Did Mary know her killer?

[Wickerman]

Didn't Harvey originally claim to visited Kelly at her home only to change the story to Kelly visited her house?

I wouldn't be too eager to blame Mrs Harvey, what may have happened is that the press had the wrong time.
The telegraphed report (the same in every newspaper) gave "seven thirty" as the time she was with Kelly, but there is a Star report that gives us "shortly after eleven o'clock".
Seven thirty could be a misprint for eleven thirty.

"As far as has been at present ascertained, the murdered woman was last seen alive shortly after eleven o'clock on Thursday night by Mrs. Harvey, a young woman who was on intimate terms with her, and who lives in New-court, Dorset-street. Mrs. Harvey says Kelly was at that time going home alone."
Star, 10 Nov.

We don't have to assume every mistake is due to a witness lying!
There are often other causes

[Vincenzo]

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?

That's part of his MO. He took great risks in just about all of his murders. Chapman and Eddowes were extremely risky. Israel Schwartz and the guy with the pipe likely saw him attacking Stride. I think the risk was part of what got him going.

[RockySullivan]

Didn't Harvey originally claim to visited Kelly at her home only to change the story to Kelly visited her house?

[Michael W Richards]

Hi errata, I've read that one theory was liz Jackson might have been dismembered on the embankment to the river. Were there any secluded enough spots for this. She may have been dossing there.

How do we know Kelly wasnt going to be cut apart and packaged up in the clothes that were burned? If torso was the ripper does him throwing away the organs mean they weren't taken as trophies in rippings?

As for truck stop killer...maybe he had a partner ?

One thing that has to be considered when looking at the Kelly murder is the possibility of a goal that includes an intention of dismemberment. The only other murders that fall into that arena are the Torso murders.

Marys right leg, her head, and her right arm at the shoulder are all severely wounded and in the first 2 cases, the wounds then allowed access to the joints.

This thread asks a question which can be addressed quite easily depending on your belief about a single question....if Mary allowed the person in at around 3:45, how could he not be known to her quite intimately?
After you ask yourself that, ask yourself what evidence there is to use in defense of a forced entry to the room? The windows and doors were all locked from the inside, no signs of forced entry, and there is no reason to believe that anyone aside from Mary, Barnett, Maria Harvey and it appears McCarthy knew of the window/latch access method. All of whom were well known to Mary.

Does the question seem a bit easier now?

Cheers

[RockySullivan]

Hi errata, I've read that one theory was liz Jackson might have been dismembered on the embankment to the river. Were there any secluded enough spots for this. She may have been dossing there.

How do we know Kelly wasnt going to be cut apart and packaged up in the clothes that were burned? If torso was the ripper does him throwing away the organs mean they weren't taken as trophies in rippings?

As for truck stop killer...maybe he had a partner ?

[Errata]

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.

The thing to remember about Elizabeth Jackson is that what was done to her was not necessary. Which is a rather obvious statement, but we tend to divide such things up as either necessary or err... recreational. But we're wrong. There is a whole spectrum that we tend not to take into account. Nobody needs to cut up a body that small to get rid of it. But that doesn't mean he did it for fun. He may have needed the pieces that small to transport them to get rid of it. Say he needed to be able to tuck them under his arm to walk to the river. It's evidence of poor planning, because next time kill someone closer to the dump site, but not evidence of some sort of fetish. Or he may have had no idea that it's far easier to sink a body by tying the whole think to a rock. He may have thought smaller pieces would sink faster. Poor grasp of physics, but not fun for him. He certainly did not render the corpse the way one would expect if he had a dismemberment fantasy. Dividing the trunk doesn't go with that. That's pure disposal. And wrapping the limbs for transport makes sense, even though using her clothing was a bad idea. But that could equally be a bad idea or a sort of twisted joke.

And the organ removal may have been necessary as well. He can't very well walk around with an open chest cavity and hope that the contents don't slip out behind him like bread crumbs. Because so much of what was done to Liz Jackson was unnecessary, but possibly for a "good" reason, it's very hard to tell what exactly he was after when he killed her. The only thing that does not at all touch upon disposal is the removal of the fetus. And I admit from the description it sounds like her skinned her abdomen. Now it could just be because the description was vague and there might actually be a reason for that, but I doubt it. The only thing we know for sure he was after was the fetus.

Everything done to Mary Kelly was purposeful. The killer may not have completed some parts, but it was not out of necessity. It was out of desire. This was recreational. Nothing that was done to her was necessary for his escape, for disposal, etc.

We had a serial killer of truck stop prostitutes. We caught him, he implicated himself, he was convicted. Creepy guy. They were investigating him for 12 other prostitute deaths along his route. They were all raped, tortured, shot, and disposed of like trash. Well it turns out that we ruled him out of five of those murders. Murders that were on the surface identical to what he did. But he couldn't have done them. He wasn't in town when they happened. And two of the murders were cleared because DNA cleared him. Now they are still looking at him for about 7 other murders, but apparently beating truck stop prostitutes with a nightstick, cutting on them, wrapping a plastic bag around their faces, shooting them with a .22 and tossing them in a dumpster is more common than anyone thought. And that's a pretty specific way to kill. And apparently, it's not unusual for there to be up to 50 other deaths attributed to a serial killer that he had nothing to do with.

So unless we can figure out what the Torso Killer was actually after, and what was part of his fantasy and what he just perceived was necessary, we don't have a lot to on. Not like Kelly.

[Michael W Richards]

Not only did mary not venture out again after blotchy, she was never planning to.

And she knew her killer.

Although I obviously agree with introduction, and can only imagine what you might be alluding to in the secondary point, but since we often disagree I thought I support your position that Mary never left the room.

Cheers

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[RockySullivan]

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

[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]

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]

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.