was Mary Kelly really murdered

[miss c]

Richard
its nice to find that im not the only one to have considered this, and although i don't necessarily believe it to be true i do think it could explain quiet a few things, like the way the body in millers court was destroyed in such a way, i found if you look at an issue then see if you can make that person (in this case Mary Kelly) the suspect you can usually make it work, and if nothing else it allows me to have a little fun working through it
miss c

[miss c]

Richard
its nice to find that im not the only one to have considered this, and although i don't necessarily believe it to be true i do think it could explain quiet a few things, like the way the body in millers court was destroyed in such a way, i found if you look at an issue then see if you can make that person (in this case Mary Kelly) you can usually make it work, and if nothing else it allows me to have a little fun working through it
miss c

[Phil H]

Miss c

In my experience, if you know someone intimately and over a reasonable period of time, there are things about them that become unmistakeable in a crod or at a distance - the way they carry themselves; walk, use their hands, the tilt of their head, hairstyle, height, bulk etc. Even if you have not seen someone for years, you still recognise them, though their hair has gone grey and they have a lined face....

In death, Joe might still have known her hands, her hair - colour, texture, fine or wiry etc. her hands would be known to him, her fingernails, the length of her fingers - there would be moles or scars on her body that he might recognise. Jack (or Jill) did not remove all of those.

So I am left with two possibilities:

a) Joe (and others) lied by misidentifying the body in No 13; or

b) it really was MJK.

I don't see any other possibilities. You simply DO NOT (at least in my experience) mistake a recent partner, however mutilated. The idea that MJK could find an exact double - hair colour and type, ears, height, size etc, to me is simply too far-fetched to be credible.

Harold Godwinson (after Hastings) and Charles the Rash of Burgundy were both identified after battles in which their bodies had been stripped and mutilated, by people who knew them well, Edith (Harold's mistress0 and (I think) Charles' valet.

Sorry, but I don't see a double as a practical possibility UNLESS a fairly widespread and complex conspiracy was in hand. Then (just) maybe.

Phil

[miss c]

Hi Phil
i agree that the Mary Kelly as the killer is almost 100% unlikely, its just an idea i like to play about with and thought i would ask for opinions,
as too Mary Kelly not having been the victim, it is likely that someone could have been ordered in her place and no one would dvds have known, im sure it was not unheard of for woman at that time to come and go from the asda and no body to notice or comment as it was how life was, also it wouldn't have took much of a similarity, hair colour and eyes were more or less all that was left to identify,
and as to the sighting, correct me if im wrong, but im sure Mrs M spoke to and say Mary Kelly leave her address which unless im wrong makes it harder to explain away her sighting does it not

miss c

[miss c]

Hi Phil
i agree that the Mary Kelly as the killer is almost 100% unlikely, its just an idea i like to play about with and thought i would ask for opinions,
as too Mary Kelly not having been the victim, it is likely that someone could have been ordered in her place and no one would dvds have known, im sure it was not unheard of for woman at that time to come and go from the asda and no body to notice or comment as it was how life was, also it wouldn't have took much of a similarity, hair colour and eyes were more or less all that was left to identify,
and as to the sighting, correct me if im wrong, but im sure Mrs M spoke to and say Mary Kelly leave her address which unless im wrong makes it harder to explain away her sighting does it not

miss c

[miss c]

DRoy
thank you for sharing your opinion, although i sense nothing i say will make you consider anything other than what you already think.
I do find it confusing that i can not find any of andthe evidence you keep refining to as definitive as everything i have read both on this site and others doubts almost every aspect of this case and the Mary Kelly case in one way or another, as another poster mentioned earlier the evidence only points to a murder being committed in 13 millers court but no one can be completely sure as to who was killed as they had none of the forensics we have today abduction the body was so obliterated that an idea could have been incorrect. Barnett may have been sure that the eyes he identified were that of Mary Kelly but having looked at the photos i find it hard to believe that he could be sure

miss c

[Phil H]

It would be interesting, miss c, if MJK was the killer - a neat (but to my mind "Agatha Christie") solution to the whole case. She stages her own death and vanishes.... but what do you think would have been her motive? and why did she not kill again (as serial killers are apparently supposed to do)?

