The case evidence and its implications

[Sam Flynn]

Yes, but don't forget that both Chapman's and Eddowes uteri were also "missing"!

Indeed, and I also recall that all but two of the torso victims didn't have missing uteri and, of those, her uterus - and the baby that it once carried - weren't "missing", as they were found.

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

Excellent post. As you know I don't subscribe to the theory that Torso Man and JtR were one and the same. However, I'm no where near as confident as I once was, and it would be absurd to say that Fish doesn't advocate a reasonable argument.

Thus,I once argued for that Torso Man was a defensive dismeberer, but I no longer believe this is a tenable argument: Defensive/offensive, like Anthony Hardy, The Camden Ripper is much more realistic.

Thus, a defensive dismemberer is motivated to"dispose of the body and to do so as expeditious a manner as possible." (Rutty, et al. 2017) THis is by far the most common form of dismemberment: approximately 82% of UK cases (Rutty et al. 2017); 74% of Polish cases (Konopke et al. 2007; 61.5% of Finish cases (Hakkanen-Nyholm et al. 2009; 45% of Swedish cases (Rajs et al. 1998; and 39% of cases reported in Hamburg (Puschel and Koops, 1987.

In contrast offensive dismemberment often arises from "sexual gratification or the sadistic pleasure of inflicting pain on the living or injury on the dead. This type of dismemberment often involves mutilation of the sexual regions of the body, and is rare. In this situation, dismemberment may be the primary purpose of murder. (Rutty)

Now, how is disposing of a Torso in what was the absolute labyrinth of the police's new headquarters disposing of the body in "as expeditious a manner as possible?"

Moreover, if the Whitehall Torso murderer was as defensive dismemberer we would have to accept that, by an amazing coincidence, he deposits most of the remains in a location where they're very easily, and quickly, discovered. Whereas the pelvic viscera, the organs of regeneration, just the parts of the body that you would expect a lust murderer like JtR (or it's equivalent, an offensive dismemberer) are hidden so successfully that is they haven't been found in 132 years. And you can't, of course, argue that they would have been retained by the perpetrator, because that's not what a defensive dismemberer would do!

Great post johng

full disclosure. I am not near as confident as fish that they were the same man but do lean heavily.

It may just be a coincidence but i do find it interesting, even if the uterus is missing because its part of the lower part of the torso thats missing in the whitehall case, that it does just happen to be the section that contains the uterus.

anyway, its blatenly obviuos to me that torso man is not a defensive dismemberer and the way he deposited the body parts did have some kind of special meaning to him. The ripper made no attempts to hide either and left them posed.

i just find it hard to beleive that two such cretins were lurking about in the same city at the same time, post mortem mutilating, cutting up, removing body parts of unfortunates and leaving remains to be found in odd and public places. IMHO both series end at the same time with pinchin and mckenzie and ive never heard a good explanation for that -if they were different men, for some reason that coincidence really sticks with me. Also, no signs of torture or sexual abuse in either series, seems just a quick kill to obtain a body to cut up.

and eventhough torsoman did dismember, he also cut up smaller parts of flesh and organs.... is that really so different than the ripper who also flayed flesh off the corpse, cut off breasts, and cuts necks to the bone?

[Wickerman]

Of course, "absent" just means "missing" and, along with the word "missing" itself, it's by far the most common word we use to describe something that's... um, missing/abasent.

I'm shocked Mr Marriott has not attempted to correct you here, in his dictionary "absent" only means 'not where it should be'.

[Sam Flynn]

i just find it hard to beleive that two such cretins were lurking about in the same city at the same time

But they did very different things, to a very different cadence, in very different parts of the city, over very different timescales, with very different facilities at their disposal.

NOT the same person(s).

[Abby Normal]

But they did very different things, to a very different cadence, in very different parts of the city, over very different timescales, with very different facilities at their disposal.

NOT the same person(s).

Perhaps

[Takod]

What most people fail to see is that differences cannot have the same level of persuasive power as similarities.

It depends on the differences; murders can very much be excluded based on their differences.

