Ripper Victims?

[Lechmere]

But was Le Grand responsible for any of the Torso murders?

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Malcolm,

You seem to know far more about what these disparate characters looked like in person than myself or anyone else in this thread, so far be it from me to disagree with you. However, if all these characters witnessed by people looked so darn different, then you must be suggesting none were the same man? That's possible to, since it should be remembered that no one saw a woman murdered, therefore, there are exactly zero known witnesses to the killer of any of these women. We merely have witness testimony of varying degree to men seen with the women before their murders. Some are more likely than others.

Now, if one were to argue that some of these men were one and the same, then it would be difficult to explain the different modes of dress, would it not? However, in my research of Le Grand and private detectives of that period, I've learned it was habit to have stashes of clothing placed about, as when following someone around town, a change of clothes or hat here and there would help keep someone from noticing they were being followed by the same man. It's also a matter of record that Le Grand had a varied wardrobe, which in fact did include nice coats, watch chains, gloves, etc. And obviously he could also mix in with the riff raff of Whitechapel, where he perhaps felt more at home. It's odd for you to say Le Grand never killed any body. He said he did, and given his record, I'd be amazed if he hadn't. I'm not speculating here, just stating facts, and that IF Le Grand were the Ripper, or the murderer of any of these women, you can bet your bum he'd have been prepared in a number of ways. That why I've said that when he's placed into the frame, all the minor (or not so) mysteries that plague each of the murders ceases to be mysterious. He's perhaps the only suspect who answers more questions than he raises, which makes him quite intriguing to me. But this isn't a Le Grand thread, so I'll stop there. As for Chapman, I really don't think he should even rank among the suspects. A 23 year old hairdresser poisoner? What a wuss.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Fleetwood Mac]

Sailor boy..... well as the term sais really, about 28, 5ft 8'', fair, scruffy, wind swept.... a brick layer, labourer, sailor, medium to stocky, but also in the possession of various hats/ jackets etc.

In the absence of anything better, I feel it has to be accepted that Lawende saw Jack.

1) Doctors's estimated time of death at 1.40 earliest.
2) Someone identified as Eddowes by Lawende was at the scene at 1.35 (or 1.38 if you go with Levy).

Not concrete, but convincing.

So, any theory has to match the description given by Lawende, give or take a couple of inches. My view is that a 5'11 man is outside the range of reason. He would have appeared to have been a tall fellow to Lawende (when stood alongside Eddowes).

[Malcolm X]

hi Tom

sorry i was a bit harsh maybe, but you know what i mean, because Pipeman appears about 40, taller and looking more like D'Onston.... more distinguished like a teacher/ senior clerk etc.

Sailor boy..... well as the term sais really, about 28, 5ft 8'', fair, scruffy, wind swept.... a brick layer, labourer, sailor, medium to stocky, but also in the possession of various hats/ jackets etc.

you see, broad shoulders/ sailor boy were seen on the same night as Pipeman and they are thus distinctly separate individuals, as are broad shoulders to sailor boy...... 3 men, but Pipeman also does not look like my LA DE DA, because he looks like a mirror reflection of G.Chapman.

so you can see how hard it is to fit your suspect into any of the last 3 murders, but this problem also applies to any other top suspect, that does not look like joe Barnett..... i think !

WHITECHAPEL is full of career petty criminals, be careful that you're not hyping up your suspect too far, because you need at the very least, proof that he's a violent person, especially towards women.

but hating women like Tumblety isn't enough, as you will understand, as is threatening letters to the police, or convictions for stealing watches etc.

[Malcolm X]

Le Grand was a professional, not an idiot. He would have had no reason to stand outside her room for an hour.



Actually, he quite resembles one of the descriptions of Eddowes’ man, being only two or three inches taller than the description. As for Kelly, I don’t know what evidence you value or don’t, but Le Grand owned nice long coats and wore a watch and chain when he wanted to. Jack the Ripper took organs with him, therefore had a private place. Where was Hutch’s private place? Hmmm? And did Hutch go six miles out of his way daily to be in Whitechapel? No, he was already there. If you want to talk levels of suspicion, Hutch is about a 3 and Le Grand a 10. One could argue that Hutch killed Kelly, if they want to go for that ‘she was a copy cat’ nonsense, but it would be an uphill battle to call him JTR. Either he was a sidekick to the real killer, or he was an honest witness, or he lied to gain celebrity and carte blanche treatment from the police. Those are your three choices.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

sorry Tom, but you're now talking rubbish and this is for the first time that i've ever known you, so that's about 10 years !

