Location of Annie Millwood's attack

[Ginger]

Thanks for taking the time to do that. I appreciate it. I hadn't considered the issue of weighting the results by including multiple related events.

The reason I'd consider the graffito to be of greater significance than the apron fragment, at least for this purpose, is that the graffito was definitely the result of a conscious decision-making process, and would have taken IMHO at least a minute to have written. If the writer was in fact the murderer, then for the time it took to write that, he stood exposed on a public street engaged in an incriminating activity. Whether or not he ever consciously considered the matter of why the location felt safe or attractive to him, I have to think that his criteria for choosing the general area for the deed would have been the same ones he used for choosing murder locations. I say 'general area', because in the matter of the graffito, a victim didn't need to be present, which was a factor operating in the choice of exact murder locations that wasn't present here. Nonetheless, I think the general areas for murders and graffito would have been chosen similarly.

It's in this matter of risk-taking and deliberate intent that I think the graffito excels the apron fragment as evidence of where the Ripper (if indeed it was he who wrote it) felt safe. The apron fragment could have been casually or surreptitiously tossed aside where it was found. It's the act of a second, and discarding it in that fashion is arguably less risky to the killer than retaining it hidden upon his person. The location where it was jettisoned, by itself, therefore says little about Jack's sense of the place as safe. If he wrote the message, however, then he did so either while in possession of that fragment of apron, or having just thrown it to the ground nearby. That's definitely a risky behaviour, and where he would do that says something about his perceived areas of safety, just as where he committed murders does.

Edit: I was actually wondering if the location of the graffito, considered as a crime scene, would radically distort the results. It doesn't seem to. I certainly accept that the Ripper passed by this way, as shown by the presence of the apron fragment. For the reasons outlined above (and the fact that it could have been dropped accidentally), that doesn't really speak to whether Goulston Street was a 'safe' place to him in the way that the graffito (if his work) does.

[Sam Flynn]

Hello Ginger

The location of the apron is, I'd have thought, as relevant from a geographical profiling perspective as its owner's dead body in Mitre Square. The apron's being dropped in the doorway, in itself a conscious act, says "Jack was 'ere" even more than the graffito does, because we don't know that the latter was written by the killer. For that reason, certain loopy theories aside, the presence of the apron in Goulston Street is a sure marker of where Jack was at some point after Eddowes' murder.

[Ginger]

Hello Ginger

The location of the apron is, I'd have thought, as relevant from a geographical profiling perspective as its owner's dead body in Mitre Square. The apron's being dropped in the doorway, in itself a conscious act, says "Jack was 'ere" even more than the graffito does, because we don't know that the latter was written by the killer. For that reason, certain loopy theories aside, the presence of the apron in Goulston Street is a sure marker of where Jack was at some point after Eddowes' murder.

Hi Sam

I'll certainly stipulate that the apron fragment marks a place where the Ripper passed, and that he was almost certainly on his way home, or to a place of refuge, after having murdered Eddowes. There is, of course, a non-zero chance that it was carried by a dog or some other agency to its final location, but I think the odds of that are so low that it can be safely lumped in with the loopy theories. Beyond a reasonable doubt, then, the Ripper left it at or within a few feet of the place where it was found.

The evidence that this forms a meaningful act on Jack's part is rather less compelling, I believe, and all the moreso when we exclude the graffito from consideration. Were it left by the message to show its provenance or just to draw attention, that's obviously a meaningful act. If he had simply finished using it and tossed it without really thinking (as I believe), or even dropped it without realizing that he had done so, then it carries no message from the killer - it simply documents his presence, like an animal leaving tracks. If that's the case, then it doesn't form a valid data point for Jeff's mapping algorithm, since its location tells us nothing about the killer's perceptions of where it would be safe to leave evidence.

Now, the thing is, IF the Ripper wrote the message, then the message is the true data point for the limited purpose of determining the Ripper's 'safe zone'. Writing a message definitely shows intent. It shows a place, just like the murder locations, where he was familiar enough with the area that he felt at home there, and safe leaving evidence, but not so close to his actual dwelling as to invite undue scrutiny.