For example, if someone is killed by strangulation in England at 00:30 and another person is killed by strangulation in New Zealand at a parallel time, and both crimes have ample witnesses we can conclude due to their differences that it was not one simply person who did it.

Then again, you may find people searching for some kind of conspiracy angle.

Yes similarities are important, and it's good to draw them where they are, but there is reasonable doubt in your case - because in many events you've had to broaden the terms by which to find said similarities, and we can dial this back even further in the case and say everyone killed (ever), was killed by the Jack - because in being killed they are similarly connected.

The organs alone are not the sole reason that the Torsos are not added to the Ripper's CV.

It's a long way going from lopping off an earlobe or slicing off some breasts to human carpentry, and you need some reasoning for why that change took place before I can say, hey, yeah, you might have a point.

Edit: There are other matters too, like the locations - you have a man who kills people outside, in places apparently of their own choosing, and I think it's reasonable to say that the Torsos were not done in public streets or a private(but not really) house.

[Fisherman]

It depends on the differences; murders can very much be excluded based on their differences.

For example, if someone is killed by strangulation in England at 00:30 and another person is killed by strangulation in New Zealand at a parallel time, and both crimes have ample witnesses we can conclude due to their differences that it was not one simply person who did it.

Then again, you may find people searching for some kind of conspiracy angle.

Yes similarities are important, and it's good to draw them where they are, but there is reasonable doubt in your case - because in many events you've had to broaden the terms by which to find said similarities, and we can dial this back even further in the case and say everyone killed (ever), was killed by the Jack - because in being killed they are similarly connected.

The organs alone are not the sole reason that the Torsos are not added to the Ripper's CV.

It's a long way going from lopping off an earlobe or slicing off some breasts to human carpentry, and you need some reasoning for why that change took place before I can say, hey, yeah, you might have a point.

Edit: There are other matters too, like the locations - you have a man who kills people outside, in places apparently of their own choosing, and I think it's reasonable to say that the Torsos were not done in public streets or a private(but not really) house.

Like I said, many people do not understand fully how this works!

I will explain it to you in detail:

Yes, dissimilarities can be proof of no connection, just as a similarity can be proof of a connection.

But that is not what I am speaking of. What I am saying is that when these things are NOT absolute proof, similarities are stronger indicators than dissimilarities, or to be more exact - they have a larger potential. How does that work? It works like this.

Imagine as powerful a dissimilarity as you can think of. Let´s say that two murders are committed, ten hours apart, in Bolivia and Canada. A man is shot in Bolivia and a woman is strangled in Canada.
Both have the word "Shazam!" carved into their foreheads.

Which suggestion is better? That they are unconnected on account of the vast dissimilarities or that they are connected on account of the similarity?

Now, turn it around. Two people are found killed. Both have "Shazam!" carved into their foreheads. What kind of dissimilarity that is NOT absolute proof can dissolve the idea that they are connected?

This is why the fact that one series involve dismemberment and the other not is inferior to how BOTH series involve abdominal flaps, uteri, hearts, ring-taking, skilled cutting, prostitution, cuts from ribs to pubes, lost colon sections, same town, same time etc.

The similarities are many and very, very rare. And that means that we must ask ourselves "can a killer who dismembers in one case not dismember in another? Is it even vaguely possible? Or is it incompatible with the laws of physics or something such?"

It is of course not only perfectly possible, but also something that there are many examples of.

And the dismemberment is the only obvious difference there is. The rest is idle speculation: "the torso killer is more smart", "the Ripper is hurrying a lot more", "the torso killer has another mindset", "he only cut the abdominal walls away because she was pregnant" and suchwhat - useless speculation.

Case effectively closed, I´m afraid.

[Fisherman]

I owe other posters answers too, but they will have to wait a day or two.

[Takod]

Case effectively closed, I´m afraid.

Same killer, no reasonable doubt, I´m afraid.

