Pinchin Street Torso - who did it?

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman,

The Miyazaki case (which is a new one to me) is interesting, as I posted earlier, it's a bit of a head scratcher why some of the torsos were decomposed. Where had they been stored? And why?
Would a serial dismemberer keep some parts some of the time, or do they have to fit a rigid MO?
Just a thought.

There will be normal dismemberments, where the killer cuts a body up in six parts, head, torso, two arms and two legs, and disposes of them so as not to be caught. And then there will be the not so normal cases, and once we involve an actual interest in the cutting itself, the game plan changes entirely. Then the dismemberment is no longer primarily a defensive strategy, but instead something the killer wants to do. And if he likes some cuts and parts better than others, I donīt see why he would not be able to keep them for a longer time than the parts he takes less of a fancy to.
Letīs make the assumption that a killer wants to use a head of a victim to gouge out the eyes, ā la Charles Albright. He seemingly did this on account of how he as a young boy had shot animals and stuffed them, with a hope of becoming a taxidermist in the future. However, his no glass eyes could be afforded and so he had to use buttons for eyes.
If such a killer keeps a head that he has taken the eyes out of and replaced them with buttons for a longer time than he keeps the legs and arms, we would be able to outline a possible reason for this, would we not? Similarly, there may have been such reasons for the torso killer too. Alternatively, if his main focus was to put fear into people, it would perhaps make sense to dump the parts on various occasions, prolonging the terror that could be gotten out of a single body. Iīm sure there can be other reasons too, some of them perhaps purely practical.

It is fascinating, and there will be a reason, of course. In the end, the circumstances surrounding the deed and the personality of the killer will set the agenda.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

If no one knew who committed either set of crimes, how could the authorities categorically state they were not connected?
Unless they did know more than they let on? I smell a conspiracy...

[Abby Normal]

Yes, Michael, the authorities did opt for no link between the Ripper and the Torso kille back in 1888. So if you want to join ranks with those with an 1880:s insight level about dismemberment murders, be my guest.

And yes, most peoiple today donīt the the series were linked, on account of how hundreds of books have suggested this as if it was a fact.

But many of the more insightful and knowledgeable reseearchers have already changed their mindsets on this business, and more will follow, for logical reasons.

So it is a procedure over time. And you are perfectly correct to pound your chest and say that you are in the majority so far: better now than never.

yup and the annals of true crime have been riddled with the cops not attributing certain murders/crimes to the same man and when its all said and done turns out they were by the same man and many more after that. the most recent example being the golden state killer.
Police mess this up all the time evenwith todays advantages like DNA and video, something the police didn't have in the 1800s.

[Fisherman]

"In the issue of 15th inst. it is said that a light overcoatwas among the things found in Cutbush's house, and that a man in a light overcoat was seen talking to a woman at Backchurch Lane whose body with arms attached was found in Pinchin Street. This is hopelessly incorrect! On 10th Sept. '89 the naked body, with arms, of a woman was found wrapped in some sacking under a Railway arch in Pinchin Street: the head and legs were never found nor was the woman ever identified. She had been killed at least 24 hours before the remains which had seemingly been brought from a distance, were discovered. The stomach was split up by a cut, and the head and legs had been severed in a manner identical with that of the woman whose remains were discovered in the Thames, in Battersea Park, and on the Chelsea Embankment on the 4th June of the same year; and these murders had no connection whatever with the Whitechapel horrors. The Rainham mystery in 1887 and the Whitehall mystery (when portions of a woman's body were found under what is now New Scotland Yard) in 1888 were of a similar type to the Thames and Pinchin Street crimes."

It appears Fisherman that the authorities were content with linking the Torso's together, but not with the Whitechapel Murders..as presumed committed by this Jack fellow. I think most everyone agrees with that in principle....I did say most.

Yes, Michael, the authorities did opt for no link between the Ripper and the Torso kille back in 1888. So if you want to join ranks with those with an 1880:s insight level about dismemberment murders, be my guest.

