Inside-Out

[Henry Flower]

sleek, the reason I don't quite agree with you is that the examples you give - darts or pool - are open contests between two parties playing by the same rules. The murders are something quite different, and I see the odds as being stacked quite heavily in the murderer's favour: no-one knows he's out to play darts, he has his darts hidden in his coat. His victims are weaker than he, and have their own reason for going with him to places that are relatively secluded, dark, and off the beaten track. A couple of minutes with a knife, and he's gone. A limited number of police, no forensic science to speak of, and a killer who has no timetable to follow, who can wait until the opportune moment, the right person in the right place at the right time.

Take Sutcliffe - he was no cunning genius. He left tire tracks, a five pound note with one of his victims, he was interviewed many times, but somehow the cops never quite joined all the dots. He was opportunistic, and extremely lucky, and that was enough to allow him to kill nearly three times as many women as Jack, over a far longer time period, and in an age of significantly more advanced investigative techniques.

[sleekviper]

Hello Henry,
I see what you mean, but I think that he has leveled his playing field by doing what no one would do. Killing victims where they stand, and preforming what in most cases appears to be an instant autopsy, in the path of anyone that may just happen to come along, is pretty much making it a fair contest. We really can't say that he is picking weaker prey because victims are women, they are full grown adults that have made it on the streets for some time. He does not take children, does not kidnap or abduct, has no mode of transportation that is seen suddenly leaving from the sight, and is not dumping bodies. Visualization or conversation of victim, to grisly mutilation is in the area of 15 minutes with no one else in sight. In a location of millions, that is beyond luck to be able to do multiple times in my opinion, but we all have ways to view events.

[Henry Flower]

sleekviper - You have a point, definitely, and I do find something to ponder in the idea of the instant autopsy - a telling phrase.

[Chava]

Henry, I posited a very Freudian kind of theory a while back because it struck me that in all except one murder the victim went down a narrow passage into a broader but confined area and was killed in that broader area. So I assume the killer went there with her or followed her there. The sexual implications are, to me, inescapable. This doesn't really apply to the Nicholls murder except in that Buck's Row itself was quite narrow, and she was killed at a point where the row houses had ended and at the gates of a stable, so maybe slightly wider. However all the others were killed that way. Chapman went down through the narrow passageway of 29 Hanbury Street through into the broader but fenced-off area of the garden and was killed there. Stride went down through narrow Berners Street through into the broader but still walled-off area of Dutfield's Yard and was killed there. Eddowes went through narrow Duke's Passage into the broader but built-around area of Mitre Square and was killed there. MJK went down the narrow passage that gave entry into Millers Court and then went into her room--with four walls and a ceiling--and was killed there.

And I don't think this was a coincidence.

Not one of those women were killed in, let's say, an alley leading off another alley of equal width. There seems to be a basic immediate change of landscape on all the murders and the connotations between the landscape of the last four murders and the landscape of internal female organs is obvious.

[Hunter]

Hi Chava,

Dutfields Yard was much narrower than Berner St... 9' 2" in width.

The immediate change of landscape probably has more to do with the need for some kind of privacy ( on the part of the woman to do business) in a very busy city and something to lean against to consumate the act... a fence, a gate, a wall or her own room with a bed... lucky Mary.

[sleekviper]

Well it would seem to point to me that he was doing a preventative measure. If you are going from a small area to a larger area, you have eliminated a flank attack, and controlled the amount of force that can advance toward you once you are in the larger area, and face the smaller. Something akin to the battle of Thermopylae when the Spartans held back the Persians on a narrow pass. With him holding that blade, they would be lucky if two could reach him if he stayed at the opening, and if you are at the front with a gun, you better not miss since he seems pretty good with his knife. In the dark, him moving, guy next to you just killed, people would be waiting to die, or shooting the guy in front.

[Chava]

Hi Chava,

Dutfields Yard was much narrower than Berner St... 9' 2" in width.

The immediate change of landscape probably has more to do with the need for some kind of privacy ( on the part of the woman to do business) in a very busy city and something to lean against to consumate the act... a fence, a gate, a wall or her own room with a bed... lucky Mary.

True! And I didn't know that about Dutfield's Yard. Still it strikes me as unusual that all those passages and spaces were used. MJK was killed in unusual circumstances in that she died in a room. But there was that pesky passage! Ditto for sure Chapman and Eddowes. Even Tabram fits this pattern, as she's killed on a square landing up a tight flight of stairs. There were lots of walls to lean on in the East End then. Not all of them were reached through narrow passages!

I think this might be the way his victims self-selected. As you've pointed out, not all of them were killed in exactly similar circumstances. And Nicholls of the canonicals breaks this pattern. It's not a theory cast in stone. But I do believe the geography had something to do with the killings.

[corey123]

Hello Chava,

A good theory. I would say though, Nichols and Chapman don't break the pattern, but rather stray a bit from it, although they were all killed near a wall, never in a open road. Always near a wall.

[Henry Flower]

That is interesting indeed. A walk around places such as Artillery Passage can really drive home just how ... orificial (that may not be a word, but it will have to act as one for the purposes of this discussion!) that area was in 1888.

