The Paris Torso Mystery

[Fleetwood Mac]

Wouldn't the Pinchin St victim's arm have been underneath the torso, which was laid face down, as per the newspaper illustration? Thus the 'evidently' means it couldn't actually be seen, but was assumed to be in that location. Have I got this right?

Mark D.

That's what I thought initially: how can you see what's underneath a body that's lying face down? But then, this isn't a body with a head and legs and so maybe such a body wouldn't lie in the way a complete body would lie.

Either way, 'evidently' certainly means he was confident.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Would you happen to know, FM, whether there has ever been a case in British criminal history of a public school teacher or barrister being convicted of murder, let alone serial murder?

[Fleetwood Mac]

Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin were serial killers who mutilated in the same time frame and geographical area. It took less than a minute to find that example. There are others.

Those were Americans. The United States is a vast country with a much larger population.

England, on the other hand, has had something like 70, captured and evaded capture, recorded serial killers since the 1590s.

Approximately five of those committed crimes in London that you could call similar to the TM or WM, in the space of a good 430 years.

Feel free to find the 'others' (same time, broadly same place) in England, that would be comparable.

In England, we're a small crowded nation living on top of another which compels us to be more liberal (give and take to make it work) and of course detection is easier than it is in a vast country such as the United States, which means they're more likely to embark on a series and have two in the same place at the same time (add in population).

[Fisherman]

That's a straw man that completely misrepresents what PI said. The Torsoman didn't put heads on display to shock. He didn't leave them lying around to be found. The heads of the Torso victims were never found, which is a sign of defensive mutilation to hide the victims' identities. The disarticulation of the Torso victims is also clearly defensive, done to make it easier to transport and dump the body parts.

You simply donīt know whether or not the decapitations were defensive. Nor can you know whether the disarticulations were. If they were aggressive dismemberments and decapitations, would the killer need to carry the parts around in a bag to prove that?

I think not.

There are eviscerations involved in the Torso murders, therefore it is completely logical to argue that the dismemberments many have been of an aggresive nature. And even if they were not, as I have pointed out before, once the killer cut out the heart, lungs and uterus with itīs appendages from the body of Jackson, he had identified himself as an aggressive mutilator. If he then procceded to reason that he wanted to try and hide the identity of his victim is neither here nor there - he had already signed a contract telling us that he was with great certainty of the same ilk as the Ripper in fundamental issues.

[Fisherman]

The Whitechapel Murderer took the uterus of each of two victims as trophies.

And it was noted at the time that he had a special interest in its extraction.

Does the same apply to the Torso murderer?

We donīt know, for the simple reason that the pelvic section of the Whitehall victim was never found. Therefore, we do. Not know what happened to that uterus.

Nor do we know that the Ripper took uteri as ”trophies”, I īt is one interpretation of a number of interpretations.

There were other parts cut out of Torso victims. Since you seem to think you know these things, maybe you can tell us if the heart removed from Liz Jackson was a trohy taken by the killer? It was never found.

We cannot reason like you do. I hope you can see why now.

[Fisherman]

Delivering meat to a butcher is just as likely to turn someone into an expert at anatomy as delivering meat to a restaurant would turn someone into an expert chef.

But having dealings with butchers in your profession puts you one step further to learning about butchering. Which is what I pointed to.

Charles Lechmere was a van driver and later a grocer. Other members of his family became cats meat vendors, with the first known example being in 1891, after the murders. None were butchers or knackers. A cats meat vendor bought boiled horsemeat from distributors who bought it from the slaughterhouses. A cat's meat vendor dealt with meat, fat, and gristle. The hair, hide, bones, hooves, and organs had been removed at the slaughterhouse.

Did I not tell you that we are not supposed to discuss the carman out here? There are threads for it.

You'd learn more about anatomy by eating a piece of fried chicken than by being a cat's meat vendor.

There were - as has been shown by Edward Stow - people along the cats meat chain who circumnavigated the law and handled large and bony chunks of horses, instead of mere cubes of flesh.

