MJK photo 4 enhanced

[Snicket-Dweller]

Hi Archaic,

Do you mean the Pinchin Street torso murder? If so, I know a little of it from general reading. Perhaps the thread you mention was one of the ones that got deleted a while back.

Helen X

[Sam Flynn]

When you say "the cut neatly through practically the entire length of the thickest bone in the body" Do you mean through the femur hip end to knee end?

Given the perspective of MJK3 - that "split femur" is pointing away from us, remember - the "cut" would have travelled a fair length along the bone, Helen. Not the entire distance from the head of the femur to the knee, evidently, but that's easily 6 or 7 inches we're looking at there... again, it's worth remembering that those 6 or 7 inches would have travelled through the toughest bone in the body. No glancing blow with a knife is going to do that, and a cleaver would just as much shatter the bone as split it in one sweep. There'd certainly be evidence of bone-fragments in the photo if that were the case.

No, you'd probably need a bone saw to produce a cut such as that, and even that would require that the femur was completely disarticulated from the pelvis, which it doesn't seem to have been based on the evidence of the other photograph and the medical notes taken at the time.

On an anatomical note, the imagined head of the femur in MJK3 appears to be hollow, like a "marrow-bone" would be. Trouble is, the head of the femur doesn't look like that - the hollow bits start further down, whereas the head itself contains rather densely-packed bone tissue, as can be seen from this longitudinal section:



That's not a split femur-head in MJK3, believe me

[Snicket-Dweller]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for that. This is more the type of femoral neck fracture I was thinking of.

The other blue dotted line is the other fracture along the shaft I can see. "Marrow cavity" was the wrong expression what I meant was the I think I can see a difference between the bone wall (so to speak) and what looks like the internal structure which is of a different density.

The break along the femoral neck is the weakest point of the femur so he ability to cleave through it is not impossible.

I'll have a trawl of the medical texts and see if I can find a closer fracture match to what I THINK I can see LOL

Helen x

[Sam Flynn]

I'll have a trawl of the medical texts and see if I can find a closer fracture match to what I THINK I can see LOL

I might make some scans from my copy of Grey's Anatomy... but as it's the big, modern version, it'd probably take too long and the pages wouldn't fit on my scanner

[Archaic]

Hi, Helen & Sam.

The thread I'm thinking of was about Mary Kelly, but members were speculating as to the Ripper wanted to completely dismember her and got a good start on the legs by de-fleshing them, etc., but then perhaps realized there wasn't time or that he didn't have the right cutting implements with him.

There was a discussion of several Torso cases, including the "Whitehall Mystery" Torso.

I'm sure someone will come up with it eventually...
I just thought you'd enjoy reading it, Helen.

Best regards, Archaic

[Snicket-Dweller]

Hi Sam,

These are the closest I can find to what I see. They are not perfect but most of the images are just illustrations and the real fractured/cut bones that are listed are bleached and or boiled for teaching purposes etc.

I will keep an eye out for a better match but for tonight this lady must catch up on her beauty sleep.

Thanks Archaic for the torso thread I'll have a hunt when I'm not so bleary eyed.

Sweet dreams to all.

Helen x

P.s Ignore the white lump in the middle of the colour image it's a cancerous lesion see I said I was struggling to find images LOL

[galadrijella]

oh wow....many thanks for this! good job

[Sam Flynn]

oh wow....many thanks for this! good job

Indeed, but that's emphatically not a split femur in the Kelly photograph.

[CountessHappyBunny]

another question

hey - can anyone tell me what the line is that appears to encircle her right leg, just above her calf muscle? It almost looks like the bottom of a stocking or a bloomer or something. Is that a cut? it seems so precise, comparatively.

also, on a related but different note - is there any description of the defensive wound on her hand? is that in the coroner's report? Is there any speculation how it got there? (i.e. did she put up her hand to ward off an attack, or was it someone out of control with a knife and it just happened to hit her hand after she was already dead)

as always, thanks for any help with this!

[Sam Flynn]

hey - can anyone tell me what the line is that appears to encircle her right leg, just above her calf muscle?

There's been much discussion about this, and much disagreement. My view is that it was a thin "garter", possibly improvised from a bootlace.

