Jack the Ripper & The Torso Murders

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

Are you saying here that if we could establish that the 1873/74 torso murders were committed by the same man that committed the 1888 Whitechapel murders, then we could eliminate all named Ripper suspects except Lech as viable suspects on account of their ages?

hi lewis
yup

[Fiver]

my thoughts are he had a bolt hole somewhere. his mom later had a cats meat shop. and also i beleive lech owned a shop or store later? so they were not adverse to owning a separate abode of business of some type. perhaps he had something similar earlier if he was the torsoripper.

There are no records of Maria Louisa Forsdyke ever owning a shop of any kind. Cats meat vendors carried their wares through the street in barrows, they didn't have shops where people came to them. She is first known to have worked in the cats neat trade in 1891. Before that she worked as a dressmaker.

Charles Allen Lechmere didn't become a grocer until 1902. There are no records of him having a separate business address before that.

Not only is there no evidence for Lechmere having a bolthole, it would require him renting a place that brought him no income for decades on a carman's salary, which was probably already spread rather thin paying to feed, clothe, and house a large family.

[Fiver]

also, if torsoman and the ripper were the same man, and you include the 1873/74 torsos (i lean they prob were, and fish def does) then lech is the only suspect that fits the bill agewise.

If the Torsoman was the Ripper and the 1873 murders were done by the Torsomanm that eliminates a lot of suspects, but it doesn't leave Charles Lechmere as the only possibility. Using the main suspect page, we see that in 1873 Charles Dodson was 41, Thomas Cream was 23, Frederick Deeming was 31, Karl Feigenbaum was 44, Hyam Hyams was 18, Jacob Levy was 17, James Maybrick was 35, Michael Ostrog was 40, William Gull was 57, Robert D’Onston Stephenson was 32, Alois Szemeredy was 33, Nikolay Vasiliev was 25, and John Williams was 33.

[Abby Normal]

There are no records of Maria Louisa Forsdyke ever owning a shop of any kind. Cats meat vendors carried their wares through the street in barrows, they didn't have shops where people came to them. She is first known to have worked in the cats neat trade in 1891. Before that she worked as a dressmaker.

Charles Allen Lechmere didn't become a grocer until 1902. There are no records of him having a separate business address before that.

Not only is there no evidence for Lechmere having a bolthole, it would require him renting a place that brought him no income for decades on a carman's salary, which was probably already spread rather thin paying to feed, clothe, and house a large family.

so you admit she owned a cart! lol jk. thanks fiver for the info.

[Abby Normal]

If the Torsoman was the Ripper and the 1873 murders were done by the Torsomanm that eliminates a lot of suspects, but it doesn't leave Charles Lechmere as the only possibility. Using the main suspect page, we see that in 1873 Charles Dodson was 41, Thomas Cream was 23, Frederick Deeming was 31, Karl Feigenbaum was 44, Hyam Hyams was 18, Jacob Levy was 17, James Maybrick was 35, Michael Ostrog was 40, William Gull was 57, Robert D’Onston Stephenson was 32, Alois Szemeredy was 33, Nikolay Vasiliev was 25, and John Williams was 33.

with all due respect your "suspects" are a joke. and universally considered as such. ill give you donston as a possible long shot. who the heck is charles dodson and john willams?!! lol
like i said the only valid suspect that fits the bill is lech.

[Mark J D]

... Cats meat vendors carried their wares through the street in barrows, they didn't have shops where people came to them...

-- What was the shop Mrs Hardiman kept on the ground floor of 29 Hanbury Street?

M.

[The Rookie Detective]

How do we know when the Whitehall torso was killed?

The main torso was found just after the weekend of the double event, having been deposited 2 or 3 days before it was discovered.

The Torso could then have only been deposited on either Saturday night/Sunday morning, because it wouldn't have been placed in daylight, and wouldn't have been placed when the site opened up again on Monday morning.

Sunday night/early hours of Monday morning is too late, based on the condition of the wall and the volume of maggots that were present.

That almost certainly means that the torso was put there on Saturday night/Sunday morning, ergo, just hours before or after the murder of Stride and/or Eddowes.

The date of death has always been focused primarily on the discovery of an arm, and not on the main torso itself.

This is a mistake, as the decomposition level is different in the main torso, due to the volume of organs/guts/fluid etc... and it is more accurate to determine how long a Torso has been dead, compared to trying to analyze a date of death just based on an arm, which will decay at a different rate.

We are left with a date anywhere between early August to early September, which is essentially a month window in which the woman was murdered.

It has always been assumed that the murder itself took place between Chapman and Stride, but I believe this is wrong and that the murder instead occurred before Nichols.

This may not seem all that relevant, but I believe that there's a reason why the killer chose the weekend of the double event to move the torso and place it in the vault.

