't think he needed a great expanse of apron to wrap around his finger.
Maria - to understand them emotionally is to understand their motivation - that is why it is so difficult or almost impossible.

[ChrisGeorge]

Chava - I don't think he needed a great expanse of apron to wrap around his finger.

If you will excuse the satire....

[Chava]

I just checked what Catherine Eddowes wore on the night she died. Basically it looks like she wore everything she had. A couple of old skirts under the top skirt, a worn but fairly formal jacket etc. But it doesn't appear she was wearing an apron. A piece of apron still possessing strings is described among her possessions. Yet one of the cops at Bishopsgate did describe her wearing an apron in the cells.

See, I got to thinking why was she wearing an apron at all? She's out on the ran-tan and the other clothes she's wearing don't suggest that she would be wearing an apron over them. The other victims aren't wearing aprons, they're dressed for some kind of night out even if it's only a night out on their corner waiting for johns. I can see where she would have an apron among her possessions because it's always useful to have one. And I can also see that she might have it tied around her waist along with her pockets, and her skirts and so on. But I doubt she wore it outside her clothes that night and I think it's possible that the Bishopsgate cop mistook one of her calico pockets, that she might have pulled out to ferret around in, as an apron.

This way the killer throws up her skirts, likely the bit of apron was on the bottom near to the chemise. And it's the closest thing to hand when he wants to shear off a piece. But I don't think we can assume it's a really large piece of material unless we have the exact dimensions of the cloth. Being as how I'm now at work I don't have access to my A-Z. Does anyone know exactly how big that piece of linen was?

[Monty]

I would agree with this, just as I agree with what Caz said before. The rub is that others, such as John Bennett and Monty on this thread, feel that this explanation is the most complex and that a simpler explanation is an unrelated hand for Stride's murder and yet another unrelated hand in the graffiti. To my mind, the purpose of the apron only becomes mystifying when comtemplating the minimalist scenario, because it the killer had no intention of leaving the graffiti, there really is no purpose for the cutting and taking of the apron piece. Since I choose to believe the Ripper wrote the graffiti, the apron piece takes on a practical purpose. My scenario - that the Ripper intentionally killed two women in different police jurisdictions and planted false clues in Goulston Street - may be incorrect, but it makes sense of all the evidence and leaves little in the way of mystery left.

I think it likely that we all, knowingly or not, interpet the evidence based on our personal biases of what we think the Ripper was like. Not necessarily WHO we think he was, but what. If we see the Ripper as a (to use a now-antiquated term) 'disorganized' sexual serial killer, then such things as a successful double murder and planned graffiti don't make much sense. If we see the Ripper as someone more planning, and perhaps more intelligent, or perhaps someone with an agenda, then it's not difficult at all to accept the various pieces of evidence.

That's not to say we all haven't considered the various viewpoints, and different scenarios, but maybe we're just hardwired differently.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Like John, I agree with that last paragraph.

I will make one think clear, I do understand why Tom draws his conclusions and how and whilst I do disagree with them I can state that I cannot dismiss them. I am aware that my conclusions have there faults as Tom is aware his do also.

To pidgeon hole someone as a 'minimalist' is unfair and, in my case, untrue. I simply draw a different conclusion.

Monty

[Wickerman]

I remember once cutting myself while making dinner, and the damn thing bled profusely for at least ten minutes and kept on seeping for hours.

Thankyou, and I was about to ask you for an example to support your theory.
My response was going to be to ask,...

"...at what point did you rip that bandaid from your bleeding finger to throw it away?"

Goulston St. was something of the order of 1500 feet from the murder site, that might take a running man 2 minutes to cover?, so why throw the apron away when his cut is still bleeding?

Your cut bled for 10 minutes but Goulston St. was only 2-3 minutes away?

I don't think your solution of Jack cutting himself provides the all important answer to the question of "why discard the apron several streets, but only 2 minutes away?"

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

conflation

Hello Greg.

"I think Lynn Cates stated a while back that the Ockham’s razor thing is a myth!"

Actually, I said that Ockham's Razor: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda, sine necessitate" is misunderstood.

