Did Mary know her killer?

[c.d.]

If Mary's killing was personal, wouldn't Kate's murder be as well? I mean is there really that big a difference between the two? Both had their faces mutilated and both had their abdomen's ripped open and internal organs removed. If you want to attach some sort of symbolism to the killer taking Mary's heart then it seems to me that you would have to do that as well with Kate's kidney.

c.d.

[Errata]

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, Errata, although I don't think we can read that much into the Ripper's cuts, you probably already know what I'm going to say. Had this been an isolated murder, and not on the back of a series of kills escalating in violence, then I think your argument would carry more weight. Eddowes' murder also carried facial mutilations similar to Mary Kelly, albeit less extreme, evincing the killer's desire to dehumanize his victims. If that same man found himself indoors and left undisturbed with his next prey, surely Mary Kelly's fate would not be unexpected?

Yeah this is one of those points where it's like pornography, you can't define it but you know it when you see it? I don't see a connection between Eddowes' mutilations and Kelly's. Other's do. And the only person who knows died a really long time ago. So it's the psycho murder equivalent of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! You might see pornography, I see hilarity and send ups of mid century sexual hangups.

Clearly the two mutilations are related in that presumably they were made by the same person, and they were on the face. And there are similarities in form. As one might expect from the same killer. But the Kelly mutilations are not the natural extension of the Eddowes mutilations. Which seems an odd thing to say given the sheer amount of damage to Kelly's face. But unless he has a very particular fetish (which shows up in no other parts of the series of murders) it's not right. If you mutilate lips, the next logical step is to remove the lips. Not do the same thing again. So the progression is wrong.

Eddowes had her lids nicked and cut. Kelly's were not. When someone concentrates on the eye, there is a reason. Sometimes they are enucleators, Jack was not. But what he did to Eddowes' eyes was time consuming and required a certain amount of patience on care. He did not have time. In terms of self preservation he should not have done those mutilations. But he did. There's a reason. In an odd way he draws attention to the eyes of both women in opposite ways. He cut's Eddowes' eyelids, he leave's Kelly's untouched. Both acts send a message, but it's not the same message. Now, if the eye injuries were reversed, that would make sense given the amount of time he had with Kelly. But he didn't do it. It's about the only thing he didn't do. Same motive, same issues, same needs, we should see the same specific injuries, maybe progressed. But we don't. So if nothing else, something significant has changed between Eddowes and Kelly. It's not his needs, it's not what he gets off on, those never change. Best available answer is that his motive changed. Which makes it personal.

Also, and I think sometimes when we talk technicalities this gets shunted aside, Kelly looked like she had been flensed. Eddowes face was mutilated, Kelly's was eradicated. Now to make myself clear I have to talk in an artistic sense, which I apologize for. Everybody knows that the brightest part of an object is the place you focus on. So lets say I have a clay head. If I don't want people focusing on the head, I don't touch it. If I want people to look at certain things on that head, I paint them a bright color. Which is essentially what Jack did to Eddowes. He called attention to specific parts by "painting" them in blood. And this is not necessarily for anyone's benefit but his, but he did it. Artistically it's called an additive technique. He added cuts. Kelly was not like this. He used what is called a reductive technique. He took away everything but the eyes. If I go back to my clay head, I would be cutting off everything that makes a face a face, but covering the eyes and painting everything bright red. When I uncover the eyes, they will be intact in a bright red lump of barely recognizable head. Both methods work very well to highlight a feature. But humans are creatures of habit. Someone is either additive or reductive. In any arena. Despite the obvious reductive qualities of taking organs, Jack is essentially additive. He called attention to certain things by adding mutilations. Kelly is different. Her murder was based solely on reduction. What is absent is the focus, not what is present.

Is all this stuff some natural law? No. It's a natural guideline maybe, but not a law. But it is damned peculiar.It's not impossible, but it demands explanation. It's not about time. It's about (and I hate to say this) an artistic perspective. Which artists use for any number of things, but regular people use to judge when something is "done", or what "looks right". It's like an apartment of black modern minimalistic furniture and this one wild west whorehouse gold and red velvet throne. If something does not go, there is a reason. And Kelly does not go with the others.

