Torso Killer discussion from Millwood Thread

[Fisherman]

Sorry for the slightly distasteful pun, couldn't help it.

I don't categorically rule out the presence of ritualistic elements in what the torso killer(s) did and how they did it but in terms of chopping bodies apart I'm thinking more along the lines of serial killers like Fritz Haarmann who indeed had a ritualistic approach to raping and killing his victims but they were not of much interest for him post-mortem. He unceremoniously hacked, chopped and sawed them in pieces, flushed some of the intestines down the toilet and disposed of the other parts in the river Leine or other places. During his trial, he specifically mentioned the problems he was faced to get rid of the body parts and that he very much hated dismembering the bodies.

Whether or not the torso killings can be attributed to Jack is a question I haven't seriously pondered on before I started posting in this thread to be honest. I always considered the Whitechapel murders and torso killings as separate lines of events, even though I know that a lot of people don't believe in two or more serial killers at work at the same time in the East End. However, there are just too many differences for me to let me believe in a one-man show, starting from the most obvious of them, disembowelment vs. dismemberment. In case of the C5, no efforts were made to hide the bodies, and as I rate the dismemberment in case of the torso killings as practical, the killer(s) went to great lengths to make sure that their identity gets destroyed as thoroughly as possible. Isn't that quite the opposite to what the Ripper did?

How does Fritz Haarmanns exploits tell us that the Torso killer must have been of the same ilk, though? Because Haarmann was unceremonious, how does it follow that the torso killer must have been unceremonious too? Its a logic I find hard to follow.
Very obviously, Haarmann CHOSE to do away with his body parts as efficiently as possible, but the Torso killer was anything but efficient in that respect - he seems to have failed miserably to fly under the radar, does he not? And you know what? I think that is what tells him very much apart from Haarmann in this respect - Haarmann genuinely wanted his parts not to be found, the Torso killer desired the exact opposite.

If the Torso killer and Jack were not one and the same then it is coincidental only that both men on one or more occasions:
took out uteri
took out hearts
took out lungs
cut away abdominal walls
stole rings from victims
cut from ribs to pubes
targetted prostitutes
avoided physical torture
were deemed very skilled by medicos
worked in the same town
worked in overlapping time periods

How anybody can accept such a mountain of coincidences is frankly beyond me. For your thinking to work, these points must all, each and every one of them, be purely coincidental. I'm sorry, but to me that's a fool's hope.

I liked the pun, though, so no need to apologize for it!

[RockySullivan]

Hi again Rocky (and Bolo-this touchs on your last post also)

I see a clear distinction between Torsoman methods of disposal (deeper meaning)and the recent LISK case(practical), which you and I discussed at length some while back.

Both dismemberers, both target prostitutes. However, with Lisk we see clear indication of dismemberment/disposal method for practical reasons only-to get rid of, to hide bodies, to possibly hide ID. LISK dismembers his victims and disposes the remains, pretty much all pieces together, in a sack in remote out of the way areas, hidden in tangled underbrush. He also deposits the victims clustered together-different cluster spots, seemingly changing locations for practical reasons-like one area getting to "full" and or perhaps worried about being spotted. and remains found indicating he dumped in one trip-not any repetitive back and forth with same victim parts. nothing to indicate anything significant in where and how he deposits due to a deeper/psychological meaning-its all very practical and very hidden.

with torsoman, we dont see the same. hes dumping in the river first. which is discovered and in the press-so torsoman knows they are being found quickly-yet he continues to dump in the river same as before, knowing they will be found. He also starts dumping in more public and bizarre places as time goes on. Culminating, in the most public dumping of pinchin. add to this the part in the shelly estate and the basement of NSY. the risks involved are also increasing with this more public and weird dumping. as Ive said before theres even a kind of escalation in the dumping pattern that points away from practical matters.

There something more to it in how and where hes dumping, fish mentioned some possibilities, and IMHO its rather obvious.
The more public dumpings also coincide with the rippers very public displays, and both end around the same time with Mackenzie and pinchin.

