Ripperologist 159

[Scott Nelson]

Nobody reads this stuff anymore?

[Wyatt Earp]

While I was pleased to see Adam Wood address William Bury’s retrial, I need to correct a mistake he made in his editorial. Adam suggests that the evidence against Bury (for the Ripper murders) isn’t “firm.” Signature evidence, which is the key evidence linking Bury to the murders, is firm enough to be admissible in court, and so it’s reasonable to suggest that it should be firm enough for Adam and others in the Ripper community. Also, the information being used to map the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature is coming from police records, medical records and court records—all firm sources. People shouldn’t have any illusions about what’s been going on with Bury. The evidence against him is the real deal.

In general, I thought this was a strong issue of Ripperologist, the best I’ve seen in a long time. The article about Hendrik de Jong was a gem, well-researched and well-written.

[ChrisGeorge]

While I was pleased to see Adam Wood address William Bury’s retrial, I need to correct a mistake he made in his editorial. Adam suggests that the evidence against Bury (for the Ripper murders) isn’t “firm.” Signature evidence, which is the key evidence linking Bury to the murders, is firm enough to be admissible in court, and so it’s reasonable to suggest that it should be firm enough for Adam and others in the Ripper community. Also, the information being used to map the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature is coming from police records, medical records and court records—all firm sources. People shouldn’t have any illusions about what’s been going on with Bury. The evidence against him is the real deal.

In general, I thought this was a strong issue of Ripperologist, the best I’ve seen in a long time. The article about Hendrik de Jong was a gem, well-researched and well-written.

Hello Wyatt

Presumably by "signature" you mean the use of the knife to mutilate rather than handwriting. Well, yes, William Bury did use a knife on his wife, and some have compared the abdominal mutilations done to his wife in Dundee in 1889 to those done to Mary Ann Nichols in late August 1888 in Whitechapel. But does that make him Jack the Ripper, absent any other evidence that might tie him to the Whitechapel crimes? I would say not. Yes Bury is in the queue as a possible suspect to have committed the murders in the East End of London but he is hardly at the head of the queue.

Cheers

Chris

[Wyatt Earp]

Hello Wyatt

Presumably by "signature" you mean the use of the knife to mutilate rather than handwriting. Well, yes, William Bury did use a knife on his wife, and some have compared the abdominal mutilations done to his wife in Dundee in 1889 to those done to Mary Ann Nichols in late August 1888 in Whitechapel. But does that make him Jack the Ripper, absent any other evidence that might tie him to the Whitechapel crimes? I would say not. Yes Bury is in the queue as a possible suspect to have committed the murders in the East End of London but he is hardly at the head of the queue.

Cheers

Chris

Chris, the Ripper’s signature as described by Keppel et al (Keppel has the credentials and standing within his field to go before a jury and provide expert testimony on this point) is a complex and multifaceted signature that appears to have been unique in the history of murder in Victorian Britain. Even a murder like the Alice McKenzie murder, which superficially resembles a Ripper murder, can’t be linked to it, per the analysis of Keppel and his team. When you account for the specific circumstances of the Ellen Bury murder, which you have to do when conducting signature analysis, the Ellen Bury murder is a match. This is remarkable evidence linking Bury to the main Whitechapel murders.

A signature match by itself is not of course sufficient to conclude that Bury was the Ripper. We have to be able to reasonably rule out the possibility that the Ellen Bury murder was a copycat or Ripper-inspired murder, which we can do, and we have to be able to reasonably rule out the possibility that the close signature match was a coincidence, which we can also do. I deal with both of these concerns in my article, “The Bury ID,” which is available on the Bury website. The handwriting links are of course inconclusive, but they’re also not part of the signature analysis.

[David Orsam]

While I was pleased to see Adam Wood address William Bury’s retrial, I need to correct a mistake he made in his editorial. Adam suggests that the evidence against Bury (for the Ripper murders) isn’t “firm.” Signature evidence, which is the key evidence linking Bury to the murders, is firm enough to be admissible in court, and so it’s reasonable to suggest that it should be firm enough for Adam and others in the Ripper community. Also, the information being used to map the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature is coming from police records, medical records and court records—all firm sources. People shouldn’t have any illusions about what’s been going on with Bury. The evidence against him is the real deal.

I'm sorry to have to break it to you that your argument is completely flawed. The fact that evidence might be admissible in a court of law does not in any way mean it is conclusive of guilt. Adam is perfectly entitled to conclude - just as any notional jury would have been entitled to conclude - that the evidence against Bury, even if admissible, isn't firm. You are not entitled to say, therefore, that he has made a "mistake" which requires correction, because he has expressed a valid opinion.