That's not a very mature way to round off a post, and it rather discourages me from replying, I'm afraid. (mostly because it assumes that oneself is correct above all else, and not only that, makes a public spectacle of it, to discourage engagement, and does little else - it's a huge turn-off)

I may have misunderstood certain things, I make no pretense to be perfect, but also as you have done, partially regarding loose-terming -

Your use of the term dismemberment, for example. The ripper crimes, let's use the C5 because why the hell not; I'm not getting into suspect territory here, had no dismemberment. They had organ removal, not dismemberment. Organs are not limbs.

So Mary Jane Kelly was not dismembered. she was mutilated, there's a succinct difference between the two. Yet all we know of the Torso killings, bar something that could be argued as an abortion-gone-wrong - is that they were dismembered. We're talking arms, legs, here. Limbs.

So you can muddy the waters with your case closed talk and state that limbs are organs and that abdominal flaps (whatever these might be) and cuts across the abdomen are sure-fire ways to tell (however they were made) that one is the same as the other; but

Let us examine the issues with such claims; We know that the newspaper sketch of the Dutfields Yard crime scene was pretty damn good. So we can assume that some effort went into newspaper sketch accuracy - if this is true, then we can rely upon things such as https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorp...r-of-woman.png - "Dismemberment murder of woman, Battersea Park, 1889 – the last victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’? Source: Illustrated Police News, June 15, 1889"

If we can rely upon this; we can see that the 'mutilation' - where it may be; is of a very different character to that of the ripper crimes, that the abdominal cuts are more emphasised upon the central, rather than the left sided jagged mortuary/surgeon styled slice/rip/whathaveyou we are used to in 'the Jack' - or at least see quite clearly with Eddowes' mortuary photographs.

Not only does this throw salt in your theory along with everything else (ie. confusing two basic and clearly defined words to fit the theory) but alone casts more than reasonable doubt upon it; for now we ( people who wish only to ascertain what happened and little else ) can see that mutilation is not dismemberment and that even the similarities do not match up. Especially since for your theory to work there must be similarities in all of the torso murders, which is somewhat proven by the lack of organs in the torso in the picture attached.

So the case isn't closed, nothing is over, but you do have an interesting theory nonetheless.

Is it useful in figuring out who 'the Jack' is? Probably not. And there ends my interest.

[Fisherman]

hi johnG
yes he did. but JR and Kattrup made the very valid point that since the entire part of the lower torso was missing (and never recovered) then that explains the drs statement. IE those organs were described as missing because they are basically part of that part of the torso that was missing. However, I do find it odd then that the dr specifically stated that the uterus was absent in this wording, especially since hes says that while describing the organs that were present:

Bond:

The substance of the heart was healthy, and there were indications that the woman had not died either of suffocation or of drowning. The liver and stomach, kidneys and spleen were normal. The uterus was absent.


It reminds me of how the dr. described Mary Kelly's missing organ-the heart was absent.

I took a look at some of Debras posts on the errand, and she leaves the issue pretty much open. The torso was taken off by the fourth lumbar vertebra, and maybe that meant that it could be established that the uterus had gone missing from the body, perhaps on account of looking at attachments of the organ. I simply don't know, but I agree that the term "the uterus was missing" implies that Hebbert believed it to have gone lost from the body.

[Fisherman]

I guess you lost the context and in doing so, the point. 13 Cases of Women being murdered during the period in question in the unsolved Files. 5 broadly assumed to be by one man. 8 murders left. 2 Torso murders. 6 left...and that includes Alice. Alice is murdered in much the same fashion as the Canonical Group members that include abdominal mutilations post mortem. That means, if correct......drumroll...that the Ripper murder style was not unique to JtR.

As was just pointed out again, the major and fundamental differences in these murders, (Torso/C5) suggest more than 1 killer.

Im good with Bingo too Fisherman,...and evidently far superior to you with Connect the Dots and Round Peg-Round Hole principles.

I am anything but certain that we can leave the shaping of pegs and holes in this case in your hands, Michael. If you are as good as you say with bingo, maybe you should stick with that instead?

There were very many similarities involved between the series, keep that in mind. Take just the fact that both killers were deemed to have skills that led on the suspicion that they were surgeons/anatomists. How often do you hear that suspicion worded in a murder case, Michael? And that just a minor point - the REAL weigh lies in the fact that we have two eviscerating serial killers who independent of each other engage in the same behavior. It is completely and utterly unlikely.