I know it' a weird and terrible explanation. One should never compare murder to art. But I'm an artist, and those are the terms I understand.

[Rosella]

Yes I recently read that he was at the tap around 3am In a thread. One thing that struck me as odd was the police said when he entered the station he couldn't utter an intelligible word at first. If he had knocked on Kelly's apartment late at night she knows him he could've gained entry on a false premise. Then again he may had had access to a key! It's most curious that McCarthy let the rent go for six weeks until the morning she was murdered. On the casebook page it also says there is a descripensy about bowyer stating in one version that McCarthy accompanied him to the station.

In the chapman inquest records there is talk of a pensioner and ted Stanley vehemently denies being that pensioner. Is this the same type of pensioner that bowyer was? Could he have been chapmans mysterious pensioner?

Would Maxwell have known bowyer? The Maxwell account is most strange when you take into account the letter from "how strange is this" thread.

I agree with you Abby, the fact that bowyer was there in the middle of the night means he has a chance to kill her then as well as the later time!

Bowyer, or 'Indian Harry' was an Indian Army pensioner, (English.) Walter Dew remembered him wrongly, as being a youth when he wrote his memoirs.

'A youth, his eyes bulging out of his head, burst panting into the station. For a time he was so overcome with fright as to be unable to utter a single intelligible word. But at last he managed to babble something; 'Another one. Jack the Ripper. Awful. Jack McCarthy sent me.'

McCarthy followed him to the station and led the police back to Miller's Court. Bowyer had run to him after pulling back the curtain at the window of Mary's room. He had stated to McCarthy 'Governor, I knocked on the door and couldn't make anyone answer. I looked through the window and saw a lot of blood.'

The 'A-Z' has Bowyer as 'a somewhat sharp-featured man with a coal-begrimed visage.' according to the Sunday Times.' Again according to the 'A-Z',' Bowyer was 'unable to open the spring-locked door' that morning. He lived at 37 Dorset St.

[Batman]

I think he mutilated their faces because he learned that witnesses had to view the body/ see their faces to be able to corroborate witness testimony. Otherwise they were just a Jane Doe until identified. The longer it took to identify them the longer it took police to corroborate a witness testimony with a description of JtR.

With MJK for example, by destroying her face he is preventing witnesses from being able to identify the body as the person they had seen with such and such. Only people well known to the victims would be able to offer immediate clues. Stranger witnesses often mistook the victim for someone else.

So that is the practical aspect of why JtR did that. Then there is the forensic psychology of the mutilations which is out of my hands as I don't think like these psychopaths do. My fridge made me do it. My dog made me do it. Who knows what's going inside there. I don't.

[Batman]

Does the time spent in the room indicate the ripper knew Kelly's schedule well enough to know no one would be coming in that time frame. Mary could have invited him yes, but he's taking a great risk if her boyfriend/roomate/landlord /friend could drop in at anytime. He's trapped in a lock room unlike some of the other ripper murders were he has some means of escape. If he had the key he might be sure no one could get inside (however the broken window pokes a hole in that somewhat). It's strange the McCarthy's guy came to check on Kelly when she hadn't paid rent in so long, they choose that morning to check up on her?

This is why I speculate (and with good reason) that Hutchinson was just an attention seeker putting himself into the place of Lewis's man outside the court.

That man outside the court is JtK who already went into MJKs room and is Blotchy face. He is checking things out. He can come and go as he pleases because the door can be opened from the outside without a key and he hasn't killed her yet, just another punter taking a smoke break or something. Oh and she is well drunk too and not complaining it seems.

[gnote]

I think he mutilated their faces because he learned that witnesses had to view the body/ see their faces to be able to corroborate witness testimony. Otherwise they were just a Jane Doe until identified. The longer it took to identify them the longer it took police to corroborate a witness testimony with a description of JtR.

