Ripper Victim?

[Tom_Wescott]

Thanks, Sam. And for some reason, I read 'Nichols' in your post to Jeff when I should have read 'Tabram', which is why I mentioned the stays. Please disregard. We seem to agree that Jack is more like the patient fisherman while Tabram's killer is the guy throwing dynamite in the lake.

BUT...could Jack have been Man #2 in George Yard? The man who inflicted the singular wound to the heart?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Fisherman]

Slightly spooky, Tom - our posts crossed, and look what we have...!

Of course he could have been - add one more wound and you´re there!

The best,
Fisherman

[Chava]

Hello all,

Michael hits on something when he says 'great rage'. That does appear to be quite evident in the murder of Tabram. It was a very clumsy murder. We would expect his next murder to only slightly less clumsy. But is that what we get?

Wolf Vanderlinden and other authors have utilized the 'cuts' to Polly Nichols' abdomen as evidence of a 'transition' between the stabbing killer of Tabram and the cutting killer of Chapman and co. I believe this is completely wrong as the awkward cuts to Polly's stomach are indicitive of a someone trying to work his knife up under her loose stays...which were obviously not loose enough for his purposes. What we DON'T see in the Nichols murder is any evidence of rage. He did not lose his temper and start cutting away at her body. He quietly abandoned her, probably when he heard Cross approaching. In the following murder of Chapman, having learned his lesson, he cut through her clothes.

I think from this it's pretty clear that Nichols was the first woman he attempted to disembowel with her clothes on. Probably the first woman he attempted this on at all. But also it doesn't seem like a first murder. So, it is possible he killed Tabram, but the evidence strongly suggests two different personalities.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Tom, I would agree that many stabs indicate great rage. But with respect I would put forward the suggestion that 39 stabs goes beyond rage into something else. We've all seen unfortunate women killed in various horrendous ways during a 'domestic'. But I don't think I've come across one with as many stab-wounds as that. 20 stabs= rage. 39 stabs=? I've no idea! Someone as transformed with anger as that would be unlikely to focus the blows as tightly as apparently this murderer did.

I think, if Tabram had had multiple stab wounds but <20, I never would consider her a Ripper victim. I'm still not certain she is. But this many stabs is extremely unusual. So that would be another 'unusual' murder of a destitute prostitute in the right place at the right time etc etc.

[Sam Flynn]

Thanks, Sam. We seem to agree that Jack is more like the patient fisherman while Tabram's killer is the guy throwing dynamite in the lake.

Indeed, Tom - and we like patient Fishermen, especially on Casebook

BUT...could Jack have been Man #2 in George Yard? The man who inflicted the singular wound to the heart?

I wouldn't have thought so, Tom. Firstly, I don't think Tabram was "double-teamed" and, secondly, a meek plunge into the heart doesn't particularly fit with Jack's later style either. My guess is that, if Jackie-boy had been involved at all, he'd have surveyed that great dome of a belly poking out of Martha's uplifted skirt and sailed his blade through it a good few times before leaving the scene.

[perrymason]

Hi John,

Im unsure of what you meant by your post...suffice to say I do know who coined the phrase...I often dont bother with the surnames and titles if I believe its someone we all should know.

Tom...I liked the post, staying objective...which is more than I can say...and leaving the door open.

Heres maybe an appropriate analogy I think...

Say its mid-Winter where you are...based on the known seasonal systems locally. Lets say last weeks weather went like this;

Sunday: Rain, 15 degrees C
Monday: Snow, 3 degrees C
Tuesday: Snow, 4 degrees C
Wednesday: Sunny, 20 degrees C
Thursday: Light snow, 10 degrees C
Friday: Sunny, cloudless, 17 degrees C
Saturday: Heavy snow, 2 degrees C, - 13 windchill.

Does Rain on Sunday mean that its likely Spring has begun early? Was it still Winter on Wednesday...even though the climate is far warmer and quite different? Does the appearance of warm temperatures again on Friday mean that Winter is ending sooner than expected now, and does that affect how we retrospectively see Mondays high temperatures? Can we conclude that the air systems are alike on each of those 7 days..even though the season itself has not changed but the days temperatures varied?

