Jack the Ripper & The Torso Murders

[Fisherman]

Just as criminal history has yet to throw up a single example of a killer murdering a woman in the street on his way to work (and about 20 minutes before he was due to clock on) Or a single example of a person discovering a murdered woman in the street and turning out to have been the killer himself.

In the interest of balance of course.

Well, well, you are back! Who would have thought it?

Just for the sake of balance, yes. Killing en route to work is an example of a single detail. It may well be that nobody has killed anybody in a public aquarium or during a ride on a fun fair either. How that would preclude it from happening is another matter. You seem to think that there is a built in impossibility to kill en route to work, in a dark, deserted street and with no witnesses in sight? Maybe I should make a little play about that too? You know "Die, hag! - oh, wait, no - I am en route to work, I forgot that!"

A detail like this does not in any way compare to the matter of two sexual serial kilers and eviscerators coexisting geographically and chronologically, because that is a matter of the frequency of a type of crime, not a question of a single detail within the murder. So listen here, Herlock, and learn something: There is absolutely nothing to stop a serial killer from using every second of his everyday life to kill, if he finds the opportunity good enough. No working treks, no aquarium visits and no fun fair rides.

As for people masquerading as innocent witnesses, there are hundreds and thousands of examples of it. The idea that murder would be an exception to that rule is ... well, I guess there is a word for that too. The same, in fact, as the one I referred to earlier.

[FrankO]

Just a detail here, Frank. Jacksons heart and lungs were removed, as pointed out by the medical expertise. There is no mentioning of any accidental cutting, taking the heart out of the ribcage, nor the lungs. Somebody "removed" them, that is to say, cut them out. And we should also keep in mind that there was a cut all the way down from ribs to pubes to make use of when removing the heart.
It sounds like anything but an accident or collateral damage to me.

You may very well be right, I just hadn't checked the information as you have/I should have. But that still doesn't make my main point go away: that the Ripper actively took the heart away with him from the crime scene, while we don't know whether Torso Man had any active interest in the heart particularly and that he took it away with him/kept it for a while. We know he just cut it out and it was never found.

Although I cannot conclusively prove that all of this has to do with such an inclination, you must admit that I have a damn good case!

I wouldn't call it damn good. I'd say you have a decent case that you really believe in and you have evidence to support it.

There are also other sketchy things in your post, like how you say that one torso victim only had her uterus cut out.

Those were actually your very own words, Christer (see your post #190).

Apart from that being more than enough to make the comparison, it actually applies that the pelvic section was missing in the Whitehall case.

That sort of makes my case. How do we know the uterus was cut out, let alone taken away or kept, if the pelvic section was never found?

So how do we conclude that she did not have her uterus cut out, Frank? I sure as hell can't do that.

Me neither. But I never concluded that in the first place, Christer. My view is that since the pelvic section was never found, we can't assume the uterus was either cut out or taken away by the killer.

[John Wheat]

Just as criminal history has yet to throw up a single example of a killer murdering a woman in the street on his way to work (and about 20 minutes before he was due to clock on) Or a single example of a person discovering a murdered woman in the street and turning out to have been the killer himself.

In the interest of balance of course.

I don't see how The Torso Killer and Jack the Ripper are one and the same the evidence isn't there. So we have two separate serial killers. If of course all the Torso murders were by the same hand. None of which were Lechmere.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So the killer, in 1887 in the case of the Rainham torso, took a woman to a private location that he had, dismembered her corpse, wrapped them and over an unknown period of time dumped the parts. It’s impossible to say if he wanted them found or not because two parts (including the head) were never found so he was either not bothered about the parts being found or he was just inefficient. Or perhaps he didn’t expect the torso to surface? Or perhaps he wasn’t bothered either way?

Then on to August 1888 and he decides against the relative safety of an indoor murder and the need to wrap and dispose of the body parts in favour of murdering women in the street with all of the very obvious risks. So it’s off to the East End to find a prostitute. He saves himself the trouble of dismemberment and of carrying around body parts and also the cost of buying wrapping materials.

Then after a couple of murders he decides to go back indoors to the dismember, wrap and despatch method.

Then he fancies a bit of street murder again for a while with three more before deciding again that variety is the spice of life after all. But this time he combines the two. He finds a prostitute but instead of street murder he uses his indoor location to kill and his dismember, wrap and dispatch method but, again for variety, he goes for a West End prostitute this time.

Then, not wanting the East End to feel left out he uses his kill indoors, store, dismember, wrap and despatched method but this time the torso is dumped in the East End.