With MJK for example, by destroying her face he is preventing witnesses from being able to identify the body as the person they had seen with such and such. Only people well known to the victims would be able to offer immediate clues. Stranger witnesses often mistook the victim for someone else.

So that is the practical aspect of why JtR did that. Then there is the forensic psychology of the mutilations which is out of my hands as I don't think like these psychopaths do. My fridge made me do it. My dog made me do it. Who knows what's going inside there. I don't.

Wouldn't that mean the Ripper didn't learn about witnesses and identifying bodies until he got to Kelly? That seems unlikely. Yes Eddowes had some facial cuts but nothing that would prevent an identification of the body.

If that was the killer's motivation he picked the worst victim to bother doing that to. Any random woman found dead in Kelly's room would have been presumed to be her before a witness was even brought in to confirm.

[Batman]

Wouldn't that mean the Ripper didn't learn about witnesses and identifying bodies until he got to Kelly? That seems unlikely. Yes Eddowes had some facial cuts but nothing that would prevent an identification of the body.

If that was the killer's motivation he picked the worst victim to bother doing that to. Any random woman found dead in Kelly's room would have been presumed to be her before a witness was even brought in to confirm.

I think its generally a given that serial killers of prostitutes do this because they are easy targets and hard to ID and trace etc.

With Nichols there wasn't much in terms of witnesses. Chapman was another matter. She was identified very quickly and people remember seeing her with someone.

Eddowes was identified by Lewende according to the clothes she was wearing not her face and as for Kelly it doesn't matter if they suspected correctly the dead person was also the tenant. Most witnesses to the events wouldn't know the victim well and in many cases would have to ID the body to say, oh yes, that's the person I knew. It is to these 'stranger witnesses' that he can suspend/slow down the case by the act of basically cutting up the face. He doesn't have the time to remove it all but he can do it enough to the point that ID doesn't take place in regular way.

[Errata]

I think it's probably wise to point out the serial killers very rarely take forensic countermeasures beyond disposing of the body. And of course nowadays they tend to wear gloves.

By far the most likely scenario is whatever a serial killer does to a body, he does because he wants to. It's part of his fantasy or an expansion of his fantasy. It's not to throw off the cops, or prevent identification, or any of that. It's because he wants to or has to.

Like, Dahmer didn't want to dismember his victims. He wanted his fantasy to come true so he could have an eternally compliant sex partner. He cut them up because when his experiment failed, it was the only way he could keep them. It wasn't to stymie the cops. It was need.

[RockySullivan]

Hi errata what do u hear what do u say

I know you've said previously that you feel the dismemberings and the rippings show a different "sense of humor". Do you think the dismembering in the torso killings was done to hinder id, aid in disposal or as part of the killers fantasy/fetish? What's your opinion about the meaning of the cutting off Mary Kelly's flaps of skin? There seems to be a remarkable similarity between the MK mutilations and Liz Jackson:

This second set of remains were described as to consist of the lower part of a female body; the body had evidently not been dead long as Bond noticed a slight ooze of blood from the ragged edges of the cut parts of flesh. Dr Bond was instantly of the opinion that the body part was that of a young woman and that an attempt had been made to carry out an illegal operation, which had been successful. None of the press reports described exactly what was found within this parcel to draw these conclusions from, but according to the medical jurisprudence book ' A system of legal medicine' which contains details from some of Dr. Bond's cases, the contents it contained were flaps of abdominal skin and the uterus of the victim, complete with cord and placenta;

"The flaps of skin and subcutaneous tissue consisted of two long, irregular slips taken from the abdominal walls. The left piece included the umbilicus, the greater part of the mons veneris the left labium majus, and labium minus. The right piece included the rest of the mons veneris, the right labium majus and minus, and part of the skin of the right buttock. These flaps accurately fitted together in the mid-line, and laterally corresponded to the incisions in the lower pieces of the trunk. The skin was fair, and the mons veneris was covered with light sandy hair. The upper part of the vagina was attached to the uterus; both ovaries and broad ligaments were present, and the posterior wall of the bladder. The uterus had been opened on the left side by a vertical cut, six inches long, through the left wall. The organ was much dilated the vessels on the inner surface large and open and the mucus membrane swollen and softened. The uterus measured 10in. long by 7.5 in. wide. The circumference of the os externum was 4in….