The killer must have physically had the body hidden somewhere between the kill date...
(between Friday 3rd August - Sunday 9th September)

...to the point it was placed in the vault...
(between 29th-30th September)

That meant the killer had the torso hidden somewhere, from approximately 3 weeks - 8 weeks before he placed the torso in the vault.

But why move the body?

And why choose to move it on the same weekend as the Ripper double event?

I believe the date of the kill was the 24th of August...the weekend before Nichols was murdered.

The 24th of August is approximately 5 weeks before he moved the torso on the 29th/30th of September and sits roughly halfway between the estimated (and generally accepted) kill-date parameters.

This is the timeline FROM AUGUST 1888 ONLY based on my hypothesis...

Plus of course a few additional facts..


Friday 4th August - A couple walking along Bakers Row in Whitechapel is seen throwing a bundle over some hoarding, that falls onto vacant ground. The bundle turns out to be a child. Barely alive, the child is taken to the infirmary; but only lives a few days.
The mysterious COUPLE escape.

Tabram - Tuesday 7th August - (early hours after Monday 6th Bank Holiday)

Whitehall Torso - Friday 24th August/early hours of Saturday 25th August - killer hides/dismembers torso over the weekend

Canonical 5 begins...

Nichols - Friday 31st August - just a few days after her birthday
(Heavy rain/storm on night before murder)

Chapman - Saturday 8th September - just over 2 weeks short of her birthday
(Tried to decapitate, but was possibly disturbed by that pesky Parisian Cadosche and his toileting habits)

Saturday 29th/early hours or Sunday 30th September - the Torso is placed/moved into the cellar vault.

On the night of Saturday 29th, 3 men were seen behaving oddly by the perimeter of the construction site of the NSY building. They had a cart with them. One of the men is seen to try and scale the fence/hoarding but is stopped by a policeman. The man gives a reason for being there and the men are told to move on. The man giving the alibi is almost certainly a worker at the site and convinces the officer that nothing is untoward.

Make of that what you will.

Stride...
Eddowes - early hours of Sunday 30th September (attacked Eddowes face to dehumanize her)
(Heavy rain)

Mary Jane Kelly - early hours of Friday 9th November (tried to take her head off, obliterated her face to dehumanize her)


Canonical 5 ends.


Then a 7 month gap from here until the following alternating sequence... (excluding Farmer and Mylett)

Could a 7 month gap indicate that the killer discovered he was to become father?

Was the 7 month time gap, the time that covered most of the gestation period of the killer's child?

That's a different angle at least...


Elizabeth Jackson - 6 or 7 months pregnant (coincidence?) murdered/dismembered - late Monday 3rd June/ early hours of Tuesday 4th June 1889

Alice McKenzie - early hours of Wednesday 17th July 1889

Pinchin Street Torso - (Saturday 7th/Sunday 8th/Sunday 9th September) - Including John Arnold (Cleary) going to the press to state there was a body in the street BEFORE the body was even placed, gives us some indication that the murder was at least known about by more than just the killer, unless he was the killer himself.

Frances Coles - Friday 13th (February 1891)


then...

Emily Smith - Attempted murder (Saturday November 5th 1892)

Lambeth Torso - June 1902


But there's lots more that we almost certainly don't know about and there were possibly other victims that would fill in those gaps. I haven't included anything prior to August 1888 on this post because it's too long a post already.



But going back to your question...

The 24th August is based on several factors, one of which regards the dated pieces of newspaper that were found with the torso. Two different publications were found, but one was certainly from the London Echo dated 24th August 1888.

I believe this date holds significance.

There was another key publication that came out on that same date, which can possibly be linked to the location of the Whitehall Torso, with the subsequent murder in Lambeth in 1902.

I am currently collating some data, and will submit some details in due course.

I believe that the killer chose that date for a reason and that the killer was far more audacious in his intent than we realize.


Of course, the counterargument will always be that the exact date can never be proven, because that's the nature of the investigative beast.

It all comes down to how far someone is willing to open their eyes, to at least consider adaptive concepts that go against pre-conceptions and established beliefs on the case.


RD

[Fiver]

so you admit she owned a cart! lol jk. thanks fiver for the info.

Thats not what I said. Cats meat vendors carried their wares through the street in barrows. Not carts.

There are several pictures of these hand-pushed barrows here.

[Fiver]

with all due respect your "suspects" are a joke. and universally considered as such. ill give you donston as a possible long shot. who the heck is charles dodson and john willams?!! lol
like i said the only valid suspect that fits the bill is lech.

I didn't pick them, I went with the main suspect list on this site. You're right that most of the popular suspects are ridiculous, but so is Charles Lechmere as a suspect

[Fiver]

-- What was the shop Mrs Hardiman kept on the ground floor of 29 Hanbury Street?

