Was Bond right about the cut linen?

[Mrs.Bucket]

Sorry, here's the attachment.

[Sam Flynn]

Also, fellow posters, came across something from Peter Vronsky's book, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters and he says if the crime scene shows evidence of careful planning, the killer is likely to be intelligent and older. If the victim was mutilated in a very disorganized way, her killer is probably schizophrenic, and schizophrenics are more likely to be very thin and unkempt. Is this an organized or unorganized scene? Your thoughts?

Hi Mrs B,

Personally, I don't hold with the "organised/disorganised" distinction, at least not to the extent where any definitive conclusions can be made. As to the Kelly scene, the mutilations themselves appear disorganised, but the disposition of the body parts appears rather practical. Whether "practicality" indicates "organisation" or not is a matter of opinion, but I don't see that it necessarily should. Added to which, of course, we don't know how "organised" the scene was before the killer started!

[Fisherman]

Hi Sam!
I found a little bit of material of the topic we have been discussing out here, and I would like to start out with Fritz Haarmann, just to give you some flesh on the bones on that case. It´s all from the horse´s mouth this time:

“I’d put the body on the floor and cover the face with a cloth so it wouldn’t be looking at me. I’d make two cuts into the abdomen and put the intestines in a bucket. I’d dip a towel in the blood collecting in the abdominal cavity and keep doing that until it had all been soaked up. Then I’d make three cuts from the ribs towards the shoulders, take hold of the ribs and push until the bones around the shoulders broke. I’d then cut through that area. Now I could get the heart, lungs and kidneys and chop them up and put them in my bucket. Then I’d take the legs off, then the arms. I’d take the flesh off the bones and put it in my wax cloth bag. The rest of the flesh went under the bed or in the cubby-hole. It would take me five or six trips to take everything out and throw it down the toilet or into the river. I’d cut the penis off after I had emptied and cleaned the stomach cavities. I would cut it into lots of little pieces. I always hated doing this, but I couldn’t help it - my passion was so much stronger than the horror of the cutting and chopping. I’d take the heads off last. I used the little kitchen knife to cut around the scalp and cut it up into little strips and squares. I’d put the skull, face down, on a straw mat and cover it with rags so that you wouldn’t hear the banging so much. I’d hit it with the blunt edge of an axe until the joins on the skull split apart. The brain went in the bucket and the chopped up bones in the river opposite the castle.”

Now, if that´s not as nice a guy as you ever could hope to run into ..?

Moving on, here is one of the bits I was referring to. It is connected to serial killer Earle Nelson, but the salient point is what is said about ”personation”:

”...the "personation" of the Portland crime scenes is quite telling about Earle Nelson. Criminologists define personation, and its cognate, depersonalization, as unusual behavior beyond that required to commit the crime. It is personation that helps establish a serial killer's signature and that often provides clues as to a killer's motivation, according to Dr. Robert Keppel in his book, Signature Killers. It is likely that Nelson's personation at the crime scenes indicate his victims represent someone he knew. Perhaps they represented his overbearing grandmother, or possibly the wife who rejected him.
"Depersonalization may be present as evidenced by the victim's face being covered by pillows or towels or by the body being rolled on the stomach (a more subtle form of depersonalization)," wrote John Douglas, et al. in the FBI's Crime Classification Manual. "Undoing represents a form of personation with more obvious meaning. Undoing frequently occurs at the crime scene when ... the victim represents someone of significance to the offender."

On these boards, there is a bit by Bill Beadle called ”Reinvestigating murder: The Kelly enigma”, and he quotes Keppel:

”...to an expert serial killer hunter like Robert Keppel this would have posed a different problem. Says Keppel, once this type of multicide has sated his anger and his lust he will undergo a temporary feeling of shame causing him to either cover her face or turn it away from him so that her eyes cannot accuse him as he walks away.”