More pertinently, perhaps, I think your proposal would fit the case as it was in the 60s or earlier. I remember reading a novel (maybe by Robert Bloch) where the killers were a couple, a girl and a man). Then the case was usually around the five "canonical" victims. Today the case is being deconstructed -we look at post MJK murders - Mckenzie, Coles; and at earlier attacks too. We argue about whether all the alleged victims are by the same hand. I don't feel that Jill the Ripper fits so well in that context.

Certainly MJK herself remains a puzzle and a paradox. Was her story, as re-told by Barnett true in any sense or a total fabrication? Why cannot we find her in the historical record (uniquely among the victims)? If not MJK WHo was she? Why did she lie?

I don't find the question of her not having been the victim totally impossible (all things considered) BUT as others have pointed out in this thread - the questions of how she passed off another body as hers; whether Barnett, McCarthy etc were in on the conspiracy etc have to be answered. Who was the "stand-in"? We have no reports of anyone else being missing, do we?

On the Mrs M issue, I can certainly vouch for the fact that one can be mistaken about the identity of another person. It has happened to me. Someone points out a third party (Martha) at a distance, they are pointing at the woman in the red dress, but you think she means the woman in the blue coat - thereafter in your mind, the woman in the bklue coat IS "Martha". But she never was or is.

You see the woman you think is Martha, and are later told she died earlier - before the time you saw her - what did you see? The explanation of course is straightforward, but before photographs and video, how would you ever find out that the woman you thought was Martha was never her? And how would others find out you were wrong - certainly if you stuck steadfastly to your story as you might well do.

I can well believe this happened with MJK.

Phil

[richardnunweek]

Hi Miss C,
I actually had Mary Kelly and Joseph Barnett as the killers way back in the 1970s, wrote many pages of work,and sent it to the News of the world, I thought it was rather good, it fitted many facts that at least 'then' I was aware of, and ended up with another female similar to Kelly being substituted for her , so that Mary could end the murder series without ever being suspected.
All good B movie stuff, but guess what, I received a rather polite ''reject''.
That is the trouble with the Jill theory, it does not fit the clues [ albeit we have very few] and it would mean that, as nobody saw the victims with another woman, the killer was never spotted,.. that and being a female,would help greatly avoiding apprehension.
Regards Richard.

[DRoy]

Miss C,

Barnett & McCarthy both said there was no doubt whatsoever that it was MJK. That doesn't raise doubt in my mind as they knew her best.

I had commented on many things and when you put them together it leaves little doubt the body was that of MJK.

DRoy

[miss c]

DRoy
i know the body was identified by her partner, but he admitted himself it was based on eyes and hair colour along with an ear which is not 100% identification so still raises doubt.

Phil
thank you for your comments, i know the Jill. Angle has been covered, but the point i was attempting to make was, wouldn't it be interesting if Mary Kelly herself was the killer

miss c

[miss c]

DRoy
i know the body was identified by her partner, but he admitted himself it was based on eyes and hair colour along with an ear which is not 100% identification so still raises doubt.

Phil
thank you for your comments, i know the Jill. Angle has been covered, but the point i was attempting to make was, wouldn't it be interesting if Mary Kelly herself was the killer

miss c

[DRoy]

Miss C,

firstly as i have previously mentioned only speaking to someone a few times does not justify saying they would not recognise them, also if it had been someone else she recognised as someone she knew vaugly and mistook for Mary Kelly why is there no report of her realising this at a later date when she must have saw them around,

True, it doesn't mean only seeing someone a couple times doesn't mean they couldn't be recognized. However, if Maxwell was wrong in identifying Mary the first time, then she'd always be wrong. Whether she found out later she made a mistake or not doesn't matter because the police obviously felt she was mistaken. Would Maxwell really approach the police or a reporter after testifying at the inquest where she was positive she knew Mary and tell them "oops, I made a mistake, it wasn't Mary"?

also although i cannot remember the source which i will find and put the like on a future post, it states that her appearance was shocking, Mary kelly explained this away as due to drink, but her appearance is described as memorable so does this not mean its unlikely to be wrong,this article is also t.e one which stated she was say that morning by many who noticed her appearance,

Assuming your source is a newspaper article? You have to be careful about trusting everything you read in the papers. There is much discussion about this throughout the boards. As mentioned, her own neighbours and apparently her friends still got things wrong and they were all reported in the papers.

secondly saying that for the witness to be right the police and docs had to be wrong is a bit far fetched as it is well documented that due to the condition of the body and amount of time that past between it bein found and examined that the time of death has always been in question.