And yes, most peoiple today donīt the the series were linked, on account of how hundreds of books have suggested this as if it was a fact.

But many of the more insightful and knowledgeable reseearchers have already changed their mindsets on this business, and more will follow, for logical reasons.

So it is a procedure over time. And you are perfectly correct to pound your chest and say that you are in the majority so far: better now than never.

[Abby Normal]

Iīm not all that impressed by Gareths points of dissimilarities. Take, for example, the last point: "Evisceration/intent to eviscerate in 4 from 5 Ripper murders, vs evisceration in a tiny minority of torsos (and then arguably for practical reasons".

For starters, we donīt know that there was an intent to eviscerate in 4 out of 5 Ripper murders; it is a guess only. Mind you, itīs not a bad guess, but if we are to say that such an intent is proven by the similarities existing visavi the three evisceration murders, it becomes a tad silly if we rate it as a near certainty that Nichols was about to be eviscerated, but refuse to accept that victims who lost their abdominal walls and their uteri by way of knife, who sustained a cut from pubes to ribs, who had rings stolen from theor fingers and who were both prostitutes (Chapman/Jackson) were in all probability victims of the same man.

Also, it is in no way established that evisceration was only present with "a tiny minority" of the torsos. Jackson is the only PROVEN evisceration victim, but since other victims lacked organs too, it may well be that at least three out of six victims were eviscerated. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence, least of all in the Rainham case, where the same division of the torso was done as in the Jackson case, and where - like in the Jackson case - heart and lungs and a part of the colon was missing. Once we know that Jackson WAS eviscerated, the rational guess must be that the Rainham victim was also eviscerated in much the same fashion.
Otherwise, she just happened to loose the exact same organs as Jackson did, but for the uterus. Coincidences, coincidences...

The only real difference lies in the dismemberment, and the only question we therefore need to ask is what is more likely to happen:

That a killer dismembers in some cases but not in all.

Or that two killers replicate each otherīs lists of extremely odd and rare inclusions, uteri extractions, heart extraction, ripping the stomach open from pubes to ribs and cutting away abdominal walls in large sections and so on.

It really is not any hard question to answer. It is a very, very easy one.

That is not to say that a killer who dismembers and dumps victims in one series and kills other victims in the open streets in another is not a strange killer. He is definitely rare and unexpected - to a degree. But not anywhere as strange and rare as the suggestion of identical twin killers roaming the streets of victorian London and inflicting the same odd damage on their respective victims. That would be a hundred times as unlikely and more. So hiding behind how how a man who only dismembers at times is not common is not going to work.

As I have pointed out before, there are examples of occasional dismemberers, like Miyazaki, the child killer in Japan. He killed four children, and dismembered numbers one and four. In his first murder, he returned to where he had left the body to decompose weeks after the murder and removed the hands and feet to keep as souvenirs. In his second murder, he left the body in the woods like in his first case, but never returned to dismember it, although he had ample opportunity to do so. He dumped his third victim in a parking lot, while he threw her clothes in the woods - so he COULD have dumped her there too - and dismembered her. The fourth victim, he took home and killed and dismembered the body. He then left the body at home, and when it started to decompose very badly, he cut it up in further pieces and dumped the parts all over Tokyo.

So in the first and second case, he was somebody who killed children in the woods and left them lying there.

And in his last case, he killed in the seclusion of his home, and he then dumped the body parts all over Tokyo.

The first two murders therefore looked like they were perpetrated by somebody who perhaps lived nearby the woods and killed there.

The fourth murder looked entirely different - here, we had a man with transportation and who dumped dismembered body parts all over a large metropolis.

