Ripper Victim?

[Jeff Leahy]

Harry,

But at least in the case of the soldier, we do have a suspect who was at the right place and at the right time and a lead that was subject to serious police investigation.
That is the only evidence of a suspect we do have in Tabram's case - everything esle is just fairytales and personal speculations.

All the best

Do we. Almost every Batalion in London was on leave that night. Hardly surprising there were lots of drunk soldiers on the Street..The fact that one was seen in a place frequented by prostitutes is about as suspicious as the copper himself doing his beat..

Pirate

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Jeff,

That is rubbish. yes, every Batallion seems to have been on leave that night but that actually increaees the chance for a soldier being the perpetrator, not the opposite, especially since Pearly Poll and Tabram earlier that night appear to have been serving other soldiers already.

I am sorry, but a soldier found outside the crime scene at the right time of the murder to occur - and the soldier himself saying that his associate had gone off with a girl - is too much of a coincidence to me. Apparently also for the police at the time who investigated this and found it to be an important lead.
At least in that case we have an indication of possible suspects instead of an imaginary fellow born out of fanciful theorising.

As for your other posts above, one get the imprerssion that the Ripper was guilty of any assault on women in the area from Emma Smith onwards, which of course is nonsense.
Pointing out the differences in style is not a matter of semantics but actually common sense, since it would be natural for serious violent crimes and sexual assaults to occur in such an environment. Prostitution has always been - and still is - one of the most dangerous occupations in the world and these women, now as well as today, would tend to attract the occasional abnormal person amongst their clients.
There are no compelling evidence for that Millwood, Smith or Tabram were victims of the Ripper.

All the best

[Sam Flynn]

Laid out?

As for her body position [it is] probably among the most common elements we see in any murder and deriving from natural or practical reasons. It is a mistake to interpret it as anything else.

Indeed, Glenn. Consider these casualties, felled on the battlefield of Gettysburg:



... Jack the Ripper's dad at work? Or just a perfectly natural position in which to find a corpse?

If it weren't for the number of men, the absence of cobble-stones, and the foreknowledge that this was an American Civil War photograph, we could almost be in Mitre Square.

[adrian]

Not only can you read our excellent interview on the Tabram killing with Jon Ogan there is also a highly interesting editorial on this vexed subject.

As I said before, and I suppose it was the publication of this special edition of the Whitechapel Society Journal that started this debate, we have more interesting articles in our February edition on the Tabram killing which also look at the location of George Yard itself and we publish rare pictures and maps of the area.

Well worth getting hold of this edition to bring clear issues thus raised so far in this thread.

https://www.whitechapelsociety.com

ADRIAN.
(Editor: Whitechapel Society Journal)

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Sam,

Indeed. Great point.


adrian,

Interesting. Thanks for that info.

All the best

[Chava]

Quick question Gareth:

How were those men killed? I don't see any blood, so I don't think they died in hand-to-hand fighting. If they were killed by the percussion of a bullet or a cannon balll, I'd expect them to look like that. The force would blow them back off their feet.

However no such force was at play in George Yard Buildings. Whatever propelled Martha to the ground, it certainly wasn't a minie ball.

As for the 'frenzy'. It's over-kill. Probably took quite a while. I imagine the killer spent as much time with Tabram's body as the killer did with Nicholls' body one way and another.

[Sam Flynn]

Chava,

It doesn't much matter whether those soldiers were shot, "exploded by bang", bayoneted, or had their throats cut. They flopped down in a number of different poses, some of which resemble those of the Whitechapel Murderer victims. This is just as one should expect, for every human's skeleton is based on precisely the same pattern and follows the same rules. A body's configuration is dictated by where the joints can bend, as joints have only limited freedom of movement.

In short, barring broken limbs, there are only so many ways in which a corpse can lie on the ground.

[adrian]

Another interesting article we have in our Martha Tabram edition of the whitechapel Society Journal is an article by the historian and ex-army man, George Fleming.

In his article; Soldiers and bayonets George discusses wider the aspects that cover such tools and their injuries. It is an interesting article that will undoubtedly inform.

https://www.whitechapelsociety.com

ADRIAN.
(Editor: Whitechapel Society Journal)

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Exactly, Sam.

Chava, I think sam's point with that example was to show that they had been killed in another way than what's relevant for the Ripper murders and they STILL could be found in this body position.

Again, this body position is among the most common ones in any murder regardless of instrument or approach being used. Only in my crime manuals there are several examples. They are seldom a result of a deliberate placement in the majority of cases.
The same with uplifted skirt, which I've seen numerous times in cases where women have been murdered and ehere there have been some exual implications in the circumstances of which the crime occurred.

All the best

[Chava]

Chava,

It doesn't much matter whether those soldiers were shot, "exploded by bang", bayoneted, or had their throats cut. They flopped down in a number of different poses, some of which resemble those of the Whitechapel Murderer victims.

Actually, Gareth, it does matter. If those poor men were lifted off their feet and thrown through the air with force, their arms and legs would extend, their bodies would straighten, and then they would hit. The body straightens out in the flight back. Tabram was found in a cramped landing. No chance for that body to fly through the air. I would expect to find her doubled over to protect her body.

[Sam Flynn]

Actually, Gareth, it does matter. If those poor men were lifted off their feet and thrown through the air with force, their arms and legs would extend, their bodies would straighten, and then they would hit.

