Was Bond right about the cut linen?

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:
" I think that Bond noticed knife-cuts in the blood-soaked undersheet at the top right-hand corner of the bed, and misinterpreted what he saw."

Sam, I canīt for the life of me understand why it would lead Bond to a misinterpretation if the cuts were in the undersheet? It was the only sheet apparently around in the scenery that the Ripper left us with. Kelly was lying on it, and in the area between her head and the partition wall, it was much bloodsoaked and cut. Bondīs contention was that the cuts owed to the Ripper having pulled the sheet over Kellys face as he cut it. From that statement we can deduce that the cuts were NOT in the area immediately next to Kellys head, but instead some distance away - so far away, in fact, that if one lifted the sheet in the top corned closest to the wall and pulled it back over Kelly, then the cut area would end up over her face.
The corresponding distance in this case would have been one of the two pointers Bond used to make his statement.
The other one would have been that the mattress underneath the cut area of the undersheet was NOT cut in a fashion that corresponded with the cuts in the sheet. In fact, it was probably not cut there at all.
Neither of these points are pressed in Bondīs report, but logically they must have been what led him to his deduction. Even if - and I donīt recommend it! - we allow ourselves to theorize that a man of Bonds experience for some reason did not check the mattress for corresponding cuts, we are still left with the fact that the cuts in the sheet would NOT let themselves be interpreted as having been made when the sheet was over Kellys face UNLESS the distance between her head and the cut area matched. And if they did, then the cut area would have been positioned a fair distance from Kellys face. As she lay on the sheet, and as the killer must have wrapped it over her, it goes without saying that the area close to her head would have gone undamaged by the blade. Accepting that the diametre of a female head is roughly about 20 centimetres, we are faced with a probable distance between head and sheet cuts of about 20-25 centimetres. And when we find a woman lying with a carved-up face in a bed, plus an undersheet that is undamaged (as far as we know) at the part close to her head, whereas it is much cut and bloodied at an area some 20-25 centimetres to the the side of her - and ONLY to the one side, mind you! - then I think it is about time to give Bond recognition for what he deducted.

In your reasoning, Sam - and I am a very big fan of your reasoning in very nearly all cases - I see no rational explanation to WHY you choose to regard Bonds deduction as a tediously repeated obvious mistake. I only see a preconceived wiew that a killer would not do a thing like this. And that is going about it the wrong way altogether, if you take my meaning. Although it is very unprobable that Mother Teresa would burn her own church down, when you find her standing beside the smoking ruins with a used match in her hand it is OK - and wise - to look for alternative scenarios. But it is not OK to say that since it would be totally unexpected for her to do such a thing, she simply must be innocent.

The best,
Fisherman

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
Must agree with you fisherman, my interpretation was her killer attacked Mary whilst she was sitting on the edge of the bed at a split moment she was facing away from him.
He placed his right hand over her mouth, and pushed her down on the bed, and using his left hand pulled up the sheet nearest the partition and partly suffocated her before using his knive.
Naturally just speculation, there are just two many 'Dont knows' here.
Regards Richard.

[Fisherman]

Hi Richard!

Well, to be honest, my scenario does not involve the sheet in any suffocation. My proposal is that he may well have partly suffocated her, but not using the sheet, though. After that he would have cut her throat in the top left hand corner of the bed, resulting in the blood-splashes on the partition wall. This is followed by his lifting her into position for cutting and eviscerating her, and only then, as he sets about cutting her face, does he lift the sheet up over her. My suggestion is that this was done because he had a personal relation to Kelly, and found it hard to destroy her face.
But just like you say, Richard, the "Donīt knows" about are plentyful indeed...!

Thanks for chiming in, Richard! And all the best!
Fisherman

[harry]

If Kelly had woken to find someone near or on the bed,she might instinctively had raised herslf from a prone position,at the same time holding the sheet up but slightly away from her body.A futile but fear driven attempt to put a barrier between them So the killer would have initialy struck through the sheet at the face or throat,and the sheet would have fallen back over the face .Hence the cuts and the blood on the sheet,which was then removed for further mutilation.

[Fisherman]

Hi Harry!