If there had been no dismemberment in the first murder, would these murders not resemble the ripper/torso murders to a highly significant degree? Or should I not use the word "significant" here...?

agree fish
the points of similarities far outweigh the differences. and also agree that serial killers sometimes dismember and sometimes don't and change their MO depending on the circs and escalation. I was trying to be fair to Sam and the naysayers, something that hopefully happens in return, but im not holding my breath!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Hi Fisherman,

The Miyazaki case (which is a new one to me) is interesting, as I posted earlier, it's a bit of a head scratcher why some of the torsos were decomposed. Where had they been stored? And why?
Would a serial dismemberer keep some parts some of the time, or do they have to fit a rigid MO?
Just a thought.

[Errata]

actually Sams list of (very valid I concede) differences made me think re his point number two.

what serial killer in history has had such a short killing time frame? (personally I think the rippers spree goes from millwood to McKenzie but assuming it was just the c5).

to me seems like its rare. but if we look at bundys short spree with the sorority murders, it is part of his much longer serial killer activity, eventhough the sorority murders seem totally different than his usual MO/sig. My point is dosnt the rippers short spree seem more likely if it was part of a longer serial killer activity?i don't know, just thinking out loud here.

The thing with that is that Bundy was a serial killer who went on a spree killing. Two completely different things. But his spree was a legitimate spree. No cooling off period. The Ripper did have a cooling off period. So not a spree.

[Michael W Richards]

"In the issue of 15th inst. it is said that a light overcoatwas among the things found in Cutbush's house, and that a man in a light overcoat was seen talking to a woman at Backchurch Lane whose body with arms attached was found in Pinchin Street. This is hopelessly incorrect! On 10th Sept. '89 the naked body, with arms, of a woman was found wrapped in some sacking under a Railway arch in Pinchin Street: the head and legs were never found nor was the woman ever identified. She had been killed at least 24 hours before the remains which had seemingly been brought from a distance, were discovered. The stomach was split up by a cut, and the head and legs had been severed in a manner identical with that of the woman whose remains were discovered in the Thames, in Battersea Park, and on the Chelsea Embankment on the 4th June of the same year; and these murders had no connection whatever with the Whitechapel horrors. The Rainham mystery in 1887 and the Whitehall mystery (when portions of a woman's body were found under what is now New Scotland Yard) in 1888 were of a similar type to the Thames and Pinchin Street crimes."

It appears Fisherman that the authorities were content with linking the Torso's together, but not with the Whitechapel Murders..as presumed committed by this Jack fellow. I think most everyone agrees with that in principle....I did say most.

[Fisherman]

actually Sams list of (very valid I concede) differences made me think re his point number two.

what serial killer in history has had such a short killing time frame? (personally I think the rippers spree goes from millwood to McKenzie but assuming it was just the c5).

to me seems like its rare. but if we look at bundys short spree with the sorority murders, it is part of his much longer serial killer activity, eventhough the sorority murders seem totally different than his usual MO/sig. My point is dosnt the rippers short spree seem more likely if it was part of a longer serial killer activity?i don't know, just thinking out loud here.

Iīm not all that impressed by Gareths points of dissimilarities. Take, for example, the last point: "Evisceration/intent to eviscerate in 4 from 5 Ripper murders, vs evisceration in a tiny minority of torsos (and then arguably for practical reasons".

For starters, we donīt know that there was an intent to eviscerate in 4 out of 5 Ripper murders; it is a guess only. Mind you, itīs not a bad guess, but if we are to say that such an intent is proven by the similarities existing visavi the three evisceration murders, it becomes a tad silly if we rate it as a near certainty that Nichols was about to be eviscerated, but refuse to accept that victims who lost their abdominal walls and their uteri by way of knife, who sustained a cut from pubes to ribs, who had rings stolen from theor fingers and who were both prostitutes (Chapman/Jackson) were in all probability victims of the same man.

Also, it is in no way established that evisceration was only present with "a tiny minority" of the torsos. Jackson is the only PROVEN evisceration victim, but since other victims lacked organs too, it may well be that at least three out of six victims were eviscerated. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence, least of all in the Rainham case, where the same division of the torso was done as in the Jackson case, and where - like in the Jackson case - heart and lungs and a part of the colon was missing. Once we know that Jackson WAS eviscerated, the rational guess must be that the Rainham victim was also eviscerated in much the same fashion.
Otherwise, she just happened to loose the exact same organs as Jackson did, but for the uterus. Coincidences, coincidences...

