torso maps

[John Wheat]

Not allegedly - they ARE a similarity. We know that they were cut from Chapman, Kelly and Jackson. How they looked and their exact sizes, we don´t know.
But when a victim has the text "killed by X" written in blue ink on the forehead, we don´t exclude a connection when victim number two has the same text - but in red ink.

Yes but not being there at the time we don't know how similar the flaps were.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It is said that very strange things can and do happen, and that this should allow us to accept a possibility of two killers.

Fine.

It´s the leap from accepting a random possiblity to proclaiming it as fact that is is actually the more probable solution that worries me.

I’ve never said that it’s a fact Fish. The massive differences make it more probable that there were two killers for me. I’m not the one that takes the ‘you must be ignorant or biased’ to hold this opinion.

[Ben]

Apologies for that, Fish!

Hope you’re well.

[Fisherman]

Hi RJ,

I’m pleased to see that my response succeeded in dissuading you from your previous intention to abandon our discussion, even if it was at the expense of your morning coffee.



I’m afraid this is where I do the bluff-calling and question the extent of your knowledge and research into Victorian gas lighting, the light-emitting powers of which varied considerably during the latter half of the 19th century. Did you look at the video I shared? Do you understand the difference between a freeze-famed image, to be scrutinised at leisure for eternity, and an event that lasted a couple of seconds.?



But even if you allow the maximum in each case, the chances of Hutchinson being able to discern a colour, let alone a pattern, were obviously very remote. It was only possible to get so close to the lamp, which was mounted high on the wall, considerably further away from the couple that your red cloth was to your light source.

We know where Hutchinson said he was standing - at the corner of Commercial and Dorset Street, 120 feet away from the entrance to Miller’s Court. I’m afraid we don’t get to do a Jon and “manoeuvre” him any closer, just to give his credibility a much-needed boost.

No, the circumstances are not known with absolute certainty, but even the most generous “stretching” and conceding does not make it remotely likely that Hutchinson was able to register the colour of such an small object, produced but for a fleeting moment, all that distance away, and in those lighting conditions. And that’s not just my opinion either.

I wasn’t confident that you would retract your attempt to call my “bluff” in the Bundy case, but I do think it’s important to clarify my position regarding Hutchinson:

I have never claimed that Hutchinson must be regarded with suspicion because his actions and movements that night constituted “standard” serial killer. All I’m saying is that he can’t be dismissed as one on the grounds that he came forward voluntarily. Serial killers have come forward voluntarily for various reasons. Nor can he dismissed as a suspect for loitering outside the crime scene shortly before that crime occurred; serial killers have loitered outside their crime scenes beforehand.

Equally, however, innocent parties have come forward with fantastic and implausible tales (usually for money or publicity), just as some people have loitered near a crime scene without having anything to do with the crime itself.

Hutchinson is simply of interest to me because there is evidence that he was seen at the crime scene and later gave a less than honest account of his reasons for being there. Not “standard serial killer behaviour” but behaviour that warrants suspicion.



Nah.

He wasn’t “stuck out on the streets” at all, and even if he was, anyone so stuck would have tried to rectify their predicament as quickly as possible, rather than engaging in a prolonged vigil of pointless voyeurism.

All the best,
Ben

P.S. The American-cloth wrapped parcel that Astrakhan grasped so “tightly” (how could he possible tell? Could he spot the veins in his hands too?) was indeed reported as “dark”, not “black”. Sorry about that, my bad. I wouldn’t have thought it made a huge difference.

I think you got the wrong thread there, Ben.

[Ben]

Sorry guys, I posted on quite the wrong thread. As you were...!

[Fisherman]

Right so the Flaps are a similarity allegedly.

Not allegedly - they ARE a similarity. We know that they were cut from Chapman, Kelly and Jackson. How they looked and their exact sizes, we don´t know.
But when a victim has the text "killed by X" written in blue ink on the forehead, we don´t exclude a connection when victim number two has the same text - but in red ink.

[John Wheat]

Do try and get it right. I don´t think the flaps ver exactly similar at all, on the contrary - if they had all been shaped the exact same way, it would have ended any discussion of one or two killers.

What I say is that the flaps were a similarity per se - victims from both series suffered them. And that means that any suspicion of a similar originator has a large and important amount of confirmation in them.

Right so the Flaps are a similarity allegedly.

[Fisherman]

It is said that very strange things can and do happen, and that this should allow us to accept a possibility of two killers.

