A Possible Reason Why Jack Didn't Mutilate Liz

Hi Jimi,

Not sure any of those youthful club members would have seen poor Liz as mistress material. Temporary beer goggles might have led to the odd fumble in the darkness of the yard I suppose.

Hi Caz,

Perhaps not, but I know of a few women in their forties who would be quite comfortable in the company of a younger man..and some who seek them out.

I believe the throat cut doesnt answer the question as to who killed her, it certainly doesnt convict Jack,.... but I believe the circumstances that we are given do suggest an impending liaison expected by Liz. As far as I know, no Ripper murder offers evidence that the killer planned his tete et tete with his victims before actually going off with them somewhere...he met them while they were soliciting....we know that was his MO in the cases of Polly and Annie at least....... and went somewhere dark. Liz appears as if waiting for someone.....not just anyone.

Also, in Liz's case, she had earned her doss before she went out....and still didnt pay for her bed which would leave her 2d to head out with.

The comments by her lodgemate, the lint brush issue, the piece of velvet for safe keeping, the ankle length skirt, the flower on her breast, the cashous, the loitering from 12:35am until rejecting a man likely propositioning her at 12:45am...either with Schwartz or Browns story, ...and most suggestive, the statement that she would not be staying at the Lodging House that night, and didnt know when she might return.......these do not suggest an Unfortunate heading out to solicit to raise her bed money and probably some boozing. These suggest anticipated male companionship of some kind that she assumed or hoped would conclude in a bed she need not pay for, likely one that is not in a lodging house. I know for many the idea that the women might actually be human and have romances instead of always "couplings for cash" is absurd, but for me its not. I think its in the evidence that Liz liked to have a steady man in her life, and tried to earn decent wages on occassion. And she didnt have a steady the night she was killed......or didnt as yet?

And if this is a new romance perhaps in the works, hows that likely to go down with the reject from earlier in the week if he were to find out?

Best regards

[Supe]

M&P,

Just compare her throat wound to that of the other four canonical victims. It's remarkably dissimilar and nothing like how the Ripper had slashed a throat previously (and 45-odd minutes after Stride's death).

You might want to read "Suede and the Ripper" in the latest Ripperologist (No. 104 July 2009) that argues against that position.You also seem to have misunderstood Caz, who was arguing that Liz Stride was killed simply to still her voice forever. As I have said before in agreement: Liz was killed by JtR but was not a "Ripper" victim. It's not that cryptic.

Otherwise, I find Caz's post quite cogent. And it should be understood that even today, with all the forensic advances, estimating time of death is an inexact science--at best.

Don.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

and could have fooled the current naysayers completely.

I wouldn't go that far. Just compare her throat wound to that of the other four canonical victims. It's remarkably dissimilar and nothing like how the Ripper had slashed a throat previously (and 45-odd minutes after Stride's death). Not to mention that, despite the Ripper being somewhat risky with his other killings, that yard was a bit too risky for a man of his type; he didn't want to get caught, that much is evident. I just can't buy into him attempting a rip there. At all.

Going by what little evidence we got, Stride's candidacy for being a Ripper victim is only based on the theory that the killer was interrupted, and if that was the case, and it's a serious if, then the Ripper was interrupted whilst he was actually cutting her throat. That's the only explanation for it.

[caz]

Hi Jimi,

Not sure any of those youthful club members would have seen poor Liz as mistress material. Temporary beer goggles might have led to the odd fumble in the darkness of the yard I suppose.

But we are also constantly reminded by certain members of the very vocal 'no way was she a ripper victim' minority that the WM would have had plenty of time to do his trademark abdominal mutilations, and that if Liz had sported any, this same vocal minority would have had no doubt that she belonged with Polly and Annie.

Now this is quite bizarre logic when you think about it, because if the WM would have had plenty of time, then any Tom, Dick or Harry hoping to pass Liz off as another mutilation murder would have had plenty of time too - and could have fooled the current naysayers completely. And yet she is left with a single cut that her killer has to assume will prevent her from identifying him to the first person on the scene after he scarpers.

