Kellys front door, why no blood?

[Jon Guy]

Hello

I believe the killer took Chapman`s scarf, Eddowes apron and used the clothes left by Harvey in No 13. to clean up.

Hi Mitch,

Although I like the way you inserted perspectives along the way that might support a suicidal lawyer as Jack, or a discreditted witness account as perhaps have some answer regarding the issue of gloves, but in this case as Sam will remind you very soon, its the issue of blood transfer to the outside of her door.

I will say this though, although many seem preoccupied with Druitt, there is no evidence that suggests or links him to any canonical crime...so he is only as viable as any man 28-40 living in London at the time, and the witness that saw a man with Mary wearing kid gloves was deemed untrustworthy by the authorities 120 years ago.

I know that ends none of the debates on either issue, but it is representative of the actual facts.

Cheers Mitch, best regards.

[Mitch Rowe]

So after killing her the Ripper left the room. No blood on the outside or inside of the door....but he must have used his hands in some way to open and close the door...but not a mark, not a smudge.... So he must have possibly put on gloves before leaving. This would mean that he probably wore gloves when he was on the streets. Did any possible witness ever mention a suspect wearing gloves....were gloves ever mentioned....I don't know.

If Im not mistaken. I believe one witness mentioned kid gloves.

[Mitch Rowe]

I believe JTR was in the habit of using prostitutes. I think he may have found the anticipation of whether he would find a safe envionment to kill that night exciting. I think he planned to kill if the conditions were right. He may have visited Mary before and planned it all out in his mind probably while he was visiting on a previous night. When he thought police were busy with other things he struck.

Or.. If JTR were Druitt he could have always had an urge to mutilate women. He feels badly about it but he cant resist as his willpower is too weak. So he chooses the women of the least value in the most risky area. He knows he is going to mutilate but he also knows that if in private she will end up like Mary.
He may even choose nights with a time limit just to increase the chance that he wont succeed in the kill. You never know what battles JTR may have had in his head.
Finally he finds Mary. Either because the heat was on or by accident or whatever. He loses control and when he realizes he has killed and mutilated a young woman he self destructs.

Hi again Sam,

I think that card is played for you whether you want it to be or not, in that the door was not described as having any blood on it anywhere, and "microscopic" traces that might have been missed visually wouldnt likely have come from a blood soaked hand anyway. As the thread accurately establishes, there was no blood visible, or reported, on the outside of the door.

Im just exploring the relevance of possible common knowldege of the spring latch... in general, by anyone,... or whether the fact the room was locked and the latch released, or set to lock when the door closes, by the killer himself implies knowledge about how to lock that room, at that moment in time, and that he could do so without even touching the door on the outside. Perhaps that same man might even know how to let himself in....at that moment in time.....the "pane" method has only been needed for a few weeks. Maybe startle the sleeping occupanmt causing her to exclaim.

I have to tie it up at least a bit, you know that ....cause guesses are useless unless they can actually work with known information...and fit all aspects.

Cheers Sam.

[Sam Flynn]

One reason there is no blood outside on the door may be just that, he was a man familiar with Marys "latchworks"...

...as I suggested, Mike, whether there was any blood on the door at all rather depends on whether his hands had been wiped and/or the blood had already dried on them; it also depends whether his hands were covered (e.g. by a glove, a piece of rag or having been stuffed in a pocket).

More importantly, the question is academic because there might well have been blood somewhere on that door - but it was either unnoticed, went unreported or was undetectable given the state of forensic science at that time.

For these reasons, we really can't say that there "was no blood outside on the door" - still less extrapolate from the assumption.

Hi again,

Before I address Sams post, I just thought Id answer that question you had Stephen. Both windows were locked, so was the door.

...All the above considerations apply whether or not Kelly knew her killer, whether or not he let himself in, whether he was a copycat or not... etc etc.