In combination with this, another killer that can be mentioned is Ed Kemper, who beheaded victims, something he explained thus:

"With a girl, there's a lot left in the girl's body without a head. Of course, the personality is gone."
The text on Kemper goes on to state:
”Those pesky personalities that serial killers find so troublesome in their victims explains why they go to such extreme lengths to depersonalize the bodies of their victims with horrifying mutilations. What is it about a personality that these killers find so threatening, that they need to obliterate it? ”

I suggest that the answer to this question is that what the killers try to remove along with the face is guilt, and the amount of guilt felt would be greater the closer killer are.
But you already know that, don´t you?

The best, Sam!
Fisherman

[Mrs.Bucket]

Nice work Fisherman!

[harry]

Most if not all of the examples given,refer to covering of the face after death.In the case of Kelly,and the cutting of the sheet as described by Bond,that would,if it happened,been before the mutilation of her face,and at the time of death.A reversal of the stated cases,in so much as the face was surely uncovered to inflict the mutilations on it.The left ear,for example,could not have been mutilated in the position found,so the killer had to be only inches away and staring at the features while he mutilated.Doubt it bothered him.

[Fisherman]

Harry writes:

"In the case of Kelly,and the cutting of the sheet as described by Bond,that would,if it happened,been before the mutilation of her face,and at the time of death"

Not sure what you are after here, Harry. But we do know that the linen was "much cut", and that seems to point to the fact that if Bond was right, a great deal of the cuts to her face were delivered with the linen covering it. My guess remains that he cut her neck first, only thereafter covering her face. And when he had destroyed the face beyond recognition, then it could be argued that the initial problem with not wanting to see her face as he cut was gone.

The best, Harry!
Fisherman

[harry]

Fisherman,
Iv'e asked this question before.How could the multiple cuts to the eyebrows,lips etc,be performed with the delicacy described,if the face was covered?.Also with the number of cuts,slashes and stabs delivered to just that part of the body,the sheet would not be cut a number of times,it would have been shredded.Perhaps what the medical man described,was not cuts,but frayings of the material.
Regards.

[Fisherman]

Harry writes:

"Iv'e asked this question before.How could the multiple cuts to the eyebrows,lips etc,be performed with the delicacy described,if the face was covered?"

And I have answered that question before, Harry. On more than one occasion. In the post above yours, you have my take on it: "And when he had destroyed the face beyond recognition, then it could be argued that the initial problem with not wanting to see her face as he cut was gone."

We know she was not found with the sheet covering her face. Therefore, if it was there at one stage of the cutting, it would have been removed at another stage. And my suggestion is that this may have been done after he had cut her through the linen to such an extent that her face was no longer there to worry about.

"the sheet would not be cut a number of times,it would have been shredded.Perhaps what the medical man described,was not cuts,but frayings of the material."

The quality of the cuts would be dependant on two things, as I have stated numerous times: the degree to which the linen was stretched as he cut, and the sharpness of the blade. Since we have no exact recording of either (although we know that the medicos described his blade as a very sharp one), we cannot tell exactly what the cuts would look like. But we DO know that "the sheet to the right of the woman's head was much cut and saturated with blood, indicating that the face may have been covered with the sheet at the time of the attack", for that is what Bond said. Cut, Harry - not frayed, shredded or torn. As for the amount of cuts required, I think that none of us can establish how many times the Ripper cut into her face. And I also allow for the possibility that he may have cut with the linen over her face first, and thereafter cut away even more, WITHOUT the linen in place.

The salient point is that Bond made his assumption from what he could see, and I suggest that what he saw was a number of cuts in the linen in a place that corresponded with his suggestion that the linen had once covered Kellys face as her killer cut, and a mattress underneath the linen that did not have the corresponding damage that would enable us to state that the linen was on the paliasse as it sustained the damage.

And as I have said before, even if Bond was a complete idiot and forgot to check the mattress, we are still faced with a large number of cuts in the linen to the right of Kellys head, at a probable distance of somewhere around 25-30 centimetres from it. I really would welcome any alternative explanation to this phenomenon, than the one offered by Bond.

The best, Harry!
Fisherman