Kates Cuts

[c.d.]

I'm guessing that there's pattern

In the way that the GSG's

Words are indented and that

this pattern is another clue

Not to belittle that line of thinking but could the fact that chalk was used be a clue? Or the height of the message? Why did the message start with "The Juwes" instead of just "Juwes." Is the T in the a clue to his identity? Did the apartment building have a specific address? Is that a clue?

I mean any damn thing can be a clue.

c.d.

[Leather_Apron]

So... Long sees the Ripper with Annie. The Ripper reads in the paper that Long identified the deceased as the one talking to him. The Ripper decides to fix that problem by mutilating the faces of his next victims.

[Trapperologist]

[I]Casebook describes the scrap of envelope she had taken from the mantelpiece of the kitchen as containing two pills. It bears the seal of the Sussex Regiment. It is postal stamped "London, 28,Aug., 1888" inscribed is a partial address consisting of the letter M, the number 2 as if the beginning of an address and an S. It would seem that she took it out of convenience as a way of storing her pills.

So the scrap on the mantle, (for starting a fire or notes or whatever) was ripped lengthwise so the postmark is there (stamp probably missing for a collection or something), and then is ripped 90 degrees so that you have the M in Mr or Mrs and a partial street address and then turns again so the city is missing. Who rips zig zag like that?

We won't even discuss having a ripped envelope on display just before someone invents the name Jack the Ripper and starts writing letters....

[Trapperologist]

Not to belittle that line of thinking but could the fact that chalk was used be a clue? Or the height of the message? Why did the message start with "The Juwes" instead of just "Juwes." Is the T in the a clue to his identity? Did the apartment building have a specific address? Is that a clue?

I mean any damn thing can be a clue.

c.d.

I agree with everything you said above except I'm not sure about the relevance of the specific address, although some have made suggestions about some Goulston Lectures, and I think the width of the message has more relevance than the height seeing as it was written on a door jamb/post/pillar with major indents even though there was already a shortage of space, unless you're talking about the height of the letters.

Everything can be a clue, depending on what you mean by clue. There are "calling card" clues in rare crimes. Most clues are just signature clues which can be subconsciously done or leads like fingerprints and the odd accurate witness. Everything in the Unabomber's communications were a clue to his upbringing in Chicago and his university education but nobody believed it. He also used initials FC for Freedom Club.

[Michael W Richards]

As I mused the other day: "Before crime fiction really took off, is there any evidence that real-life criminals purposely leave clues behind? It strikes me that the idea of leaving a deliberate trail of clues is a device employed by crime writers so that their star detective can (a) prove their brilliance; and (b) catch the villain. Might it be the case that, owing to the popularity of detective stories - in books, TV, radio and movies - what was originally a fictional conceit has leached out into the real world?"

My guess is that this is precisely what we're dealing with. As in the vast majority of criminal cases, I strongly suspect that there was nobody leaving a breadcrumb trail of cryptic clues behind him in Whitechapel 1888.

I would agree with that Sam. No matter what personal beliefs I have about these cases I don't see anyone that would purposely leave a trail. With one exception maybe...I think the apron section "placement" was intended to mislead people about his path home.

[Michael W Richards]

Of course not. And there is no such thing as "proof", there is only proof, no quotation marks.

You seem to think that what cannot be proven is always proven to the contrary? That´s a tad odd, to say the least. Is that how you are arguing your case? Since A cannot be proven, B is?

Maybe I can use it for the Lechmere theory? Since it has not been disproven, it is proven, sort of?

No, actually what Ive said is that the very foundation of a Canonical Group requires having established linkage, at the very least by killer, from each victim to the others. And that has not been done. Many attempts have been made, and as I said, 130 years plus later that is still the baseline. So when an alternative idea is presented, having some foundations in the known physical and witness evidence, it should be considered as an equal proposition to the C5. At this point in time, they are all just theories.

In this particular case I suggested that the anomalies in the cuts and the stories by witnesses may indicate something else was at play here, other than the Ripper himself. Or, maybe it was him but this kill represented something other than his traditional act like a client with random women shtick. There was a very stupid miscalculation severing the colon section..messy. That alone doesn't seem to match the type of cutting done by Annies killer. Nor does the facial cutting.

Ive always subscribed to the premise that things that don't appear to be similar to a sample are usually different than the sample. In my case, Annie is the sample.

[Sam Flynn]

There was a very stupid miscalculation severing the colon section..messy. That alone doesn't seem to match the type of cutting done by Annies killer.