The only real difference lies in the dismemberment, and the only question we therefore need to ask is what is more likely to happen:

That a killer dismembers in some cases but not in all.

Or that two killers replicate each otherīs lists of extremely odd and rare inclusions, uteri extractions, heart extraction, ripping the stomach open from pubes to ribs and cutting away abdominal walls in large sections and so on.

It really is not any hard question to answer. It is a very, very easy one.

That is not to say that a killer who dismembers and dumps victims in one series and kills other victims in the open streets in another is not a strange killer. He is definitely rare and unexpected - to a degree. But not anywhere as strange and rare as the suggestion of identical twin killers roaming the streets of victorian London and inflicting the same odd damage on their respective victims. That would be a hundred times as unlikely and more. So hiding behind how how a man who only dismembers at times is not common is not going to work.

As I have pointed out before, there are examples of occasional dismemberers, like Miyazaki, the child killer in Japan. He killed four children, and dismembered numbers one and four. In his first murder, he returned to where he had left the body to decompose weeks after the murder and removed the hands and feet to keep as souvenirs. In his second murder, he left the body in the woods like in his first case, but never returned to dismember it, although he had ample opportunity to do so. He dumped his third victim in a parking lot, while he threw her clothes in the woods - so he COULD have dumped her there too - and dismembered her. The fourth victim, he took home and killed and dismembered the body. He then left the body at home, and when it started to decompose very badly, he cut it up in further pieces and dumped the parts all over Tokyo.

So in the first and second case, he was somebody who killed children in the woods and left them lying there.

And in his last case, he killed in the seclusion of his home, and he then dumped the body parts all over Tokyo.

The first two murders therefore looked like they were perpetrated by somebody who perhaps lived nearby the woods and killed there.

The fourth murder looked entirely different - here, we had a man with transportation and who dumped dismembered body parts all over a large metropolis.

If there had been no dismemberment in the first murder, would these murders not resemble the ripper/torso murders to a highly significant degree? Or should I not use the word "significant" here...?

[Abby Normal]

There's nothing vague about it, as there are any number of categorical dissimilarities between the two series. For example:

- All Ripper murders in small part of the East End, vs majority of torsos dumped in various locations in West London
- Five Ripper murders committed in a few weeks, vs a handful of torsos spread over a period of 15 years
- 4 out of 5 Ripper murders committed outdoors, vs none of the torso victims killed/dismembered outdoors
- Dismemberment features in 0% of the Ripper murders, vs dismemberment featuring in 100% of the torso cases
- Evisceration/intent to eviscerate in 4 from 5 Ripper murders, vs evisceration in a tiny minority of torsos (and then arguably for practical reasons)

actually Sams list of (very valid I concede) differences made me think re his point number two.

what serial killer in history has had such a short killing time frame? (personally I think the rippers spree goes from millwood to McKenzie but assuming it was just the c5).

to me seems like its rare. but if we look at bundys short spree with the sorority murders, it is part of his much longer serial killer activity, eventhough the sorority murders seem totally different than his usual MO/sig. My point is dosnt the rippers short spree seem more likely if it was part of a longer serial killer activity?i don't know, just thinking out loud here.