Now, some may find this believable, it’s up to the individual of course but I’d say that it screams of no connection whatsoever. Increasingly lengthy paragraphs can be written about ‘panes’ (didn’t they use to be called ‘flaps’?) but to what end? We have no photographs we can only go on wording. I’ll stick to ‘cuts.’ And we are on thin ice if we try to use them as if we are trying to read the future by looking at the tea leaves in a cup. If you get different people cutting up different corpses you’re going to get some similarities.

Differences outweigh similarities. It’s not even close.

[Fisherman]

You may very well be right, I just hadn't checked the information as you have/I should have. But that still doesn't make my main point go away: that the Ripper actively took the heart away with him from the crime scene, while we don't know whether Torso Man had any active interest in the heart particularly and that he took it away with him/kept it for a while. We know he just cut it out and it was never found.

That is true. So he either took it away with himself, or he cut it out for the joy of cutting a heart out and then discarded of it. And in the Rippers case, we actually cannot tell whether or not he took the heart from the Kelly scene with any special intent. Just as the Torso kille may have thrown it to a hungry dog passing, the same applies for the Ripper. There are no certainties at all involved here, but for the one that both murders involved the excision of the heart. Which of course mean that the only certain thing is that we have a similarity of a very rare kind on record here too. I genuinely believe that is as far as it goes.

I wouldn't call it damn good. I'd say you have a decent case that you really believe in and you have evidence to support it.

Of course, different minds will call it different things. I will take your offer with no hesitation.

Those were actually your very own words, Christer (see your post #190).

Yes, I could of course not claim that we have two examples of excised uteri, could I? But it must be pointed out that such a thing is very much a possibility, not least since we KNOW for certain that the killer excised the uterus from Jacksons body. In the Rainham case, this means to me that I firmly think that since we know that the heart and lungs were "absent" from the body, the likelihood of an intentional evisceration of those parts must be regarded as greater than the likelihood of the parts falling put accidentally in the dismemberment process.

That sort of makes my case. How do we know the uterus was cut out, let alone taken away or kept, if the pelvic section was never found?

We donat. And that is why I did not count it as case number two as per the above. But I am pointing to how a killer that we KNOW excised the uterus from Jackson, is in no way at all unlikely to have done the same in the Whitehall case. Once we have knowledge about proven eviscerations on account of a killer, that has to color how we look on the overall likelihoods.

Me neither. But I never concluded that in the first place, Christer. My view is that since the pelvic section was never found, we can't assume the uterus was either cut out or taken away by the killer.

See the above, Frank!

[Fisherman]

So the killer, in 1887 in the case of the Rainham torso, took a woman to a private location that he had, dismembered her corpse, wrapped them and over an unknown period of time dumped the parts. It’s impossible to say if he wanted them found or not because two parts (including the head) were never found so he was either not bothered about the parts being found or he was just inefficient. Or perhaps he didn’t expect the torso to surface? Or perhaps he wasn’t bothered either way?

'The Rainham case is the first "canonical" one, and so we must accept that there is a possibility that the killer may have counted on the body parts to sink to the bottom of the Thames. But as he kept claiming victims, it becomes clear that he seemingly had nothing at all against the parts surfacing. It is also a fact that the parts from the Rainham victim were dumped on different occasions and in different locations, meaning that the killer seemingly optimized his chances of having the parts found.

Then on to August 1888 and he decides against the relative safety of an indoor murder and the need to wrap and dispose of the body parts in favour of murdering women in the street with all of the very obvious risks. So it’s off to the East End to find a prostitute. He saves himself the trouble of dismemberment and of carrying around body parts and also the cost of buying wrapping materials.

Off to the East End? What makes you think he was not always there? The only torso that was thought to have been manually carried to its dumping site was the Pinchin Street torso, wherefore the police sought the immediate neighbourhood of the railway arch.That is the only evidence we have about where the killer was based. Dumping parts in the west is not evidence of living there. He may have wanted the parts to be found in the epicenter of London, in which case he had no choice but to dump in the west.
As for the change in method, I have already pointed out how it may have been about for example the added thrill. Or about practical reasons, not having access to the bolthole on the day in question. Or, perhaps most likely, the desire of a narcissistic killer to get more ink and blacker headlines.

Then after a couple of murders he decides to go back indoors to the dismember, wrap and despatch method.

See the above.

