What makes her such a likely candidate?

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:
"No. He brought her down to ground slowly, allowing her weight to slump. This caused her legs to be drawn up. It was as if her knees were buckling. I suggest only that her position indicates that he brought her to the ground and that his act of bringing her to the ground would have allowed him to simply turn her a little given an extra second of time. Again, he didn't draw up her legs. That was a natural happenstance of his lowering her to the ground. I contend that he lowered her because he wasn't finished yet, and that her being on her side was also natural due to his using mostly one arm to support her weight. She would have, of necessity, been dropped to one side, knees drawn up."

Okay, Mike - that makes better sense. But I think that we must weigh in that her knees were drawn high up. It was said that they looked drawn up as in agony. That implies that they were drawn up significantly beyond a ninety degree angle to the body.
Now, if he lowered her that far, meaning that she must have come close to sitting down on the ground, then why would he turn her over on her side in the first place, considering that he must have wanted her on the back to do the cutting? I do not see the necessity you are talking about, and I do not think it applied in any other case either. With Chapman, she could hardly have been on her side at any stage, given the small space between boarding and stairs. To me, Chapmans position implies clearly that if she was lowered to the ground, then she was not lowered with the Ripper standing behind her! I see no reason to believe that the Ripper was lowering Nichols or Eddowes standing behind them either.
Remember the description of Stride: ”Over both shoulders, especially the right, and under the collarbone and in front of the chest there was a bluish discoloration”. If that was the killer grabbing her, he seems to have grabbed her from the front. And in Annie´s case: ”there were two distinct bruises, each the size of a man's thumb, on the forepart of the top of the chest.”
And even IF the Ripper for some reason held onto Stride from behind, then why not just let Stride slump all the way down, take a step back, and let her drop on her back? The angle of the knees tells us that she was quite close to the ground anyhow, if that angle was something that did not come about because she drew her legs up after falling.

To me, Strides position has always pointed very much away from the Ripper being responsible for putting her there. Another thing involved is that IF he did it the way you are suggesting he did, then he would either have cut her at the very final stage of her fall, more or less as he was rotating her onto her side, OR he waited to let her end up on the ground, whereafter he reached in over her, almost banging his own head against the clubhouse wall, shoved his knife in under her neck and cut her as she was lying down, with the blade travelling upwards.

In the other cases, the doctors press the point that the victims would have been lying down on the ground as he cut. One of the things that caused the medicos to opt for that guess, would have been that the force inflicted on the victims, that allowed the knife to travel down to the bone, implies that the heads of the victims were supported from behind as he cut. But that was not applies in the Stride case, whichever way you look at it.

If it was the Ripper, then why did he either cut when Stride was falling or settle for cutting her when she was in a position totally on her left side? Why not roll her over, get behind her and THEN cut, when the position allows you to apply maximum weight to the cut, and affords you access to cut all the way around the neck with undiminished force? If he did so with all the other victims, why on earth would he set about doing it the other way around on Stride?

Nah, Mike - though your suggestion takes us as close as the evidence allows for bringing the Ripper on stage, I think that weighed together it all speaks very clearly away from him!

The best, Mike!
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

If we only look at Diemschutz as the interrupter, then his timing was so perfect as to be unimaginable. In the area of a busy club, anything might have spooked him, and so, the interruption theory isn't hanging upon one possibility.

Heretofore, the interruption theory seems to have been bandied about as the reason for the killer being frustrated in his intention to mutilate, initially - it was claimed - by the arrival of the pony and cart. Even if there were something else that spooked him before Diemschutz's arrival, it's a bit hard to believe that it happened in the instant between the cutting of the throat and the deposition of the body on the ground. Furthermore, if it was (say) Kozebrodski opening the scullery door to spit his baccy into the yard, that would tend to push the time of death a little further away from Diemschutz's entrance, as by the time he arrived there was only the heap on the floor, and no report of anyone else in the yard.

As you say, Mike, the notion that the killer didn't even have time to roll Stride onto her back needn't negate the concept, but what I sense is a progressive shrinking, or at least a distinct fluttering, of the time envelope during which the "interruption effect" might have applied.

[Fisherman]

While I´m at it: We have Blackwells testimony telling us that "the feet almost touched the wall". If Stride was lowered down, and then slumped over on her side, then why did the feet happen to end up on top of each other? Blackwell does not say that ONE foot almost touched the wall - he says that BOTH feet did.
If you are rolled over on your side, I think the chances of your feet ending up like that are minimal. To me, it sounds like she drew her legs up herself to the position in which they were found.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Dan Norder]

You asked me for my notes a couple of years ago. I'm about to bin them to make room in my bookcase.