I have read your article and I note that the authority for your claim that "Signature evidence is admissible in court" is a 2005 article by four American academics who say, "Signature analysis is a widely used crime scene assessment practice in the United States, and is the only crime scene assessment technique that is accepted in court testimony and appellate decisions". They refer to a number of US decisions in support of this but what about the legal position in the relevant jurisdiction of the criminal courts of England?

In any event, it is clear that Bury's actions did not match all the 11 signature characteristics listed by the authors of the 2005 article. The authors of that article claim that those 11 characteristics created a "unique signature" by which, they say, it is possible to link "the six victims of one killer". Amongst these were (no. 5) that "the victims’ bodies were left open and on display" but this was certainly not the case with Ellen Bury whose body was placed in a trunk. Then we have this (no.7): "the victims were left in sexually degrading positions with their legs spread and genitalia exposed to illustrate their vulnerability after death and the killer’s". This does not apply to Ellen Bury. Then (no. 8) "the killer mutilated his victims and showed increased postmortem mutilation from one victim to the next". Yet, you accept in your article that the mutilations in the case of Ellen Bury were "relatively minor". And we have (no. 9):"the killer evolved to the removal of their organs and body parts, and removed some of them from the crime scenes". Once again this does not apply to Ellen Bury (and I don't accept that all the rest apply either).

Furthermore the authors of the 2005 article state: "murderers who stab and kill female prostitutes, leave their bodies in unusual positions, and probe, explore, or mutilate body cavities are extremely rare. It would be extremely unusual to find more than one of these killers, exhibiting that combination of signature characteristics, operating in the same area at the same time." Ellen Bury was not a prostitute and was not murdered in or around the Whitechapel area of London. One might add that her throat was not cut like a number of the victims of the Whitechapel murderer.

I am aware that you have an answer for the fact that the Ellen Bury murder does not display the same "unique signature" comprising the 11 "signature characteristics" because you say that Bury "needed to modify his behavior as a murderer in order to conceal his identity as Jack the Ripper" and you point out that Modus Operandi can change from crime to crime and signature characteristics can be "reduced". While this may be so, you fail to consider what a devastating impact this has on your argument about admissibility. Once characteristics from one murder to another do not match perfectly, and there are, on the contrary, significant differences, then there is no chance, either in the USA or the UK, or in any proper criminal court of law, that any signature, or similar fact, evidence is going to be admissible evidence to prove a connection between those murders. It's just not going to happen.

Even worse is that you tell us that the signature evidence is the "key evidence" against Bury. Given the admitted differences between the signatures, I fail to see how you think it would be possible to secure a conviction on the basis of the signature evidence.

In short, your argument seems to amount to a claim that because there were some relatively minor mutilations to the body of Ellen Bury and/or some cuts and stabs in the abdominal and genital areas, that she had been strangled and that in your view her body was posed inside the trunk (something which is really only argument and by no means established fact) that these similarities with the Ripper murders are so strong that the case against Bury is so compelling that no-one could plausibly describe that case as anything less then firm. I suggest, however, that Adam and others in the Ripper community would be perfectly entitled to conclude that the case against Bury is not firm and the admissibility or otherwise of signature evidence is neither here nor there and makes no difference to that conclusion whatsoever.

[Wyatt Earp]

David, when I say that signature evidence is firm enough to be admissible in court, it should be clear to you that I am referencing the reliability status of this class of evidence and not suggesting that because the evidence is admissible that this makes it conclusive of guilt. As I’ve already pointed out, signature evidence by itself is insufficient to establish guilt. My stance is based not only on the position of signature evidence within the U.S. legal system, but also on its position within the legal systems of other countries, such as the U.K., Australia and South Africa (see the 2015 book by Woodhams, Crime Linkage: Theory, Research and Practice, pp.200-1). If Adam Wood is using the word “firm” in some other sense, that would be for him to clarify.

You spend a good deal of time questioning the legitimacy of the mapping of the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature as described by Keppel et al. The substance of your critique is that certain signature characteristics vary in how they’re expressed, vary in the degree of their expression or are entirely absent at the Ellen Bury crime scene. However, as I noted in my article, the research on serial killers informs us that a given signature characteristic can vary in how it’s expressed, vary in the degree of its expression or be entirely absent at a given crime scene in connection with the specific circumstances of that murder, and as I have explained, we do indeed possess a ready and obvious explanation for why we should observe variation at the Ellen Bury crime scene. All you’ve produced, then, is a set of irrational objections to the mapping. You compound your mistake by declaring that a court would exclude signature evidence on the basis of variation, when this is actually an established characteristic of this type of evidence.