LISK dismembers and disperses the remains in different location, skull/extremities in one place, torso 40 miles way. It's exactly the same, dismemberment and dispersal to hinder identification/investigation, the only difference is the environment. He's in London, there's nowhere else to dump.

[Abby Normal]

it's called dispersal, meant to delay or prevent the finding of the body parts and hinder identification of the victim.

Hi again Rocky (and Bolo-this touchs on your last post also)

I see a clear distinction between Torsoman methods of disposal (deeper meaning)and the recent LISK case(practical), which you and I discussed at length some while back.

Both dismemberers, both target prostitutes. However, with Lisk we see clear indication of dismemberment/disposal method for practical reasons only-to get rid of, to hide bodies, to possibly hide ID. LISK dismembers his victims and disposes the remains, pretty much all pieces together, in a sack in remote out of the way areas, hidden in tangled underbrush. He also deposits the victims clustered together-different cluster spots, seemingly changing locations for practical reasons-like one area getting to "full" and or perhaps worried about being spotted. and remains found indicating he dumped in one trip-not any repetitive back and forth with same victim parts. nothing to indicate anything significant in where and how he deposits due to a deeper/psychological meaning-its all very practical and very hidden.

with torsoman, we dont see the same. hes dumping in the river first. which is discovered and in the press-so torsoman knows they are being found quickly-yet he continues to dump in the river same as before, knowing they will be found. He also starts dumping in more public and bizarre places as time goes on. Culminating, in the most public dumping of pinchin. add to this the part in the shelly estate and the basement of NSY. the risks involved are also increasing with this more public and weird dumping. as Ive said before theres even a kind of escalation in the dumping pattern that points away from practical matters.

There something more to it in how and where hes dumping, fish mentioned some possibilities, and IMHO its rather obvious.
The more public dumpings also coincide with the rippers very public displays, and both end around the same time with Mackenzie and pinchin.

[RockySullivan]

If he stored all the parts in the vault originally, and smuggled them out to throw them in the river or dispose of them in any other way, I think it is a tad strange that he didn't do away with the torso and the leg in the same manner. What killer who wants to hide what he has done, decides that he needs to clear out the evidence, only to then come up with the idea to leave one or two parts of it THAT HE "FINDS" HIMSELF....?
In my world, that does not add up very well.

well what if he or whoever was keeping the torso in the vault hadn't got a chance to dump it yet?

[bolo]

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiīm Jake the peg, dideldideldideldi, with his extra leg, dideldideldideldo....

Sorry for the slightly distasteful pun, couldn't help it.

I don't categorically rule out the presence of ritualistic elements in what the torso killer(s) did and how they did it but in terms of chopping bodies apart I'm thinking more along the lines of serial killers like Fritz Haarmann who indeed had a ritualistic approach to raping and killing his victims but they were not of much interest for him post-mortem. He unceremoniously hacked, chopped and sawed them in pieces, flushed some of the intestines down the toilet and disposed of the other parts in the river Leine or other places. During his trial, he specifically mentioned the problems he was faced to get rid of the body parts and that he very much hated dismembering the bodies.

Whether or not the torso killings can be attributed to Jack is a question I haven't seriously pondered on before I started posting in this thread to be honest. I always considered the Whitechapel murders and torso killings as separate lines of events, even though I know that a lot of people don't believe in two or more serial killers at work at the same time in the East End. However, there are just too many differences for me to let me believe in a one-man show, starting from the most obvious of them, disembowelment vs. dismemberment. In case of the C5, no efforts were made to hide the bodies, and as I rate the dismemberment in case of the torso killings as practical, the killer(s) went to great lengths to make sure that their identity gets destroyed as thoroughly as possible. Isn't that quite the opposite to what the Ripper did?

[Fisherman]

He got disturbed and had to leg it.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiīm Jake the peg, dideldideldideldi, with his extra leg, dideldideldideldo....

[bolo]

and again-why hold onto the last part, a leg, for half a mile, especially after you've dumped the rest into the river and the river is still the same distance away on the other side of the road than said persons yard?!?

He got disturbed and had to leg it.

