The posing of the body

I think for those who feel the room should have been "festooned" with organs you should read Dew's account of his first view of the room.

I agree with a lot of what you suggest Sam, not all placements as it were are in what can be described as unnatural positions considering his ongoing surgery,...but as you rightfully point out, why the items are under the head is inexplicable at this point. Or why those items.

I believe they may be used as a simple device to elevate her head, which would mean the position of her head was of some importance to him,..which may indicate the direction her face is pointing was intentional as well.

You may not agree with me on this point, but I think you may see some merit in this......she is left reclining on a bed facing an anticipated guests arrival later that night. I think someone may have come to the room after the killer left. Lets not forget that Mary Ann's testimony includes footsteps on occasion until almost 6am. As I recall that's after Liz Prater has gone for some hair of the dog.

Just for a what if.....what if Barnett or Fleming had been told by someone that Mary had to be killed, silenced, removed... and whomever of them is told to do that, refuses. When the one that was asked arrives that night for some late night canoodling, he finds Mary in a pose like he'd expect....but in a condition he would not. Would someone like that fear retribution for any statement he makes that might reveal the killer?

Just wondering if in some way, if 2 people were involved....one "albeit after the fact",.. maybe the second is one who finds her but doesn't summon the police, leaving that task to Bowyer and McCarthy later that morning.

Best regards Sam, all.

[Archaic]

Jack the ''I Wanna Be In Pictures'' Ripper

. This is jacks first indoor kill, he now has total privacy. He may well have pined to dissect and fidget with the innerds of his past kills, but this option was'nt available to him on the street.

This is an excellent topic fo a new thread; thanks! Here's my personal take on it: I agree with what several of you have said, including Daveshredder whom I quoted above. Besides the escalation of his own drives, I think Jack got quite a kick from 'upping the shock value' of his murders- which is also why he killed them & left them in public where he knew they would quickly be found.

But the murder of Mary Kelly gave him a new opportunity for both 'actions' and 'spectacle'. During this greater window of time in which to indulge his whims & experiment, Jack was clearly anticipating the utter HORROR which awaited those who found her... knowing it would also be experienced by all those who investigated the scene, by the neighborhood, & by extension everyone everywhere who ever heard or read about it.

In addition to his personal drive to mutilate, his obsession with ''externalizing'' internal body parts, and other potential motives, I think it's important to realize that Jack's grotesque overkill is an incredibly effective way of extending his 'control' of the scene and of intentionally prolonging the duration of the murder event... which in turn intensifies & prolongs the various forms of sick pleasure it gives him.

I also believe that Jack knew full well that with an indoor crime scene of such gruesome magnitude the Police would take PHOTOGRAPHS. They had been greatly criticized for not doing so with the earlier murders. In those cases, their reason was the need to get the appalling street murders cleaned up rather than waiting for daylight.

I believe Jack knew that with an utterly destroyed human body in a private room, the police would realize it was futile to attempt to sketch it or to describe it in words. I'm sure some aspect of the Ripper's grisly mutilations/posing of Mary was inspired by his gleeful knowledge that his 'funny little games' would be preserved for all time in Police Photographs. Jack was right on this count, and I'm sorry to say it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Well, that's my opinion; I'm curious to hear what the rest of you think. Best regards, Archaic

[Sam Flynn]

I have to say I always wonder why he didnt use the whole room to shock.

I sense that it's because he was far more interested in the practicalities of evisceration than in anything particularly symbolic, Dave. In the "practicality" department, he certainly had a big enough job on his hands when he mutilated Kelly, without getting too hung up on fripperies.

[Daveshredder]

I have to say I always wonder why he didnt use the whole room to shock.
Maybe the organs under the head are a throw, gary ridgeway, who killed 49 women near green river, attempted to throw the police with one of his victoms by placing food around and on her corps ?

[Sam Flynn]

I agree with the above Sam, I think her arm was flipped back over an empty cavity. There are other issues Im not willing to dismiss as unintentional or accidental...and they do suggest that he was creating a scene on the bed, rather than just engaging in slash and cut.

He seems to have been dropping organs onto the mattress as he went along, Mike, and most of them end up in perfectly logical, practical positions - the others more randomly placed, but never very far away. This would be no different than one would expect if the killer were driven by the simple need to "get stuff out of the way" in order to continue digging out more organs.

So, spleen by the left side, one breast seemingly flung to the foot of the bed, intestines heaved over the right side of the body, liver translated horizontally a few feet to rest between the legs. If the killer really wanted to "convey" something, then he had the 100 square feet or more of Kelly's room in which to express himself, yet he only displaced the organs a few feet from where they would normally have been.

The disposition of the body itself seems perfectly "normal" - it's not as if the killer was going to close up Kelly's legs after having carved a saddle of flesh from thigh to thigh and exposed one of the femurs. In fact, it's almost the case that it would be more significant if he had closed the legs up again.

The exception seems to be the odd assemblage of organs under the head, but there were (literally) only a handful of those. The thing is, we don't know precisely what Dr Bond meant by "under the head", so whether the organs were used as a "prop" or were simply stuffed out of the way we really don't know. Whatever the reason, it seems not to have been one of displaying the organs in question, for they would have been occluded by Kelly's head.

[The Good Michael]

Jukka,

I'd have to agree about the off-cuts, as you call them. For all we know, that was part of his display, if display it was, rather than the product of fighting off an attacker.

Cheers,

Mike

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

1. No doubt about it, that Saucy Jacky had some sort of a sexual frustration. What kind of?! They should have caught the bugger to get a proper answer to that.