Fine.

It´s the leap from accepting a random possiblity to proclaiming it as fact that is is actually the more probable solution that worries me.

[Fisherman]

It was superficial anyway. I find it very hard to believe that a true evisceration serial killer wouldn't have "followed through" with the knife to get at the innards.

If his true aim was to get at the innards, then you have a case.

But what if it was not? You keep telling us that the torso killer only eviscerated in ONE proven case, so why would you require the Pinchin Street torso to be eviscerated? Your guy normally does not do that, does he?

If we look at the Pinchin Street torso as a woman who had limbs cut of and who had a wound added that directly led the thoughts to opened up abdomens and Ripper murders, then we get a different picture. As I say, I don´t think eviscerations were the only things the combined killer was into. I think he was interested in what could be done to the female body with a knife. And a saw, if he had such a thing at hand.

He disassembled women, first and foremost, if you ask me. In various ways.

[Fisherman]

The Ripper was an eviscerating serial killer, TK was a killer who removed heads and limbs but OCCASIONALLY eviscerated.

And there are examples of people who dismember only some of their victims. So that is no problem at all, I´m afraid.

[Fisherman]

And elsewhere he often uses "slips". Either way, they're not technical terms, neither are they specific. Furthermore, "large" is only relative; if the two pieces of flesh removed from Jackson's abdomen were large, then the three removed from Kelly's were enormous.

To be able to state this you must know the exact sizes of the flaps in each case.

Do you?

No, you don´t. Since you speak of your objectivity, you may need to be aware of these matters. You simply take it as a fact that Jacksons flaps were smaller than Kellys, but one fact is that there were TWO flaps from Jackson and HREE from Kelly. And since we have reports saying that the Jackson flaps made up the "abdomen of a woman", that seems to imply that the Jackson flaps may in fact have been larger than the Kelly flaps.

"May", that is - I am not one to try and make it look as if I knew. I only know that both women had their abdominal walls or significant part of them, removed in large flaps. Plus I know what that points to.

[Fisherman]

Not just like Chapman and Kelly. The number and nature of those infernal "flaps" were different in each case.

Two, three or four. That´s how different they were in numbers. As for the nature of them, you are welcome to describe how they differed - myself, I can´t. They can have been very much alike and they can have been not very much alike. Fact.
If they were exactly siilar in shape, it would be odd if the connection was not made back then, so reasonably, they were not twin-like. But that is of no material interest once we know that all three women had their abdominal walls removed to a significant extent by the removal of large flaps of flesh and subcutaneous tissue. Eye on the ball, please!

[Fisherman]

Do you know how to cut meat? Then you, too, can remove a uterus if you put your mind to it. Who knows, you might even do it more successfully and consistently than Jack the Ripper, whose mileage varied between victims.

Yes, anybody can -potentially - kill a woman and cut her uterus out.

But how many do? Next to nobody. It is really, really rare.

And that is what the discussion should focus on.

[Fisherman]

Bookmakers, barrel makers and surgeons. We are talking about an aberration, not a profession mr sholmes.

edit: seriously that's your argument? 2 barrel makers could operate a loom?

Two barrel makers COULD potentially operate a loom. That goes without saying.

It also goes without saying that if we have two murder cases in the same area and time that involve evidence of a barrel maker having been involved, operating a loom, then there is next to no reason at all to suggest that TWO barrel makers could have been involved.

That is what the whole discussion is about. Almost nothing is impossible. But some things are massively unlikely.

[Fisherman]

That if there hadn't been a "bump" there, the uterus might well have been left intact. Or, in other words, the removal of the uterus was effected largely as a by-product of wanting to remove the child, not as a "hysterectomy" in its own right, which was what happened in the majority of the Ripper murders.

It remains an unknown factor whether the killer of Liz Jackson took an interest in her because she was a woman or because she was a pregnant woman.

My own take on things is that the first matter was the primary one and that the second was something that further interested him. I don´t think that the flaps were cut because she was pregnant but instead for the same reasons that Chapman and Kelly had their abdominal walls cut away. To my mind, it had nothing to di with any practical considerations, but instead with the inspiration grounds for the deeds.

No matter what applies, we are left with the fact that we cannot say that the flap cutting was made for different reasons in the Jackson case as opposed to the Chapman and Kelly cases. But we CAN say that the measure is rarer than hen´s teeth and therefore clearly indicative of a connection.