Your suggestion is something I have seen before. I think that it must be challenged in at least two ways:
1. Kelly was lying on the sheet that we are speaking about. That means that it would have been a question of reaching behind herself in order to grab hold of the sheet if she was right-handed and did it with that hand. It would also mean that she would have grabbed the sheet with the back of her hand facing the sheet - an awkward thing to do.
Of course, she may have used her left hand, letting it travel over her body to grab hold of the sheet, and then pulling it over herself. It cannot be excluded as a possibility, but I think that both these suggestions are kind of awkward.
2. The sheet was "much cut" after the strike. That means that a large number of cuts were made through it - reasonably, many enough to correspond with the damage done to her face. Now, if the sheet simply fell back over her face as you suggest, it would have been distinctly difficult to cut through, since cloth needs a bit of a stretch to facilitate cutting through it. What I am suggesting is that the killer did not only put the cloth over her face - he kept it in place as he cut, and the combination of Kelly lying on it and him stretching it over her face, was what made him able to cut through it with ease. If he had not held it, it would reasonably have fallen from her face with the strokes of the blade.

Anybody who thinks this over will soon enough realize that no matter if he was standing at the side of the bed or if he was straddling her, such a thing would be easiest to do for a left-handed person, grabbing the fabric with his right hand and pulling it over her face first, only thereafter to cut with his left hand. But it may just as well have been done the other way around - he may have leant in over her, grabbed the sheet with his LEFT hand, pulled it over her, and arched his left arm over her head, cutting with his right.

The best!
Fisherman

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Fisherman!

Your suggestion makes sense in the way, that "Murder! Oh murder!" has been described as a faint cry!

But the thing I find fishy( ), is:

Why would have Saucy Jacky wanted to use the sheet to cover the cuts?!

All the best
Jukka

[Fisherman]

Hi Jukka!

"Why would have Saucy Jacky wanted to use the sheet to cover the cuts?"

My take on it was that he wanted the cuts to cover the face, before he could stomach looking at it. He was - to my mind - closely aquainted to Kelly, and his motive for killing her was radically different than the motives for the preceding cases (where the motive lay in the killing itself) - once again to my mind, of course!

The best!
Fisherman

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Fisherman!

Obviously we have made the same conclusion from a different angle;

MJK was the peak of Saucy Jacky!


My angle is; unlike the others, she was young, attractive, etc... Maybe he had also heard about her reputation of being good in self-defence and got an extra kick out of it too!

Also I don't find her being a lefty that impossible, thinking about the injuries on her left arm!

All the best
Jukka

[Sam Flynn]

In your reasoning, Sam - and I am a very big fan of your reasoning in very nearly all cases - I see no rational explanation to WHY you choose to regard Bonds deduction as a tediously repeated obvious mistake.

Because the bloodstained sheet was clearly underneath Kelly's body, and Dr Phillips - while he mentions the blood-soaked nature of the sheet, the mattress and the floor beneath - makes no mention of the cut linen at all.

Now, I interpret this not in terms of Bond hallucinating the cuts in the sheet, rather in terms of Phillips possibly having noted the cuts but not reading any significance into them. This may well have been because he noted that it was the blood-soaked undersheet that was cut, and that any notion of an undersheet being lifted over the face of the victim (and then laid back down again) did not occur to him.

I only see a preconceived wiew that a killer would not do a thing like this.

Incorrect, Fish - but nice try. I give my true answer above.

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:

"I interpret this not in terms of Bond hallucinating the cuts in the sheet, rather in terms of Phillips possibly having noted the cuts but not reading any significance into them. This may well have been because he noted that it was the blood-soaked undersheet that was cut, and that any notion of an undersheet being lifted over the face of the victim (and then laid back down again) did not occur to him."

Fair enough, Sam! That still leaves us with a cut undersheet, no mentioning at all of any cuts to the mattress underneath it, a probable distance between Kellys head and the cuts in the sheet that corresponded with Bonds suggestion - and no alternative explanation to that suggestion that works, at least not if the things outlined above hold true.
And to be honest, Sam; I canīt say that I think that Phillips silence on the matter deflates Bonds suggestion in any way. He may simply not have pondered the origin of the cuts at all - he was standing in the middle of chaos and hell, and to try and take it all in must have been very hard.

