torso maps

[RockySullivan]

Like I said, Rocky, it's not that important for the reasons already mentioned.

I asked for an example of an sk who killed sex workers in London in the 19th century and you provided so thank you very much. I am just curious if Jack is the first

[Abby Normal]

I asked for an example of an sk who killed sex workers in London in the 19th century and you provided so thank you very much. I am just curious if Jack is the first

you mean the Torsoripper. ; )

[Abby Normal]

Have a look at the Mad Butcher, or the Cleveland Torso Killer as he is also known.

http://www.clevelandpolicemuseum.org/collections/torso-murders/

Considering how much the butcher changed up his mo I don't understand why sometimes dismembering woman and packaging them up and sometimes decapitating males, post mortem mutilation of genitals and leaving them outside in fields is acceptable modus operani variation but the ripper/torso variations are not.

Hi Rocky and Frank

exactly rocky. Serial killers can change there MO up drastically, especially under differing circs.

just off the top of my head:
BTK mainly strangled but sometimes shot.

The recent GSK bludgeoned and sometimes shot-and geographically was all over the place.

Carl Panzram did everything every where.

Zodiac went from shooting to stabbing to shooting-changed victimology even-going from killing couples to a cab driver!


And Frank O in terms of risk-Bundy went from attacking girls in there rooms to a highly planned ruse in public and back to the most extreme risk at the end by rampaging in a sorority house!


comparing these the apparent change in MO between Torsoman and the ripper is nothing. both basically post mortem mutilation and removal of body parts.

[John Wheat]

for someone who thinks Bury is the ripper (as you know hes one of my favored suspects too) I would think you would be amenable to a changing MO based on the killers personal circumstances!

I do but why would a dismemberment killer suddenly start killing outdoors and ripping throats and abdomens?

[Sam Flynn]

I do but why would a dismemberment killer suddenly start killing outdoors and ripping throats and abdomens?

Indeed, and why would a killer who dismembered his victims in a leisurely manner over a period of more than a decade suddenly decide to publicly disembowel a handful of women in a blitz lasting a few weeks? Why would a dismemberment killer who killed, dismembered and dumped most of his victims in West London suddenly decide to disembowel women in East London?

The two series were clearly not the work of the same person. The differences are just too many, and too great.

[RockySullivan]

Indeed, and why would a killer who dismembered his victims in a leisurely manner over a period of more than a decade suddenly decide to publicly disembowel a handful of women in a blitz lasting a few weeks? Why would a dismemberment killer who killed, dismembered and dumped most of his victims in West London suddenly decide to disembowel women in East London?

The two series were clearly not the work of the same person. The differences are just too many, and too great.

The torso killer went through a lot of trouble to spread his victims all over town in an attempt to hinder the identification. That took a place to kill, a place to dismember, clean up and then packaging the body parts into parcels. After which the dispersal and disposal required either a cart or a vehicle. There's a lot of work and risk involved in that process. The less time the Ripper can spend with the victims the better his chances. The dispersal was a risky process. The killer eliminates the need for a location and the dispersal by approaching a victim in a dark alley quickly murdering, eviscerating and removing the organs. The Ripper was on a murder spree in the fall of 1888 and the Whitehall torso fits right in nicely in the timeline.

How do you explain the variation in the Mad Butcher case?

Why would a dismemberment killer who killed, dismembered and dumped most of his victims in West London suddenly decide to disembowel women in East London?

Or why would he dump on Pinchin st when it's right by Berner street?

[Fisherman]

The two series were clearly not the work of the same person. The differences are just too many, and too great.

No, they are not.

The differences - although they are decidedly there - can be bridged. But the similarities really cannot be explained away. And that´s where the significance of the subject dissimilarities/similarities lies.

Once we have killings being committed in an area that can easily be covered by a single killer (and London is such an area, there is nothing to suggest that the geographical area involved is too big for one killer only to cover it - not by any strech of the imagination), and that overlap in time (and these two series do just that), then a case can always be made for a possible common originator.

What governs which path to take is the issue of similarities/dissimilarities. If there are no similarities (something you seemed to, somewhat exotically, argue in the post of yours I answered), then much as it may STILL be the same killer (William Heirens had three victims, he killed one woman by knife, then shot the next woman and finished off by strangling a six year old girl - who he also dismembered, speaking about dismemberment being something that tells us that any not dismembered victims must be by another hand!), the probability of more than one killer is very obvious.