I'd hate to see anyone throw out anything that could be useful. I'd take them if you don't mind sending them to me.

[The Good Michael]

Fisherman,

I'm not saying Stride's killer was the Ripper. I'm pointing to the placing or the helping down to the ground of Stride as something more than just a quick kill and connecting it to the possibility of something more that he was wanting to do. Remember that this was a secondary component of Stride's death that I was considering could push it past the 50/50 mark, canonically speaking, and not as some full-blown theory.

Anna,

I lifted a 100 pound woman in the air today with one arm and set her gently back down on the ground with all her weight on one forearm. I certainly think a man could slowly lower a dying woman to the ground. In fact, I have no doubts of it.

Gareth,

Your point is taken about the coincidental timing of getting ready to rip and a cart coming along. If Stride had only bled to death from a partial wound rather than a full throat cut, we might be saying the killer may have been interrupted else he would have done a better job (or he was a terrible killer).
The point is, if an interruption occurs in about any activity, any point in time during that activity seems just as likely as any other to me. An example might be that I am playing a game of chess and I have a dog in the other room. At what point in the game is the dog most likely to jump up and disturb some pieces? This is unanswerable of course. I don't take the interruption theory as gospel ( I don't believe in gospel anyway), but I also don't see a reason, logically to disregard it, and that is not after making an assumption Stride was a Ripper victim. That is just from thoughts based upon the location, the club activities, and the timing of things. I'm kind of back to the 50/50 or 52/48 mark.

Cheers,

Mike

[caz]

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Good Michael I suggest only that her position indicates that he brought her to the ground and that his act of bringing her to the ground would have allowed him to simply turn her a little given an extra second of time.


Hi Mike,A good point and , if true, then we should suppose that the alleged interruption - Diemschutz, whatever - must have happened within the split second required to turn her 90° onto her back. If her killer was prevented from executing this simple action, let alone any intended mutilation, it strikes me that we have another reason to cast serious doubt on the "interruption hypothesis".

Hi Sam,

It would not necessarily be a case of a serial mutilator being prevented from carrying out the next step in the process after delivering a fatal cut to the throat. It might be that he had no intention of going any further until he could satisfy himself that the yard was still deserted and there was no sign of anyone about to disturb his peace.

If there was any chance that someone could have overheard Liz exchanging a last word with her killer, followed by an abrupt silence, or the sounds of her final drop to the ground, then he would have been wise to spend the first minute or two immediately afterwards hiding nearby in the darkness, listening out for anyone coming to investigate, or just coming upon the scene by accident. There is no way of judging, unless you were there at the time, the safety of returning to Liz and/or executing that next simple action of turning her onto her back. For all you or I know, the killer could have had to play the Invisible Man while constantly reviewing how clear the coast was, until the first sounds of pony and cart reached his ears and he felt compelled to give up in frustration and get the hell out. But anything else could have spooked him before that finally happened, or otherwise ruined his mutilating opportunities.

There is therefore no 'must have happened within the split second' here.

I hate to go on about the South Croydon case, but it has to be said that if Sally Anne Bowman’s killer had not similarly thought to lie low for a while in the darkness, and a nearby resident had heard something and come to investigate, they would have come across him in the process of sexually abusing and mutilating her dead body. As it is, and despite being high on drugs at the time, he was careful to give himself a chance to leg it if the worst came to the worst, in which case Sally’s body would have been found by the resident (substitute pony and cart) with merely a cut throat, and her ex boyfriend, who had a lengthy argument with her in his car immediately before she was attacked, would have been up to his own neck in trouble in the absence of the offender’s DNA left at the scene.

Stride is the only victim clutching something in death. Breath fresheners. Indicating perhaps that she was completely unaware she was in danger with her company.

...the only people that were known to be at that location at approx 12:46, by the gates, or in the yard, was Liz and her assailant. A man who Im fairly sure few people would describe as "cunning", based on his weaving entrance and foiled attempt to take Liz into the street.

Hmmm. Cunning enough, though, Perry, to get back in favour with Liz immediately after failing to force her bodily into the street, to the extent that she feels completely safe in his hands when he whips out his sharp knife. You're not helping yourself, you know.

The members of the club went into the street yelling "another woman" had been killed, inferring that she was killed by someone who had killed previously, as she is the first, not second, victim discovered that night. This was in my opinion a rather blatant effort to deflect any potential link to someone at that club being involved.

I think you mean ‘implying’ here rather than ‘inferring’, if your theory is that the club members were encouraging others to infer that the Whitechapel fiend had struck again, to protect one of their own from possible blame.