M.

"On the ground-floor there are two rooms, occupied by Mrs Hardiman and her son, aged 16. Mrs. Hardiman keeps a cat's-meat shop. The son goes out with the cat's meat." - 16 September 1888 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.

So the meat was cut up and skewered at 29 Hanbury, then sold by the son when he went out on his route. Your point?

[Abby Normal]

"On the ground-floor there are two rooms, occupied by Mrs Hardiman and her son, aged 16. Mrs. Hardiman keeps a cat's-meat shop. The son goes out with the cat's meat." - 16 September 1888 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.

So the meat was cut up and skewered at 29 Hanbury, then sold by the son when he went out on his route. Your point?

um i think it was that people had cat meats shops where they cut up meat. or torsos. lol

but maybe her 16 year old son was torso man! he would fit the age profile of the earlier ones at -1 years old!

[John Wheat]

with all due respect your "suspects" are a joke. and universally considered as such. ill give you donston as a possible long shot. who the heck is charles dodson and john willams?!! lol
like i said the only valid suspect that fits the bill is lech.

Lechmere is a joke suspect as well.

[Abby Normal]

Lechmere is a joke suspect as well.

really john? really? hes a joke suspect along the lines of ostrog and maybrick and gull and others in fivers list?!?! really?
a man seen in tje middle of the night hovering near polly nichols freshly killed body and could very well have been her killer?
a man who had a material discrepency with the pc on the scene?
a man who we know walked close to tje murders sites on a daily basis?

how would you like it if i called bury a joke suspect? after all he had ef all physical connection to the case and cant even be placed any where near the murder sites or the victims. cmon he was just a domestic murderer!!

but i wouldnt do that because hes not a joke suspect and i have alot of respect for people like you who think he is a valid suspect(and he is). how about you show the same respect?

would that be too much to ask?

[FrankO]

oh ok thanks got it. but we dont know exactly what day whitehall torso was murdered, or cut up, or removed from his bolt hole, or if any of the torso parts were placed somewhere else before brought to whitehall.
so i dont think we can say he had his bolt hole available when chapman was murdered.

According to the medical evidence, the Whitehall victim could even have been killed (well) before Nichols. So, whatever the case, we can assume that Torso Man did have some bolt hole for his Whitehall victim, as we know he killed her & cut her up. That must have been done at some place and not out in the street. And the same goes for the storage of the body/body parts.

The Whitehall construction site being that place seems a bit unlikely since no body parts were ever discovered there by noone until the torso part at the beginning of October. But even if we assume that Whitehall was that place, he apparently did have that place at his disposal at the time that Chapman was killed and, quite possibly, also when Nichols was killed. Whether Whitehall was his bolthole for the other torso victims, is another question, of course. If he did use the Whitehall site for killing, cutting up & storing the Whitehall victim, then it would show that he was able to be ‘creative’ about finding a bolthole and that finding a bolt hole to serve for his needs was important to him.

and this isnt even bringing in access or not to a cart, which may have also played a part in whether he killed in his bolt hole or on the street.

its way too uncertain for me. and besides as i mentioned its possible he didnt have his chop shop and or cart available for whitehall.

Seeing that, up until the Whitehall victim, Torso Man let years pass by between victims (assuming that one and the same man was responsible for all) victims, I don’t see much in the ‘lack of cart or bolt hole’ explanation. Possible, of course, but I think a rapid increase in killing for a relatively short period of time (shorter than his shortest pause up to then) is not explained by something practical, but rather by a different need on the killer’s part, possibly a stressful event that happened in his life that perhaps caused him to drink or use drugs more than usual. Just my view, of course, but there you go.

so killed/ dismembered her somewhere else or even on premise like jerry suggested. which of course, if so, points even stronger to one of the workers there like wildbore.

Jerry has done good work. Wildbore is a very interesting suspect for the Whitehall victim.
Cheers,
Frank

[John Wheat]

really john? really? hes a joke suspect along the lines of ostrog and maybrick and gull and others in fivers list?!?! really?
a man seen in tje middle of the night hovering near polly nichols freshly killed body and could very well have been her killer?
a man who had a material discrepency with the pc on the scene?
a man who we know walked close to tje murders sites on a daily basis?

how would you like it if i called bury a joke suspect? after all he had ef all physical connection to the case and cant even be placed any where near the murder sites or the victims. cmon he was just a domestic murderer!!

but i wouldnt do that because hes not a joke suspect and i have alot of respect for people like you who think he is a valid suspect(and he is). how about you show the same respect?

would that be too much to ask?

There's a good chance Bury was the Ripper the same cannot be said for Lechmere. The evidence for Lechmere as the Ripper let alone the Torso Killer as well is non existent.