Bury was living in the East End throughout the period of the Whitechapel murders. It is ridiculous to suggest that because he committed another murder shortly after he moved from the area, that this should discount him as being the author of the Whitechapel murders.

You seem to be confident that Bury could never be convicted of the Ripper murders, however William Beadle spoke to an attorney in Dundee who offered a very different assessment of the evidence against him: “Based on the evidence presented here, a Crown Prosecution of William Bury for the Ripper murders would have had every chance of success” (see “Where We Are With Bury,” available through a link on the Bury website). This attorney’s assessment was made prior to the publication of my article, and so the case against Bury has only strengthened since he delivered his opinion. We now possess forensic evidence placing William Bury at the crime scenes in the case, and I maintain that this would go a long way toward securing his conviction.

[Abby Normal]

David, when I say that signature evidence is firm enough to be admissible in court, it should be clear to you that I am referencing the reliability status of this class of evidence and not suggesting that because the evidence is admissible that this makes it conclusive of guilt. As I’ve already pointed out, signature evidence by itself is insufficient to establish guilt. My stance is based not only on the position of signature evidence within the U.S. legal system, but also on its position within the legal systems of other countries, such as the U.K., Australia and South Africa (see the 2015 book by Woodhams, Crime Linkage: Theory, Research and Practice, pp.200-1). If Adam Wood is using the word “firm” in some other sense, that would be for him to clarify.

You spend a good deal of time questioning the legitimacy of the mapping of the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature as described by Keppel et al. The substance of your critique is that certain signature characteristics vary in how they’re expressed, vary in the degree of their expression or are entirely absent at the Ellen Bury crime scene. However, as I noted in my article, the research on serial killers informs us that a given signature characteristic can vary in how it’s expressed, vary in the degree of its expression or be entirely absent at a given crime scene in connection with the specific circumstances of that murder, and as I have explained, we do indeed possess a ready and obvious explanation for why we should observe variation at the Ellen Bury crime scene. All you’ve produced, then, is a set of irrational objections to the mapping. You compound your mistake by declaring that a court would exclude signature evidence on the basis of variation, when this is actually an established characteristic of this type of evidence.

Bury was living in the East End throughout the period of the Whitechapel murders. It is ridiculous to suggest that because he committed another murder shortly after he moved from the area, that this should discount him as being the author of the Whitechapel murders.

You seem to be confident that Bury could never be convicted of the Ripper murders, however William Beadle spoke to an attorney in Dundee who offered a very different assessment of the evidence against him: “Based on the evidence presented here, a Crown Prosecution of William Bury for the Ripper murders would have had every chance of success” (see “Where We Are With Bury,” available through a link on the Bury website). This attorney’s assessment was made prior to the publication of my article, and so the case against Bury has only strengthened since he delivered his opinion. We now possess forensic evidence placing William Bury at the crime scenes in the case, and I maintain that this would go a long way toward securing his conviction.

Hi Wyatt
I see bury as a credible suspect as you know. I see that hes a known murderer of a woman with knife involved and the post mortem mutilation as a significant similarity.
I also find that he was in the area at the time important also.

But what is this forensic evidence placing him at crime scenes?

[Wyatt Earp]

Hi Wyatt
I see bury as a credible suspect as you know. I see that hes a known murderer of a woman with knife involved and the post mortem mutilation as a significant similarity.
I also find that he was in the area at the time important also.

But what is this forensic evidence placing him at crime scenes?

Signature evidence.

[David Orsam]

But what is this forensic evidence placing him at crime scenes?

Signature evidence.

Oh dear.

[David Orsam]

David, when I say that signature evidence is firm enough to be admissible in court, it should be clear to you that I am referencing the reliability status of this class of evidence and not suggesting that because the evidence is admissible that this makes it conclusive of guilt.

No, that's exactly what you WERE suggesting. Look, just look at your own words:

"I need to correct a mistake he made in his editorial. Adam suggests that the evidence against Bury (for the Ripper murders) isn’t “firm.” Signature evidence, which is the key evidence linking Bury to the murders, is firm enough to be admissible in court, and so it’s reasonable to suggest that it should be firm enough for Adam and others in the Ripper community."

You were saying that because signature evidence is admissible in court then it was a "mistake" for Adam Wood to say that the evidence against Bury isn't firm.

It's a pure non-sequitur. The admissibility or otherwise of signature evidence does not affect whether the evidence against Bury is firm or not.

As I said, it is perfectly possible and reasonable for Adam Wood to conclude that Bury was not guilty despite the signature evidence. It's a reasonable view to hold. Yet you call it a "mistake" as if Adam has made some kind of error of fact.