But the logic of this 'blatant' deflection effort doesn’t really work, because the obvious inference from any potential link to someone at the club would have been that this was the fiend who had just murdered “another woman”. The cops would have got their man and he would have been a Jew to boot. For ‘blatant’ read ‘backfiring’.

Love,

Caz
X

[Fisherman]

So, Caz, what you are suggesting here is a man who lures Liz into the yard, then cuts her neck (in a comparatively shallow manner), then hides for a couple of minutes "nearby, in the darkness", after which he was planning to return to the fallen Stride and set about the eviscerations. Nearby in this case, I take it, meaning further into the cul-de-sac of the yard?

I cannot disprove that.

I never imagined I would be asked to.

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

So, Jack just happens to walk past that particular gateway in that particular street, notices the kerfuffle between Liz and BS, and waits till the latter has gone. Liz stays where she is, to be approached and attacked by the opportunist Ripper. Would you Adam'n'Eve it - a pony and cart arrives in those very moments during or after Jack's cut to her throat. Spooked by this interruption, our swift mutilating murderer then cowers in the shadows, before squeezing past a twitchy horse, and making good his escape without anybody noticing.

I am baffled why such an elaborate sequence of events should be proposed even as a "plausible alternative" to the simpler, and eminently more believable, scenario whereby Broadshouldered Man was her killer.

[Observer]

Hi Sam

The way you describe the events surrounding Liz Strides death above does sound a bit far fetched yes, but lets not forget that there were some who were involved in the case believed this to be the case.

all the best

Observer

[c.d.]

So, Jack just happens to walk past that particular gateway in that particular street, notices the kerfuffle between Liz and BS, and waits till the latter has gone. Liz stays where she is, to be approached and attacked by the opportunist Ripper. Would you Adam'n'Eve it - a pony and cart arrives in those very moments during or after Jack's cut to her throat. Spooked by this interruption, our swift mutilating murderer then cowers in the shadows, before squeezing past a twitchy horse, and making good his escape without anybody noticing.

I am baffled why such an elaborate sequence of events should be proposed even as a "plausible alternative" to the simpler, and eminently more believable, scenario whereby Broadshouldered Man was her killer.

Hi Sam,

I can only respond for myself. I see the BS man as her killer having a lot of red flags so I look around for other options. And when I take into account that Liz was a prostitute and had her throat I start to suspect Jack. And since I also believe that Jack was out that very night killing Kate a mere mile and a half away (if I am correct on the distance) those suspicions become a lot stronger.

But let me pose a question to you. If you believe that Jack killed Kate just a walkable distance away, is there any reason to conclude that Jack was incapable of being at Dutfields Yard that same night?

c.d.

[caz]

So, Jack just happens to walk past that particular gateway in that particular street, notices the kerfuffle between Liz and BS, and waits till the latter has gone. Liz stays where she is, to be approached and attacked by the opportunist Ripper. Would you Adam'n'Eve it - a pony and cart arrives in those very moments during or after Jack's cut to her throat. Spooked by this interruption, our swift mutilating murderer then cowers in the shadows, before squeezing past a twitchy horse, and making good his escape without anybody noticing.

I am baffled why such an elaborate sequence of events should be proposed even as a "plausible alternative" to the simpler, and eminently more believable, scenario whereby Broadshouldered Man was her killer.

Hi Sam,

Very good.

Now do the same exercise using what you assume was happening immediately before, during and after Kate's deadly encounter in Mitre Square, and see if you can make the timings sound any less elaborate or more plausible.

Love,

Caz
X

[perrymason]

Caz,

Since you and I could use up all the available server space just making our points....Ill only address a bit...

"It would not necessarily be a case of a serial mutilator being prevented from carrying out the next step in the process after delivering a fatal cut to the throat. It might be that he had no intention of going any further until he could satisfy himself that the yard was still deserted and there was no sign of anyone about to disturb his peace."

Cut then pause and consider? I dare say he would have been caught redhanded with Kate, and maybe Polly if the man didnt act swiftly after the throat cut. He goes to the abdomen after laying them on their back and spreading the legs....or did you miss those two prior kills? Then the one following Liz Strides murder across town?

"Hmmm. Cunning enough, though, Perry, to get back in favour with Liz immediately after failing to force her bodily into the street, to the extent that she feels completely safe in his hands when he whips out his sharp knife. You're not helping yourself, you know. "

Why would you think I would suggest he is in her favour at any time, or more importantly after he causes her fall? All he had to do after Schwartz and Pipeman leave is strong arm her into the yard,...maybe push his finger into her chest for emphasis while he "discusses" her making a scene before.....see Liz's bruises..... She mouths off, starts to leave, he grabs the scarf and pulls, twists her and drops her while he slides the knife across her throat, and its all over.