[Fisherman]

Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin were serial killers who mutilated in the same time frame and geographical area. It took less than a minute to find that example. There are others.

Had a quick look, and the two certainly used the same approximate area. So I will say what I have said before: maybe there are examples that I have been unable to find, but they will only go to show that it is a very rare thing to have two eviscerating serial killers in the same approximate area and time. And in Kempers case, he is not an eviscerator in the true sense of the word. An eviscerator is somebody who disembowels by way of cutting somebody open and extracting organs through the opening. There is a wish to get at the organs, and that wish lies behind the killer cutting the body open. In Kempers case, what I find is that it is said that he ”dissected” one or two of his victims, and this was in combination with dismemberment - he cut the body up in pieces, and he then - if I have the correct meaning of ”dissect” - cut into the parts laid open by the dissection. Maybe you have exact information to dub Kemper an eviscerator? Of course, he tore the larynx and tongue out of his mothers neck, but that would be more of a symbolic matter aimed at getting rid of her voice in his life.
But I am not going to quibble all that much about this small difference - I think the pair is very useful in the context you present them.

You say there are others. Maybe they are even closer? Who would that be?



* Only one Torso victim was identified, so we cannot reach any conclusions about victimology.

The one example we have is nevertheless in line with the Ripper victims. And what we have is what we go by.

* Neither killer cut the abdomen open all the way down. The Torsoman cut the bodies horizontally, severing the spine. The Ripper mutilated the soft tissues of the torso.

The torso killer cut the abdomen from sternum to groin in two cases, before cutting horisontally. So you are incorrect here.

* The Ripper took organs with hims as trophies. The uterus that the Torosman excised was not taken as a a trophy.

You donīt know that the Ripper took organs as trophies. It is am assumption you are making. The hearts and lungs were missing in the Rainham case as well as in the Jackson case. There can be no knowing whether or not these parts were taken as trophies. Your point has no value, I īm afraid.

* The Ripper cut throats to kill his victims. We have no idea how the Torso victims were killed. The Torsoman severed heads after the victims were dead.

Since we ”have no idea how the Torso victims were killed”, how does that preclude that they too died by way of having their throats cut? And why would we predispose that a killer must always kill in the exact same fashion? I can name many who did not.

* The Ripper took some victims possessions as trophies. We have no idea whether or not the Torsoman did so.

Again, we only know that parts were missing. That is not the same as reasoning that the killer must have taken them as trophies. Moreover, we can also consider how the killer is likely to have had extensive time with the Torso victims and much less so with the Ripper ditto. That means that it is a logical solution that he may have taken organs from the Ripper victims to prolong the gratification for himself. In which case they WOULD be trophies - but with a logical difference explaining why he took trophies from the open street victims. Finally, as I said before, there were parts missing from both the Rainham victim and Jackson that may or may not have been trophies. Again, your point leaks rather badly.

* The doctors concurred that the Torsoman was skilled at separating limbs at the joints and was probably a hunter, butcher, or knacker; but not a surgeon. Doctors varied wildly in their estimates of the Ripper's skill - some thought he was a butcher or knacker, some thought his skill went well beyond that and he was a doctor, and some thought that the Ripper had no knowledge if anatomy whatsoever. We do know that the Torsoman was skilled at removing heads, while the Ripper had no idea how to go about the job.

What we know is that Charles Hebbert said that the Torso killer underwent a progression, from not being able to decapitate by knife in the first three murders, to accomplishing it in September of 1889, with the Pinchin Street victim. If Hebbert was right, and if the notches to the neck vertebrae in the Kelly case disclose a failed effort to decapitate, as suggested by the medicos of the time, then we have two killers who were willing but unable to decapitate by knife in 1888.

Your coincidences do not exist.

