Was Mackenzie a copycat?

[lynn cates]

resemblance

Hello Jon. Thanks.

"The Birtley boy was influenced by the Ripper. There is nothing about the victim, injuries, weapon and location of the murder that resembles the Ripper."

That was the eventual assessment. But so I may say of MANY of the WCM.

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

I fail to see how Eddowes of Kelly can be in any sense a "copycat." Both of them were far more gruesome than any previous murder, and that's not so much a copy, as one-upmanship.

If you want to murder someone, and cover it up by making it look like it was done by a serial killer, you are going to copy the serial killer's crime meticulously, not go all meat-grinder on the body. You run the risk of the police thinking someone else did it, because the previous killer never did anything this gory.

Do a little Googling-- I think you'll find that, if anything, copies tend to be less gory than the original murder scenes.

Also, carving designs on the face strikes me as something a killer does to a stranger. The facial mutilations in neither case were intended to hide the victims' identities-- they were for fun, I'm pretty sure, mainly because they seem to be symmetrical, and not random: I've seen the cuts on Eddowes face described as a "clown face"-- I don't know that I'd call it that, but I understand what people mean. The killer had a look in mind, and it just seems like it would be harder to project that onto a face that is familiar; a stranger would present more of a blank canvas.

I'm not even getting into how a killer would treat someone he knows vs. someone he doesn't know, vis a vis being willing to obliterate a familiar face-- although for what it's worth, Eddowes' face wasn't obliterated, and while to us, it looks like Kelly's is just a mess, it might not look that way to the killer, because he spent some time carving the skin just so, until it looked the way he wanted it to look (making an assumption, but bear me out). If all he wanted was to obliterate, he could have smashed it in with the kettle.

[Phil H]

Thanks DVV - I meant STRIDE of course, not Eddowes.

[DVV]

Sigh

In the case of Kelly, and perhaps Eddowes, what I have in mind is a killer seeking to hide his domestic murder as the Ripper's work, by imitating what he has read in the press. So not copy-cat per se, or influenced, but deliberate at second hand.
Phil

Domestic murder in Mitre Square.

It gets better.

[RivkahChaya]

If De Salvo ad not been caught, some casebookers would see a dozen of different killers behind his crimes.
And that's just an example among many.

Well, there was almost certainly more than just De Salvo involved. or so i have been informed by some diehard afficionados.

LC

The pattern of the murders attributed to a "Boston Strangler" were several murder-rapes of middle-aged to elderly white women all in 1962 They were all strangled with their own nylon stockings, or other personal items, like bathrobe cords, except for one woman, who died of a heart attack during the rape. Then, in late 1962, through 1964, several very young women, all under 25, both black and white, were murdered, and most of them were raped. The first two young women, in spite of being young enough to be the granddaughters of the first set of victims, were considered part of the same cluster, because they followed close in time, and were also strangled with nylon stockings.

There were two middle-aged to elderly women murdered during the second cluster, but one was stabbed and beaten. The second one, however, was raped and strangled with nylons. One of the other "second cluster" victims was murdered without being raped, and she was stabbed, and beaten around the face. The very last victim was beaten and strangled with nylons.

Albert DeSalvo confessed to all the murders, and so once he was sentenced to life for other crimes (serial rape), the police closed the books. He had prior convictions for rape and assault as well. However, he was never actually tried for the murders and rapes of any of the women, and a lot of the police at the time didn't think all the "Boston Stranglings" were committed by one person. That was a public perception fueled by the press.

The current belief of the Boston police as well as the FBI is that The first cluster of murders was the work of one person, and he may have committed one of the second ones, with the reason for the time gap unknown. The young women who were raped and strangled were the victims of a second killer who copied the "Boston Strangler's" MO, but not victimology, and two of the second cluster were a burglary that was interrupted, and a domestic violence case-- the two stabbings/beatings without sexual assault.

It's worth noting that the first cluster of nylon stranglings almost certainly were done with stocking that belonged to the victims, and at any rate, used nylons, while the second victims appeared to be strangled with new nylons the killer brought with him.

Also, the age gap is not just a "there will always be an oldest and youngest" sort of thing. The range of ages of the young victims was 19-23, and the old victims was 55-85. So they really look like two sets of victims. About the only thing they had in common was that they were women who were home alone, who were attacked in their own homes. That's less odd than it might seem to us now, back when a lot of women were home alone during the day, and they let salesmen, and delivery people in pretty regularly.

FWIW, there were strangle-murder/rapes in the Boston area after DeSalvo's arrest, but since the press assumed that the Boston Strangler was in custody, the murders weren't reported as part of the "Boston Strangler" series of crimes.

[Jon Guy]

Hello Jon. The "Birtley boy," as you call the Beetmore slayer, is a prime example of a contemporary copycat. People were despatched from London to investigate.

And Beetmore is CLEARLY more like a "JTR" killing than Liz was.

Thanks Lynn.

The Birtley boy was influenced by the Ripper. There is nothing about the victim, injuries, weapon and location of the murder that resembles the Ripper.

Of course, they had to send someone to view the body.

If you read up on the Birtley murder you will see what I mean.