Annie's killer cut her colon, too, and only managed to cut out a portion of her bladder. Plus he hacked out three "fillets" of abdominal flesh in order to open her up, when one or two cuts would have been more efficient and just as effective.

actually what Ive said is that the very foundation of a Canonical Group requires having established linkage

There can be no established linkage at this remove in time, but there are sufficient similarities between the four evisceration murders to suggest that the same person was responsible for them.

At this point in time, they are all just theories.

At one time, Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe and the Keplerian heliocentric model were "just theories" too, but we didn't have to wait until the age of space travel for it to become obvious that Ptolemy's theory was the least likely to be true, not least because it required additional speculations to be posited in order to make it work. It's the same with every "alternative" Ripper theory I can remember.

[Michael W Richards]

1. Annie's killer cut her colon, too, and only managed to cut out a portion of her bladder. 2. Plus he hacked out three "fillets" of abdominal flesh in order to open her up, when one or two cuts would have been more efficient and just as effective.

3. There can be no established linkage at this remove in time, but there are sufficient similarities between the four evisceration murders to suggest that the same person was responsible for them. At one time, Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe and the Keplerian heliocentric model were "just theories" too, but we didn't have to wait until the age of space travel for it to become obvious that Ptolemy's theory was the least likely to be true, not least because it required additional speculations to be posited in order to make it work. It's the same with every "alternative" Ripper theory I can remember.

On the above Sam, 1......"only managed a portion of her bladder" seems to presume it was targeted, when Phillips indicates that the "whole" operation was geared to obtaining the complete uterus...on #2, I don't recall anyone suggesting an alternative and preferable manner of doing things, in fact the cuts reveal a specific target and the specific actions to obtain said target. As for 3, hyperbole aside with all due respect, your previous conclusion that there are "sufficient similarities" in 4 of the murders isn't anything more than your own perception. Pollys murder, for example, is for me dramatically different from Marys murder. In almost every category that is relevant for profiling. Those 2 are not sufficiently similar....and though I note that you likely left Liz Stride off to make your list of 4, her murder is categorically different from the other 4.

My whole inference here is that by presuming a series of at least the Five Canonicals, despite the very significant differences in that group, you create a GIGO effect that is counter productive to finding the real truth about any of these murders.

[JeffHamm]

thanks jeff
this is cool. and theres my favored suspect right in the thick of it.

Hi Abby,

Just thought you might be interested. I've finally had a chance to implement some improvements in one of the underlying predictors and have just completed running it through the testing phase. And, to my surprise, it's made a decent improvement (often things that appear they might work, well, don't once tested properly). With the current version, out of 33 test cases the offender's residence is the anchor point we're locating in 31 of them, for the other 2 I'm locating their workplace (as their residence is sufficiently far away from their offense locations that they would be a commuter. As I say, geographical profiling starts with the assumption the offender is a marauder, which is true about 80% of the time.

Anyway, 10 (just under 1/3) locate the anchor point within zone 1 (yellow + pink region), by zone 3 (expand to orange region) 50% of the offender's anchor point has been located, and 75% are located with 6 zones (expand to the light red/magenta region). 93.94% are found inside the red area, and the other two a bit beyond into the green area. While it no longer splits into two areas, the northern one is the remaining focus (and this primary area would be in the upper circle you suggested based upon the Eddowes/GSG activity alone).

So, at the moment, Barnett is the only named suspect (a recent one) that falls in the 75% region (zones 1-6; and he's right in zone 1 too). The suspect marker north of Miller's court doesn't actually have anyone associated with it. I mislocated Hutchinson here at one point as I misidentified the building, but that building was a new residence for low income residence, so I've kept it marked as a lone male would have the privacy he might need in such a location, etc. But that's nothing to base anything on, and I just didn't want to take the location off after having found it.

Also interesting is that the peak (the pink area inside zone 1) focuses on the end of Dorset Street, where there was a pub and I believe there's tales of a potential sighting of a fellow who aroused suspicion there? Problem is that, if that pub was JtR's anchor point, I would think he would be recognized as a regular.

Anyway, as I say, provided JtR was a local, and all of the C5 including Stride were killed by him, then based upon the locations of his offenses, then the spatial analysis suggests he has come significant connection (home, work, etc) in that region. The GSG falls inside that region too, suggesting there may be more to that location than just a random place to drop the apron piece. In the Levy suspect thread they mention that Levy (the witness) was a cousin I think of the Levy the suspect (mad butcher I think), and there was some connection with those buildings (a brother of the suspect Levy lived there it might have been?).