I think you are correct there - they will not be coincidences at all. So the problem is basically yours - you are the one who suggests that two different killers both cut from pubes to ribs (you seem unaware of that), both cut away abdominal walls from their victims, both targetted prostitute victims, both operated in London in the same time frame, both stole rings from their victims fingers, both were deemed skilled cutters by medicos and so on.

If you are now willing to concede that these matters were not coincidences at all, so much the better.

[rjpalmer]

Wouldn't the Pinchin St victim's arm have been underneath the torso, which was laid face down, as per the newspaper illustration? Thus the 'evidently' means it couldn't actually be seen, but was assumed to be in that location. Have I got this right?

Mark D.

Yes, I suspect Fleetwood is over his skis.

The torso was face downwards, and Inspector Pinhorn said it looked like it had been dumped from a gunny sack. So it was not 'positioned.'

Mary Kelly, obviously, was facing upwards.

Further, Dr. Clarke, who presumably took extensive notes, identified the arm doubled under the abdomen as the right arm, not the left. Perhaps the downward position of the body had confused Pinhorn.

As such, any resemblance to the Kelly murder is likely to have been incidental.

"Dr. John Clarke, assistant to Dr. Phillips, divisional police-surgeon, was the first witness. He said that at a little before six o'clock on the morning of the 10th of September he was called by the police to Pinchin-street. Under a railway arch there, about 8 ft. from the road, and 1 ft. from the right wall of the arch, he saw the trunk of a woman, minus the head and legs. It was lying with the right arm doubled under the abdomen, and left arm at the side. The arms were not severed from the body."

(Morning Post, Reynold's Newspaper, etc)

I will again refer to the study ("by qualified people") showing that "profilers" had identified "rituals" and "signatures" from crime scenes that were not related.

Caution is advised.

[Fiver]

That tells us all how much you know about aggressive dismemberment. I pointed earlier to Danny Rolling, a coed killer who decapitated one of his victims and put it on display for shock effect in her book shelve, a few yards only from where her body lay.

So Rolling took the head off - but was it about preventing identification? Well, obviously you must believe so!

Ted Bundy reportedly decapitated Georganne Hawkins, but he did so a fair few days after having left her body in the woods. Was that about preventing identification, when he returned to the body, or were there other reasons?

When Ed Kemper was ten years old, he killed and decapitated a cat. He then mounted the cat head on a spike. Was he after making the cat unidentifiable, or was there another driving force? Maybe there is a clue in how he went on to kill female students, decapitate them and perform irrumatio with the heads, who knows? He also had sex with bhis m others decapitated head before ripping out her larynx. He threw darts at the head. He left the body in his mothers home, with an exception for the larynx and cut away tongue that he threw in the garbage.
That's a poor effort to try and hide the identity of a victim, is it not?

Now that you know all of this - and there are more decapitators who made no effort at all to try and hide the identities of their victims - maybe you can conceive another explanation for decapitation than hiding the identity in the Thames Torso case too?

That's a straw man that completely misrepresents what PI said. The Torsoman didn't put heads on display to shock. He didn't leave them lying around to be found. The heads of the Torso victims were never found, which is a sign of defensive mutilation to hide the victims' identities. The disarticulation of the Torso victims is also clearly defensive, done to make it easier to transport and dump the body parts.

[Mark J D]

The position of Mary's body included her left forearm lying across her abdomen.

It was reported by two policemen who were first on the scene of the Pinchin Street torso find: the arms were close to the body and the hands close to the abdomen, the left hand was evidently resting where the gash was.

I'm a touch surprised that two such murders involving extensive mutilation and everything that entails, concluded with the body being found with the left hand/arm either lying across the abdomen or 'resting where the gash was' in the abdomen. There's a possibility that the hand/arm was positioned that way, and we know that sexual serial murderers engage in ritualistic behaviour that appears to lack meaning to the observer but does hold meaning for him. 'Just a possibility, speculation and so on. Still, how does a dead left hand/arm, which surely couldn't have been resting in that position at the point of mutilation, find its way to lying/resting on an opened abdomen?