Then he fancies a bit of street murder again for a while with three more before deciding again that variety is the spice of life after all. But this time he combines the two. He finds a prostitute but instead of street murder he uses his indoor location to kill and his dismember, wrap and dispatch method but, again for variety, he goes for a West End prostitute this time.

See the above.

Then, not wanting the East End to feel left out he uses his kill indoors, store, dismember, wrap and despatched method but this time the torso is dumped in the East End.

See the above.

Now, some may find this believable, it’s up to the individual of course but I’d say that it screams of no connection whatsoever. Increasingly lengthy paragraphs can be written about ‘panes’ (didn’t they use to be called ‘flaps’?) but to what end? We have no photographs we can only go on wording. I’ll stick to ‘cuts.’ And we are on thin ice if we try to use them as if we are trying to read the future by looking at the tea leaves in a cup. If you get different people cutting up different corpses you’re going to get some similarities.

Differences outweigh similarities. It’s not even close.

As I have told you, generally speaking, differences are a much weaker tool than similarities. You need to let that soak in. it is a forlorn hope and a falsity.

It is not the variation between street murders and bolthole dittos that tells the story. It is the fact that we have two series of murders involving eviscerations and both having inclusions of the same extremely rare damage to the victims. And the idea that different people cutting up different corpses will result in "some similarities" does not stand up as an explanation for these damages. I mean, really, Herlock...?

Of course, if you can show me two series of evisceration murders in the same area and time that both involved as rare inclusions as these two series do, it would be interesting to hear about it. I think you will find it beyond impossible, though. That´s not to say that you should no go for it, Herlock, instead of making unsupported verbal claims about it. It's much the same as the "nobody would ever kill en route to work" argument. It does not hold any more water than the Sahara in summertime.

[Fisherman]

I'm off for the evening now, but when I return, we shall speak about Joseph James de Angelo (who most people out here will be aquainted with) and Peter Madsen (who most people out here will not be aquainted with).

I'm looking forward to it!

[The Rookie Detective]

So the killer, in 1887 in the case of the Rainham torso, took a woman to a private location that he had, dismembered her corpse, wrapped them and over an unknown period of time dumped the parts. It’s impossible to say if he wanted them found or not because two parts (including the head) were never found so he was either not bothered about the parts being found or he was just inefficient. Or perhaps he didn’t expect the torso to surface? Or perhaps he wasn’t bothered either way?

Then on to August 1888 and he decides against the relative safety of an indoor murder and the need to wrap and dispose of the body parts in favour of murdering women in the street with all of the very obvious risks. So it’s off to the East End to find a prostitute. He saves himself the trouble of dismemberment and of carrying around body parts and also the cost of buying wrapping materials.

Then after a couple of murders he decides to go back indoors to the dismember, wrap and despatch method.

Then he fancies a bit of street murder again for a while with three more before deciding again that variety is the spice of life after all. But this time he combines the two. He finds a prostitute but instead of street murder he uses his indoor location to kill and his dismember, wrap and dispatch method but, again for variety, he goes for a West End prostitute this time.

Then, not wanting the East End to feel left out he uses his kill indoors, store, dismember, wrap and despatched method but this time the torso is dumped in the East End.

Now, some may find this believable, it’s up to the individual of course but I’d say that it screams of no connection whatsoever. Increasingly lengthy paragraphs can be written about ‘panes’ (didn’t they use to be called ‘flaps’?) but to what end? We have no photographs we can only go on wording. I’ll stick to ‘cuts.’ And we are on thin ice if we try to use them as if we are trying to read the future by looking at the tea leaves in a cup. If you get different people cutting up different corpses you’re going to get some similarities.

Differences outweigh similarities. It’s not even close.

But that is not factually correct Herlock...

There were NO Torso murders throughout the entire Canonical 5 timeline.

The Whitehall Torso was placed in the vault within hours of the double event and discovered a few days later...

But the murder itself occurred BEFORE Nichols.

And that is one of the key points that has been overlooked.

The belief that the killer murdered the Whitehall victim AFTER Chapman, is NOT correct.

He murdered the Whitehall Torso victim BEFORE the Canonial Ripper victims.


On that basis, he didn't change backwards and forwards between M.O because there were no Torso victims during the Autumn of Terror.

And that is a key point that nobody has seemed to have acknowledged.


On that basis, the Torso killer's spell as the Ripper is what gained him fame...

The Kelly murder was a hybrid of the two, and I would suggest that the killer lived very close to Miller's Court.

He tried to take Kelly's head, but I believe he may have been disturbed by Bowyer doing his 3am rounds into Miller's Court.