That's why I formulated my question to be about the message rather than about the apron. That's what I had on my mind at that point. My initial belief was that the graffito wasn't written by the Ripper, and if including it in the data set radically distorted the results, I was going to take that as pretty good evidence that the graffito (a deliberate act) wasn't the Ripper's, AND that the apron piece had been thoughtlessly discarded or accidentally dropped (as opposed to deliberately placed) as Jack was leaving his killing zone. We got the opposite result, of course.

On balance, I still believe that the graffito wasn't Jack's, and that the apron placement really shows nothing more than a place that he passed. It happens to be deeply enough inside his killing zone that it doesn't distort the pattern, but I think that's still weak evidence for deliberate placement. Jack liked to shock people, and I think that had he intended a message, it would have been rather more dramatic. That's perhaps prejudiced thinking on my part, but I think on balance of evidence that it's likely to be correct.

[JeffHamm]

Hi all,
Have made a couple of improvements in the profiling routines, just some slight modifications that have improved the performance a bit. I thought I would have a look at how the various choices that have been suggested at one time or another influence the resulting profiles. So I started with the C5, then added Tabram, then Millwood, then McKenzie (the inclusion of Millwood is speculation that if Jack is responsible for Tabram then Millwood looks like an early failed attempt. One of the contemporary views was that Tabram was definitely part of the same series, while McNaughten, for one excluded her. I can't recall who at the moment, but one of the Doctors (Phillips maybe?) didn't think Eddowes was by the same person. Today, of course, there is debate around Stride. And as then, some now include McKenzie as well. So, I thought I would try some of those combinations.

I've listed the output for the suspects in the order they ranked as per the C5 plot (which shows their location by the box next to their ranking number - not sure how visible they are here though). Note, Chapman, at number 13, was not actually living at this address at the time of the C5, but was to the south east on Cable street. That's off the map. I've left him on it just so people can know where he eventually was. I believe there is some question around Tumblety as well. And Druit is only speculated to have access to the location indicated.

Anyway, I've also made a couple modifications to the visualization. Zone 1 is now yellow, but the magenta/pink bit in the centre of it represents the highest 1% (each zone is 5%). Zones 2-4 are in the orange areas, and this helps highlight some of the secondary peaks of interest. Zones 5-8 are a lighter shade of red, again, to aid in detecting where lower peaks may be occurring (and, when the contours are drawn in, that helps to quickly work out what zone you're looking at; I left the contours off as shrinking the images to post them here degrades the image and the contours look awful.

Anyway, here are the zone scores for the various outputs, which are shown below. Note, Sagar's suspect falls in the top 1% priority zone for the C5, which is what the asterisk is indicating.

In short, while things shift around, as one would expect, the overall pattern is pretty stable in that it remains in the Western area. The biggest shift is when Stride is removed, and personally that, and the secondary peak over by Nichols, have always interested me as good places to look. Curiously, none of the suspects have the decency to locate themselves there.

Oh well. Enjoy.

- Jeff

C5 +Tabram +Millwood C5+TMMc C5-Stride C5-Edd
Sagar’s Suspect (*1) ( 4) ( 5) ( 4) (13) (48)
Levy .................( 2) ( 3) ( 4) ( 2) (13) (36)
Barnett .............( 2) ( 1) ( 3) ( 3) ( 2) (13)

Druitt ...............( 8) (20) (14) (14) (19) (81)
Hospital ............( 9) (13) (18) (17) (17) ( 9)
Bachart ............(13) (12) (16) (12) (38) (56)

Hutchinson .......(11) ( 2) ( 2) ( 2) ( 8) ( 1)
Tumblety ..........(14) ( 8) (25) ( 22) (60) ( 6)
Peabody House .(16) (15) ( 7) ( 8) ( 7) (25)

Cohen .............(19) (12) (18) (21) (46) (33)
Pizer ...............(25) (21) (25) (26) (70) (19)
Kosminski ........(28) (27) (32) (31) (65) (35)

Chapman .........(30) (12) (11) ( 9) (41) (23)
Kaminsky .........(34) (35) (36) (35) (45) (55)