Wouldn't the Pinchin St victim's arm have been underneath the torso, which was laid face down, as per the newspaper illustration? Thus the 'evidently' means it couldn't actually be seen, but was assumed to be in that location. Have I got this right?

Mark D.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The Ripper took organs with hims as trophies. The uterus that the Torosman excised was not taken as a a trophy.

The Whitechapel Murderer took the uterus of each of two victims as trophies.

And it was noted at the time that he had a special interest in its extraction.

Does the same apply to the Torso murderer?

[Fiver]

It has nothing whatsoever to do wih Kosminski and haircutting. If he delivered meat to butchers, and at the same time was a member of a family that was deeply involved in the horse flesh business, there is every chance that he acquired an amount of training and insights about cutting and disarticulating.

Delivering meat to a butcher is just as likely to turn someone into an expert at anatomy as delivering meat to a restaurant would turn someone into an expert chef.

Charles Lechmere was a van driver and later a grocer. Other members of his family became cats meat vendors, with the first known example being in 1891, after the murders. None were butchers or knackers. A cats meat vendor bought boiled horsemeat from distributors who bought it from the slaughterhouses. A cat's meat vendor dealt with meat, fat, and gristle. The hair, hide, bones, hooves, and organs had been removed at the slaughterhouse.

You'd learn more about anatomy by eating a piece of fried chicken than by being a cat's meat vendor.

[Fiver]

Not at all - see the above. What links the two series are the many similarities of a many times extremely rare nature. Two sexual serial killers who eviscerate in the same time frame and geographical area is an unheard of phenomenon. These two series would be the only example worldwide and historically, if your hunch is correct.

Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin were serial killers who mutilated in the same time frame and geographical area. It took less than a minute to find that example. There are others.

But I don't think it is. Because, not only would that require that there were two sexual serial killers who eviscerated in the same time and geographical area, it would also require that they both were -purely coincidentally - into:
-prostitute victims
-cutting the abdomen open all the way down
-excising uteri
-cutting away the abdominal walls from victims in large panes
-cutting throats
-stealing rings from their victimsī fingers
-being very skilled with the knife

The odds for all of these matters to coincide between the series are beyond astronomical. Therefore, they are not likely to indicate anything but a common cutter.

* Only one Torso victim was identified, so we cannot reach any conclusions about victimology.
* Neither killer cut the abdomen open all the way down. The Torsoman cut the bodies horizontally, severing the spine. The Ripper mutilated the soft tissues of the torso.
* The Ripper took organs with hims as trophies. The uterus that the Torosman excised was not taken as a a trophy.
* The Ripper cut throats to kill his victims. We have no idea how the Torso victims were killed. The Torsoman severed heads after the victims were dead.
* The Ripper took some victims possessions as trophies. We have no idea whether or not the Torsoman did so.
* The doctors concurred that the Torsoman was skilled at separating limbs at the joints and was probably a hunter, butcher, or knacker; but not a surgeon. Doctors varied wildly in their estimates of the Ripper's skill - some thought he was a butcher or knacker, some thought his skill went well beyond that and he was a doctor, and some thought that the Ripper had no knowledge if anatomy whatsoever. We do know that the Torsoman was skilled at removing heads, while the Ripper had no idea how to go about the job.

Your coincidences do not exist.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The Thames Torso killer dumped one of his victims smack bang in the middle of Ripper territory. That carries huge weight when discussing a connection between the series.

Does not the fact that the only Torso victim to be identified is known to have solicited only outside Ripper territory carry huge weight when discussing a connection between the series?

[Fisherman]

That does nothing to disprove my point. Those parts were removed from the body, but they aren't missing like the parts removed from the Ripper victims.

Not all the parts removed from the Ripper victims are missing, though. Remember Mary Kelly?

And, as a reminder, whether or not excised parts are missing is very much inferior in meaning to whether or not parts are excised in the first place. We are dealing with two serial killers who eviscerated victims, and that is actually not a point against a common originator…