The idea that he had all the time in the world with Kelly, is not necessarily true.

He also tried to cut her face off, take her nose, slit her eyes etc... But he knew he couldn't dismember her and so took his rage and frustration out on her.

I believe the Torso killer worked as a Navvy on the Commercial Street tramway, which required him to lodge locally in Whitechapel for the duration of the job.
The work began and ended in the autumn of 1888.

There was a gap after Kelly where he had to reset...and from there he alternated Ripper and Torso style kills at his leisure.


He also worked on the construction of the Great Eastern Railway, because he murdered Coles and dumped the Pinchin St torso under arches of the GER.

He also worked on the Canalways, hence why he was able to deposit body parts on multiple occasions.

He also worked on the NSY building as a builder, in Stone work/Carpentry/Marble/Concrete etc...

The Board of Works signed off a lot of the work that he did as a Navvy contractor for the Canals/Railway/Civil building projects, and the connection to George Lusk having been a builder at the Board of Works simply cannot be overlooked.

Lots of connections there if you but open your mind to the possibilities.


The idea that the killer was a madman, a Jew, or a Maybrick-type figure, is simply rhetoric pushed by the people in power at the time.

The last Ripper murder was recognized as Coles but there were attempted Ripper style attacks much later.

And the Torso killer murdered a woman in 1902, but this time boiled and dumped the entire body in a pile outside Doultons factory in Lambeth.


There's so much more...watch this space


RD

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ll leave this alone. Clearly unconnected. The cuts/mutilations weren’t vanishingly rare. It’s simply a convenient exaggeration.

Ripperology is becoming the work of fantasy and preconception. Fit everything to suit a theory. It’s now nothing more than a game.

[rjpalmer]

You claim that you have no doubt that the murders would have made me reason that they belonged to the Torso murders if they had happened in 1890. Well, R J, the two bodies found had been skillfully dismembered and emptied of the viscera inside them, so if they had been dumped in London in 1890, why would I not reason that they could belong to the series of the Thames murders? Going on that info only?

The thing is though, that you had to move fifty years down the line and you had to move from London to Lancaster to find these murders. And THAT, R J, effectively tells the murders apart. It is a great reason to assume that they were not carried out by the same man who committed the Torso murders.

This sounds like an admission that I'm right, Christer. The only distinguishing feature is one of time & place.

That's exactly the point: you can't look at a dead body, or parts of a dead body, and pretend that you know the murderer's intent or motive.

You're stuck with saying, "ah well. This happened in 1935 in Lancashire!"

The point is that Ruxton's murders were not the works of a sexual serialist, they were the works of a domestic killer.

Now turn your attention to the dismemberment murders in London between 1873 and 1901 and realize that any one of them could have been the work of another Ruxton, and are now being wrongly attributed to 'Jack the Ripper.'

There are of course also differences involved that would raise an eyebrow or two - the careful removing of lips, teeth, fingerprints, eyes and scars and moles, for example, speaks a very clear language about how the victims could with great certainty be linked to the killer. If you remember, the Torso victims from 1887-89 had no such signs on their bodies. There was not a single effort found on the bodies in those cases that suggested a desire to hide the identities of the victims. So one of these killers was likely a killer of strangers, while the other was a domestic killer or something such, where a link existed.

That would certainly give me a pause, instead of leaping to the conclusion that they needed to be linked to the Thames Torso series.

Good grief, Christer.

Now ask yourself: why are there differences? It's not rocket science.

It's forensic science.

Forensic science advanced by leaps & bounds between 1888 and 1935, so of course Ruxton now tried to destroy the fingerprints and any chance for dental comparisons (which he failed to do).

There was no similar need in 1872-1889!

That's the difference.

It's such a basic point that I'm amazed that you keep glossing over it.

What it meant to leave a victim unidentifiable was completely different in the Victorian era.

And yet, with the sole exception of Liz Jackson, not in a single one of the 'torso' cases was the victim identified.

Yet, based on that single exception, you generalize it into a general rule that there was no attempt to hide the victim's identities. That's bizarre reasoning.

Unlike you, I certainly wouldn't be confident to dismiss the idea that Jackson didn't know her attacker based on a set of second-hand underwear that had been thrown into the river.

It certainly seems likely that the killer didn't expect them to be found, let alone traced.

Don't confuse good police work with the killer's indifference to detection.

[rjpalmer]

How lucky, then, that the Ruxton murders were nothing of the sort, being geographically and chronologically way off the Torso murders. And only used by you to make a false point.