[Abby Normal]

There's nothing vague about it, as there are any number of categorical dissimilarities between the two series. For example:

- All Ripper murders in small part of the East End, vs majority of torsos dumped in various locations in West London
- Five Ripper murders committed in a few weeks, vs a handful of torsos spread over a period of 15 years
- 4 out of 5 Ripper murders committed outdoors, vs none of the torso victims killed/dismembered outdoors
- Dismemberment features in 0% of the Ripper murders, vs dismemberment featuring in 100% of the torso cases
- Evisceration/intent to eviscerate in 4 from 5 Ripper murders, vs evisceration in a tiny minority of torsos (and then arguably for practical reasons)

good list of the differences Sam, and yes its for these reasons why im not at 100% same man.
however, the only one that's a cold hard fact (and I admit , its a biggee)and stands on its own-with no interpretation or "yes, buts" is your point number 4. now compare it to the number of cold hard facts of the similarities:

same victimology
overlapping time frame
overlapping location
post mortem mutilation
flaps of stomach flesh removed
noses cut off
knife primarily used
Bodies left in odd, shocking and public places
faces gashed
vertical cuts to abdomen
internal organs removed
genitalia cut
rings removed

no ifs and or buts and I even left out similarities like series ends the same time, or no overt attempt to hide, because that is up to interpretation.

[Abby Normal]

ah I see. so now people who entertain the idea that the evidence and similarities may point to torsoman and the ripper being the same man- are engaged in lazy thinking and fantasy and trying to fool people. LOL. so when I guess when misinformation, semantic games aren't enough resorting to flat out insults will do.

disgraceful.

sorry chaps insult away but nothing can change the cold hard truth in the number of similarities that reasonably point to they may be the same man. and thankfully more and more reasonable and respected folks are starting to see it too.

[Fisherman]

They do not

Well, thatīs a relief and a half...!

Given the required qualifications, do you believe you qualify?

Would I qualify for a discussion that required reasonability and politeness? Thatīs really not for me to say, is it? In the end, I think there would be those - you included - that would claim I do not qualify. Then again, there would be others saying that you would not be fit to take part yourself.

So itīs not very much use asking the question if the first place, is it?

At the end of the day, it would be nice if everybody out here WAS reasonable and if everybody out here WAS polite. Sadly, that is not the case. Some have no intention of being polite, others enter a discussion with that aim and leave it after having shamed themselves. A few people manage to stay reasonably polite although they have ample reason not to. There are all kinds out here, and that is to be expected, actually.

We can discuss these things all day long, and we will disagree over them too, Iīm sure. Therefore I tend to think that making as good a case as we can for whatever we argue out here is and remains the most important thing. If we can couple it with being charitable and making friends, then so much the better. But I find not all posters invite that kind of a debate. It has resulted in me discussing things in a friendly manner with some and with a less friendly manner with others. I donīt doubt that I am to be blamed to a degree for the failures to keep a polite tone many a time. Nor do I doubt that others are also to blame for it on other occasions. But as I say, in the end, it is not for me to judge myself in that department. Or for you to judge your own efforts.

My overall recommendation would be not to focus on other posters personally if we can avoid it, but instead debate the case as such. No matter how annoying we think another poster is, allowing that annoyance to take precedence over our interest in the case will always be wrong.
Whether you think that I am polite enough for your taste is never going to be as important as whether the Ripper series and the torso ditto had the same originator. So can we return to the case facts now, please?

[Kattrup]

I think you are wise to select your oponents on matters like these with a bit more care fortwith, though, so I salute you on that decision. If reasonability and politeness involves accepting you laying down your homemade rules for what can be said or nor,

They do not

I would not want to participate in such a debacle anyway.

Given the required qualifications, do you believe you qualify?

[Fisherman]

Perhaps you should reread it. I wrote “I agree that as the tailor in the story, your posts with this thread and others weave a beguiling phantasy. But every time you parade it, it fails to fool.”

I believe you misunderstood it, but no matter. When I have time, I am happy to discuss terms used and framing with reasonable and polite posters.

Once again, I misunderstood nothing. I even understand that you have by now realized that claiming that using the terms dismemberment and evisceration would be inadmissible was inevitably going to end in a cop out for you. And lo and behold...!

I think you are wise to select your oponents on matters like these with a bit more care fortwith, though, so I salute you on that decision. If reasonability and politeness involves accepting you laying down your homemade rules for what can be said or nor, I would not want to participate in such a debacle anyway.