Was Mary Kelly a Ripper victim?

[Batman]

I think that he was more than comfortable being in all these places with his victims because he had been in those very places before with others or maybe even these exact same victims. He knew everything about the place because he had been there before. Hanbury backyard, Miller's Court, Mitre Square, the lot.

[Fisherman]

Why would she later resort to doing the biz on the streets when she had a room and had been used to operating indoors?

That is a good question. Then again, why would the Ripper opt for a girl selling sex in a room - he seems to have done his hunting on the streets?
Maybe the middle of the road option is that Kelly aquired her customers in the streets - she was known to parade a few of them, according to Dew - and then took them back to Millerīs Court. Including on the night of her death.

That would make a lot of sense to me.

[MrBarnett]

Perhaps she was an escort who charged blokes what ever she wanted just for being with or even sitting beside her, to make said blokes look good.

That would imply she was a cut above the other women in the Highway? Not sure why we would think that.

It seems almost certain from research done by Debra that MJK lived for a time at 79, Pennington Street, which has been identified as a brothel. Presumably she took her clients back there.

We've no idea about Cardiff, but I think it's extremely unlikely that she was entertaining clients in shop doorways in the West End, Paris or Pennington Street/Breezer's Hill.

The Highway was notorious for its 'dancing saloons' where prostitutes picked up sailors. Within a 5-minute walk of where Kelly lodged there were apparently 40+ brothels, sometimes little more than a spare room or two in a family home.

Why would she later resort to doing the biz on the streets when she had a room and had been used to operating indoors?

[Busy Beaver]

Perhaps she was an escort who charged blokes what ever she wanted just for being with or even sitting beside her, to make said blokes look good.

[MrBarnett]

What we don't have is any evidence that MJK provided her services in back alleys. I doubt she did in the West End, France or the Highway.

[MrBarnett]

MJK Taking customers to her room?

This is pretty close, bearing in mind that the room in question may well have been hers a short while before.

[c.d.]

"There is NOT ONE scintilla of information that is known to exist that Mary EVER brought clients to her room, and seranding someone for over an hour doesnt count as a sex act."

Hello Michael,

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true what conclusion can we draw from it? It appears that you are trying to argue that this means that she COULDN'T have ever brought a client home. But if we follow that logic it would also mean that if her killer was not Jack, and that a better suspect was someone who had never killed before, could we not simply dismiss that suspect for the simple reason that he had actually never killed before? As a further example of that type of reasoning, Mary could never have engaged in prostitution because there was a time when she had never done so.

So it would seem that all we can conclude is that based on past evidence that she was unlikely to have brought a client back to her room but we can not rule out the possibility that she did so.

c.d.

[AuroraSarintacos]

While I agree over the importance of this being one the first examples of crime scene photography, I still believe that the importance of it more or less can only lie within the realm of (somewhat small) historical importance.

Other then that, all questions and inquiries about Ms. Kelly's surroundings during such violence would just be educated speculation due to the fact that, yes, we have nothing new to come off of. We're studying a case that happened more then a hundred years ago.

Besides all that I will say that, now that I am older, I try to not look too much at the photos of these women in death. It makes me terribly sad, and I am sure most can agree, that the fact that another human being could do something like this to another person, especially a poor, vulnerable (poverty, alone) woman.

While I understand some of the theories and romanticism with the victims, Ms. Kelly being one in particular, I personally (and perhaps this is biased) find her more relatable if one were to just view her as a rather smelly, dowdy, filthy woman with snot,the stink of uncleanliness, and a rather rough voice and attitude then what she is generally thought of as a 'comely' young woman. An actual human being grounded within the reality of her time.

Cheers.

[Jon Guy]

Do all Ripperologist's obsess over such minute detail due to the fact that they really have nothing new to go off of?

No, I think it`s because a photo of the scene of the crime is important.

[Michael W Richards]

Its in the minutia that the crucial information can be found, but its when a point of view is established with the prior intent being to link in some fashion some or all of these women to one killer, it gets muddied.