It really is too precise for a cut, if you ask me. That's comparatively wobbly flesh he'd have been dealing with there, not to mention a relatively springy mattress, so maintaining a steady line across several inches of curving flesh would have been rather difficult. Furthermore, the killer would have had to have been on the bed, with his leg over his shoulder perhaps, in order to remain steady enough to make such a neat, thin wound.

I suppose the clincher comes from Dr Bond mentioning almost every wound you can see in the photographs with minute detail, including the merest abrasions to the back of the hand and a single, small cut to the thumb. He goes on to mention the circular incisions to the breasts... but of a circular incision around the right calf, no mention at all is made.

[Sam Flynn]

with his leg over his shoulder perhaps

Nice trick if you can manage it, but what I meant to say was "with her leg over his shoulder", of course

[karensa]

What the hell is a bolster?

I'm on page 8 and will say so far, I can't make out anything BUT a partial hand in the up close gross pic and it looks like the thumb of the right hand to me off a straight visual, and the pinky doesn't bend the same way. Why is it such a horrid proposition this is a shot taken from another angle? They do that in CSI work.

Other than that, the big hump looks like a well endowned Mae West sort of lady parts thing but apparently is not the case if he removed both breasts, so what are the humps? What the hell am I looking at here? Is this even the same victim? Maybe they got pics confused in the case files. What it all looks like to me, can't be. So I don't know what this is in the gross pic. So ehh.


Oh and whoever said he wasn't whacko is whacko.

[karensa]

And how sure are we that this is even taken from the crime scene itself and not after the body was moved elsewhere? I do understand the argument about which hand or thumb/pinky but there's still another scenario that isn't moving from one side of the bed to the other, but moving the body or turning it, and someone putting the right hand over that side of her body, and still getting the table thing in the shot.

1888 CSI was crude compared to procedures today. Of course they moved the body and who knows what else and we don't know the sequence (theirs) of the shots, or if there had been others that have been lost over this much time.

Page 11 and instead of debating what it is, my question is now on "and the point is?" Back to reading...

[karensa]

Ohhh kay. Wow, amazing how we process visual data.

I *think* I see what's up with the photos - and while I still *see* the thumb of the right hand (and my brain processed the rest of the image as her head being out of view on the *right* edge of the photo), that's not the perspective at all. Nope, I think I get it now.

The reports clearly have her right arm/hand on the bed, and it's not showing in the main full body image. Only the left hand is draped over her side.

The camera angle is most likely taken from the foot of the bed on the side closer to the wall, up near her hip area, facing UPwards toward the bedside table. The big bloody "thing" in the center is the genital area after having been mangled, and the skinned portion that originally looked like a forearm is actually her right leg. The area below that circle artifact is a dark line, which would be the same as had been mistaken/assumed to be the ridge of a stocking on the right leg. This image is an up close and personal photo of the "money shot" so to speak, and the line of perspective goes across and upwards to the table with the rest of the remains still there.

Look on page 1, at the larger shot of her on the bed and up against the wall is whatever that thing is, pillow, bedding, whatever - that would be the general position of the photographer kneeling down and shooting from bed height angle toward the table.

So in this shot, her head would be out of view of the left edge of the photo, and while it still looks like a thumb, the hand being out of the shot in this manner is a visual illusion and the brain is seeing the beautiful lady instead of the old hag, or the white rabbit instead of the woman at the vanity etc.

*whew*

I need a drink after that mental wrestling match.

[karensa]

Well I can't delete or edit the above so apologies for the spam. I'd put it all in the one post if it'd let me

I do feel that her body wasn't positioned or staged. Granted her involvement in the art of sex and the genital mutilation and the spread legs would suggest that this is all the same but to me, that's associative and subjective to the beholder (like the hand thing!). In order for him or anybody to commit this kind of slaughter, he moved her legs apart for the "best angle" and no doubt moved her dress out of his way to get at flesh. It was for convenience of the act and not sexual in and of itself.

If he was trying to show off his work, a much more symbolic or representative position would be shown. He left the clothing bunched up and in a wadded mess, much as he left her...and then he left her in the death position. Her legs were apart because he was very probably down between her legs cutting and hacking. He had them shoved out of his way. Wonder if measurements could be taken based on her height and space between the legs to get an idea of Jack's size...just a thought.

Great thread though...got 10 more pages...sorry if it's spam posting but this forum doesn't allow for delete function *all the time* apparently...and I'm still commenting :P