Wednesday when something new is seen is an example of something occurring within a set period of time that is known to be incompatible with the expected norms. It is however an event that changes nothing about what season it is, or anything that we know about the other days of the week and their temperatures....its an isolated case of weather that was unexpected, within a time frame where we would assume the weather would be much different.

The Season has not changed due to the appearance of those weather anomalies, they are just that.

Jacks victims 1, 2 and 4 are like the season "Winter" in the above scenario...acting as expected on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday., (Polly, Annie and Kate), ....the anomalies are Martha as Sunday, Liz as Wednesday, and Mary as Friday....with Alice rounding off the week as a more likely fit than either Stride or Kelly...based on the expected seasonal temperatures.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday clearly demonstrate anticipated regional climate for the time of year....and nothing that happens on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday has any influence at all on how we perceive that very predictable and well documented Seasonal category. Its still Winter.

We dont re-categorize the Seasons based on the appearance of some isolated non-seasonal weather each year.

Jack the Ripper killed women by subduing them without a sound or struggle...before using any knife, he cuts the throats and then begins to mutilate their abdomens.

Thats his fixed "Season" figuratively,.... and a murder by stabbing within the same period is like a warm weather day in the middle of a known cold Season....thats all.

So Marthas murder seasonally speaking is a Spring Event during the Winter,... and in this case the comparison of her murder to ones done that Spring before Jack was about, is appropriate.

Best regards TW, all.

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:

"and we like patient Fishermen, especially on Casebook "

Now isn´t that funny!

Fisherman
patient as ever

[Natalie Severn]

Hello all,

Michael hits on something when he says 'great rage'. That does appear to be quite evident in the murder of Tabram. It was a very clumsy murder. We would expect his next murder to only slightly less clumsy. But is that what we get?

Wolf Vanderlinden and other authors have utilized the 'cuts' to Polly Nichols' abdomen as evidence of a 'transition' between the stabbing killer of Tabram and the cutting killer of Chapman and co. I believe this is completely wrong as the awkward cuts to Polly's stomach are indicitive of a someone trying to work his knife up under her loose stays...which were obviously not loose enough for his purposes. What we DON'T see in the Nichols murder is any evidence of rage. He did not lose his temper and start cutting away at her body. He quietly abandoned her, probably when he heard Cross approaching. In the following murder of Chapman, having learned his lesson, he cut through her clothes.

I think from this it's pretty clear that Nichols was the first woman he attempted to disembowel with her clothes on. Probably the first woman he attempted this on at all. But also it doesn't seem like a first murder. So, it is possible he killed Tabram, but the evidence strongly suggests two different personalities.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Some challenging ideas here Tom and I think you are onto something important.
In another post I mention the killer Robert Napper currently serving life in Broadmoor.He committed a murder 15 years ago ,outdoors,on a young mother, by numerous stabbings [49 I think it totalled]which appeared to be "frenzied" like Martha Tabram"s did..
In a subsequent murder of a young mother, he stalked her,duped her into opening her door by pretending to be someone he was not and killed her instantly in the hallway of her flat.Then he killed her four year old child.
This indoor murder bore many similarities to that of Mary Kelly,in that he mutilated her grotesquely and removed her internal organs and spread them about the room and made off with some of them.

This man,also known as the "virgin rapist" because of earlier assaults in the open air on women,is thought to have committed many more unsolved murders in London,in the past twenty years.He changed his behaviour and modus operandi ,possibly depending on whether he was in the open air or not.

However,doctors have determined he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia,he certainly suffers delusions which have been described in British papers.But it is unlikely that when he committed the murder of Rachel Nickell he was anything other than cool and determined to kill her in exactly this way.It is most unlikely he was "angry" or in a "frenzy" of any kind----unless you call such psychosis a "frenzy".