The killer - whoever he was - had a finite amount of time and security at the scene of this murder. So it just doesn't add up that the ripper would definitely have hung around in those circumstances to do some ripping, while anyone else (including anyone known to her personally) would not even have stayed long enough to make sure he had silenced her for good.

I'm now going to copy a couple of posts over here from the Berner St Con(spiracy) thread, which I've just been reading, because my observations would be way off topic there:

To solve the conundrum all you have to do is reconcile three things—

1. Stride was dead at 1.00 am.

2. Stride bled to death comparatively slowly.

3. The Ripper was interrupted at 1.00 am.

Like others, I'm not sure what Simon's point was here.

1. Blackwell's estimated time of death for Liz is consistently buggered about with by people who misunderstand his words or try to stretch the English language to breaking point. His best guess was that she had died less than 20 minutes before he examined her, ie after 12.56am. But he allowed for a maximum time of 30 minutes at the outside, taking it back to 12.46 at the very earliest.

2. What would bleeding to death 'comparatively' slowly actually mean in terms of minutes or seconds, given the window we have between 12.46 and when she was found dead (and allowing for any timepiece eccentricities of the day)?

3. The killer (whoever he was) made himself invisible in good time. But we don't know if he left Liz when and how he intended to leave her, or when and how he felt obliged to leave her in the circumstances.

This murder is so blatantly not Jack, that to engage anyone else in that discussion any longer for me is pointless,....so Ill bid you adieu, and let the nonsense flow without my disruption.

Thank god this resource doesnt require that evidence be submitted with counter posts.....there never would have been a Liz Stride/Ripper thread beyond an opening post.

Good luck.

This is quite the most rude, insulting and ignorant post I've read in recent times - even more so given that it still represents the minority casebook view according to the recent poll on who killed Liz.

What about all the documented cases of repeat offenders who have notched up their own double events, or been forced by riskier circumstances, different victim behaviour or pesky witnesses to adapt their attacks accordingly, or even used different methods and weapons, or aborted an attack in favour of safer avenues?

I hate to become a repeat offender myself, but once again the Sally Anne Bowman case in South Croydon makes mincemeat out of the 'blatantly not Jack' position, not least because it involves a mutilating killer who was high on drink and drugs who:

1) Didn't hear the taxi coming along the deserted street at 3.30am until he had battered his first victim round the head with a blunt instrument, after snatching her bag and threatening her with a knife.

2) Ran off when the taxi disturbed him and brutally stabbed Sally Anne to death with the knife, just 400 yards away and forty minutes later, as soon as her ex boyfriend had driven off after an argument the couple had been having in his car, leaving her alone and vulnerable on the pavement.

3) Retreated into the shadows immediately after killing her to check the coast was clear and only when no lights went on and all was still quiet returned to the body to inflict all manner of indignities and injuries on it, sexual and otherwise, before snatching her underwear, bag and mobile phone as trophies and heading back to where he was staying the night with a couple of female friends who lived locally.

And that's just one case out of at least three on record involving a second, excessively brutal attack in one night, due to the frustration of an aborted, incomplete or unsatisfying first attempt.

We just don't know that a refusal by Liz, or a pesky witness too many, or just a 'bad' feeling about a certain place and time (or even the sudden realisation that a pony and cart was fast approaching before he could roll this one on her back) would not have made Kate's killer react just like Liz's killer had done, less than an hour previously.

To think we do know that would be totally arrogant and shortsighted even if it didn't fly in the face of real evidence we can examine for ourselves from real documented cases of real serial offenders.

Incidentally, has anyone ever suggested that the cachous could have come from Packer's shop?

Matthew ran a fruit and sweet shop from the premises.

http://www.casebook.org/witnesses/w/Matthew_Packer.html

I don't recall seeing that little detail before. I thought it was just fruit and veg.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jimi]

jack?