Many believe that a man who was part of a gang started his "spree" outdoors in April, progressed to working alone outdoors in August and adopting frenzied stabbing while carrying 2 weapons, both of which get used,..., transformed to a competent silent killer who has a defined technique and preference for working outdoors and slicing into the female abdomen after the woman is incapacitated by throat cuts in September, carried on that new format less than a week later, still outdoors, in Sept,... then abandons all his prior signatures and slices a womans throat once outdoors in a passageway and leaves her untouched, then returns to the general format seen in the Sept murders in Oct, only to lose his format, focus... and his mind, with the only young female in the series, while she was in bed undressed.

At that point he is either taken into custody and institutionalized, he goes on and changes to poisoning wives from that point, he stops completely and remains unknown, or he continues on the next year, perhaps as late as 1896. The authorities assure us that he is known to them but they cant arrest him, that he is unknown to them, that he is in custody in an institution but a witness wont identify someone of the same ethnicity, that he committed suicide, and that he fled to the states.

Hope that clarifies the study a bit.
The original Transformer.

In the case of Mary Kelly all the minutia points away from a man who silently kills women while they solicited alone outdoors and had a predisposition for abdominal mutilation with an ultimate goal of obtaining organs from that region.

[Sam Flynn]

The whole lower part of that region is mutilated to a pulp. It's pretty obvious.

Indeed. However, it's the mistaken attribution of the prominence to the right of that region as her "knee" that's the issue.

Do all Ripperologist's obsess over such minute detail due to the fact that they really have nothing new to go off of?

Afraid so. However, the mistaken perception of the bolt of cloth as a knee can morph (in the minds of certain ripperologists) into the incorrect belief that the body or bed was moved, and/or that the photograph was faked. This in turn will lead to loopy conspiracy theories, police cover-ups, etc. It is very important, therefore, to establish the truth of what we're looking at.

[Batman]

Do all Ripperologist's obsess over such minute detail due to the fact that they really have nothing new to go off of?

I have no problem with people obsessing over minutia and correcting stuff, but when the minutia is just left in pieces without considering the overarching theory holding them together, a lot of those pieces can end up being contradictory, which often finds the holder saying one thing and then contradicting themselves in another argument. Then you get cherry picking and positions are easily undermined when these are exposed.

It's easier to hold a lot of little details than to hold a larger explanation which covers them all.

[c.d.]

"Do all Ripperologist's obsess over such minute detail due to the fact that they really have nothing new to go off of?"

Yes. Poor social skills and lack of a sex life will do that to you.

c.d.

[AuroraSarintacos]

Ms. Kelly is obviously posed. The legs are spread apart; the head is placed on the pillow, her hand was placed in her emptied viscera.

What you're looking at his the wrist of her left hand. What you're also looking at is his pelvis area/hip area in the other photo.

The whole lower part of that region is mutilated to a pulp. It's pretty obvious.

Do all Ripperologist's obsess over such minute detail due to the fact that they really have nothing new to go off of?

[Batman]

Eh? My lines START on her right leg, so it's included by default.

How can a single point in space include a leg? That makes no sense mathematically or logically. You either capture what's in the image with your lines or you don't at all. You haven't (her right leg isn't within your angles), meaning it can't explain the image, ever.

Besides, those lines merely connect elements of both photos along a line of sight; they don't encompass the fields of view.

You are contradicting yourself here instead of just admitting you have been talking about using it as a field of view all along.

Your own words...

They are not. And it's not an "estimate", but an extrapolation of the field of view of MJK3 onto MJK1, incorporating the analogous landmarks in either photograph, where the frame cuts off, etc.That was a mere slip; .....You can see hardly any of her left leg in the second photo, if you can see any part of it at all.

Your whole argument here is that you have a field of view, with her knee not in your view. Now you want to claim that this wasn't what you were doing all along? Seems to me the error of not having her leg in your field of view is now causing you to claim your lines mean something else. Oh dear.

You simply CAN'T get her left knee to align with the garter, the table and the viscera on the table, nor can you get the knee into the frame of MJK3. I wish you'd think things through.

That's entirely rebutted here.

https://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=461575&postcount=595

You couldn't reply to any of it.