Was Mary Kelly a Ripper victim?

[Trevor Marriott]

Is that because her heart was taken by the killer ?

According to Detective Inspector Reid head of Whitechapel CID who attended the crime scene, it was not taken away by the killer. But of course you already know that dont you?

And that is why Kelly's murders is different from the rest, and has a direct bearing on the murders of Chapman and Eddowes.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Jon Guy]

[Karl]

Mary Kelly was a bit younger and a bit taller than the other victims.

Ergo, she wasn't slain by the same knife-wielding lunatic butchering women in Whitechapel.

See what I mean? Differences are trivialised, so as to justify ignoring such details. Half a foot is hardly "a bit" taller, and 20 years is hardly "a bit" younger. The main thing to note about height is when the victims become taller than the murderer - that is unusual in and of itself, but especially when all previous victims have been uniform.

As for Ted Bundy, would you suspect him if he were at large and a woman in her 50s was found slain? He had a thing for young women. It's not random that the oldest of his numerous victims was 26 years old. And Bundy was also, as far as I'm aware, taller than all of his victims.

[Trevor Marriott]

You ought to take care, bouncing up and down like that at your age could damage your health

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Sam Flynn]

As for Ted Bundy, would you suspect him if he were at large and a woman in her 50s was found slain? He had a thing for young women

But Bundy killed two, perhaps three, little girls, which is not to trivialise anything, merely to point out that the victim's age is not always a straightforward diagnostic criterion. Besides, any significance we read into the victims' ages is somewhat complicated by the observation that Nichols looked younger than her years, and the same has been argued for Eddowes and Stride.

[Darryl Kenyon]

See what I mean? Differences are trivialised, so as to justify ignoring such details. Half a foot is hardly "a bit" taller, and 20 years is hardly "a bit" younger. The main thing to note about height is when the victims become taller than the murderer - that is unusual in and of itself, but especially when all previous victims have been uniform.

As for Ted Bundy, would you suspect him if he were at large and a woman in her 50s was found slain? He had a thing for young women. It's not random that the oldest of his numerous victims was 26 years old. And Bundy was also, as far as I'm aware, taller than all of his victims.

I watched a docu on Bundy recently and he seemed to pick up his victims were you would expect to find younger women, campuses, on the beach, hitchhikers etc . Jack prowled the street at night were it would be reasonable to expect the victims would be of say Polly's class rather than young prettier women who would most likely work in brothels.
As for Mary that was probably due to the fact that he moved indoors [extra patrols etc] and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Mrs Cox lived in the ground floor flat I am sure that Jack would just as easily murdered her.

[Sam Flynn]

Jack prowled the street at night were it would be reasonable to expect the victims would be of say Polly's class rather than young prettier women who would most likely work in brothels.

Unfortunately for Mary Kelly, she was a younger woman who no longer worked in a brothel, but was compelled to walk the same streets as Polly Nichols... whether the same killer was responsible for their deaths or not.

[Karl]

But Bundy killed two, perhaps three, little girls, which is not to trivialise anything, merely to point out that the victim's age is not always a straightforward diagnostic criterion. Besides, any significance we read into the victims' ages is somewhat complicated by the observation that Nichols looked younger than her years, and the same has been argued for Eddowes and Stride.

The youngest of his possible victims was 8, but he was himself 15 at the time. In any case, they still have youth in common. Youth symbolises innocence, and by association, vulnerability. Mature women simply didn't do it for him. He wanted girls, in the age range of 15-25. Or someone who'd look 15-19. The outliers could easily have the same appearance as his preferred targets.

With the Ripper murders, you have the ages at 43, 47, 45, 43... and 25. And granted, Nichols was said to look about ten years younger than she was, but even so she'd be a mature adult at the most generous. If Kelly look about ten years older then that would at least be something, but her description as beautiful suggests otherwise. And beauty, with respects to the first four, could hardly be said to be a quality they shared with Kelly.

[Abby Normal]

The youngest of his possible victims was 8, but he was himself 15 at the time. In any case, they still have youth in common. Youth symbolises innocence, and by association, vulnerability. Mature women simply didn't do it for him. He wanted girls, in the age range of 15-25. Or someone who'd look 15-19. The outliers could easily have the same appearance as his preferred targets.

With the Ripper murders, you have the ages at 43, 47, 45, 43... and 25. And granted, Nichols was said to look about ten years younger than she was, but even so she'd be a mature adult at the most generous. If Kelly look about ten years older then that would at least be something, but her description as beautiful suggests otherwise. And beauty, with respects to the first four, could hardly be said to be a quality they shared with Kelly.

Hi Karl
You said previously in this thread that you wouldn't be surprised that they were all killed by different killers.

Do you still believe that?

and if so why?

[Sam Flynn]

And beauty, with respects to the first four, could hardly be said to be a quality they shared with Kelly.

Availability might well trump aesthetics from the point of view of an opportunistic killer.

[Michael W Richards]

Availability might well trump aesthetics from the point of view of an opportunistic killer.

That's surely relevant Sam, and the fact that Mary was in bed undressed when she is first attacked can only be explained if she had habitually brought strangers into her room. That would enable "opportunity". Given the fact that Blotchy is the ONLY such person fitting that criteria, and that she only had the room to herself for 2 nights prior to her murder, it would seem the premise that Mary brought "clients" in to her room is nothing more than speculation.

So how does an "opportunity" killer of women actively working the streets find himself in a dead end courtyard?

