Was it really two blades?

[perrymason]

...but was she conscious whilst all this was going on, Mike? Remember the effusion of blood between the scalp and the bones of her skull. Remember, also, her propensity for fits.

Thats a great point Sam,...which raises the question why would someone keep stabbing a body that had slipped into unconsciousness? Surely by that time the person had enough wounds to succumb to them eventually, maybe sped along by exposure.

Thats why one last final stab with a large weapon makes some sense,...no need to struggle and stab furiously, she cant resist....finish her off finally. The question is does the same man do both acts....furious pen-knife stabbing at a struggling woman then changing to a sternum puncturing dagger or bayonet for a single final blow?

I say no, but I also believe Killeen could gauge wounds.

Cheers Sam

[Sam Flynn]

I say no, but I also believe Killeen could gauge wounds.

It rather depends on the exposure he'd have had to this sort of wound, Mike. I doubt that Killeen, nor many police surgeons today for that matter, would have had much opportunity to study stabs that penetrated a breastbone.

[The Good Michael]

I think he killed her with the large knife (not a bayonet), and then pierced her rapidly with the same knife at a shallow depth. If he wanted a lot of rapid piercings, for whatever reason, he would have found it nearly impossible to thrust a large knife into her 38 times, extricating it from bone, sinew, and muscle each time, without being extremely exhausted. It was much easier to quickly go up and down, much like putting holes in a pie crust. The depth of penetration would have been very minimal, and it was.

No way did one man carry two knives, and the thought of two men doing it is unlikely to me. Killeen didn't say he knew what had been done. He said he thought a knife was used and a dagger or bayonet. Why? Well a dagger has a double-edge, I suppose and is used for plunging into someone, whereas a knife is used for slicing. Both can do either job, especially on a slab of meat, which is what Tabram apparently was to the killer.

Mike

[Sam Flynn]

Both can do either job

Interesting to note, in this context, that skilled Chinese chefs use a rectangular cleaver for many different cutting/chopping purposes. Not that I'm suggesting that a rectangular cleaver was used on Tabram, nor that the killer was a skilled Chinese chef

[The Good Michael]

Gareth,

That reminds me of the TV show, Iron Chef, LVP.

Back to the blades: I wonder if Killeen looked at the wounds and thought about what he would use to make them, and not what was possible?

Mike

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:

"I can't for the life of me fathom why a killer would stab someone the heart with a bayonet (say) and then NOT continue to use the bayonet to inflict the rest. You could have some major "puncture fun"with a bayonet that sharp, so why switch to a pocket-knife?"

That is a fair point, Sam. As you know, I am of the meaning that the larger blade came into play not before, and maybe it can be argued that the killer was not happy about the smallish wounds but wanted to see bigger´uns...? Not that I endorse such a wiew myself.
Another take on things could perhaps be that if the deed was somehow premeditated (which I do not believe either), then it could be argued that the killer may have felt he needed a big blade to kill with, but a small one that would be more nimble for the task of eviscerating. Of course, if this was the original plan, then something went terribly wrong.

All musings that does not sound very credible, I know. But I am of the meaning that two blades most assuredly were used, and since I hold that wiew, I do believe that we must look for an explanation - and you know what it looks like in my version! Two knifewielders - but NOT simultaneously; one of them with annihilation only on his mind, but the second one with a budding agenda of eviscerations.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"If he wanted a lot of rapid piercings, for whatever reason..."

For whatever reason indeed, Mike...?

"he would have found it nearly impossible to thrust a large knife into her 38 times, extricating it from bone, sinew, and muscle each time, without being extremely exhausted. It was much easier to quickly go up and down, much like putting holes in a pie crust."

Then let´s begin by asking ourselves how many frenzied, annihilating killers with knives in their hands make it a point not to get tired during the stabbing: Correct - none.
And I think you have hinted before at the possibility that maybe there was no frenzy included? Would that make it probable that it was our boy that mistook Tabram for a pie? Or would we be dealing with another creature altogether? And if there was no frenzy, what does that tell us about the cut, placed in an isolated surface together with no other wounds? Was that just a pie-crust thrust too? And if it was, and not something dealt with the normal stabbing savagery, then how come it came out as an obvious cut?

"The depth of penetration would have been very minimal, and it was."