[Fisherman]

yes you drill down on the details to minutia until you find a difference. I fear we may have to start counting the number of molecules in the flaps of stomach flesh removed from Chapman, Kelly and Jackson!

Gareth has already done that, Abby, telling the victims apart in terms of flap sizes and apparitions. And this he has done without knowing zilch about how the flaps looked - an amazing thing indeed!

[Fisherman]

Details you don't like... like heart AND lungs removed in one of the torso cases; heart only in Kelly's case. Details like uteri removed in a minority of the torso cases (and one of those with a baby inside it) versus uteri removed in a majority of the Ripper cases (100% of them if we exclude Stride). Details like overwhelming majority of torso murders in West London, versus ALL the Ripper murders in a small part of East London...

I could go on, but believe me, I'm not ignoring details. On the contrary, I'm taking them ALL into account.

Personally, I don't dislike it a bit that not all victims had their uteri and hearts taken. It is not the percentage of the victims that suffer such damage that tells the story, it is the fact that these inclusions are present in both series that do. That are - luckily - very rare occurrences, both of them. And that's before we include the rarer-than-henīs-teeth taking away of the abdominal walls, another feature present in both series.

Imagine five women killed in Bow, and five women killed in Chelsea, all of them by knife. Imagine further that one woman in each series has both her pinkies cut off.

Do you for one split second imagine the the police would NOT make the connection, although the women were killed in different districts?

Change the districts to Oxford and Portsmouth. Would the police say "Nah, probably no connection"? No, they would not.

Change the victims to males in Bow and females in Chelsea. Change the murder method to strangulation in Bow and knifing in Chelsea - and the police would neverhteless speak of the murders as the pinkie murders and work from the assumption that there was a connection.

And that would not require more than just the one victim in each series.

There is absolutely no need for us not to accept that the same logic appears when women from two murder series in the same town lose their hearts, their uteri and their abdominal walls - even if only one victim in each series suffer that fate.

Its another matter that the Whitehall victim may have had her uterus taken, just as the Rainham victim may have had her heart and lungs taken too. Those possibilities, however, is something you don't seem to take into account, instead claiming that only Jackson had organs taken from her body. The fact is that we really cannot tell how many torso victims were subjected to that, can we?

[Abby Normal]

One would think so, would one not? However, my answer is no, the ritual required the sawed off limbs and not the disjointed ones, if I am on the money. And to be frank, my personal belief is that the disarticulations may have taken less time than the sawing, which I imagine was done with great care.

interesting fish! care to expound??

[Fisherman]

hi fish
one thing-wouldn't the disarticulated joints point more to a ritual aspect, not the sawed off ones, as there was seemingly more care and time to disarticulate other than saw??

One would think so, would one not? However, my answer is no, the ritual required the sawed off limbs and not the disjointed ones, if I am on the money. And to be frank, my personal belief is that the disarticulations may have taken less time than the sawing, which I imagine was done with great care.

[Abby Normal]

Details you don't like... like heart AND lungs removed in one of the torso cases; heart only in Kelly's case. Details like uteri removed in a minority of the torso cases (and one of those with a baby inside it) versus uteri removed in a majority of the Ripper cases (100% of them if we exclude Stride). Details like overwhelming majority of torso murders in West London, versus ALL the Ripper murders in a small part of East London...

I could go on, but believe me, I'm not ignoring details. On the contrary, I'm taking them ALL into account.

yes you drill down on the details to minutia until you find a difference. I fear we may have to start counting the number of molecules in the flaps of stomach flesh removed from Chapman, Kelly and Jackson!

[Sam Flynn]

only if you overlook the overall similarities and the details that you don't like.

Details you don't like... like heart AND lungs removed in one of the torso cases; heart only in Kelly's case. Details like uteri removed in a minority of the torso cases (and one of those with a baby inside it) versus uteri removed in a majority of the Ripper cases (100% of them if we exclude Stride). Details like overwhelming majority of torso murders in West London, versus ALL the Ripper murders in a small part of East London...

I could go on, but believe me, I'm not ignoring details. On the contrary, I'm taking them ALL into account.