1....LE GRAND looks nothing like LA DE DA, who in turn looks nothing like Pipeman, or any other suspect seen close to a victim, the description of LA DE DA is unique...... he's a one off odd ball

2....GH was returning from Romford in Essex, so forget your `stay at home` 6 miles rubbish, GH lived right in the murder zone and by his own words.... was out that night stalking the streets, or as good as !.... it's more likely that JTR lived in the kill zone than he didnt, you can see the pattern.

3....the average sighting looks far more like Joe Barnett, than it does Pipeman, and your Pipeman is definitely not the Lawende suspect...FACT!
because for this to be so, Pipeman must have come along later, but due to the tight timing this is virtually impossible, thus for me and many others here ``sailor boy`` is the killer...... this description is very similar + or - 50% to the guy seen talking to Stride, it is also similar to GH, but your LE GRAND doesn't fit in at all..... nor does Tumblety/ D Onston/ kosminski or Druitt

4....someone called GH knew MJK and that is far more than you can say of LE GRAND, or any other top suspect

5.... your suspect is no stronger than Kosminski ... FACT ! he's a street criminal only that has never killed anyone, this is a far cry from a savage mutilator. JTR is far more likely to be G.Chapman than LE GRAND, who at least was a convicted serial killer and highly suspicious too.

[Ben]

Hi Lechmere,

I doubt very much that the killer intended to retain the organs for any appreciable length of time. Once safely inside the buidling, he could have made for one of the upstairs "cubicles", and conducted whatever sordid business he had planned for them there. Organ-taking serial killers often experiment with cannibalism, and this may well have been the intention of the Whitechapel murderer. The bedrooms may well have been closed during the day in the Victoria Home and similar establishments, but the same cannot be said of the kitchens, which were often situated below street level. The Victoria Home's own kitchen also boasted a "great fire". I don't suppose for a moment that the killer left anything of an incriminating nature either with the deputies or in the bedrooms when he was out.

Hi Tom,

I wouldn't say that Le Grand as Lawende's man is beyond the realms of "possibility", but his physical particulars would make such an identification somewhat unlikely, to my mind. Schwartz's pipeman was too vaguely described to be the spitting image of anyone, and whoever pipeman was, there is little reason to cast him in the role of Stride's killer, especially when there was another man physically manhandling her nearby.

Thanks for clarifying your belief that Le Grand inserted himself into the investigation out and self preservation, and to divert the investigation away from himself via a completely fictional suspect. I certainly can't fault such reasoning, as it is precisely the sort of behaviour that we've seen other serial (and one-off) killers resort to. If true, it would imply that he went about it a less direct way than Armstrong and some of the others (for instance, he didn't come forward and say, in effect, "I was pipeman, and I was there because I witnessed this assault etc"), but that's no reason to rule it out I suppose.

All the best,
Ben

[Tom_Wescott]

Tom
I await you book or dissertation with renewed eagerness!

Why?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Lechmere]

Ben
I don’t disagree with some of the points you raise there but the Ripper story has many instances of people being slung out late at night from lodging house kitchens when they weren’t supposed to be there. Also in a big lodging house – such as say the Victoria Home – we know that the inmates were not allowed in the sleeping area in the daytime and their cubicles were not private areas where possessions could be left. It would only be ‘private’ while he was sleeping in it. They had cleaners and so forth about the place in the daytime.
If my memory serves me correctly the Victoria Home actually had a separate facility for keeping possessions safe – but that meant essentially giving them to the keeper. Not a wise move if the said possession is a kidney or uterus.

Tom
I await you book or dissertation with renewed eagerness!

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Ben,

The eye witness evidence is the weakest in any criminal case, but since it's all we've got, we must work with it, but not accept it as gospel. If Lawende or one of the guys guessed Eddowes' man at 5'9" tall, then surely 5'11" or 6ft isn't out of the realm of possibility? And Pipeman was 5'11", 35 yo, fair haired, etc. Le Grand was 6ft tall, 35 yo (or so he said in 88) fair haired, etc.

As for Le Grand-as-killer inserting himself into the investigation, there have indeed been instances of serial killers resorting to such tactics for the pure thrill of it, but I would suggest that the majority of "inserters" do so primarily for reasons of self-preservation; to lessen the value of potentially incriminating evidence, and I see fewer indications of this in Le Grand's case.

