Open or Closed-Probabilities

Hi all,

Just a point for Issac....we need to remember that no noise was heard following the cry of "oh-murder", so that effectively rules out that cry signaling her attack. 2 women were listening at that moment, both were awake, and 1 was in the same dwelling and one in a room opposite her front door.

3 women claimed to hear the cry in the press, I cant recall the name of the third, but there was apparently a statement made to that effect.

Has anyone wondered why the phrase "oh-murder" appears in that format in the reportings of the Inquest?

My guess is that it was typed that way, with a hyphen, as a way of indicating the phrase drops in volume and tone on the second word. "Oh-murder".....

Thats why I believe it was probably an exclamation of disappointment or annoyance....which would be understandable if she had been woken to answer the door. She was hammered at 11:45, and sang off and on for over an hour...when the room goes dark and silent I think we have sleep commencing.

Best regards all

[Issack]

Hi C.D
Thanks for the info regarding Barnett. Your point regarding the clothes/money is noted
Was Barnet certain that the clothes in the room 'neatly folded as if for bed' belonged to MJK , thus if she was the one discovering the body and fled, I would assume she was wearing clothes. I take your point regarding the money

[Issack]

According to the information I have read, the doctors who carried out the post-mortem and studied the room were of the opinion that the body on the bed was murdered on the bed.
I assume therefore that this means that there was no trail of blood from the door to the bed. This means (in my opinion) there are these possibilities.

1. The cry of ‘Oh Murder’ came from the victim who was lying on the bed and was awoken by JTR and silenced immediately after she cried out. Hence no further sounds of a struggle or person being dragged back into the room and thrown on the bed.
2. The girl was murdered on the bed, but remained silent (Asleep possibly) . Somebody returning to the room (after the event) who used or shared the lodging opened the door and saw the body on the bed, cried out ‘Oh Murder’ from the door and ran off
3. The cry was totally unrelated to the murder.

If witnesses only head the ‘cry’ but not any scuffle or struggle than I believe that these are the most likely scenarios.

As an aside:-

Whilst I believe the murderer was JTR, does anybody know if the body was positively identified by the police? Or was it a general assumption that 1. people knew that MJK lived there, and 2. MJK did not come forward, so hence everybody assumed that the victim was MJK

[c.d.]

Hi Issack,

Welcome to the boards. Joseph Barnett (who had previously lived with Mary) identified the body in the room as that of Mary Kelly. In the very unlikely event that his identification was somehow wrong and that Mary had fled back to Ireland as you suggest, she did so with no clothes, no luggage and no money. Not a very likely scenario.

c.d.

[c.d.]

I have to wonder whether the police began questioning witnesses by informing them that there had been a murder in the night or whether they started the questioning by asking the witnesses whether they had heard anything unusual in the night and then informing them that there had been a murder? Did they tell witnesses that another witness reported hearing a cry in the night before taking their testimony?

I watch the show "Ghosthunters." Quite often they pick up disembodied voices on their equipment. Many times when they first play it back it is garbled and hard to hear exactly what is being said. But then they say it sounds like blah blah blah. Then they play it again and you find yourself saying yeah it does sound like blah blah blah.

Could we be dealing with the power of suggestion here?

c.d.

[Celesta]

Without seeing the actual site of both room and court, and conducting a test, we can do no more than speculate on how the cry would have sounded in that narrow court. If Prater thought the sound came from the area of the door, then we might also remember that the head of Mary's bed was against the same wall the door was in. A cry of murder coming from the bed might have been taken as coming from the doorway. The two were not far apart. Prater was drowsy but awake, and she apparently was used to hearing sounds from Mary's room. When she heard the cry of "O murder" she may have assumed it was coming from the doorway.

Or,

If the cry appeared to come from the area of Mary's door, then perhaps she had opened the door to let a client out, and once he had gone she didn't close the door, right away. JtR was lurking and probably waiting for just such an opportunity. JtR may have been familiar enough with the area to know that prostitutes came and went from Miller's Ct all the time. He could have followed Prater there, or Lewis, or Cox.

Or maybe he just tapped lightly on Mary's door and she opened it.

[Issack]

I am not as knowledgeable on this as all the rest of you on this, but what are your views on the following:-
Further to Barnaby’s observation, could the cry of ‘Oh Murder’ been from Mary Kelly as she returned to Millers Court alone at about 3:45am , and entered the room from the outside. (Hence door open and she was standing just outside the threshold)

She immediately observes that one of her lodging companions had been murdered within the room and gave out the famous cry, and ran away (never to return/ fleeing back to Ireland).
This would mean that the body in the room was not in fact Mary Kelly as has been suggested by some and would place the murder earlier, before the scream.