I'm pleased with how this is performing on my test cases. What I need to do, though, is expand that set as I'm now getting to the point I'm worried I might be picking up on things that are idiosyncratic to the set of cases I have, rather than things that generalize to other cases.

- Jeff

[Sam Flynn]

On the above Sam, 1......"only managed a portion of her bladder" seems to presume it was targeted

I don't think it matters much either way - if the bladder was targeted, then he only managed to cut a piece of it, which says a lot about his "expertise"; if it was accidental, then it's a further indicator of how crude the evisceration was.

[Fiver]

A single cut severing only 1 artery completely is like a double throat cut that nicks spines? Eh?? If you want to try Apples to Apples, have 2 apples.

Your post is a bit ironic, considering Stride's killer did a more thorough job of slitting her throat than Eddowes' killer did of slitting her nose.

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

Just thought you might be interested. I've finally had a chance to implement some improvements in one of the underlying predictors and have just completed running it through the testing phase. And, to my surprise, it's made a decent improvement (often things that appear they might work, well, don't once tested properly). With the current version, out of 33 test cases the offender's residence is the anchor point we're locating in 31 of them, for the other 2 I'm locating their workplace (as their residence is sufficiently far away from their offense locations that they would be a commuter. As I say, geographical profiling starts with the assumption the offender is a marauder, which is true about 80% of the time.

Anyway, 10 (just under 1/3) locate the anchor point within zone 1 (yellow + pink region), by zone 3 (expand to orange region) 50% of the offender's anchor point has been located, and 75% are located with 6 zones (expand to the light red/magenta region). 93.94% are found inside the red area, and the other two a bit beyond into the green area. While it no longer splits into two areas, the northern one is the remaining focus (and this primary area would be in the upper circle you suggested based upon the Eddowes/GSG activity alone).

So, at the moment, Barnett is the only named suspect (a recent one) that falls in the 75% region (zones 1-6; and he's right in zone 1 too). The suspect marker north of Miller's court doesn't actually have anyone associated with it. I mislocated Hutchinson here at one point as I misidentified the building, but that building was a new residence for low income residence, so I've kept it marked as a lone male would have the privacy he might need in such a location, etc. But that's nothing to base anything on, and I just didn't want to take the location off after having found it.

Also interesting is that the peak (the pink area inside zone 1) focuses on the end of Dorset Street, where there was a pub and I believe there's tales of a potential sighting of a fellow who aroused suspicion there? Problem is that, if that pub was JtR's anchor point, I would think he would be recognized as a regular.

Anyway, as I say, provided JtR was a local, and all of the C5 including Stride were killed by him, then based upon the locations of his offenses, then the spatial analysis suggests he has come significant connection (home, work, etc) in that region. The GSG falls inside that region too, suggesting there may be more to that location than just a random place to drop the apron piece. In the Levy suspect thread they mention that Levy (the witness) was a cousin I think of the Levy the suspect (mad butcher I think), and there was some connection with those buildings (a brother of the suspect Levy lived there it might have been?).

I'm pleased with how this is performing on my test cases. What I need to do, though, is expand that set as I'm now getting to the point I'm worried I might be picking up on things that are idiosyncratic to the set of cases I have, rather than things that generalize to other cases.

- Jeff

thanks jeff!

[Sam Flynn]

A single cut severing only 1 artery completely is like a double throat cut that nicks spines? Eh?? If you want to try Apples to Apples, have 2 apples.

Yes, but - boy! - what a cut it was:

"The big muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed... All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife marking the intervertebral cartilages." (Dr Brown's notes from Eddowes' post mortem.)

[c.d.]

My whole inference here is that by presuming a series of at least the Five Canonicals, despite the very significant differences in that group, you create a GIGO effect that is counter productive to finding the real truth about any of these murders.

And yet Michael, evidence from modern day serial killers has been presented to you which links their murders which contain significantly more differences than appear in the C5. Your response is to completely ignore it. Yet, they were all killed by the same hand.

If you focus solely on differences then you are going to see only differences.

c.d.

[seanr]

So, at the moment, Barnett is the only named suspect (a recent one) that falls in the 75% region (zones 1-6; and he's right in zone 1 too).

Hi Jeff

When you say Barnett, do you mean Joe Barnett? Is he in Zone 1 by virtue of living at Miller's Court?

Only there are those who name John McCarthy as a suspect or as more involved in the murders than has generally been thought. It may be sufficient/of interest to say that McCarthy and Crossingham's lodging houses land in Zone 1?