"I think you mean ‘implying’ here rather than ‘inferring’, if your theory is that the club members were encouraging others to infer that the Whitechapel fiend had struck again, to protect one of their own from possible blame.
But the logic of this 'blatant' deflection effort doesn’t really work, because the obvious inference from any potential link to someone at the club would have been that this was the fiend who had just murdered “another woman”. The cops would have got their man and he would have been a Jew to boot. For ‘blatant’ read ‘backfiring’."

The Logic is not only sound, its savy...that "another woman" yell by members started the Jack suppositions....the act itself and the circumstances certainly didnt. And Schwartz, if associated with the club, instead of checking at 12:45am to see if his wife had moved what was probably a few suitcases since noon by herself to their new digs, he brings an off-property thug into the picture as well.

There is far more evidence that Liz was simply killed and left than there is anything more than that was to occur, or anyone more sinister than BSM must have been involved.

Cheers Caz, best regards.

[The Good Michael]

Gareth and Caz,

Just to make sure that my argument which has been quoted is not taken out of context, I want to reiterate that I was making the argument for Stride's killer being Jack, and not an altercation that allowed another man an opportunity to take BS' place. I think BS is Jack. This was a busier area because of the proximity to the club. To not give JTR the little intelligence necessary to pause a moment because of noise possibly coming from several different directions, is to suggest he only could unthinkingly eviscerate his victims. I don't believe anyone can seriously think this was so.

Cheers,

Mike

[caz]

Cut then pause and consider? I dare say he would have been caught redhanded with Kate, and maybe Polly if the man didnt act swiftly after the throat cut. He goes to the abdomen after laying them on their back and spreading the legs....or did you miss those two prior kills? Then the one following Liz Strides murder across town?

Hi Perry,

Do you mean Annie and Polly were the 'prior kills' where he could not have afforded to pause and consider his own security before starting the mutilation process? That would only be true if he had listened long enough to hear the sounds of the people who actually came across the bodies and then started ripping regardless.

As it was he took his chances and got away with it - just. One could argue that he had pretty close calls on both occasions (to match Albert Cadoche's close call on the second ), which he could have read about in the papers even if he didn't appreciate at the time just how close he must have come to discovery. He had a long three weeks to reassess all the risks before he killed again.

In Dutfield's Yard he could have been acutely aware of the dangers of going straight from cutting to ripping without taking careful stock and listening out for signs of anyone approaching by chance (signs that he may or may not have missed in Buck's Row) or investigating after hearing a disturbance (like the one previously reported but not investigated in the backyard of 29 Hanbury). Also, he knew himself better than you or I do, so maybe he feared (again from Hanbury) that once he began the mutilation process he might not find it so easy to stop himself. In this case he may have waited just long enough to hear the confirmatory sounds that he had been wise to hesitate this time.

But if he had to give up on this impossible location it didn't cool his blood. It just fired him up to try again elsewhere, and maybe he couldn't have stopped himself once he got started. Given any other night, I suspect he might have considered the conditions in Mitre Square too risky. But this wasn't any other night and he had gone three weeks without mutilating a sausage.

Why would you think I would suggest he is in her favour at any time, or more importantly after he causes her fall? All he had to do after Schwartz and Pipeman leave is strong arm her into the yard,...maybe push his finger into her chest for emphasis while he "discusses" her making a scene before.....see Liz's bruises..... She mouths off, starts to leave, he grabs the scarf and pulls, twists her and drops her while he slides the knife across her throat, and its all over.

So when does Liz take out her cachous, and why is she still holding them when she is found, if BS doesn't give her any opportunity or reason to calm down and collect herself between causing her to fall and strong arming her against her will into the yard?

The Logic is not only sound, its savy...that "another woman" yell by members started the Jack suppositions....the act itself and the circumstances certainly didnt. And Schwartz, if associated with the club, instead of checking at 12:45am to see if his wife had moved what was probably a few suitcases since noon by herself to their new digs, he brings an off-property thug into the picture as well.

I still don't get the logic of club members thinking that yelling "another woman" would focus police minds on Jack and therefore away from one of their own being responsible. It would have the opposite effect if the cops simply reasoned that Jack was therefore likely to be one of those club members.

Love,

Caz
X

[Fisherman]

Since, Caz, we don´t get too many opportunities to agree on things, I will take the chance to pounce on this one:

"So when does Liz take out her cachous, and why is she still holding them when she is found, if BS doesn't give her any opportunity or reason to calm down and collect herself between causing her to fall and strong arming her against her will into the yard?"

Yes, Caz! She was in all probability feeling at ease when she took out her cachous.

So we´re agreed! Who would have thought it?

The best, Caz!
Fisherman