[lynn cates]

Beetmore

Hello Jon. The "Birtley boy," as you call the Beetmore slayer, is a prime example of a contemporary copycat. People were despatched from London to investigate.

And Beetmore is CLEARLY more like a "JTR" killing than Liz was.

Cheers.
LC

[Abby Normal]

Copycats, in the sense that they mirrored crimes, didn`t exist.
They may do now thanks to Hollywood and celebrity.


Can anyone provide a contemporary example of a copycat killer?


Yes, there are the feeble minded who are influenced but one that mirrors crimes, and not just make a random slash as an after thought like Bury or the Birtley boy.

Any Victorian examples please?

I agree completely Jon
I don't know of any killer who tried to make his own crime appear to be the work of another specific killer to deflect blame. In that way I believe that the term copycat does not exist in actuality.

Now of course it is not uncommon for a killer to make a crime appear to be for a different motive like robbery when his real motive was jeoulosy to thow off police. But that is called staging.

Certainly killers as you say can be influenced by other killers as in they have heard about them and wanted to try it too.

I think that mckenzie was either a ripper victim who was interrupted or unrelated and it just appears by chance to be ripper like.

[Michael W Richards]

I think the point regarding the use of skin flaps by Mary Janes killer is really about how the press and the specific details they published about some of the earlier crimes may have influenced actions taken by the killer or killers in later murders. I believe that to be a real possibility myself, perhaps in 2 cases within the Canonical Group.

The issue of the thread is does Alice resemble a Ripper style murder, ..and I would think the answer uniformly should be yes, perhaps with a measure of caution,.. but in general, it does. Its why the Police mobilized their forces once again in a Ripper sized investigation. But perhaps they didnt do so with thoughts that this was the same man that killed the previous Fall...certainly Bond didnt think so. And weve all read the various statements that suggest he was either incarcerated, drowned or institutionalized before Alice was killed.

In essence we have evidence that the contemporary officials must have believed that the actions taken with Alice resembled the actions taken by Jack. But does that mean it was intentionally done?

I think that question and the same one concerning Mary Kelly, and perhaps Kate Eddowes, can be addressed in this manner......it is clear that the murderer of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were likely the same person, and the objective of the killing seems to have been to mutilate the freshly made corpse. More specifically, the midsection or abdominal region. Forget about the argument about whether he was after specific organs for a moment and just focus on the objective here,... the cutting open of the murder victim.

If we were to suppose that a man sought out women so he could mutilate them after he kills them,... then how many men are we to suppose also shared that exact same dysfunctional perspective to address the similar, but non-Canonical, murders?

My guess is that even among killers this pm mutilator fellow was unique,.. a unicorn among horses. So acts that were performed on victims not attributed to Jack, but very similar in style and victimology, were either accidentally so, or intentionally so.

I opt for B.

Cheers

[GregBaron]

Influence or copy?

Thanks for the examples, Gregg. Appreciated. Examples will be few and far between.

But did Bundy copy Schaefer down to details like the positions of the bodies when found or was Bundy just killing two people in one day cos he`d read about it?
Isn`t this more a case of being influenced rather than a copycat?

This I'm not sure about Jon and you may indeed be correct. He had in fact
read about it in a detective magazine...but from what I recall he did try to copy the details...

I think our copycat idea here is of the type of hoping another will be blamed
for one's crimes...I can think of no examples of this off the top..



Greg

[Phil H]

In the case of Kelly, and perhaps Eddowes, what I have in mind is a killer seeking to hide his domestic murder as the Ripper's work, by imitating what he has read in the press. So not copy-cat per se, or influenced, but deliberate at second hand.

Not a theory, not definite, just a possibility I hold in mind.

Phil

[Jon Guy]

Thanks for the examples, Gregg. Appreciated. Examples will be few and far between.

But did Bundy copy Schaefer down to details like the positions of the bodies when found or was Bundy just killing two people in one day cos he`d read about it?
Isn`t this more a case of being influenced rather than a copycat?

[GregBaron]

Copycat mentality...

Can anyone provide a contemporary example of a copycat killer?

Bundy copycatted John Gerard Schaefer on his double Lake Sammamish murders..

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Long Island killer is copycatting Green River..
Copycats exist but not in great numbers..

By the way Jon, I’m offering these examples but I generally agree with your overall thesis..

With all the talk of differences in the murders, I've yet to hear a valid
motive, sans psychopathy, for the brutal murders of street walkers...


Greg

[Jon Guy]

The "coincidence" I had in mind was simply that there are only so many ways to dissect a body/remove flesh from it, and the killer of Kelly may just have happened to do things in a way reminiscent of the killer of Chapman.

Kelly`s body mirrors Chapman body.
Maybe, Kelly`s head is turned the other way but otherwise it`s a mirror image
Even the left hand is placed in the same place.

If it`s just a case of "there are only so many ways .." have you got another example, intestines over the right shoulder ete etc ?

[Phil H]

Missed this

What, one of the biggest coincidences in the history of violent crime you mean? Surely time could have been a factor that allowed the killer of Chapman to do what was done to Kelly.

The "coincidence" I had in mind was simply that there are only so many ways to dissect a body/remove flesh from it, and the killer of Kelly may just have happened to do things in a way reminiscent of the killer of Chapman.

Phil