Thats to say it was jack who killed liz.
In that current climate, any one of the club regulars, who had arranged to meet his mistress after the meeting could have killed Liz in that manner.
Jacks methods had been well reported, get rid of a demanding bit on the side and let Jack take the blame.
Liz strides character for extorting money (Holland) is fairly positive.
What say you that she backed somebody into a corner and suffered the conseqences of Jacks reign of terror?
What do you think?
Keep Well
jimi

[Ben]

I've suggested in the past that Stride's non-compliance might account for some of the "differences" in this particular murder, so (3) would get my vote too.

[Sam Flynn]

(3) This one won't go willingly to a quieter location like the others, away from pesky witnesses. So he quickly cuts her throat at the point of encounter, in case she's thinking of reporting him as suspicious, and goes off in search of greener pastures.

Ooh... now that I like, Caz. That would, at least, tie in neatly with the struggle at the gates.

That said, it needn't necessarily have been solely Jack's preserve to be worried of being reported for roughing up a prostitute, given the climate of suspicion that persisted in the East End at the time.

[The Good Michael]

Caz,

3 is the best choice.

Mike

[caz]

(3) This one won't go willingly to a quieter location like the others, away from pesky witnesses. So he quickly cuts her throat at the point of encounter, in case she's thinking of reporting him as suspicious, and goes off in search of greener pastures.

Anything fatally flawed there?

Love,

Caz
X

[rtomko]

If Jack killed Liz, why didn't he mutilate her? The most common explanation seems to be that he might have been interrupted. The longer that Jack was alone with her in the yard, the weaker that argument becomes. We naturally assume that Jack began his mutilations immediately after killing his victim. But what if Jack had some sort of ritual that he followed before beginning to cut? Something that was extremely important to him and something from which he would not deviate. It could have been so compulsive that had he been interrupted in mid ritual, he could no longer go forward with the act.

What do you think?

c.d.

The two strongest arguements are that (1) JTR was interrupted and had to get away quickly or (2) it wasn't JTR that killed Liz.

[caz]

Here I am, late to the party as usual.

It's hardly pointless to examine a case on its own merits, Caz - which is all the thought experiment invites us to do.

The technique needn't be confined to thought experiments either. I'm reminded of the fact that astronomers have recently managed to image extra-solar planets, which would otherwise have been undetectable owing to the glare of their parent star. The way the astronomers achieve this is by blotting out the star, so that the planets have a chance of being seen. We know that the star exists, but (in effect) "pretending" that it isn't there is essential in order to make possible the objective analysis of bodies in its periphery.

If ever there were a metaphor of how the "Double Event" should be looked upon, that's it. Put aside "Saucy Jacky", 120 years of Ripper lore, and blot out the glare of the Eddowes murder, and what are we left with?

Yeah, yeah, yeah Sam. Very good. But it wouldn't actually prove anything if what you appeared to be left with was (A) a simple one-off murder in Berner, while what you could equally have been left with (regardless of what Katy did next) was (B) a murder by a man who was hell-bent on attacking a woman - any woman - that night, with a sharp knife he was carrying for the purpose, and would not have said no to inflicting some more damage had he considered the conditions favourable. In both (A) and (B) the killer could of course have called it a night after Liz and crept off to bed with a mug of cocoa and a penny dreadful.

So in order to have a stab at guessing which was more likely to be the case, (A) or (B), you might then be advised to start looking at any other knife attacks that happened around the same time and place, in case there might be some evidence, for example, of (C) a murder by a man with his blood up, taking advantage of conditions that allowed him to inflict considerably more damage on a woman than had been the case with (A) or (B) just an hour earlier and a short walk away.

And lo and behold, you would be able to depend on Kate driving herself magnificently into view - if not in the form of a fire engine ringing her own bell.

I'm not sure how anyone could safely ignore her after that, or insist that with or without her (A) is still the far more likely scenario. Not only that, but you know as well as I do that the man who cut Kate’s throat had done it before. Indeed it had become quite a habit of his by the time your one-off killer tried his hand. Lucky for him, if Liz knew who he was, that the single slash he went for was enough to silence her for good. I thought it was a bit touch and go.