My friend recently told me that his two year old boy starting beaming happily in the bath because he had put his penis inside the neck of the shampoo bottle: I think there is something inbuilt in the male psyche to invest in almost any passage that can be entered and travelled up a sliver of sexual meaning. Maybe there is indeed a level on which the topography in which he kills his victims marries up in some way with his urges. Then we are left with the man being led by the woman (who has a womb inside her up a narrow passage), up a narrow passage to a womb-like space, where he opens her up and removes the womb from inside her... and takes it away. At which point, if we follow the Freudian schemata through to its conclusion, the interesting question becomes perhaps, takes it away to where? Though of course, maybe the game is over by that point.

It's an intriguing speculation. But it cannot in any way help us eliminate suspects, which is a shame.

[FrankO]

One final thing: I've often heard Mary's arm wounds being described as classic defensive wounds, with the implication that she was conscious when attacked with the knife. I'm not so sure. If she raised her arms to shield herself from assault, (try it with your own arms), wouldn't the parts we see cut on the photo actually be shielded? If she raises her arms in defence, would it not be the underside of her forearms that would be exposed to attack? I might be entirely wrong there, it's just a thought.

Hi Michael,

The way I see it is that those carves in her left arm very likely weren't defence wounds. There’s no blood on that arm having flown from the wounds, which would have been the case had they been caused while she was still alive. And, as you say, if she would have raised her arms in defence, the underside of her forearms would have sustained wounds, not the upper side.

It seems that the only defence wounds were the cut on the right thumb and the abrasions on the back of that hand, as they are the only wounds described by Dr. Bond as showing extravasation of blood in the skin, which is a sign of them having been inflicted during life.

All the best,
Frank

[Henry Flower]

Thanks for that Frank - I think I am unconsciously wanting to spare the poor girl any knowledge at all of what was to come - because it was so horrific. The things that Dr Bond describes as defence wounds make me wonder what exactly the mode of attack was in this instance. What do you think? Is there any kind of consensus about the form that this attack took initially?

[Scorpio]

Thanks for that Frank - I think I am unconsciously wanting to spare the poor girl any knowledge at all of what was to come - because it was so horrific. The things that Dr Bond describes as defence wounds make me wonder what exactly the mode of attack was in this instance. What do you think? Is there any kind of consensus about the form that this attack took initially?

Read from about half way into my " Time after Time " thread, in the Motive,Method and Madness forum. The Kelly murder is discussed at length by various members.

[Henry Flower]

Scorpio - thanks for the info, will do.

[FrankO]

Thanks for that Frank - I think I am unconsciously wanting to spare the poor girl any knowledge at all of what was to come - because it was so horrific.

That's completely understandable, Michael!

Is there any kind of consensus about the form that this attack took initially?

As you probably noticed by reading the good thread indicated by Scorpio, there's no real consesus about the initial attack and the circumstances leading up to it.

The things that Dr Bond describes as defence wounds make me wonder what exactly the mode of attack was in this instance. What do you think?

Regardless of the thread mentioned by Scorpio (I just read it), my view is still as follows. The strong suggestion that MJK only suffered small wounds on her right hand while still alive, tells me that her defense lasted just a couple of seconds. It tells me that she probably only got time to raise her right hand and possibly squeeze out the cry of murder and then it was over. We know that she was at the far right end of the bed when she was attacked.

Why her killer, if JtR, abandoned his usual way of attack of somehow subduing (quite possibly strangulation) his victims and then laying her down, might be because Mary Jane was already laying down, unaware of his intentions. So, in my view the attack may not have played out the way it used to, because the killer found himself presented with a different situation: his victim was already lying down motionlessly and unaware of his intentions when he still had to launch his initial attack.

This is why I rather think she was dozing or sleeping than that she was wide awake when he attacked her. I have no problem seeing her lying on the right end of the bed, dozing, and him putting a knee on the bed in preparation of his attack. Then she awakes because of the movement on the bed and he has no choice but to immediately attack her. She’s able to raise the right hand while he's stabbing at her. He grabs that hand and gets it out of the way, while he keeps stabbing at her. Perhaps he throws the sheet over her face in the process to disorient her. How or why things would work out exactly is impossible for us to say. He may have mutilated her face because he knew her (although in my view that doesn’t have to mean she knew him as well), she may have pulled the sheet over her face herself in a lame attempt to defend herself, who knows?

But the big picture for me is that she didn’t expect the attack until just a second (or two) before it was launched, that she was then lying at the far right end of the bed, that she was able to raise her right hand in defense and perhaps utter one cry, and that her killer was able to cut her throat within a couple of seconds after he started.

All the best,
Frank

[Henry Flower]

Hi Frank,

What you suggest sounds entirely plausible given the few facts we can be sure of. It's plausible and terrible. To kill with a knife is monstrous. It makes strangulation look like a small mercy.

Ugh... It disturbs me perhaps too much. But thanks for the estimate of what took place. Maybe once my head is a little more clear of the horror of the killing I can think rationally again.

Things done to corpses - images of the butchery etc - do not disturb me unduly; but the terror during the initial attack is very hard for me to engage with mentally. I used to be able not to - as an enthusiastic teenage ripperologist wannabe it hardly entered my consciousness, even as I traipsed the sites at night. Now I cannot avoid seeing and imagining the terror.

But thank you.