For what reason do we include Stride?

[DJA]

How many men wore peaked caps back then, Abby?

Eleven a side,plus another to sing about it.

[Observer]

Well, I think that if Stride's killer wasn't Jack but a first-timer then he did an excellent job of finishing her off. No hesitations, no tentative stabs, just one swift, sure, deep slash across a throat that was at least partly obscured by a silky scarf. In the dark as well!

Hi Rosella

You're in reasonably good company regarding the above. This is what Wynne E Baxter had to say.



. "In the absence of motive, the age and class of woman selected as victim, and the place and time of the crime, there was a similarity between this case and those mysteries which had recently occurred in that neighbourhood. There had been no skilful mutilation as in the cases of Nichols and Chapman, and no unskilful injuries as in the case in Mitre-square - possibly the work of an imitator; but there had been the same skill exhibited in the way in which the victim had been entrapped, and the injuries inflicted, so as to cause instant death and prevent blood from soiling the operator, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection,"

I personaly believe he was not far wrong in his belief

Regards

Observer

[c.d.]

"If mutilation was the key, why would the killer attack his victim next to a busy social club?"

Hello Harry,

You can also turn that around and ask why anybody would kill in that location. If the location was bad for Jack it was also bad for a non-Jack killer.

c.d.

[Pcdunn]

"If mutilation was the key, why would the killer attack his victim next to a busy social club?"

Hello Harry,

You can also turn that around and ask why anybody would kill in that location. If the location was bad for Jack it was also bad for a non-Jack killer.

c.d.

True, but if the non-Jack killer supporters use the domestic dispute scenario, then an element of crime of passion enters into this, in which he may not have been thinking all that clearly when he murdered Liz.
This is at odds with some Jack as killer supporters who believe he was more calculated about killing at that location, while still others just interpret it as a crime of opportunity.
I think that if Jack meant to leave her in the yard, then he may have been one of the men seen with her earlier in the evening.

[c.d.]

Hello Pat,

Why does a crime of passion have to be limited to a non-Jack killer? I can see Jack overcome with a desire to kill this woman only to come to the realization a few minutes later that this was not a good place to do it and that he had made a mistake.

As for a domestic, I would expect an argument which nobody heard post Schwartz as well as a few slaps to the face in an escalation of anger. No evidence for either. Also no stabs to the body which would indicate uncontrollable anger. What happened seems all too controlled and calculated.

c.d.

[Sam Flynn]

The Saucy Jack postcard played an enormously important part in creating the mystique - or, in my view, the myth - of the Double Event. Whoever wrote it has a lot to answer for

[SirJohnFalstaff]

The question is why?



The lack of mutilations. These are largely attributed to an interruption, hence the savagery of Eddowes' attack by an assumed frustrated Ripper. This is purely speculative.

Your point is valid.
There is also another possible hypothesis that I'm sure has come out in the past century: what if Jack was interrupted every single time? That said, until he moved indoor and could do what he always wanted to do with a victim...

There are very few absolute in all those cases.

[Harry D]

"If mutilation was the key, why would the killer attack his victim next to a busy social club?"

Hello Harry,

You can also turn that around and ask why anybody would kill in that location. If the location was bad for Jack it was also bad for a non-Jack killer.

c.d.

Hello, CD.

Not if this were a crime of passion or committed by a serial killer who wasn't driven by post-mortem mutilation. Get her inside the yard, slit her throat, done. The murders were a means to an end for the Ripper, but by killing Stride where he did, he increased the odds of being caught or interrupted before he could live out his ritualistic fantasy.

[Michael W Richards]

There are a few things that stand out to me with this murder that do not suggest any kind of serial mutilator, which the killer of Polly, and 10 days later Annie, most certainly was. The coupling of this murder with a second murder has been based on timing and geography and very little else. There are few similarities with the subsequent and previous victims in terms of actions taken, and the absence of any interaction with the victim after the cutting of the throat suggests there was no interest after killing. I submit the very thing that defines the Ripper based on the first 2 attributed victims is a strong desire to cut after killing.

3 throats were slit in the East End that night, and its probable that only 1 had any possible connection with a serial mutilator. The one obstacle to stating that more empirically is the physical evidence in the Mitre case, which suggests a more primitive skill set.

[Sam Flynn]

Very well put, Michael.

[Hunter]

3 throats were slit in the East End that night...

Which ones were those? I must be ignorant.

[John G]

There were three London murders that night: Stride, Eddowes and Sarah Brown. However, although Brown had her throat cut she was not killed in the East End; she was murdered in her own home in Westminster by her husband, John Brown, who walked into a police station and confessed, "I've stabbed my wife." This was at 11:00pm on the 29th September, 2 hours before Liz Stride's body was found on the other side of the city.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

A crime of passion implies a link between the victim and her killer.

If the police didn't jump to conclusions, they probably did ask for alibis to anyone who were close to her, and certainly before the end of the inquest.

If they didn't, they botched this one to an unforgivable level.

EDIT: this said, if there is enough differences between the type of knives used in both cases, an hour apart... but the nuance in both inquests are too subtle for my English.

[Damaso Marte]

Of all the arguments used by those who exclude Stride from the Ripper victims, my least favorite is "why would the killer strike outside of a busy social club".

Why would the killer strike in the backyard of a tenement, quite possibly just as some of the residents therein were waking up for a day of work? Why would the killer strike in a square heavily patrolled by the police?

A hallmark of the Ripper killings is a willingness to commit murder in areas where there was a high chance of being seen, and the ability to do that with great stealth, leaving behind no evidence.

Of course, I don't believe in Israel Schwartz. Oh, I believe he existed, but I don't believe he saw Stride's killing and I think that the BS man is, as Lynn Cates puts it, just that. If I believed in Schwartz, I would not consider Stride a Ripper victim: the loud antics of BS man are not the antics of somebody who gets away with the Chapman or Eddowes murders.

[John G]

Of all the arguments used by those who exclude Stride from the Ripper victims, my least favorite is "why would the killer strike outside of a busy social club".

Why would the killer strike in the backyard of a tenement, quite possibly just as some of the residents therein were waking up for a day of work? Why would the killer strike in a square heavily patrolled by the police?

A hallmark of the Ripper killings is a willingness to commit murder in areas where there was a high chance of being seen, and the ability to do that with great stealth, leaving behind no evidence.

Of course, I don't believe in Israel Schwartz. Oh, I believe he existed, but I don't believe he saw Stride's killing and I think that the BS man is, as Lynn Cates puts it, just that. If I believed in Schwartz, I would not consider Stride a Ripper victim: the loud antics of BS man are not the antics of somebody who gets away with the Chapman or Eddowes murders.

Hi Damaso,

I think this is a very good post, which I absolutely agree with. In respect of Dutfield's Yard, most of the club members had left by the time Stride was murdered. Moreover, the yard was cloaked in almost pitch black darkness-Lave couldn't even see the door to get back into the club-giving the assailant a level of protection: personally I would consider Bucks Row, Mitre Square and Hanbury Street to have been riskier venues.

Clumsy BS man, in my opinion, is very unlikely to have been Stride's killer, assuming he existed at all. As Keppel (2005) points out, the evidence suggests that JtR's murders were planned and organized, which is not suggestive of a drunken fool, who randomly attacks someone in the street in front of two witnesses. In fact, if BS man was Stride's killer I think it highly unlikely she was a Ripper victim.