Jack the Ripper & The Torso Murders

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

I don't rule her out as a Ripper victim (I'm a guy that doesn't easily rule things, if at all), but I have some serious doubts about her as a Ripper victim. But if I had to choose, then I would certainly not put her in Torso Man's basket. But I have a feeling you knew or guessed this already.


If we're supposing that McKenzie was a Ripper victim and the Ripper and Torso Man were one and the same, then I might see it like that, too. But it's perhaps an 'if' (or 2) too many for me. I see the fact that the Ripper opened up the abdomens of all 4 of the victims he mutilated in the C5 as a sort of benchmark. Had MacKenzie been an early victim, like Tabram, then I'd probably included her as a Ripper victim more easily. But that's just me.

The best,
Frank

thanks frank. fair enough.

[Abby Normal]

Sorry but Jacob Levy is not universally considered a joke Abby.

Steve

totally agree, but most the others were. which was my point.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

So….Torso discovered on 2nd October and had been placed there 2 or 3 days earlier. A man called Lawrence was in there on the 29th

You suggest a murder date of sometime between early August to early September which encompasses the murders of Tabram, Nichols and Chapman (although I’m unsure as to how you arrive at those dates as there doesn’t appear to be any indication of TOD from the Doctors [maybe it was estimated elsewhere?])

You believe that the kill was on the 24th August but this is only a hypothesis. There’s nothing wrong with a hypothesis RD but we can’t confirm or dismiss on the basis of one.

So we clearly have a Torso murder occurring within the Whitechapel series which means that the killer (if there was a killer - and we can’t be certain of this) had a premises where he could kill and dismember victims which he chose not to use for the Whitechapel victims. He moved from the highly risky killing of prostitutes outdoors and leaving them where they were certain to be found almost straight away to taking them (presumably of their own volition?) to a premises and killing them with little or no chance of discovery.

Yes, there is always an element of risk in dumping wrapped body parts but the person that did it would have had time for caution; to eliminate as far as possible the risk of being discovered. I’d also ask how certain it would have been for ‘packages’ dumped in the Thames to surface at some point? Would he have considered it a possibility of a package staying at the bottom of the Thames? I don’t know but it introduces an element of chance where’s the Whitehall and Pinchin Street torsos could fail to have been found so this introduces an element of inconsistency within the Torso series. Did he want them found or not? Or is it possible that these torsos weren’t all dumped by the same person?

It’s a minor point but the fact that Elizabeth Jackson was from the West End also adds an element of doubt as to a connection with the Whitechapel murders. Of course she could have ventured into Whitechapel for some reason or the killer could have gone to Chelsea but the Whitechapel murders were all within a small area suggesting that the killer wasn’t a man that roamed any distance for victims.


Can I say with total certainty that the two series weren’t connected. No (but I can’t prove that Lewis Carroll wasn’t the ripper either) All that we can do is to stand back and compare the two ‘series.’ We can’t prove that the torsos were part of a series. It’s far, far easier to state that the Whitechapel murders were though (yes we can certainly question Tabram, Stride, Mackenzie and Coles.) The differences between the torsos and the WM are obvious and telling. I’m not in any way criticising research into the subject but the dangers are obvious and I think that often caution is mistaken for negativity or a desire for the status quo. It’s not. It’s a precaution against the joining up of random dots to make something fit a theory. To a far worse extent we’ve recently seen on here the use of anagrams and lines drawn between locations. There’s nothing wrong with caution imo.

I see nothing to connect these two ‘series,’ and I’m far from convinced that the torsos were particularly a part of a series.

[rjpalmer]

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?

Why worry about such things?

'We' can't, and we won't, and they weren't.

-

Going back to the leg being 'accidentally' buried in the vault at Whitehall, Christer Holmgren's theories can't be correct.

A careful reading of the source materials shows that the leg was not under the mound of dirt; it was in the middle of it.

Further, the mound was the 'trailings' of a drain dug 8-10 weeks before the discovery of the leg, and the medicos believed the leg had only been buried about 6 weeks--ie., 2-4 weeks after the drain had been dug. Thus, the burial couldn't have been an accident--which is a strange idea anyway.

There is even some slight evidence that another body part had been buried even deeper in the vault but had been dug up again.

There had been a clear attempt to bury parts of the body, but the killer or killers must have abandoned the idea.

This was not a body put on 'display.'

[Elamarna]

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.

Sorry but Jacob Levy is not universally considered a joke Abby.

Steve

[FrankO]

hi frank
mckenzie had the vertical cut too, but not as deep as the other ripper victims also. do you rule her out as a ripper victim, or then maybe as a torso victim, since the verticle gash was more akin to them?

Hi Abby,

I don't rule her out as a Ripper victim (I'm a guy that doesn't easily rule things, if at all), but I have some serious doubts about her as a Ripper victim. But if I had to choose, then I would certainly not put her in Torso Man's basket. But I have a feeling you knew or guessed this already.

imho if they were the same man, then the vertical gash was kind of like torsomans first kiss, or part of a sig, regardless of how deep it went.

If we're supposing that McKenzie was a Ripper victim and the Ripper and Torso Man were one and the same, then I might see it like that, too. But it's perhaps an 'if' (or 2) too many for me. I see the fact that the Ripper opened up the abdomens of all 4 of the victims he mutilated in the C5 as a sort of benchmark. Had MacKenzie been an early victim, like Tabram, then I'd probably included her as a Ripper victim more easily. But that's just me.

The best,
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.

[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

[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?

[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]

"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!

[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?

[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]

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.

[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