Time of death is still being disputed. I agree. I don't necessarily agree with the doctor's time of death give or take a couple hours but again, these people weren't stupid. They may not have got it exactly right but they'd have to be quite incompetent to be as wrong as you suggest.

Finally is it not possible that's since we know so little about her that there could have been at least one or more friends we don't know of and they would not have came forward. If they were murdered and assumed to be Mary kelly.

Anything is possible but is it likely or probable? No. Her "friend" would have to have at least some features that match Mary so much so that it fools her ex-lover and her landlord, not to mention any of those that saw the body. Mary would then have to hide so nobody that did know her would not find her. Does she do that? No she hangs about the same neighbourhood where she lives so that Maxwell can see her and then goes drinking so Lewis can see her. That doesn't make sense.

Cheers
DRoy

[Phil H]

I don't know whether this is the right place to go into the "Jill the Ripper" question, miss c, even though you have raised it in your own thread.

I'll just say this:

The theory is not new - as I recall, William Stewart and (perhaps) Conan Doyle advocated similar ideas. (The A-Z states that it can find no evidence of Doyle having done so in writing though.) At the time of the murders, the Rev Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborn also advanced a similar view. the thought was that the killer might have passed un-noticed as either a midwife or an abortionist.

This idea was linked, I believe, with the mistaken view that MJK was pregnant when killed.

Others here will be better placed than I (no criminologist) to say whether the crimes were capable of having been perpetrated by a woman. My understanding is that the concensus is that they are not, but I may be wrong or out-of-date!

Other questions might be - are all the murders by the same hand. In recent times the issue of whether Stride and Kelly were killed by the same hand as Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes has been debated in my view wih some credibility. So I think you would need to consider whether you are suggesting all the crimes were by a single, female killer. In that context, Schwartz's evidence suggests that Stride was attacked by a man - but was he her killer?

You might also want to examine the question of the fire in MJK's room; the burnt clothing etc etc. What was "Jill's" motive in taking "trophies" from some victims? Where do you stand on Eddowes' apron scrap?

The female killer is an ingenious solution to the enigma of JtR but personally, I have yet to be remotely convinced by it. A midwife or an abortionist rings less true, as an example, than Odell's schochet (religious butcher) - for me, if we are looking for a "type" rather than an individual. The idea is closer to Agatha Christie than an evidence based approach to a real murder... but you and others may differ on that.

I applaud lateral thinking, however, and it is no doubt time this idea was discussed again.

Phil

[DRoy]

Simon,

All the evidence proves is that someone was murdered at Millers Court.

Barnett, Bowyer and McCarthy all said it was MJK based on appearance. They would know better than Maxwell or Lewis.

Couldn't you use your argument for any person through history who was murdered without DNA testing having been completed? Come on Simon!

Cheers
DRoy

[miss c]

Hi DRoy
you raise good points, yet i have looked into this in great detail over the last months and still fine wholes in what we know,
firstly as i have previously mentioned only speaking to someone a few times does not justify saying they would not recognise them, also if it had been someone else she recognised as someone she knew vaugly and mistook for Mary Kelly why is there no report of her realising this at a later date when she must have saw them around, also although i cannot remember the source which i will find and put the like on a future post, it states that her appearance was shocking, Mary kelly explained this away as due to drink, but her appearance is described as memorable so does this not mean its unlikely to be wrong,this article is also t.e one which stated she was say that morning by many who noticed her appearance,
secondly saying that for the witness to be right the police and docs had to be wrong is a bit far fetched as it is well documented that due to the condition of the body and amount of time that past between it bein found and examined that the time of death has always been in question.
Finally is it not possible that's since we know so little about her that there could have been at least one or more friends we don't know of and they would not have came forward. If they were murdered and assumed to be Mary kelly.
I am not for one second saying this is what happened but am pointing it out as what i believe to be a valid point
miss c