[Fisherman]

But they did very different things, to a very different cadence, in very different parts of the city, over very different timescales, with very different facilities at their disposal.

NOT the same person(s).

They did not do "very different things" at all, Gareth. They did the same things, over and over again. Uteri, hearts, abdominal flaps, talking rings, cut from pubes to sternum, killing prostitutes, displaying skills that had the medicos marveling...
They did dissimilar things too, but all murders are dissimilar in some fashion.

Of the "cadence" we know next to nothing.

All victims may have been killed within the fewest of miles, you for some reason keep forgetting that, time and time again.

And we do not have the facilities listed, so we cannot say to what degree they differed. But we CAN say that the differences there were or may have been, could well lay behind the dissimilarities we have inbetween the cases.

Now, since you so often falsely point me out as distorting the case, how about you get these matters correct instead?

[Abby Normal]

That's not a very mature way to round off a post, and it rather discourages me from replying, I'm afraid. (mostly because it assumes that oneself is correct above all else, and not only that, makes a public spectacle of it, to discourage engagement, and does little else - it's a huge turn-off)

I may have misunderstood certain things, I make no pretense to be perfect, but also as you have done, partially regarding loose-terming -

Your use of the term dismemberment, for example. The ripper crimes, let's use the C5 because why the hell not; I'm not getting into suspect territory here, had no dismemberment. They had organ removal, not dismemberment. Organs are not limbs.

So Mary Jane Kelly was not dismembered. she was mutilated, there's a succinct difference between the two. Yet all we know of the Torso killings, bar something that could be argued as an abortion-gone-wrong - is that they were dismembered. We're talking arms, legs, here. Limbs.

So you can muddy the waters with your case closed talk and state that limbs are organs and that abdominal flaps (whatever these might be) and cuts across the abdomen are sure-fire ways to tell (however they were made) that one is the same as the other; but

Let us examine the issues with such claims; We know that the newspaper sketch of the Dutfields Yard crime scene was pretty damn good. So we can assume that some effort went into newspaper sketch accuracy - if this is true, then we can rely upon things such as https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorp...r-of-woman.png - "Dismemberment murder of woman, Battersea Park, 1889 – the last victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’? Source: Illustrated Police News, June 15, 1889"

If we can rely upon this; we can see that the 'mutilation' - where it may be; is of a very different character to that of the ripper crimes, that the abdominal cuts are more emphasised upon the central, rather than the left sided jagged mortuary/surgeon styled slice/rip/whathaveyou we are used to in 'the Jack' - or at least see quite clearly with Eddowes' mortuary photographs.

Not only does this throw salt in your theory along with everything else (ie. confusing two basic and clearly defined words to fit the theory) but alone casts more than reasonable doubt upon it; for now we ( people who wish only to ascertain what happened and little else ) can see that mutilation is not dismemberment and that even the similarities do not match up. Especially since for your theory to work there must be similarities in all of the torso murders, which is somewhat proven by the lack of organs in the torso in the picture attached.

So the case isn't closed, nothing is over, but you do have an interesting theory nonetheless.

Is it useful in figuring out who 'the Jack' is? Probably not. And there ends my interest.

Hi takod
but dismemberment is a form of mutilation. And both were post mortem mutilators.

and as i keep repeating, the torsoman did more than just dimember limbs, he cut up the body into smaller pieces of flesh and organs, just like the ripper who along with cutting out internal organs also flayed off pieces of flesh, cut off breasts and almost decapitated.

is that so very different?