This I dispute strongly, as you know. We are speaking of three inches plus, perhaps four, as far as I understand. A pierced spleen, pierced lungs, pierced liver and pierced stomach bears witness of something that can never be referred to as reflecting a very minimal depth of penetration, Mike! Moreover and once again, the problem remains that a "daggerlike" blade that penetrates that deep WILL give away a width that surpasses that of a pen-knife in 99 cases out of a hundred. And in case number hundred, where we have a comletely uncommon dagger or bayonet with a very small width, perhaps a pen-knife width of one third of an inch, we would get the same kind of entrance hole in BOTH trunk AND sternum, meaning that there would not be any difference between the blades for Killeen to comment upon. In which case we would not have had this discussion.
Those who argue that Killeen may have meant that the only difference in the two types of wounds would have lain in the fact that the sternum blade must have been stronger than the smaller blade have nothing to gain either; "stronger" won´t do the trick on it´s own, since if the sternum blade was only stronger but not bigger, then why would Killeen say that the smaller blade could not have penetrated the breast-plate WHEN HE HAD PROOF TO THE CONTRARY BEFORE HIM?
Nor would only "longer" clear things up, since a long, thin blade need not be shoved in to it´s full length. So if the sternum thrust differed from the others in depth only, there would have been no way for Killeen to assert that it was not just one and the same blade.

In fact, this means that we can rule out that the thrust through the sternum had set off a hole that was comparable to the ones in the trunk. It must have been significantly LARGER (that´s the bot about "long and strong" again), quite simply, and it must have tallied NOT with a pen-knife-like bayonet or dagger, but with a heavy, sturdy, broad instrument, completely incomparable to the pen-knifish weapon.

And, like I have said before, it did not take a very skilled doctor to measure the differences and come up with a verdict. Killeen may have been comparatively fresh, he may have felt under pressure, he may have had a bad day. Similarly, he may have been an extremely competent physician, he may have excelled at the inquest (the coroner was very pleased with him, it would seem, and he may have had the sharpest day of his career that day. Either way, he would not have had any trouble at all measuring depth and width of the respective wounds. And obviously, they were very much unalike.

One killer with one knife is the likeliest alternative up only til then point when you can establish that such a proposition is unviable. After that, we know we are not looking at exhibit number one in the catalogue of knife violence murder victims.
A killer with two knives is not impossible at all, especially not if there was premeditation. Two killers with one blade each is also viable. The two killers arriving at different points of time? Of course, that moves us further back in the catalogue. But on which page do we find pie-crust stabbers?

The best, Mike!
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Fisherman, minimal compared to the 1 deep thrust. Not minimal as far as damage.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"minimal compared to the 1 deep thrust. Not minimal as far as damage."

See what you mean, Mike; deep enough to pierce her inner organs, but not deep enough to give away the true character of the blade, is that it?

If so, we are still handling the pack of problems I posted earlier - if the blade only travelled, say, three and a half inches in, and if the blade was smallish enough at that part to leave an impression in the breastbone that makes us able to opt for a choice of just the one blade being used - then why did not Killeen do just that...?

There is a very understandable wish about to turn Killeens two blades into just the one. It would facilitate things immensely, and it would put us on dry land statistically. But it remains nothing more than wishful thinking as long as we have Killeens steadfast assertion, never even entering on the suspicion that something, somehow could have resulted in a misinterpretation on his behalf - he was dead sure. The blade that caused the smaller wounds COULD NOT have inflicted the one through the sternum. It was an impossibility. That decision on his behalf is as good as any worded claim that the hole through the breastplate was larger would have been. We do not get the exact measures, but we DO get an assertion that leaves us with no doubt - that wound looked distinctively different, and, given the fact that the expression "long and strong" and the estimation dagger or bayonet was made, I think the only reasonable deduction is that it was much larger than the other entrance holes.

The best, Mike!
Fisherman

[perrymason]

Heres what I believe is a very plausible answer for this dilemma...and it does have some circumstantial support....

A drunk soldier loses his cool with a prostitute after she maybe tried to cheat him, or mocked or insulted him, or maybe hurt him physically....whose to say he didnt take the pen knife from her?.... His physical reactions are like many of the soldiers who come home from Wartime today...overly tweaked towards aggression and violence in dispute resolution.....he stabs her with a pen knife over and over again, as she slumps to the floor, he slows and stops....kneeling or sitting beside her now unconscious body...(as per Sam's idea ),.... his mate comes round the building, sees his chum with blood all over his hands and cuffs, the woman unconscious but still breathing, .....he pulls out a large knife to mercifully and finally kill the woman so when they leave they know her breathing had ended and she would not be resuscitated to testify against them someday.

The pen-knife stabs arent 38 individual attempts to kill Martha, they are exasperated expressions of rage....but the single stab with the dagger bayonet was to cause the end of life immediately.