That Bury was Jack the Ripper is no more than an opinion. To disagree with that opinion cannot properly be described as a "mistake".

As I’ve already pointed out, signature evidence by itself is insufficient to establish guilt. My stance is based not only on the position of signature evidence within the U.S. legal system, but also on its position within the legal systems of other countries, such as the U.K., Australia and South Africa (see the 2015 book by Woodhams, Crime Linkage: Theory, Research and Practice, pp.200-1).

It may surprise you to learn that I do not possess a copy of the 2015 book by Woodhams but I can see that pages 200-1 are part of an article by a South African academic called Gerard Labuschagne entitled "The Use of Linkage Analysis Evidence in Serial Offense Trials". If he has cited some UK authorities for the admissibility of signature evidence I cannot fathom why you haven't cited the cases, rather than the book. Just tell us what the cases are.

If Adam Wood is using the word “firm” in some other sense, that would be for him to clarify.

Are you seriously suggesting that when Adam Wood referred to the "lack of firm evidence" against Bury he specifically meant the lack of admissible evidence? He was just saying that he doesn't think the evidence against Bury is strong enough to conclude he was Jack the Ripper. That's an opinion. You may disagree with it but it's ridiculous to categorize it as a mistake on the basis that signature evidence is admissible evidence in some jurisdictions in some historical periods.

You spend a good deal of time questioning the legitimacy of the mapping of the Ellen Bury murder to Jack the Ripper’s signature as described by Keppel et al.

Not true. I have simply been looking at the issue from the angle of whether the "signature evidence" against Bury would have been admissible had he been charged with the Ripper murders (assuming that he was charged in a time period and jurisdiction in which such evidence was admissible). I was saying that the fact that signature evidence may be admissible in general does not mean it is admissible in every case. My simple point was that where there are significant differences between signatures in different murders a prosecutor will have literally no chance of getting the signature evidence admitted. A defence lawyer would tear the argument to shreds. You don't even consider this. It doesn't matter how many reasons you put forward as to why there might be significant differences, those differences kill any admissibility argument. At the very least, one cannot say that signature evidence will be admissible in every single case and, therefore, you cannot say for certain that signature evidence would be admissible in a case against Bury for the JTR murders. So your whole point about admissibility of signature evidence gets you nowhere.

The substance of your critique is that certain signature characteristics vary in how they’re expressed, vary in the degree of their expression or are entirely absent at the Ellen Bury crime scene. However, as I noted in my article, the research on serial killers informs us that a given signature characteristic can vary in how it’s expressed, vary in the degree of its expression or be entirely absent at a given crime scene in connection with the specific circumstances of that murder, and as I have explained, we do indeed possess a ready and obvious explanation for why we should observe variation at the Ellen Bury crime scene.

I haven't even begun to dispute that your explanation for the variations might be correct. I have expressed no opinion on that subject. But unless you can show that the courts are happy to admit signature evidence in one murder which varies from signature evidence in another murder as evidence that the same person carried out both murders then you are sunk.

If you look at the US authorities that were cited in the 2005 article you will see that the signature evidence needs to be virtually identical for it to be admitted.

All you’ve produced, then, is a set of irrational objections to the mapping.

I haven't offered any objections to the mapping.

You compound your mistake by declaring that a court would exclude signature evidence on the basis of variation, when this is actually an established characteristic of this type of evidence.

This is the bit you need to prove. You haven't offered any evidence to support it.

Firstly, where is your authority that variation is an established characteristic of signature evidence? It will make a nonsense of the word "signature" if that's true.

Secondly, and far more importantly, do you have even one example of a legal case where signature evidence has been admitted in evidence in a murder case (or even another serious crime) where there are significant variations between the signatures in different crimes?

Bury was living in the East End throughout the period of the Whitechapel murders. It is ridiculous to suggest that because he committed another murder shortly after he moved from the area, that this should discount him as being the author of the Whitechapel murders.

I haven't said that at all. I haven't been arguing whether Bury is or is not guilty. My point is that a defence barrister would argue that aspects of the supposed signature of JTR are not present in the Ellen Bury murder and would therefore move to exclude signature evidence from being admitted in a case against Bury for the JTR murders.

You seem to be confident that Bury could never be convicted of the Ripper murders

I have said or suggested nothing of the sort.

however William Beadle spoke to an attorney in Dundee who offered a very different assessment of the evidence against him: “Based on the evidence presented here, a Crown Prosecution of William Bury for the Ripper murders would have had every chance of success”

Good for him. But that's just an opinion isn't it? Same as Adam Wood if he said that such a prosecution would not have a chance of success. My point is that he can't be making a "mistake", even if you disagree with him.