There's nothing at all 'false' about my point.

The Buxton case perfectly illustrates any number of errors in your thinking in recent days.

Concentrate for a moment on this difference in 'time & place.'

London in the 19th Century was one of the largest and most populated cities in the world. It was also one of the most paved cities in the world. There were many areas in Central London and East London where privacy was at a minimum.

Further, disposing a body was different then as compared to now, due to a lack of automobiles and only rudimentary forensic science.

Thus, your comparisons with modern cases, in this respect, will always be very wide of the mark.

If a man killed his mistress or his maid in his flat, he didn't have to worry about DNA evidence or fingerprinting or even blood typing.

He had that advantage when disposing of the body.

He also had some disadvantages.

He could not throw his victim in the boot of his car and bury it on some hillside in the Epping Forrest.

With basically only his own feet to rely on, he would be forced to dispose of the body in pieces or bury it in his garden; but in such a crowded area as London, the latter option was not a good one.

So, cutting up the body wasn't a matter of 'sexual' depravity; it was merely the logistics of not getting caught.

What exactly would you expect to find in such a case committed in London in 1888, where a man murdered his maid and wanted to get the body out of his house?

As horrible as it is to contemplate, would he not strip the body, removed the head and take special care to destroy it, then cut the body up in order to smuggle it out of the house, and throw it in the Regent canal or the Thames?

Why are you so keen on seeing every one of these crimes as 'sexual'? Or in linking every one of these crimes in a city of 5 million?

[FrankO]

Hi Roger,

Hi Frank. A well-reasoned and fair-minded post, but can I just comment on the above statement?

Thanks & yes, you can!

Let's just remember--and I'm sure you don't disagree--that we might also be looking at two different blokes with a very different appetite.

We might indeed. I can't tell you any differently. And I am familiar with the Ruxton case - a very interesting case. But the thing is (although I don't remember the details of that case) that, in the case of Torso Man, we see mutilations beyond what was necessary to dismember or cut off the head for easy transportation. In the 1873 and 1884 cases, the perpetrator 'played' with the heads; in 3 of the 4 cases from Rainham to Pinchin Street he cut the abdomen from sternum to pubes, with a variety of depths, but still. Of course, whoever did it, mutilated the bodies much less than the Ripper did, but they were still unnecessary mutilations with regards to the dismemberment. That's why I lean to 2 blokes with a sort of similar apetite. But, like yourself, I remain unconvinced that the Ripper and Torso Man were one and the same guy.

Cheers,
Frank

[rjpalmer]

I’ll leave this alone. Clearly unconnected. The cuts/mutilations weren’t vanishingly rare. It’s simply a convenient exaggeration.

Ripperology is becoming the work of fantasy and preconception. Fit everything to suit a theory. It’s now nothing more than a game.

Hi Herlock,

this common claim about the 'rarity' of serial killers working side-by-side in the same time & place doesn't carry any weight among people who grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s-1990s.

In Seattle alone, there must have been nearly a dozen of these reprobates whose murders overlapped. Some lived in the area for years--others just passed through--including Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, Robert Lee Yates, etc. Along, of course, with "one-off" murders by other depraved individuals.

And Seattle had 1/5th the population of Victorian London.

I give no credence whatsoever to this line of thinking.

RP

[Mark J D]

Hi Frank. Happy New Year to you too!

... in the case of Torso Man, we see mutilations beyond what was necessary to dismember or cut off the head for easy transportation ... they were ... unnecessary mutilations with regards to the dismemberment.

I was about to make precisely this point -- indeed, to propose the concept of 'overcut' (on the model of the established term 'overkill'). If a body can be transported and disposed of in the classical six parts, we need a term to distinguish this from, say, Elizabeth Jackson's body being found in 12 different instalments, with an instalment sometimes containing more than one physical item.



Bests,

Mark D.

[Kattrup]

Hi Herlock,

this common claim about the 'rarity' of serial killers working side-by-side in the same time & place doesn't carry any weight among people who grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s-1990s.

In Seattle alone, there must have been nearly a dozen of these reprobates whose murders overlapped. Some lived in the area for years--others just passed through--including Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, Robert Lee Yates, etc. Along, of course, with "one-off" murders by other depraved individuals.

And Seattle had 1/5th the population of Victorian London.

I give no credence whatsoever to this line of thinking.

RP

Hi RJ


Very good arguments, not just this but your last few post, I agree completely.

There's no particular reason to think the cases related, and even first-time killers can attempt and also succeed at grisly mutilations and dismemberments.