[Fisherman]

That's not a very mature way to round off a post, and it rather discourages me from replying, I'm afraid. (mostly because it assumes that oneself is correct above all else, and not only that, makes a public spectacle of it, to discourage engagement, and does little else - it's a huge turn-off)

There is actually nothing wrong with assuming that you are right, not least when all empirical evidence and all of criminal history is in correlation with that assumption, Takod. You see, it is not a case of me having caught a case of illusions of grandeur, it is a case of me pointing out that the factualities of the case leaves us little choice but to accept a common killer. Look, if you will, at for example the Jack the Stripper cases. Strangled prostitutes (the commonest murder method and the commonest victims), and the police were in no doubt at all about how a serial killer was on the loose.
We supposedly have two eviscerators who take out organs of both a sexual as well as a non-sexual nature, who cit away abdominal walls, who are both deemed very skilled with the knife, who murder prostitutes, who steal rings from their fingers, who do not torture but instead opt for swiftest possible death, who seem to have as a goal to acquire bodies to mutilate - we are talking about very, very rare creatures doing even. more rare things.
What are the odds? They are beyond betting, I'm afraid. The Jack the Stripper case fades into oblivion in comparison.
It is sad if we make this a question of lacking maturity on my behalf instead of awarding it its true value. Too much time has passed when it was swearing in the church to speak of a common killer, too much remains to be done for that sort of thing to be useful. For me, it is case closed, there is no possibility at all of two killers, we are well beyond that point. You are just as entitled to disagree about that as I am to think that would be wrong. It has nothing to do with maturity and all to do with logic, facts, statistics and criminal history.

I may have misunderstood certain things, I make no pretense to be perfect, but also as you have done, partially regarding loose-terming

I have no ambitions at all to paint myself out as perfect, and I don't need to. It is you who must perform miracles on this, you who must turn water into wine. Me, I am taking the easy way out - nothing at all even remotely similar has ever happened, and nothing even remotely similar is likely to happen forthwith. It has nothing to do with me, but all to do with empiri and the facts, once more.

Your use of the term dismemberment, for example. The ripper crimes, let's use the C5 because why the hell not; I'm not getting into suspect territory here, had no dismemberment. They had organ removal, not dismemberment. Organs are not limbs.

Very, very true, and absolutely agreed. I have always been of the exact same sentiment - anybody who says organ removal in itself must be dismemberment is wrong. It can be PART of dismemberment, but when it is not accompanied with the limbs being taken off, organ removal is something different.

So Mary Jane Kelly was not dismembered. she was mutilated, there's a succinct difference between the two. Yet all we know of the Torso killings, bar something that could be argued as an abortion-gone-wrong - is that they were dismembered. We're talking arms, legs, here. Limbs.

Yes, indeed, we are talking arms, legs, head, torso in the Torso killer case. But we are ALSO talking about a uterus cut out from Jackson, as well as a heart and a pair of lungs removed from her body. And that is NOT dismemberment, remember? To add, we are talking about how said Jackson (and the Rainham victim) had their torsos cut up in three parts, but BEFORE that, they had their abdomens opened up from pelvis to sternum - the Rainham victim even had her sternum sawed through! And that is something that was entirely unnecessary for the purpose of dismemberment only. The Pinchin Stret victim also had her abdominal wall cut from sternum to pelvis, and the vagina cut open - but no organs taken out. What was that cut about? Dismemberment? I don't think so.
So you see, there are more than one level involved here, and saying or implying that dismembers are not mutilators and eviscerators is a truth with modification - they may well be, and the signs are all over the torso cases.

So you can muddy the waters with your case closed talk and state that limbs are organs and that abdominal flaps (whatever these might be) and cuts across the abdomen are sure-fire ways to tell (however they were made) that one is the same as the other; but

I aim to clear the waters. They have been muddied for 130 years. It has been blasphemy to claim a common originator for the series, and so it is long overdue that this is done. Others have gone before me, many will follow after me, beginning with Drew Gray this summer. I have never said that limbs are organs (so implying that IS muddying the waters, mind you!), nor have I said that the abdominal flaps are organs (although the hide is considered the largest organ of the body, Takod). So please keep to the truth!