Then you are clearly unfamiliar with the argument against Le Grand. Stride is the one murder where a suspect was witnessed, damn near the spittiing image of Le Grand, who was in fact within a mile of the murder site in that very hour. This is also the one murder where Le Grand is stuck to it like ugly on an ape, coercing Packer and the two sisters to give false evidence in order to create the fictional 'Grapeman', a suspect very unlike himself. We also find he and Packer at the front of the Batty Street lodger story. Yet not a whiff of him in Mitre Square. He was likely out of pocket on this ordeal and risked trouble with the police. He certainly gained nothing from it, other than completely throwing off the investigation, which apparently was his intent.

Hmmm – I’m not altogether sure than an examination of his less than illustrious criminal career substantiates this statement:
Le Grand was a professional, not an idiot.

That's because you haven't examined his career. But those who did, such as Scotland Yard, most certainly disagreed, from the police sergeant who dogged him for years, to Sir Melville Macnaghten himself. But please feel free to believe what you'd like.

Anyway, enough about Le Grand. I shouldn't have allowed Malcolm to cajole me into discussing him. I will now try to force myself to shut up before the Cartel shows up to nitpick.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Ben]

I agree with Malcolm here.

While it is often observed that eyewitness sightings count for little in terms of ruling suspects in or out, the cases for older and taller suspects must be predicated on an assumption that nobody saw the killer, and I personally find this very hard to take on board. Unless the witnesses in question were lying, Lawende's man was the probable killer of Eddowes, and Schwartz's broad-shouldered man was the probable killer of Stride. Any "suspect" who cannot realistically be described as average in height and around 30 does tend to suffer, credibility-wise, for this reason.

As for Le Grand-as-killer inserting himself into the investigation, there have indeed been instances of serial killers resorting to such tactics for the pure thrill of it, but I would suggest that the majority of "inserters" do so primarily for reasons of self-preservation; to lessen the value of potentially incriminating evidence, and I see fewer indications of this in Le Grand's case. John Eric Armstrong was a serial killer from Detroit who was observed by a witness at the scene of one of his crimes, and when he discovered this, he approached the police voluntarily with a crap excuse that appeared to validate his presence there; in this instance, he claimed to have "discovered" the body. Le Grand had no need, as far as I'm aware, to legitimize incriminating evidence that might lead to him, because there wasn't any.

The act of removing organs most assuredly did not necessitate a private dwelling, which were relatively rare in the district. The larger lodging houses in particular hosted foul-smelling kitchens with equally foul-smelling lodgers cooking up their meaty treats, and these kitchens were often situated below street level with doors that were not patrolled by deputies or night watchmen. Moreover, if the lodger had a private cubicle, he would have been shielded by four walls from prying eyes.

Living in the area in which the crimes are committed is indisputably a "pro" for the candidacy of a given suspect, by the way. Not a con.

I do think this suspect versus suspect business is getting a bit silly.

[Lechmere]

Hmmm – I’m not altogether sure than an examination of his less than illustrious criminal career substantiates this statement:
Le Grand was a professional, not an idiot.

[Tom_Wescott]

in neither of these scenarios, is there any room for LE GRAND to fit in, because i'll mention this very briefly, you can not stalk outside MJKs from 3am to 4am and then risk breaking in.

Le Grand was a professional, not an idiot. He would have had no reason to stand outside her room for an hour.

yea but your suspect does not match the Eddowes suspect and he's very hard to fit into MJK too.

Actually, he quite resembles one of the descriptions of Eddowes’ man, being only two or three inches taller than the description. As for Kelly, I don’t know what evidence you value or don’t, but Le Grand owned nice long coats and wore a watch and chain when he wanted to. Jack the Ripper took organs with him, therefore had a private place. Where was Hutch’s private place? Hmmm? And did Hutch go six miles out of his way daily to be in Whitechapel? No, he was already there. If you want to talk levels of suspicion, Hutch is about a 3 and Le Grand a 10. One could argue that Hutch killed Kelly, if they want to go for that ‘she was a copy cat’ nonsense, but it would be an uphill battle to call him JTR. Either he was a sidekick to the real killer, or he was an honest witness, or he lied to gain celebrity and carte blanche treatment from the police. Those are your three choices.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Malcolm X]

in a heavily built up area like London, it's not easy to transport whilst hiding from view, a whole body, especially if you live in a mid-terrace.

the killer also needs to get his murder victim well away from him and not to dump her in the basement, or hide her in the walls, it's therefore much easier to carve her up into small parcels.