Some similarities with Kelly:
The skin & tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation & part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia & muscles as far as the knee.

The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus & Kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the Rt foot, the Liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side & the s pleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

Why did the ripper put one breast under Kelly's head and the other by her right foot? I'm going to go out on a limb here...and say it's fairly clear that torso killed Mary Kelly. Do the mutilations say he knew the victims? Were the dismemberments not done to hinder id, but because torso liked cutting people up? I feel that taking part of the body and placing them around the room show a very similar deranged mind to cutting up bodies and spreading them around London.

[Errata]

No serial killer does anything he doesn't want to do. Even in the pursuit of not getting caught. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 20 ways to deal with a corpse so it cannot be identified. He chose dismemberment because it appealed to him. It would have been easier to set her on fire.

[RockySullivan]

You don't think Mary Kelly is a victim of Torso?

[Errata]

You don't think Mary Kelly is a victim of Torso?

I think it unlikely. I think if she had been she would have been dismembered. Abdominal flaps are not unusual. It's really the only way to expose the entire contents. That in and of itself is not significant.

[Batman]

Why did the ripper put one breast under Kelly's head and the other by her right foot? I'm going to go out on a limb here...and say it's fairly clear that torso killed Mary Kelly. Do the mutilations say he knew the victims? Were the dismemberments not done to hinder id, but because torso liked cutting people up? I feel that taking part of the body and placing them around the room show a very similar deranged mind to cutting up bodies and spreading them around London.

A sadist of the lust killer type follow some behavioural patterns. At a young age violence and sex fused in abnormal ways. Arson. Animal torture. This isn't a science. It is just a soft social study with some common patterns. They don't really help the investigation. They are just not surprising elements to the persons pathology. What this means though is that they don't think normally about some things. If I asked you what is it like to be a bat you might have some ideas but ultimately you can't really know. In the same way we can't really know either what these individuals are thinking because the whole stimuli thought process is psychologically wired differently to us.

There is really nothing cryptic to the way the mutilations occur. Most of what you are seeing with the placement of the victims body parts in places are given the term 'ritualistic' and form the murderers signature. Parts of the ritual and done subconsciously. For example the placement of the intenstine horizontally to the side, organs to the left or right. This is all done just to move forward quickly. We can deduce where the killer was by the placement of organs in Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly's case. That's all that is about.

So apart from the semi-conscious ritual there are the more conscious focused parts. The overall focus is on reducing their female properties. The less they look like a woman the more the killer has achieved an objective of sorts. It is a dehumanizing thing to do to someone. It is also sexual. How can any normal thinking person understand that though? It is very unlikely JtR had sex with them. He likely couldn't. I once heard a suggestion that the knife can be described as a phallic replacement psychologically. The thing is, this gets us nowhere in terms of anything really other than just putting us in some sort of 1st person perspective of the killer's mind. What's it like to be a bat?*

I think 99% of time the subconscious stuff is what reveals things about a person like this. Traits and quirks might be found there. Stuttering. Left/Right hand use. Handwriting. Words and phrases. Stuff like that is much more interesting IMO

Batman

*What's it like to be a bat is a very good paper by Nagel on problems within questions about the philosophy of consciousness.

[RockySullivan]

Batso, most serial killers who target prostitute are their biggest customers. Do you think the ripper wasn't a john who frequently patronized prostitutes? Do you see the similarities between liz Jackson & Mary Kelly?

[Batman]

Batso, most serial killers who target prostitute are their biggest customers. Do you think the ripper wasn't a john who frequently patronized prostitutes? Do you see the similarities between liz Jackson & Mary Kelly?

Yes I agree. However I don't think it is a necessary criteria. I would accept a Ripper suspect that was sexually dysfunctional (more of the psychological rather than physical type) that didn't sleep with prostitutes, but knew prostitutes. I am inclined to accept the FBI profile that JtR didn't rape his victims.