[Tom_Wescott]

Chava and Natalie,

I think Natalie's term 'frenzy' is far more appropriate than rage. I think that's what we see in the Tabram murder. Excessive stabbing is not all that rare in these kind of murders.

Sam and Fishnet,

I cannot at all buy the idea that Jack happened to stumble upon a dead body and stab her. I think he was either her killer or not, and probably not.

I think Ben has made a lot of good points, so I'm certainly not going to 'battle' him on this topic. Tabram is a frustrating grey area. But the evidence between her murder and Nichols' does not suggest the same killer.

Rob, et al,

Yes, Nichols had two stabs to her privates, which were also the probable result of his attempting to work his knife up under her stays in the dark. It's not hard to see how that could happen. Had they been intentional, I imagine they'd be more than small stab wounds.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[perrymason]

I would think its fair to try and fit a square peg into a round hole...or tossing incongruous acts with ones that are consistently performed....I dont think its fair to try and re-shape the peg with a "knife" to make it fit though....

Stabbing to kill is infantile on the killers sophistication scale...excising organs intact is in an entirely different league.

There are no "killer" baby steps between Martha and Polly and eons of differences evident...even the level of sophistication itself.

If you want to make Orange Juice, you squeeze oranges...not just any round fruit handy.

Best regards

[perrymason]

Sam,

Tom's suggestion that a 2nd man may have been in play can be supported by the appearance of two separate weapon wounds, and that we do not know at this moment whether she was choked while being stabbed....a feat near impossible, while keeping the victim quiet, by one man alone.

Cheers Sam

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Mike,

Like Tom, I don't buy at all the idea of Jack stumbling on the body. Neither do I believe that there were two men involved - whether both collaborated in her death, or one killed her and the other came along afterwards.

[Fisherman]

Tom writes:
"I cannot at all buy the idea that Jack happened to stumble upon a dead body and stab her"

Fair enough, Tom. On a side note, I do not think that she would have been dead at that time, since Killeen tells us she lived through the stabbing.

I have initiated a thread some time ago called "Scavenger or predator", and my feeling is that Jack would have chosen the former whenever he could. Of course, London was not littered with stabbed women on tenement landings, and that simply forced him to add the actual killing to his agenda. But we have no evidence telling us that he enjoyed that part - in fact, he gets it overwith as fast as he can, implying to me that it was of no actual significance to him.
We also see how he preyed on the most vulnerable types of women, at least from the outset; if Tabram was his and if it went down as I suggest, she is the prime example, but the stupendeously drunk Nichols and the sick and frail Chapman make nice examples of this too. Then, as his confidence grew, he stepped up a little to Eddowes, who I feel could have potentially offered a little more resistance.
But the bottom line remains that his interest lay not in killing, not in inflicting pain, but instead in finding the easiest prey possible - and to that end, Tabram would have offered a superior opportunity.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:

" Neither do I believe that there were two men involved - whether both collaborated in her death, or one killed her and the other came along afterwards"

And that is because you have come up with nice solutions to the problems of why he used two weapons and why there was a cut-like wound in an area in which he professed no other interest, namely...?????

The best, Sam!
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

And that is because you have come up with nice solutions to the problems of why he used two weapons, namely...?????

Soldiers often carry more than one weapon. Butchers often carry more than one knife.

and why there was a cut-like wound in an area in which he professed no other interest

... can't see what that has to do with there being more than one person, Fish. If the "other" was particularly interested in lower abdominal mutilations, why weren't there more, and why was there only one titchy cut?

[Fisherman]

Sam writes:

"Soldiers often carry more than one weapon. Butchers often carry more than one knife"

Yes, Sam. But why use them both in a deed of frenzy...? That remains a riddle, does it not?

"can't see what that has to do with there being more than one person, Fish. If the "other" was particularly interested in lower abdominal mutilations, why weren't there more, and why was there only one titchy cut?"

Because there was no more time offered - he was spooked/interrupted. The main thing is that this particular wound would have been a strange one if it was a single stab to the lower body. But on top of things it is a single CUT to the lower body. That remains a riddle, does it not?

Fisherman
riddle-solver