We now possess forensic evidence placing William Bury at the crime scenes in the case

Don't be silly.

[Scott Nelson]

Ellen Bury was not a prostitute and was not murdered in or around the Whitechapel area of London.

Wasn't Ellen allegedly a former prostitute?

[David Orsam]

Wasn't Ellen allegedly a former prostitute?

If she was it means, by definition, that she wasn't one when she was murdered.

Jack the Ripper's supposed signature was murdering prostitutes, not former prostitutes.

[caz]

I would agree with your use of 'supposed' there, David, as it's not quite the same as a fact. Jack may or may not have cared if his victims were actively soliciting, former prostitutes, or neither, when he struck each one, if he was merely looking for easy female targets. There have been various suggestions that he was thinking of a female relative when killing these women, so nothing is clear cut.

If he was only interested in murdering prostitutes because he had a thing about them, then it was his signature - no question - but then it would presumably have involved an assumption on his part that a victim was in the 'oldest profession' unless she made that crystal clear before he whipped out his weapon.

Love,

Caz
X

[Wyatt Earp]

Are you seriously suggesting that when Adam Wood referred to the "lack of firm evidence" against Bury he specifically meant the lack of admissible evidence? He was just saying that he doesn't think the evidence against Bury is strong enough to conclude he was Jack the Ripper. That's an opinion. You may disagree with it but it's ridiculous to categorize it as a mistake on the basis that signature evidence is admissible evidence in some jurisdictions in some historical periods.

I understood his remark to mean that there is no reliable evidence against anyone in the case. That is where I disagreed with him. The signature evidence linking Bury to the Ripper murders is in principle sufficiently reliable to be admissible in court.

My simple point was that where there are significant differences between signatures in different murders a prosecutor will have literally no chance of getting the signature evidence admitted. A defence lawyer would tear the argument to shreds. You don't even consider this. It doesn't matter how many reasons you put forward as to why there might be significant differences, those differences kill any admissibility argument. At the very least, one cannot say that signature evidence will be admissible in every single case and, therefore, you cannot say for certain that signature evidence would be admissible in a case against Bury for the JTR murders. So your whole point about admissibility of signature evidence gets you nowhere.

The Ellen Bury murder can be closely mapped to Jack the Ripper’s signature as described by Keppel et al. I demonstrate this in my article, and Table 2 in my article highlights the closeness of the match. The variations that exist are not significant and can easily be explained by the specific circumstances of the murder.

There are two separate questions we need to consider. First, can we, as an investigative body, satisfy ourselves that William Bury was Jack the Ripper? The answer to that is “yes.” No one in this field has been able to put forward an effective criticism of the ID that I’ve published. It’s a solid ID—the evidence is there and the reasoning is sound. Second, could we obtain a conviction of William Bury for the Jack the Ripper murders in a hypothetical trial? That is an open question. It is possible that the signature evidence linking Bury to the Ripper murders would be excluded at a trial, which would obviously lessen the likelihood of obtaining a conviction. It's also possible that it would be included at a trial, which would obviously increase the likelihood of a conviction. You seem preoccupied with the second question, but I’d suggest that in 2018 the more important question is the first one. Bury confessed to murdering Ellen, and we have no compelling reason to disregard his confession, but he was recently acquitted of her murder in the mock trial held in Dundee. Should that acquittal cause us as a community to declare him innocent of Ellen’s murder? Of course not. A negative result from a legal proceeding against Bury for the Ripper murders would not “sink” the identification of William Bury as Jack the Ripper.

Firstly, where is your authority that variation is an established characteristic of signature evidence? It will make a nonsense of the word "signature" if that's true.

I’ve given you three sources for that in footnote 3 in “The Bury ID.” David, if you intend to be a serious participant in the conversation about the signature evidence linking Bury to the Ripper murders, please consider making some effort to familiarize yourself with the signature analysis literature. A good book for you to obtain would be Serial Violence: Analysis of Modus Operandi and Signature Characteristics of Killers by Keppel and Birnes.

Don't be silly.

This is a frustrated remark. Signature analysis falls within the behavioral sciences wing of the forensic sciences. The signature evidence linking Bury to the Ripper murders is real forensic evidence. The evidence shows that the unique combination of homicide-related behaviors demonstrated by William Bury at Princes Street in Dundee can be seen at the locations of a number of unsolved murders in the East End of London. This is the behavioral equivalent of finding Bury’s DNA at these locations, and in combination with other evidence it establishes that he was at these crime scenes and that he was the perpetrator of these murders.

[Wyatt Earp]

Wasn't Ellen allegedly a former prostitute?

Yes, she was.