The best,
Fisherman

[diana]

Another wrench in the works

When this topic was first discussed on the boards years ago, I performed a simple experiment with a bed sheet and a kitchen knife. I couldn't make a cut. I can't explain very well but the sheet just wasn't crisp enough. It bent and conformed to the blade and I couldn't get the blade to go through. Of course being female I would have less strength and I certainly did not have a big gob of adrenaline pulsing through my veins at the time which I suspect Jack did.

I'd like to know how he did it at all.

[harry]

Fisherman,
Bond doesn't say It was the undersheet that was cut.He states the sheet that was to the right of her head.From the photo of her lying there I would think the over sheet that had clearly been moved back to expose the body and was lying in a jumbled heap was the more likely the one he was refering to.Bond was there,as was Phillips,to make a preliminary check of the body,and there is no evidence he disturbed anything else.The undersheet was more likely to have still been folded under the matress on the far side of the bed.As Bond also speaks of pools of blood on the floor,there is even more reason to doubt his story.As the bed was close up against the partition,Bond would not have been able to see what was underneath the bed on the far side,even if bending down, there was a large tub under the bed obscuring most of what was underneath,and the table against the bed,prevented a position from where it might have been possible to gain a reasonable view of what was beneath the head of the bed.If there was a cut sheet at all,odds are it was the oversheet,and things happened as I described in my earlier post.
Regards.

[Fisherman]

Diana writes:

"I'd like to know how he did it at all."

Wouldnīt we all, Diana!
On your point about the difficulties involved in cutting through a sheet, the all-important factor that must be involved is a good stretch to the fabric. If that is not there, then you will find it extremely difficult to cut through a sheet. What Iīm suggesting is that Kellys own weight helped to fix the sheet to the bed, thus leaving the Ripper with the rather easy task of stretching it over her face with one hand, and cutting away with the other. Of course, the sharpness of the blade will be of distinct importance too, but I think the damae done on Kelly tells us that he used a very sharp one.

The best, Diana!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Harry!

"In the Dorset Street case the corner of the sheet to the right of the woman's head was much cut and saturated with blood." That is what Bond says, and that clearly indicates that it was the part lying over the top right hand corner of the bed, close to the partition wall, that he referred to - the undersheet, in other words. That was the place where Phillips also spoke of blood saturation. And no oversheet is in sight, as far as I can see.

Moreover, If you read my post above in answer to Dianaīs point, you will realize that the undersheet had a distinctive advantge over a loose oversheet - had there been one - when it comes to the ability of stretching it over Kellys face, since it remained fixed to the bed by Kellyīs own weight! Had this not been the case, then the Ripper would have needed TWO hands to stretch it over her face - and since two hands was all he had, then what would he do the cutting with?
On the point of Bond not being able to see the blood on the floor, I think you may be missing the point that the bed was lifted out into the room to enable the photographer present to take the MJK2 picture. And Bond did not arrive until 2 o clock (whereas Phillips entered the room at about 1.30). And if the photographer had not asked to have the bed moved, the police would have done so anyway, Harry, to enable a search. There was a pool of approximately two square feet of blood underneath the bed, and once the bed was removed it was there for anyone to see.

The best, Harry!
Fisherman

[Mrs.Bucket]

Fisherman,

Your thoughts are interesting in that they reflect what I have been thinking on this case for several years. The carnage of MJK's killing just doesn't compute with the other canonical victims.

I have long felt that the extensiveness of the wounds inflicted to MJK indicated the killer knew her, specifically as regards to her face. I was completely unware of Dr. Bond's report. Evidently, I have not been buying enough books. However, it makes even more sense that the killer knew her if he also covered up her face until he damaged it beyond recognition. Of course, how Barnett recognized her is beyond me. I don't see any eyes or ears. But I digress...

Being that MJK's killing diverged from the other killings, I have thought for some time that maybe she was the trigger in some way for the killer and that once he finally killed her he was done, removing his need, maybe for several years or forever, of his need to kill again.

If I am reading you correctly, you believe this person was Joe Fleming. I am going to have to look into this connection some more. He was just a fruit hawker, correct?

(I like Hungry, Hungry Hippos )