G. Chapman chose to poison instead, maybe because torsos are still able to be identified, or dumping the body parts was simply too awkward for him.

the trouble with a torso is, if it is identified, the killer can only really be one of a few people, it is easy to eliminate this to just one person.

but you have to ask yourself this, why was JTR generating torso victims at home, why not simply lure his lovers out on the streets and kill them there, like a normal street murder and thus the killer could be anybody and this also has to apply to G.Chapman too.

maybe because this killer isn't JTR, i dont know !

i think at the very least, that JTR would have killed his lovers whatever, as per Liz Stride, because this is his natural M.O and so damned easy to do, TORSOS just dont seem like him at all.

[Abby Normal]

I disagree with that. from Tabram to Kelly, the killer took more measures to delay finding the body and identifying. Eddowes' face was badly mutilated, but she was still identified quickly. Kelly's face was mutilated even worse, but she was identified too. if he had killed Kelly in a court or backyard, but with the same facial mutilations, she would not have been identified as quickly. and he could not have known that Kelly, a single prostitute living alone, would be found a matter of hours after her death. he may have reasonably expected that she wouldn't be found for days or weeks.

with Jackson, her head was taken away completely. fingerprints were not done at that time. so he was obviously trying to hide her identity better than he had done with Eddowes and Kelly (IF he was JTR). Jackson's killer could not have guessed that a homeless prostitute would be identified by her clothes.

we don't know where Jackson was taken from or how she died. she very well could have died by strangulation/throat cut. since her head specifically was not found, we have to assume it was either hidden to hide her identity or taken as a souvenir.

I don't think display and disposal was important for JTR, but became more important as the heat picked up. that much is shown in the progression from Tabram to Kelly. so, for me, Elizabeth Jackson COULD be a logical next step.

my opinion, after Kelly, I don't think we'd see another JTR victim that was stabbed/slashed and left in an open street or court. Kelly showed that he was forced to become more careful. and Jackson could show that he was becoming even moreso. after Kelly, he may have realized how risky it actually was to kill a person in the victim's residence....it may have allowed him time for more mutilation, but raised the risk of being caught with no escape route. with Jackson, he may have killed her at a residence, shed, barn, etc which would allow for escape and more mutilation.

again, I'm not saying I believe Jackson was or was not a JTR victim, only that she shouldn't be dismissed so quickly based on disposal of the body.

Hi Pontius
Interesting ideas.
My thoughts on the torso killings is that the killer(s) were trying to hide the victims identity but not neccesarily the act. If you are going to try to dispose the bodies so they would never be found and have gone to length of cutting up the bodies and disposing many parts in the river, why then leave some parts in the open, ie. Pincin street and in the new SY (?!). I think the killer wanted some parts to be found. Why? because he was a serial killer and along with getting off on murder and dismemberment he also got off knowing the body (parts) would be found and/or taunting the police/public. Therefor I dont think the Torso killings were abortions/experiments/burke and Hare or any medical/scientific motivated because then they would certainly have gone the extra inch and tried to TOTALLY hide ALL the body parts.

As for the Torso killer and JtR being the same I think its possible but not probable. However, if they were the same man, and I said before that perhaps the torso killings were victims the killer for whatever reason killed at home or his workshop and the dismemberment was for getting the body removed from his place and the other JtR murders were when he could not bring them to his place and so he killed them in the open.

And there are the similarities that they were the same type of victim, it happened in the same general area and time frame, they are all unsolved and there seems to be a degree of mutilation in all. Then of course there is the argument-what are the chances that two seperate serial killers are operating at the sametime/place, especially when serial killing is in its infancy in 1888 (unlike recently when it would not be so improbable)

It might be interesting to see a geographic profile that includes the victims of both the Torso and JtR murders.

[Malcolm X]

to me it's very important to know when MJK stopped singing, because this is evidence from her neighbours, that isn't tainted by all of this GH stuff.... it's therefore one of the few things that we might be able to rely on

but unfortunately around 1am isn't good enough for me, this is like i've just had my balls kicked right through my body and out of my mouth

this weakens GH quite a lot, when we get back to MJK next year, we are going to have to give this much thought, did he visit Millers court 3 times that night... bloody hell !