What some of us are calling Ockham's Razor is actually the "Principle of Parsimony."

Cheers.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Monty,

What 'minimalist' is hasn't actually been fully explained, so please don't take offense. I imagine most of the Cartel are minimalists, so you're certainly not alone.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[harry]

Many learned medical people state that sociopaths are quite common,and move around undetected because they appear and act so normal.So maybe JTR was of this kind,except for those times,when the desire to kill and mutilate caused him to act defensively in choosing a time when circumstances permitted solitary activity.As for needing a cleaning rag,anyone who has been near up to the elbows in muck ,can well understand a need to get rid of the muck as soon as a job is finished,and in a case where danger is an added factor,to clean up on the way from that danger.Nothing abnormal about that.

[Malcolm X]

i wouldn't bother trying to get inside his head, because any suspect on our list can harbour his evil, without others knowing.

[Malcolm X]

Yes but anti-Semitism is ages old. The Nazis were only cashing in on the existing ancient anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe generally and using it for their own purposes.

Chris

yes, and most people i know are anti-semetic, far more so than they are racist, Jews are extremely unpopular.... but the graffiti is refering much more to :-

``the jews are the men that will be blamed by everyone, for everything that's wrong in society today ``

this seems far more like a prophecy, than in reference to the next month

time travel ?..... no, we wont be around in the 25th century, because it looks like we'll be extinct by then, even so; there are some very strange things in this world that cant be explained away

[ChrisGeorge]

yes, and most people i know are anti-semetic, far more so than they are racist, Jews are extremely unpopular.... but the graffiti is refering much more to :-

``the jews are the men that will be blamed by everyone, for everything that's wrong in society today ``

this seems far more like a prophecy, than in reference to the next month

time travel ?..... no, we wont be around in the 25th century, because it looks like we'll be extinct by then, even so; there are some very strange things in this world that cant be explained away

Hi Malcolm

I doubt if the inscription has such a wide-ranging implication as written by whomever wrote it but I might be wrong.

Think of it this way.

If the graffito was written by the killer, he could have been just expressing his frustrations on the night, i.e., as if to say, "I tried to mutilate the woman by the side of the Jewish socialist club but the Jews interrupted me. So you see what they made me do -- kill this second woman behind the synagogue!"

Chris

[Chava]

yes, and most people i know are anti-semetic, far more so than they are racist, Jews are extremely unpopular.... but the graffiti is refering much more to :-

``the jews are the men that will be blamed by everyone, for everything that's wrong in society today ``

this seems far more like a prophecy, than in reference to the next month

time travel ?..... no, we wont be around in the 25th century, because it looks like we'll be extinct by then, even so; there are some very strange things in this world that cant be explained away

Gosh, most people are anti semetic (sic) but they aren't racist? 'Jews are extremely unpopular'. Well I'm a Jew and I think (a) anti-semitism is racism.
And (b) your assertion as to the popularity of Jews suggests you yourself are a racist. This is a board for Ripperologists, not the meeting of the Mein Kampf Book Club For The Intellectually Challenged.

To get back to business, I think it's possible, if the graffito was written by the Ripper, that he was trying to implicate the Jews, but if that was so, (and I've said this many times before) I'd expect something a little less circumlocutory. Something along the lines of 'I killed them whores because I like to drink Christian blood'. What was written was ambiguous and didn't really help him. Add to that an over-reactive policeman who was terrified of a mob--even though they had already picked up a Jewish suspect and the East End didn't burst into flames--and you've got another mystery that didn't need to happen. I strongly suspect that the graffito was there before the cloth was dropped.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Bearing in mind that the unique piece of apron was found at least twenty minutes before anyone knew it was missing, would PC Long have given it a second thought had he found it, say, in a park, with not a tree within twenty yards upon which someone could have daubed or carved an anti-Semitic message?

Would he still have whizzed it off to Commercial Street police station, or simply ignored it whilst muttering something about litter louts?

The GSG, which, to my mind, was not written by the perpetrator, lent very convenient and much-needed credibility to PC Long's miraculous finding of the piece of apron.

Regards,

Simon