2. The right arm is probably thrown aside in the beginning of the mutilation.

3. The left arm has some cuts, possibly caused by self-defence. But I wouldn't exclude the possibility of "off-cuts"...

3. The slashed face turned to the window might very well be meant to shock the viewer!

All right, too many presumptions and maybes!

All the best
Jukka

On a point of detail - I'm sure that the idea that Kelly's hand was "thrust into" her abdomen comes from popular literature on the subject, and is in any case a misinterpretation. Her elbow is flat on the mattress, and her forearm and hand rest across the bottom of her rib-cage. One can see from the "reverse-angle" photograph that Kelly's hand barely peeps over the top of her left flank. If anything, it overhangs the abdominal cavity, and hardly encroaches into it at all.

I agree with the above Sam, I think her arm was flipped back over an empty cavity. There are other issues Im not willing to dismiss as unintentional or accidental...and they do suggest that he was creating a scene on the bed, rather than just engaging in slash and cut.

All the best Gareth.

[Daveshredder]

I remember seeing in the "From Hell" graphic novel.

Funny, I just got my copy in the mail yesterday and that was the first bit I glanced at !

[Christine]

The whole thing was certainly done for sexual gratification, so it's pretty much impossible to sort out his moving her legs from his disemboweling her, or to separate his removing her breast from his raising her face, or to separate his need to degrade and dehumanize her from his need to throw her insides about.

[Sam Flynn]

On a point of detail - I'm sure that the idea that Kelly's hand was "thrust into" her abdomen comes from popular literature on the subject, and is in any case a misinterpretation. Her elbow is flat on the mattress, and her forearm and hand rest across the bottom of her rib-cage. One can see from the "reverse-angle" photograph that Kelly's hand barely peeps over the top of her left flank. If anything, it overhangs the abdominal cavity, and hardly encroaches into it at all.

[kensei]

Having just been on the threads about Mary's gravesite where people are saying nice things about her, this thread kind of makes one feel like you need a shower after delving into it. With that disclaimer, there are some dark thoughts I've had while studying the details of how Mary's body was found.

I could see the spread legs being just a product of the killer kneeling between them to do his work. But the left hand being thrust into the disemboweled abdomen- I don't think that could have happened accidentally. It was done as deliberately as the placing of all the body parts in the places where they were found. And I kind of get a mental image of Jack, reveling in the privacy of his first indoor kill, lapsing into a sort of insane sense of humor once the butchery was underway. He knew the body would be found in the morning by someone, and for the first time he had time to think about that, how he wanted it to look. This might be a stretch, but I almost see him lapsing into a Joker-type persona (i.e. Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight"), going "Ooh, I'll put this here and that over there, this is going to be great!" You know, just because of throwing himself headlong into the sheer outrageousness of what he was doing in that place and time. I've also long thought that with the fire burning for warmth he was at least partially disrobed, at least shirtless, both for sexual gratification and to keep his clothes free from blood. And the creepiest thought of all that I get, the one that really makes me need a shower after I say it, is partially fed by one of the illustrations I remember seeing in the "From Hell" graphic novel. The severed breast under the head. I see him holding it in his hand, and thinking what a great joke it would be to make a pillow out of it.

It just goes to show- when we really contemplate the man and try to put ourselves into his head, it is not always a place we find we want to be.

[Daveshredder]

But I do agree with what you say, it is kind of "Over Kill" which sort of makes me feel it may have been more than one culprit. But thats just a feeling and you can never base anything incriminating on feeling. lol

[Daveshredder]

My line of thought has been that, jack was getting more comfortable with his kills. Allowing him to take it one step farther each time. Which I am lead to believe is now accepted as a common trait of serial offenders. Also you have to take into account the setting. This is jacks first indoor kill, he now has total privacy. He may well have pined to dissect and fidget with the innerds of his past kills, but this option was'nt available to him on the street.

Hi, Every time i see the pictures I ask myself why has he tucked the left hand and part of the dress in to her abdomine, was he just clearing up or is it supposed to offend the viewer. Maybe he just stuck the hand on top and ity fell in ?

Hi Dave, Gordon...

If I had to guess I would say that when he flipped her onto her back from her right side that left arm may have dangled over the bed.....but not at the elbow joint. So the forearm might have stuck out from the bed enough to aggravate him as he tried to place things about her and on her night table.

After he had finished.....whatever it was he thought he was doing, I think he may have just flipped it back up onto her, and it fell in place where it is seen in the photo. Now...why her head is tilted towards anyone entering or leaving the room...why he placed a breast and a uterus under her head, why he only takes flesh from her right leg to the knee.......all anyones guess.

Mine is that what "posing" we see is intentional misrepresentation of the killers real objectives, and an attempt to create an illusion of a killer who cuts organs out of dead women. I believe her killer simply wanted to kill her. To make her dead. And to have the evidence not direct suspicion his way. Having said that, I dont believe that the evidence with any other Canonical Group murder suggests that the Ripper's goal was simply murder.

He forgot though that the killer called Jack had left a more specific kind of murder trail and crime scene tableau,.....simply because his objectives were not the same as Marys killers were. Cutting any old organ out isnt Jacks pattern, and he always takes what he cuts free... in terms of organs. Marys killer didn't.

I believe the evidence suggests Marys killer was angry with her.....I dont see another alleged Ripper victim that leaves that same impression with me....unless its the wounds on Kates face. Spite, or anger. Passionate emotions.

To me if anything, up until Kates facial cuts, there is no indication that he was anything but focused and cold hearted. Dispassionate if anything.

My best regards and welcome aboard Gents.