I believe Sam that they are germaine to the issue of blood on the door handle or knob outside, which would be pulled closed by someone who didnt use "spring latches", and left to close and lock on its own by someone who knew how to engage it. There are many, many kinds of locks for doors, and this system sounds inferior to the deadbolt they lost the key for, so as a secondary system, one that might only have been added when the key was lost,...you might not expect that everyone would know how to engage it.

One reason there is no blood outside on the door may be just that, he was a man familiar with Marys "latchworks", and therefore knew he didnt even need to touch the door from the outside when leaving. Or put it this way, a killer who knew the latch could have walked out with his hands covered in blood and left none on the outside of the door.

Cheers Sam, Stephen.

[Sam Flynn]

That falls under "what are things that are suspect if the man was unknown to Mary, or that room"...

It doesn't really, Mike. It falls under (for example) "did the killer wipe his hands before he opened the door?"; "was the blood on his hands dry anyway?"; "did he stuff his hands in his jacket pocket?" or, as Stephen asked, "did he wear gloves?".

There are also another set of considerations around what the police/doctors were capable of doing - such as: "could tiny blood traces be reliably detected on a door-knob in 1888?", "if so, were they looked for as a matter of routine?" and "if not, were they looked for in this case?"; if not, then the blood might well have been there, albeit not detected or reported.

All the above considerations apply whether or not Kelly knew her killer, whether or not he let himself in, whether he was a copycat or not... etc etc.

[Stephen Thomas]

Maybe he left via one of the windows.

The door was somewhat blocked by the table, I believe.

So after killing her the Ripper left the room. No blood on the outside or inside of the door....but he must have used his hands in some way to open and close the door...but not a mark, not a smudge.... So he must have possibly put on gloves before leaving. This would mean that he probably wore gloves when he was on the streets. Did any possible witness ever mention a suspect wearing gloves....were gloves ever mentioned....I don't know.

Hi Stephen,

That falls under "what are things that are suspect if the man was unknown to Mary, or that room"...and in this case, if Mary opened the door to receive someone when she exclaims "oh-murder", she likely engaged the spring latch, which meant the door would remain unlocked when closed again, the assumption being that her visitor might not be staying long...the deadbolt key was missing now for some time. All the killer need do is to open the door from the inside, release the latch, and let the door close behind him, and it would lock. And I wouldnt be surprised if he did it barehanded, after removing gloves that he used while cutting Mary to bits. Fingerprint science, although known of, was not used for many years in investigations.

And I should add that despite the fanciful notion that she was out and escorted her killer back home, there is no accepted evidence that says she ever left her room, ever brought clients to her room, or that she was with the killer when he arrived at room 13.

This was as Jack-like as apples and oranges are. The Fluid MO camps decided this was Jack based on the kill scene, not the stalk or acquistion. People like myself tend to look for the initial stages of an attack, and the overall objectives as a way to see if this matches other murders. Whats done to the victim is not as material as how she was acquired, her profile, and the overall objectives that might be gleaned from the murder.

In truth, it would be hard to say that his objective was her heart, and thats essentially one of the few matching characteristics that I would look for. Her killer may have just wanted to kill her, then aimlessly cut her up in a fugue like state....there is no-one alive who can claim some things that were done to Mary have any logical motivation.

Mary Ann and Annies Killer, as well as Kates, wanted to do something specific to a specific area...and any organs taken were from that same area. He cut where he is to take things from, after cutting to kill. He doesnt attack first with a knife, slash at her while she is defending herself, and aimlessly slice for who knows how long after.

The only logic that might be present in that scene is if the killer was trying to replicate a murder scene created by a monster.

Best regards all.

[Stephen]

Mary Kellys door.

So after killing her the Ripper left the room. No blood on the outside or inside of the door....but he must have used his hands in some way to open and close the door...but not a mark, not a smudge.... So he must have possibly put on gloves before leaving. This would mean that he probably wore gloves when he was on the streets. Did any possible witness ever mention a suspect wearing gloves....were gloves ever mentioned....I don't know.