Love,

Caz
X

HI C.D., Michael et al,

Speaking of time, Gavin Bromley wrote an extensive essay on time and PC Smith's Beat. (click) He argues that Smith came along a little later ih his beat and his description of the man he saw is reliable.

Gavin says "There is one account there that does not sit well with the others at all, certainly for the timing given of the event. That is the statement of Israel Schwartz."

But Gavin does leave the door open that Schwartz did see the killer and I quote "This was a short window and also ten minutes after Schwartz said the events happened. This is not an issue in itself, as witnesses do sometimes get the time wrong. If it did happen at that time, then it is certain that he witnessed the beginning of the attack that led to her death as she was found dead within four to five minutes."

This is my opinion. Schwartz saw the killer in the first act of bold murder. Right there. Right at Dutfields Yard.

His story is a lock because he IDed the body of Liz Stride at mortuary as the woman he saw. He was not called to inquest simply because his account contained the name "Lipski" uttered. The officials, for reasons of public safety, wanted no part of that. They had plenty to establish her death as murder without him.

And Israel Schwartz, as recent research has shown, continued on with his life in St George's East, raising a family and becoming a storekeeper. He was an honest witness.

His time was off by about ten minutes.

Roy

Im not looking to one up you Roy, but I can guarantee that people had read me post close to that very thought here over the past three years. It is implausible to accept he was checking to see if his wife finished moving at 12:45...he is outside a Jewish Working Mens Club after a meeting and he is a Working Jewish Man, and the front door was already locked so if he left at that time he would have to leave via the side door and yard. He steps into the yard, sees the scuffle with Liz by a bully, maybe sees a man smoking a pipe by the gates, he scurries on past not wanting to be involved, and as he and this other chap split Liz is being fatally assaulted.

Schwartz cannot provide his story in his own words to Police due to his inability to speak any English, and his translator may have been Wess, who may have translated for Goldstein also. I think Goldstein saw what happened by the way....he had a case full of empty cigarette cartons and cigarette makers lived in the cottages, and some stated they were awake at the time. I believe he decided against entering the yard when he saw a body or a man over one...

The Club was known as an anarchist club, with low men hanging about until past one in the yard smoking and talking. Yet the witnesses say no-one at all was in the yard on that night.

I believe the attack and murder was committed by a drunk and surly attendee of that nights meeting, and the club members constructed an outside the gate scenario during the translations that puts the likely killer coming from off the property...cause he couldnt have come from the club street door...its locked.

The Club knew if police could prove that murderers attended meetings there, the radical press "Arbeter Fraint" and the Club are no more.

Consider this........of all the Inquest details there cannot be any more strange a one than the fact that William Wess is the first person to speak at Liz's Inquest. We dont know if he had ever seen or heard of a Liz Stride...and we also know he said that he had left long before she is killed.

So this is the most relevant opening statement....he speaks before Diemshutz? Or Kidney?

The truth of Dutfields Yard lies within a woven tale around it.....its defensive SPIN by the club, little more.

Cheers Roy

[Roy Corduroy]

Donald Swanson, who was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard at the time, and who had all the facts available to him, didn't see it that way. He believed that it was possible for the killer to be someone other than the BS man and expressed his opinion in an official report.

Hi c.d.

You are correct. Swanson left the door open for another bad actor on the scene. My opinion is just one bad guy, with the witness timing a little off.

Roy

[Roy Corduroy]

PS:

My opinion of Schwartz's role as witness in the Stride murder has nothing to do with "Anderson's witness."

I've got no dog in that hunt.

Roy

[c.d.]

Hi Roy,

Well Bromley may be correct but Donald Swanson, who was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard at the time, and who had all the facts available to him, didn't see it that way. He believed that it was possible for the killer to be someone other than the BS man and expressed his opinion in an official report.

So in a Bromley/Swanson shootout, I prefer to go with Swanson.

c.d.