[Abby Normal]

Welcome to my world, Bolo! This is EXACTLY what I believe took place. The murders had a ritualistic element to them, and once the killer had taken care of that matter, there would always be the practical matter to dispose of the leftovers after the party. Meaning that once the body had filled itīs purpose, played itīs role, the killer could not keep it at his premises. So he had to get rid of it.
However, I believe that he used that practical demand to send messages. One such message would be to the police: Look what I can do in your own cellar vault! Other parts may have played similar roles, like for example how the Shelley part may have been an example of black humour, how the dumping in Battersea park may have been a reminder of where the killer met Jackson (as suggested by Joshua Rogan), how the dumping in Pinchin Street just happens to denote a site where I believe the killer had grown up and where his mother had lived many a time, how the dumping in Fitzroy Square may have been a finger in the air towards the police who patrolled the premises and so on. Plus I am suggesting that since the killer would have found out that his parts did NOT disappear but instead float and be found (and he may well have known this from the outset, of course), just about all of them, he proceeded to send shockwawes through London by letting them float ashore along the banks of the mightiest metropolis in the world: "I can do this and you canīt stop me!"
In many ways, killing out in the open streets is also an example of how the killer owned the stage, set his own rules and killed in public - and once more, "You cannot stop me!"

The one objection I would make would be to say that the ritual was - if I am correct - not only about pre-dismemberment. It actually involved parts of the dismemberments. Not all of them, parts of them. The sawed off limbs 1873 were ritualistic, the dismembered joints were not, if you ask me. But I will not go further into that as of now.

hi fish
one thing-wouldn't the disarticulated joints point more to a ritual aspect, not the sawed off ones, as there was seemingly more care and time to disarticulate other than saw??

[Abby Normal]

Good question, Christer. I think the Whitehall woman could have been cut up somewhere inside the expansive basement of the Police Building. I'm thinking the torso was moved around depending on where the men were working. At least 6 men swear the torso was not in the vault on that weekend. Henry Edge is adamant it wasn't there and he was recalled to swear he did not see it when he was in that very corner with a struck match. Then, on Monday, it appears and Wildbore sees it. Twice that day. And once more the next day. Then he reports it to the Foreman.

When Jasper Waring had Smoker sniffing around, the dog hit on other areas of loose dirt but nothing was found. I believe these areas at one time may have contained parts of the body. That vault became an area of attention because the surveyor and others were going to be in there for measurements. That was the time to move the body that lay upon the wall to another area in the basement. The vault was not visited on a daily basis by many, other than Wildbore and Lawrence, because they decided to keep tools in there rather than the newly built locker in another vault. The workmen were looked suspiciously upon. They were watched outside of work.

Echo

London, U.K.

10 October 1888

"The fact that everyone is of opinion that no stranger could have put the parcel in such and out-of-the-way corner considerably narrows the inquiry; and on Monday week other workmen will be called who will prove that the parcel was not in the vault on the Saturday before the Monday when it was found."

As far as Elizabeth Jackson goes. I guess she could have been cut up in the Park. The area where the upper torso was found was said to be an area not too frequently visited by employees. The Police Buildings were near completion at this point, so doubtful the basement could have still been used.

As you know, we can speculate until we turn blue, but there is not enough known about little details that could break the case. Wildbore had a home in Battersea. His route to work may have taken him across the Albert Bridge and down Grosvenor Road past the Shelley House, past the timber wharf where the Pimlico arm was found etc etc. Did his home have a workshop in the backyard? I can't answer that. He was a professional carpenter so it very well may have. He would have had saws at work. He probably had saws at home. Was he handy with a knife? Who knows?

All I DO know is he was one of a very few men that knew how to safely get into that vault in all lighting conditions. He located the torso and held back telling anyone after seeing it 2 times the day before. At inquest nobody smelled the body yet several press reports state Wildbore himself said it stunk when he examined it. Somebody seemed to be pouring Condy's fluid on it also. When would someone be able to do that?

Lots of questions left unanswered.

brilliant Jer, as usual!