Ideas to explain the ferocity of MJK's murder

[J6123]

Had Eddowes or Chapman had a private room, and taken the Ripper to it, we might have seen something very similar to Miller's Court. I'm quite happy with the explanation for Kelly's destruction being that the location was a bit more secure and he had more time.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

Oh, my! That would make a magnificent novel!

"From Hell", the movie, makes it a plot twist. It's not MJK, but nobody know but Abberline.

[lynn cates]

detective work

Hello Harry.

"IMO, Nichols & Chapman are almost definitely by the same hand."

Good. The parallel cuts seem to clinch this.

"With Eddowes, I just can't make my mind up. The nature of the mutilations were notably less clean and precise than Chapman's . . . "

Indeed. Nice piece of detective work. And, in conjunction with the many anomalies in John's testimony, one's eyebrows should be raised.

Cheers.
LC

[Penhalion]

The whole 'Not Really MJK' is quickly becoming one of my pet peeves. There's no reason to doubt it was her, people who knew her well identified her body and she was found in the room she was known to occupy. If it WASN'T MJK, then who was it? A woman WAS butchered in that room. Both of the women she was known to share the room with were alive and well after the murder. Are people postulating that she lent her room to a third hitherto unknown woman while MJK went.....where on a raw November night? And that no one noticed that this other woman was missing?

The 'Not MJK' thing is all well and good for fiction but it doesn't play very well in real life.

[Harry D]

Hello Harry.

"IMO, Nichols & Chapman are almost definitely by the same hand."

Good. The parallel cuts seem to clinch this.

"With Eddowes, I just can't make my mind up. The nature of the mutilations were notably less clean and precise than Chapman's . . . "

Indeed. Nice piece of detective work. And, in conjunction with the many anomalies in John's testimony, one's eyebrows should be raised.

Cheers.
LC

Hello, Lynn. How's it going?

Don't you accept that there are possibly internal and external factors to explain the discrepancy in skill between Chapman & Eddowes other than a different killer?

[Ausgirl]

I think the above reflects more on your own perceptions of what people are capable of shinealight, but its not an accurate representation of what we see in everyday life today

In everyday life we see murderers who cut up bodies to dispose of them, however there is no evidence that most of these people ultimately sought post mortem mutilations which in effect necessitated the murders being executed in then first place.

Sorry -- but no-one has seen serial killers "in every day life", in any era. In our particular era, there's .. Ed Gein. Not that I think he's a lot like the ripper. But he did carve dead bodies, and killed to acquire them.

Peter Dupas, Kemper, Bundy, Derek Percy, all postmorten mutilators. But Gein is the one who killed just to make them dead. And therefore, useful to him.


In real life, serial killers do not follow any kind of serial killer recipe. We can talk about them as a group, they *generally* do this or that thing, but there is always, always, the one guy or several to prove you utterly wrong. Within the rare group 'serial killer' there's a range of subgroups, and people who fit all and none of them.

Variation in MO is NOT uncommon. It really is not. There's a pile of 'em who've done it. Varied victim pool, varied weapons, varied sexual activity ....they do quit killing for decades and start up again, they do rape some victims and not others, and so on and so on.

In real life, I believe it'd be pretty hard for police, or anyone at all, to look at a series of violent and specifically sharp force attacks on group of analogous victims, all in an area the size of a postage stamp, with a generally visible rate of escalation in wound patterns overall, and NOT think "one man did this".

Even in Victorian London, even in Whitechapel.

[c.d.]

If a killer has no problem ripping open the abdomen of a victim, why in the world would a face somehow be off limits or carry extra significance? There is only so much flesh on a human body.

c.d.

[Ausgirl]

It's also not very useful, IMO, to argue that lack of precise linear progression in terms of wound savagery is indicative of separate killers.

In fact, this very argument has set back investigations into serial murders, in our own era.

Personally, I think at the moment Emma Smith was attacked by a vicious gang of youths, exactly as she said she was.

I think a reasonable assumption is that there was indeed a gang of violent youths, perhaps attacking other women in the area as well. Perhaps not, maybe they were just tourists. Someone recently raised the idea that perhaps the two are not mutually exclusive - JtR is part of a couple of vicious gang attacks, his mates don't really get into it as he does.. so he branches out on his own.

What I do think for sure is that the chances are extremely slim on there being TWO killers in that little tiny area, in that short period of time, who strangle - and- use a knife, leave their victims posed legs open, cut or maim the throat extensively and kill in high-traffic areas.

And MJK had enough 'hallmarks' of previous murders for it to seem obvious we're looking at the same guy. Because.. intestines, organ removal.. really, how many killers of that ilk do people think were rampaging around that portion of the East End?

[Harry D]

And MJK had enough 'hallmarks' of previous murders for it to seem obvious we're looking at the same guy. Because.. intestines, organ removal.. really, how many killers of that ilk do people think were rampaging around that portion of the East End?

See, you say that, Ausgirl, but it's quite remarkable how many violent customers were inhabiting that neck of the woods around this time. Off the top of my head there were men like Grainger, Cutbush, & Bury who committed knife attacks on women, and in Bury's case a Ripper-esque murder. The Thames Torso Killer would be the most notorious, and how can we be sure that was the work of one individual? Then you've got all the non-canonical victims to factor in.

[Ausgirl]

See, you say that, Ausgirl, but it's quite remarkable how many violent customers were inhabiting that neck of the woods around this time. Off the top of my head there were men like Grainger, Cutbush, & Bury who committed knife attacks on women, and in Bury's case a Ripper-esque murder. The Thames Torso Killer would be the most notorious, and how can we be sure that was the work of one individual? Then you've got all the non-canonical victims to factor in.

Well, sure - I mean, look at the coastal region of California/Washington and the incredible number of killers clustered along that particular thin stretch of road. There's probably dozens of them there, right now. Killers can and do share locations. But what narrows the field for a particular set of murders is exactly what made the police in 1888 believe a 'Ripper' was at large -- the high unlikelihood of a killer sharing five or six traits with any other killer, in a small area, during the same period.

But yep, there was others about. Which is why I'm on the fence about Liz Stride being a Ripper victim, only a little more inclined to think Martha Tabram was, and unsure about people like Annie Millwood.