Polly and Annie were working at the time, and that should be factored when looking at future murders and how the victims were accessed.

[caz]

Yes, which such ghastly facial mutilations would suggest. I do not see why the killer having some personal motive should be so controversial, though.

Not so much 'controversial', Karl, as entirely without evidence that a male associate of Kelly's was a violent individual with a personal motive for killing her and wanting to inflict those 'ghastly' facial mutilations. Isn't it wanting it both ways, to argue that the ghastliness of the facial mutilation is clear evidence of a personal motive, while the ghastliness of the equally over-the-top bodily mutilation is evidence of a copy cat overdoing the ripperesque?

The ripper himself, on the other hand, was without a shadow of a doubt an extremely violent individual, who needed no more motive than his evident penchant for ripping up unfortunate women, during a limited period of time and in a very limited area of town.

Because no matter how you try to categorise MJK, she's a square peg in a round hole.

I strongly disagree - both with the value of trying to 'categorise' MJK in the first place, and with her being a square peg in a round hole. You'd need evidence that she was not precisely the ripper's cup of tea - being a vulnerable female, living on her wits, who had nobody with her to keep her safe when her killer encountered her.

You say it's the same killer because "look at all the similarities". That's interpretation.

I agree that would be interpretation, but did I actually say what you quote me as saying? How do you think I would define a significant similarity or difference?

Me, I say MJK had a different killer because "look at all the differences". That, too, is interpretation. Personally, I find my own interpretation to be much more compelling than yours.

Well obviously. I guess it's hard for any of us to have our own interpretations questioned or challenged. So we'll probably end up having to agree to disagree over this one - which is not too disagreeable, is it?

I have pointed out how MJK was completely different from the other victims in terms of victimology, and those who disagree with me not only trivialise those differences, but completely sweep them under the rug.

I'm sorry? The only ones I recall immediately are the age and height factors, which don't amount to a hill of beans without first providing the hard evidential support for how old and how tall MJK really was! She could have said she was younger than she was, and other Whitechapel victims were said to look younger than their real ages, so what would the ripper's perception have been of the difference in age, and how do you know it would have made a hap'orth of difference to him in any case, if he'd encountered MJK and done a quick mental comparison? "Oh dear me no, this one is too young [too tall/too whatever] for my tastes"? What if women out alone on the streets at night tended to be that much older, with those of MJK's age being thinner on the ground, only making up, say, 20% - or one in five?

Beyond that, the sample of victims we have to study is far too small to make any realistic judgement of the ripper's criteria and to exclude a victim on that basis. You would surely still ask any ripper suspect where he was on November 9th, even if your instincts told you MJK was killed by a different hand. That's all I'm really saying - that the ripper cannot be eliminated from this murder on the available evidence, and certainly not on the basis of personal interpretation or instincts.

I try not to be biased. And if I may place a feather in my own cap, I ask you to note that Kelly's height was one of the two main arguments (in fact the most important one of the two) that I had for dismissing her as a Ripper victim - and I was also the one to express doubts concerning Kelly's height. If I may be so forward, I haven't seen a similar degree of scepticism from those who are adamant that Mary was a Ripper victim - who indeed refuse to acknowledge even a shred of evidence for an alternative explanation.

I trust you will no longer apply the above to me, as I am 'adamant' about very little, apart from the fact that several women, living in pretty dire circumstances in a tiny area of East London, had their lives cut short for no apparent reason, each one by a man carrying a sharp knife - and all within a few weeks in the second half of 1888.

I still don't really get the height argument, even if it could be confirmed that MJK was significantly taller than all the other victims. A) Her killer could well have overpowered her as she was lying on her bed if he was vertically challenged; and B) there is no proof that the ripper allowed himself to be seen with any of his victims, and therefore he could have been any height at all.

If we say that OJ Simpson murdered his wife, does this suggest she was at fault somehow?

Of course not. Her murder was very obviously a one-off, not one of a series of similar crimes, where someone was targeting other women at random, not for who they were or for any personal motive to get shot of her.

As I said, nobody is intentionally blaming the victim here, or suggesting she 'brought it on herself', whether it's Mrs OJ or MJK. It's just the subtle implication that if someone wanted MJK dead, but only MJK, there must have been 'something about Mary' we're entirely clueless about, that made her the specific target of a man in her life. And I'm not talking hair product.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Lynette Culver and Kimberly Leach were pre-teens, ergo they weren't killed by Ted Bundy, who killed girls in their teens or twenties. (Similar things could be said of Shawcross and Sutcliffe, among others.)

Hi Gareth,

Nice one.

Somebody has to be the tallest, the shortest, the youngest, the oldest, the most unfortunate, the least unfortunate, the fairest, the darkest, in any series of three or more murders. By itself, that doesn't give us an odd one out. It merely allows for unsupported theories about the killer or killers.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

She had also very likely been trafficked between Cardiff, France, Kensington and the Ratcliffe Highway - very different circumstances from the other victims.

But if the ripper had no prior knowledge about his victims, and MJK was one of them, then all they needed in common was to be where he was when the red mist came over him.

I doubt he asked for their life stories before whipping out his knife.

Love,

Caz
X

[John Wheat]

But if the ripper had no prior knowledge about his victims, and MJK was one of them, then all they needed in common was to be where he was when the red mist came over him.

I doubt he asked for their life stories before whipping out his knife.

Love,

Caz
X

Exactly Caz

The Ripper was after easy targets and wouldn't care about the victims lives one bit.