[Fisherman]

Caz writes:

"Everyone seems to be assuming that if Mary was killed by the ripper, he must have set out to kill her".

Nope, Caz. Not yours truly. My guess is that it WAS the Ripper, that the Ripper was Joe Fleming and that there is a 50/50 chance that he did not set out to kill her.

Your suggestion is an interesting one, and I really strongly believe that the explanation to some of the differences we see with Kelly, is that the intent on behalf of the man who cut her was not the same intent in Kellys case as it was in the others.

The best,
Fisherman

[caz]

Hi All,

Everyone seems to be assuming that if Mary was killed by the ripper, he must have set out to kill her. But could some of the questions about his MO, and the different circumstances of an indoor job on a younger, probably stronger (even if drunk) unfortunate, be answered more easily if the ripper was a habitual user of prostitutes, who left the vast majority of them alive, unharmed and unsuspecting?

If it's not a stretch to see Jack as a regular user, then is it too much of a stretch to imagine him going off with Mary, expecting his usual quick fumble down a dirty alleyway, only to be led to a room they can use? In such circumstances, who knows when and how his mind might have turned from enjoying a leisurely encounter in relative comfort with a relatively wholesome specimen, to really letting rip after weeks of impossibly hot pavements? The longer he spent in her company, the greater the chance of her making a wrong move or saying the wrong thing and setting him off.

If his MO had previously been to take only the weakest, most desperate women by surprise when he thought he had a few minutes alone with them, then this one does seem like a departure - unless Mary was in a deep, drunken slumber when he struck. But in that case would she have woken in time, or sufficiently, to see the knife coming and react to it?

So I do wonder if he might have taken himself by surprise on this occasion.

Love,

Caz
X

[FrankO]

Wouldn't we then expect the killer to now have found a perfect opportunity to play out his M.O. in Millers Court?

Hi Jon,

Not necessarily, as the situation was clearly different from the outside murders. In those cases, his victims were standing up preparing (or so they thought) to service him and nothing else, while Kelly was probably lying on the far right side of the bed. I can imagine that the Ripper waited for the right moment to attack, a moment when his victims weren't paying too much attention to him. For instance, he could have waited untill they were focusing on putting away the money he'd just given them or on lifting their skirts for him. I can well imagine that things didn't work the same way in Kelly's case.

He has her in the perfect environment, a room of her own - so why does he not follow his previous M.O.?
For the killer to employ his initial manouver his victim needs to be on her feet, he is not going to try to strangle her while she is laying down!

Like I said, maybe things with Kelly didn't play out the way he'd 'gotten used to' with his other victims. She didn't need to put away the money in her clothes somewhere, she could just have put it on the table or whatever. She didn't just need to raise her skirts to service him because she had a bed. They had more privacy, so she could move around her room and away from him so that that perfect moment didn't present itself in the way it had before. She could have sat down immediately, taking off her boots, she could have asked him to light the candle or the fire while she started undressing, or whatever.

So, I think that either the perfect moment didn't present itself to him while she was standing up, or he came into the room while she was asleep. In the former he may have waited for her to doze off. Whatever the situation, there's no reason to think he hadn't wanted to strangle her. If she was lying on the far side of the bed, already dozing off or completely asleep, he probably had to put a knee on the bed before he could reach her. This may have woken her, which may have forced her killer to use the knife immediately and skip the strangling. I suspect that something like that happened and that she was only able to raise her right hand and perhaps utter a single cry of murder.

If he strangled her while standing, as was his normal M.O., then why undress her?

Obviously, then he would have had access to her whole body. I'd expect that to be much more interesting to a killer such as the Ripper.

If those wounds to Kelly's arms are indeed defensive wounds, she was not strangled, or at least not successfully - in a perfect environment?

I very much doubt if those wounds in her arms were indeed defensive wounds. The only wounds I suspect to be defensive wounds are the small wounds that were inflicted on her right hand.

All the best,
Frank

[Sam Flynn]

Good post, Joan. Couldn't agree more.