Mikes idea that the large stab was first is really negated by the fact that Killeen said that all the stabs were made while she was alive...that single large blade stab was enough to kill.

Cheers Mates

[The Good Michael]

Mike,

Yeah, we talked about that scenario a few years back and it ties to the soldiers scenario. I don't believe anyone had a bayonet, however, and a single blade could do all the damage regardless of what one thinks Killeen said. If it was two men, the soldier idea seems the most likely. One man doing it is more logical. If we go with that, it must be one blade or some madness that is impossible to account for.

Cheers,

Mike

[lynn cates]

off the wall

Hello. Permit an off the wall, flaky solution.

Imagine, if you will, Martha being done in by a quick bayonet thrust from a drunken (perhaps insulted) military man. He flees, horrified by his action. Moments later, a seemingly docile young scholar with a sexual fetish--recently exacerbated (careful with that word) by pornography use, comes upon the scene. She's dead so, why not? Perhaps he received the final satisfaction he craved and would later need to initiate this on his own.

Of course, a scholar/school master would probably carry a pen knife. But, to implement this on his own at a later date, he would need to know just a bit about dissection. So some skill would be needed. It would help if there were surgeons in the family.

But why would a chap from Blackheath be in Whitechapel? Maybe just visiting?

Lynn Cates

[The Good Michael]

Druitt didn't do it.

Mike

[perrymason]

Mike,

Yeah, we talked about that scenario a few years back and it ties to the soldiers scenario. I don't believe anyone had a bayonet, however, and a single blade could do all the damage regardless of what one thinks Killeen said. If it was two men, the soldier idea seems the most likely. One man doing it is more logical. If we go with that, it must be one blade or some madness that is impossible to account for.

Cheers,

Mike

Hi Mike,

I dont think that Im of the opinion that it was an actual bayonet either, but I do adhere to Killeens voiced opinions on the differences he noticed with one stab wound as compared with the many, many others. I have to believe that some of the pen knife wounds by their damage were full deep stabs to the length of the blade being used, some would be shallow because frenzied stabbing will inevitably cause erratic wound shapes and depths, but I believe we have 2 weapons here.

Soldiers to me seem a likely prospect, and we have her in the company of one of 2 near midnight, and 1 of 2 is seen near George Yard by a patrolman more than 2 hours later...supposedly waiting for a chum who was with a girl/woman at the time.

If we accept Killeen...and I see no reason on paper why we shouldnt, then we have one man with 2 knives, or 2 men with at least 1 knife each....or we have Martha with a pen knife that is taken from her by a single man with only a dagger on him.

That last one is my second choice, the 2nd is my first.

Cheers Michael

[Fisherman]

Lynn Cates suggests:
"Imagine, if you will, Martha being done in by a quick bayonet thrust from a drunken (perhaps insulted) military man. He flees, horrified by his action. Moments later, a seemingly docile young scholar with a sexual fetish--recently exacerbated (careful with that word) by pornography use, comes upon the scene. She's dead so, why not? Perhaps he received the final satisfaction he craved and would later need to initiate this on his own."

All of the wounds would have bled, Lynn; that would have been why Killeen was sure that the wounds were inflicted during life. And if the thrust through the sternum came first, and your scholar arrived some time later, then her blood would have had stopped flowing, and Killeen wouls not have asserted us that Tabram received all wounds while alive.

Michael writes:

"A drunk soldier loses his cool with a prostitute after she maybe tried to cheat him, or mocked or insulted him, or maybe hurt him physically....whose to say he didnt take the pen knife from her?.... His physical reactions are like many of the soldiers who come home from Wartime today...overly tweaked towards aggression and violence in dispute resolution.....he stabs her with a pen knife over and over again, as she slumps to the floor, he slows and stops....kneeling or sitting beside her now unconscious body...(as per Sam's idea ),.... his mate comes round the building, sees his chum with blood all over his hands and cuffs, the woman unconscious but still breathing, .....he pulls out a large knife to mercifully and finally kill the woman so when they leave they know her breathing had ended and she would not be resuscitated to testify against them someday.
The pen-knife stabs arent 38 individual attempts to kill Martha, they are exasperated expressions of rage....but the single stab with the dagger bayonet was to cause the end of life immediately."

Could be right, Michael; but how do we account for the cut to the lower abdomen? And why did the soldiers not communicate? It was a silent deed, byt the look of things. Of course, they may have kept their voices low, and the cut may have been a stab gone wrong - but it does not sit all that well with me ...

The best,
Fisherman