Let us examine the issues with such claims; We know that the newspaper sketch of the Dutfields Yard crime scene was pretty damn good. So we can assume that some effort went into newspaper sketch accuracy - if this is true, then we can rely upon things such as https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorp...r-of-woman.png - "Dismemberment murder of woman, Battersea Park, 1889 – the last victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’? Source: Illustrated Police News, June 15, 1889"

If we can rely upon this; we can see that the 'mutilation' - where it may be; is of a very different character to that of the ripper crimes, that the abdominal cuts are more emphasised upon the central, rather than the left sided jagged mortuary/surgeon styled slice/rip/whathaveyou we are used to in 'the Jack' - or at least see quite clearly with Eddowes' mortuary photographs.

Not only does this throw salt in your theory along with everything else (ie. confusing two basic and clearly defined words to fit the theory) but alone casts more than reasonable doubt upon it; for now we ( people who wish only to ascertain what happened and little else ) can see that mutilation is not dismemberment and that even the similarities do not match up. Especially since for your theory to work there must be similarities in all of the torso murders, which is somewhat proven by the lack of organs in the torso in the picture attached.

Hold on, please. From where have you gotten the idea that I confuse dismemberment and mutilation? What I say is that a killer who nourishes an urge to dismember is a man who wishes to cut into meat, and in that respect, he may have parallels with a mutilator. But I CAN tell an arm from a uterus. You also say that the abdominal cut is more "central" in the Jackson case than in the Eddowes case, if I read you correctly? And to argue your case, you put forward the mortuary photos of Eddowes (soundly enough, a photo is a photo!) and a ... drawing in the IPN? That is a bit troublesome.
Do you think the artist drew that picture in situ, Takod? Invited to do so by the police as the manning the drawing lifted that cloth?
I would say that this drawing is certainly not made on site, but instead a reconstruction made after the case transpired. And even if we were to look upon it as a real representation, there were actually THREE part of Jacksons torso. The picture you point to has only one of the sections. How do we know where the wound travelled in the other two sections?
That's a tad unlucky for you. And it gets worse, actually - we know that two large flaps of skin and subcutaneous tissue were cut away from Jacksons belly. And they fit together in the midline, as Hebbert put it - and they also fit together along their outer borders, meaning that Jackson must have been cut on the sides too!
There is no comparison to Eddowes, therefore. It would be more accurate to compare to Chapman and Kelly, who suffered the same fate as Jackson. They too had their abdominal walls removed in sections.
Can we tell to what degree they looked like Jackson? No, we cannot.
But we CAN say that the mere fact that they all three did have their abdominal walls removed points very - or to be more exact, extremely - much to a common offender, since it is a trait that is ridiculously, mindblowingly and exceedingly rare.

So the case isn't closed, nothing is over, but you do have an interesting theory nonetheless.

Is it useful in figuring out who 'the Jack' is? Probably not. And there ends my interest.

Thanks for the kind words on my "theory". I'm afraid I disagree about whether the case of a common offender is closed or not - I regard it as very closed myself. I am aware, however, that there are those who disagree, but I regard them as doing so on a factually and empirically unsound basis. I'm sure they are wrong, quite simply, just as I am sure that your interest will endure, contrary to what you say today.

And that's all fine.

[Joshua Rogan]

I took a look at some of Debras posts on the errand, and she leaves the issue pretty much open. The torso was taken off by the fourth lumbar vertebra, and maybe that meant that it could be established that the uterus had gone missing from the body, perhaps on account of looking at attachments of the organ. I simply don't know, but I agree that the term "the uterus was missing" implies that Hebbert believed it to have gone lost from the body.

As I posted earlier, "the uterus was absent" seems to have been given undue prominence, as the source Abby used appears heavily edited. The MA gives the full quote from Bond which shows it wasn't an isolated statement and so less emphasis should be placed on it.

"The substance of the heart was healthy, and there was no blood in it, and no staining of the lining membrane of the heart, which is rather an indication that the woman did not die of suffocation or drowning. The liver was normal, and the stomach contained about one ounce of partly digested food. The mucus membrane of the stomach presented nothing abnormal. We noticed no inflammation. The kidneys and spleen were normal, and the small intestines and the part that attaches the intestines to the body were in place and healthy. The lower part of the colon or large bowel and of the pelvic viscera were absent - that includes the uterus, bladder, and rectum"