But when we find similarities, a common originator becomes more likely the more similarities we find, and the same thing applies the more unusual these similarities are.

Two serial killers who both took out hearts on occasion, who both took out uteri on occasion, who both targetted prostitutes, decidedly in some cases and possibly in all of them, who both cut the abdomen totally open on occasion and who both cut away the abdominal wall on occasion in the same area and in overlapping periods of time are logically out of question.

That does not happen. Not then and not now.

What there is learoom for is the sound - although in this case unneccesary - scepticism that will rule out being too sure about matters and risking getting it wrong.

Such a thing can sometimes be helpful. But taking that scepticism to a level where it is flatly DENIED that the two series actually can have been by the same man is intellectually untenable. And to take a step further and call those who speak for the logical view people with closed minds is not only rude but also completely bonkers.

The two series in all likelihood had the same originator and no sensible research can work from the opposite assumption.

[Fisherman]

Why would a dismemberment killer who killed, dismembered and dumped most of his victims in West London suddenly decide to disembowel women in East London?

This is the kind of stuff that we really need to keep away from a sensible discussion.

There can be no knowing that the torso killer killed and dismembered his victims in West London.

All we know is that he dumped most of them there. But that does not automatically mean that they were killed and dismemebered there.

The Pinchin Street torso was in all probability cut up close to where it was dumped, since the assumption was that this torso was manually carried to the dumping site.

If the killer dismembered all his victims in one and the same place, then that means that they would all have been cut up in the East - and then normally transported to the West for dumping.

There are things we know. And then there are things we dont know. And then, sadly, there are things claimed as if we did know what we can´t know.

Let´s do it right, and avoid that.

[Sam Flynn]

Don't be absurd, Fish. Nobody is going to kill in the East End and transport the dismembered remains the best part of ten miles to the West in order to dump them in the Thames or on land.

[John Wheat]

Don't be absurd, Fish. Nobody is going to kill in the East End and transport the dismembered remains the best part of ten miles to the West in order to dump them in the Thames or on land.

Certainly not in the 1870's and 1880's before motor cars were prevelant.

[Sam Flynn]

Certainly not in the 1870's and 1880's before motor cars were prevelant.

Quite so. Furthermore, there were many other potential dumping sites in the Thames closer to the East End, without having to travel all the way to Battersea Bridge.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Don't be absurd, Fish. Nobody is going to kill in the East End and transport the dismembered remains the best part of ten miles to the West in order to dump them in the Thames or on land.

They would have had to have been mad and to have had access to transport, say a deranged Carman for eg Gareth

[Fisherman]

Don't be absurd, Fish. Nobody is going to kill in the East End and transport the dismembered remains the best part of ten miles to the West in order to dump them in the Thames or on land.

The only absurdity involved here is when you state as a fact that the torso killer killed, dismembered and dumped in the West. It is inventing facts out of thin air, and that IS absurd.
Where a dismemberment killer chooses to dump his victims and the reason for picking the spots utilized are matters we cannot predict - or solve in retrospect with no hard evidence at all. Many killers have dumped bodies and body parts far away from where the victims were killed.

I have suggested before that the combined Ripper/Torso killer was a man very interested in press coverage. Dumping the bodies out in the far West and letting the Thames take them through the greatest metropolis on earth would be a very useful way to make himself and his work advertised.

[Fisherman]

Quite so. Furthermore, there were many other potential dumping sites in the Thames closer to the East End, without having to travel all the way to Battersea Bridge.

He arguably travelled further west than that, Gareth. And he DID travel! He spread his parts over a large area of London. Why would he do that, if he had a safe place to dump from in the West? Why visit new spots and choose new dumping sites?

Because, perhaps, the dumping of the parts had a significance and/or a purpose to him?

[Fisherman]

Certainly not in the 1870's and 1880's before motor cars were prevelant.

Tell me, John; if todays serial killers with motor cars choose to transport body parts in their cars to a dumping site - how does that materially differ from the concept of taking the parts by horse and cart to a dumping site in the victorian days? It is not as if this killer had to drive fifteen hours to get to the West End by horse and cart, is it?

So what is it you are trying to say? That the victorians were uninclined to use their transport means in any criminal activity?