Torso Killer discussion from Millwood Thread

[Sam Flynn]

So it looks like they may have been tossed in from around the area I've circled in purple, or possibly the next bridge west

I'd incline more to the latter, not least because some body parts were found on land in Battersea Park and in the garden of Shelley House, both of which are to the west of Vauxhall Bridge.

[JeffHamm]

Hello Jeff

A couple of years back, I made a map of where the body parts were dumped or, more frequently, had drifted; note, however, that the Rainham torso would be waaaay off to the right, so it's not shown. Here's the map again, with the blue line, as I recall, representing the boundary of the Canonical Ripper murders.

Thanks for that Sam. I'm assuming the locations along the Thames are for the most part, ones that have washed ashore? Given the Thames is tidal, they could drift either direction pending on incoming or outgoing tides. I would think a historic tide timetable would be useful to look around the time the parts were thought to have entered the water (if they were able to make such a determination). Anyway, on the basis that most of these have drifted from somewhere, it looks like a dispersal pattern, where locations concentrate relatively near where they were thrown in, and spread out as they've drifted further (not as many make it that far and wash ashore, before then). So it looks like they may have been tossed in from around the area I've circled in purple (or possibly the next bridge west), but this is just a guess as one needs to know the flow patterns of the specific river. The thing to do would be do dump marked items, of similar buoyancy, weight, etc, and determine how they disperse in the Thames under similar tide conditions (again, if they had a good idea of when the parts entered the water, then it's just a matter of looking up the tide around that time). Working out where the marked items end up would help narrow down where the body parts likely entered into the river. That location would be a good place to start considering where to then search for suspects.

- Jeff

[Sam Flynn]

Not sure if I've seen [Mei Trow's map], but I'll have search when I get the chance.

Hello Jeff

A couple of years back, I made a map of where the body parts were dumped or, more frequently, had drifted; note, however, that the Rainham torso would be waaaay off to the right, so it's not shown. Here's the map again, with the blue line, as I recall, representing the boundary of the Canonical Ripper murders.

[Sam Flynn]

both series end at the same time with pinchin and mckenzie.

For that to be true, we must believe that:

1. McKenzie was a Ripper victim
2. The Pinchin Street torso was deposited by the same perpetrator(s) as the West London torso dumps
3. "The" Ripper and "the" Torso Killer were one and the same person

It's all a bit circular, isn't it?

[Sam Flynn]

Ignoring the very large differences, and only looking at the similarities, will of course make two things look similar

Especially when even the similarities are contentious or generalised to the point of obscuring the details, e.g. "took out hearts". Really? The torso killer took out the heart and the lungs of one victim, which was almost certainly a "thorax-emptying" exercise, not specifically targeting the heart for removal. It was the latter which happened to Mary Kelly, whose lungs were left in place and, barring the torn-off lower part of one lobe, intact.