If it takes some sort of "force" to make a body fall in that "Gettysburg" manner, every hospital administrator in the country had better get their lawyers lined up pretty sharpish.

Tabram was found in a cramped landing. No chance for that body to fly through the air.

Room enough to fall on her back, though - whether she was alive or dead at the time.

If she was hanging over a bannister, with one leg bent behind her shoulder blades and both index fingers shoved up the contralateral nostril, you'd have pretty much a copper-bottomed case for arguing that her body was "posed". As it is, her body was in a perfectly natural configuration when it was found - barring the lifted skirt, of course, but a pretty "normal" position for a corpse otherwise.

[Fisherman]

Robhouse writes:

"So if then, as you say, there was only one wound in the lower portion of the body, (apparently a three inch incision 1 inch in depth, which sounds to me more like a cut than a stab) would you agree then that this was in the private part? Or do you think that Swanson was in error when he wrote this?"

Couldnīt say, Robhouse - Killeen speaks of the lower body, there is a mentioning on his behalf that the groin area was targetted together with breast and belly, Swanson speaks of private part - and we are dealingwith Victorians...
What I would say, is that if there had been a number of stabs to her legs, I dont think that Killeen would have omitted that sort of evidence. Andhe seems pretty clear on the point that there was only one wound to the lower body. Placing it exactly, however, is not a simple thing to do. To guess that it would not have been too far away from where the reproductive organs are situated does not seem a foolish thing to do, however. Thatīs why I am very interested in that wound.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Well whadduyouknow? Ben actually found time to engage further in this thread, in spite of his exhaustion with it! How civil of you, Ben. It is of course slightly LESS civil to speak of me rotting in my grave, but there you are - you do as best as you can, and when your arguments fail, you sometimes resort to such things. Oh, well...

"The only thing that annoys me is when people think that the winner of the argument is the person with the loudest voice and the longest posts."

Then smack yourself, Ben!


I will try to be a little bit shorter and a little bit more civil. Since you really are not adding anything of value, that should be easy enough. Here goes!

"she lacked evidence of extensive brutalisation with the knife, such as Tabram and the later "canonical" victims received, and there is simply no possible justification for the argument that objects inserted into the vagina followed by abdomenal slashing is more of a transition than stabbing to stab/slashing."

Itīs less of a transition, actually. That is what I have been trying to tell you all along. Look at it this way: If we have a guy who runs insurance scams, what are we looking for? A guy with a box of matches in his pocket? Nope. We are looking for a man who destroys property he has previously insured. If he chooses to finish his wooden house off with a bunch of termites, he is just as good a suspect.
You, Ben, prefer Tabram over Smith since Tabram was knifed. But the knife, Ben, is and remains secondary to the interest in the reproductive areas - for the knife is not per se the interest; it is solely a means of reaching for the interest. And if the knife is not used to obtain any of the things we know the Ripper showed an interest in - cutting necks and opening up abdomens - then there is nothing at all involved that points to the Ripper. It points to possesion of a knife and a a lack of restraint on the holders behalf to inflict violence with it - and not a single thing more.

You say, Ben, that you "have an easier time lumping him in with the majority of serial killers who demonstrate diversity in their murder/mutilation methods rather than deciding that JTR must have been one of those incredibly rare, robotic serial killers who must conform, Hollywood-like, to a rigidly consistent technique". You are welcome to that wiew. It may be right and it may be wrong in Jackīs case. But the fact of the matter is that we only have a handful of deeds that are commonly acknowledged as Ripper deeds, and these all have those robotic traits. And no matter how much of a need you feel to add more attacks and victims, the things we must look for with such victims are the exact interests and focuses that the Ripper swore to in the ackowledged Ripper deeds. And that does not mean that we are first and foremost looking for men with knives. Nor does it mean that we are first and foremost looking for violent men. Therefore, when we find a woman that has been stabbed to death, showing no focused interest in cutting necks and/or eviscerating, we have NOT found a victim that by any sound argument belongs to Jack the Ripper.
The priority list we may use after having read up on what the Ripper did to his victims looks like this:
1. Victims who have had their abdomens opened or show signs of such an interest.
2. Victims who have had their throats cut.
3. Victims who have suffered cuts to other parts of their bodies, or who have been stabbed with a clear focus on the lower abdomen or the neck, in that order.
4. Victims who have been stabbed in other parts of their bodies.

Thatīs how it goes and thatīs how it stays, Ben. And that is why people keep telling you that Tabram is a lousy match. She of course neednīt be - but her candidacy rests heavily on the cut to her lower abdomen, and not on the fact that she as one of many, many women had the bad luck of running into a violent man with a knife.

The best,
Fisherman

[robhouse]

Fisherman,

Fair enough. I would only add, regarding your comment "Killeen would have omitted that sort of evidence" that Killeen need not have omitted anything. The newspapers are (to my knowledge) the only source of Killeen's testimony, and several of those leave out any mention of the wound in the "lower portion" of the body? So as to what else they ommitted, I can't say.

Also, where does Killeen say "that the groin area was targetted together with breast and belly"?

Thanks

Rob H

[Fisherman]

Robhouse asks:

"where does Killeen say "that the groin area was targetted together with breast and belly"?"

I did it the lazy way, Robhouse, and qouted from the Tabram page here on Casebook, where it says "According to Killeen, the focus of the wounds were the breasts, belly, and groin area". Itīs in the sources, but since Iīve seen it a thousand times, I have not bothered finding the exact source.

The best,
Fisherman