[richardnunweek]

Hi.
What are the odds that the T.O.D, was calculated from guesswork, and that famous cry of 'Oh Murder'.
Did Mary open the door to someone?
Was the room entered, without her knowing?
Was the cry uttered by someone else close by , unrelated to the murder?
Was the cry heard, kelly awakeneing from a nightmare?
Why is it that I am the only one on Casebook, who takes the latter suggestion seriously?
There are two witnesses to the kelly murder that endorse that suggestion, one is Mrs Prater, the other Mrs Maxwell.
The former at the inquest , suggested that the cry heard was like'Awakening from a nightmare'
The latter claimed to have seen Kelly some four hours later alive.
If Maxwell was right then clearly Mary was not attacked at 4am, and the explanation of a nightmare becomes plausible.
But lets not just take their evidence, how about Kit Watkins some three years later, who is alleged to have interviewed a court resident named Lottie who told her that the deseased [ Kelly] mentioned to her, that she had had a bad dream , in which she was being murdered.
This dream apparently occured somewhen after Sept 30th.
Unless Lottie was a work of fiction by Watkins, and the dream was invented because it tied in with what Prater recalled at the inquest, I would suggest the following.
According to the woman Lottie, the dream refered to Mary jane being murdered, which rather ties in with what words were heard at 4am that morning....Oh Murder'.
So we have a reoccurance of a nightmare Kelly had previously, brought on quite possibly by Barnetts preaching, and reading of the papers to her, and an awareness quite possibly of women that were known to her being cut to pieces on the streets.
And one should also mention alcohol, and paranoid fear of being alone in room 13 at nights, could also induce a reoccurance of that dream.
Regards Richard.

[Hellrider]

Or the reaction of someone passing by as the killer came out of Mary's room, either holding his bloody knife or with obvious bloodstains on his clothes?

what an irony of fate that would be but is it really credible that somebody would stumble upon a guy just like the one the entire district has been afraid of for months and just say a friendly "good night" and go on their way?

[kensei]

Does "Oh, Murder!" strike anyone else as an odd thing to scream if one is being or about to be attacked? Could this scream be someone actually discovering the murder (and obviously not subsequently reporting it)?

Or the reaction of someone passing by as the killer came out of Mary's room, either holding his bloody knife or with obvious bloodstains on his clothes?

[Barnaby]

Does "Oh, Murder!" strike anyone else as an odd thing to scream if one is being or about to be attacked? Could this scream be someone actually discovering the murder (and obviously not subsequently reporting it)?

I do just that Sam, and as we know this issue drew from you a backing of a single source to contrasting reports numbering 7 or 8 I believe...with different wording but the same content.

We should be mindful of the totality....and the ratios.

Cheers Sam

[Sam Flynn]

Well, on those 2 points I think you are way on a limb on Sam....for One, Elizabeth did state that she could hear Mary moving about in her room, and she did not qualify it as being when she was climbing the stairs.

I gave you the quote, Mike. That should be enough. That, and a logical, reasoned reading of the sequence of questions in the official inquest transcript and the other papers. Now, some of these we know adopted a "precis" approach to recording proceedings, and some of them got things wrong - the official transcripts aren't immune to this either. The point is, one should look at the totality of what was written down, and draw a reasoned conclusion from all the available sources, not just individual soundbites from the odd one or two.

Well, on those 2 points I think you are way on a limb on Sam....for One, Elizabeth did state that she could hear Mary moving about in her room, and she did not qualify it as being when she was climbing the stairs. There are multiple quotes that back up that point.

On the second, if Marys voice was loud enough that Elizabeth could hear it from inside the house with Marys door and windows closed, then you explain her choice of words for what location she thought the voice came from. It wasnt loud enough to hear within the house? Well, Sarah thought the cry was "at her door". And how could Sarah think that if Marys door was closed? Her windows faced the whitewashed wall, not the Keylers, and 2 small broken panes, one covered by a pilot coat and curtains the other just covered by curtains arent great avenues for sound waves to slip through.

Your objection is primarily based on the fact that you believe the window above Marys windows didnt offer Elizabeth access to sounds from the courtyard...but thats where Liz thought it came from, so did Sarah.

Id rather you didnt discount what I believe is a very valid concept based solely on your personal belief about where Liz's room was located and how that window above Marys, or the one over the archway, or both, factors into the equation here.

We have statements that put to rest where they believed the cry came from. My point is that they could not have heard the cry from that location unless the originating voice spoke the words into the courtyard....via the open door is my premise.

My best regards

[Sam Flynn]

assuming the call was from room 13......Could Marys voice have been heard as described by the women if her door was closed?

Emphatically, yes.