Regarding the Thames Torso Murders, etc..

[Phil H]

their suspect for JTR also had also had a granny living on Pinchin Street... and that kind of thing.

Now who could you be thinking of?

Stop or you'll make me cross.

[Abby Normal]

I have never ruled out that the ripper and torso killer could be one and the same. Actually, the more I think and learn about it the more I lean to the possibility that they were one man.

Victimology, unsolved, similar wounds, bodies/parts "casually" left on display, same time frame, same general area, unlikelihood of two separate serial killers operating at the same time/place (at the infancy of serial murder no less).

The apparent difference in MO of the dismemberment could simply be explained that it was done for ease in removing the body from the killers residence while the ripper victims were killed away from the murderers home and thus no need to dismember. In other words the torso victims were killed when the killer could bring them home and the ripper victims were killed when he could not. I have posited this idea before in other threads.


And to those who say that the MO is too different-I definitely see that but it is a myth that serial killers never change there MO. The experts say this.

A case in point. The Visalia ransacker, east area rapist and original nightstalker we're all thought (for a long time)to be different serial offenders until DNA and later other evidence definitively linked them. Three totally different MOs, same unknown guy.

[Ausgirl]

Abby - just to derail things temporarily - what was interesting about EAR was that he changed his MO, changed location (either due IMO to police getting a bit too close to home, or he was incarcerated for a time), but is a brilliant example of how a killer with a definite fixation/fantasy does not change his 'script'/signature. He might vary it to fit particular situations, allow it to evolve over time, but it's always basically the same. In EAR's case, he was actually quite OCD about the verbal script and several other things.. I'm currently very interested in compulsive behaviours among killers, so that's why I'm blah'ing about it.

Anyway, that's why I can't at this point (given that I'm not as well informed as many here) discount that JtR and Torso guy were the same man.

It's not unknown for several killers to concurrently operate in areas that are the same or overlap, especially where there is access to victims who won't be missed (like the throngs of killers targetting hitch-hikers and roadhouse prostitutes on the highway running through California/Oregon/Washington). But no matter how different the kill methods/dumping locations, where there's bodies showing up with shared mutilations (abdominal, genital, facial) and mutilation traits (level of skill) and lack of evidence of penile rape, I'd think it silly not to investigate a possible link.

[Ausgirl]

OT again, sorry - as for Visalia, I agree that it was probably EAR/ONS in his early stages - I see the same compulsive behaviours in the 'ransacking' which would later become a strong part of both his signature behaviour and verbal script, as well as the large volume of break-ins in one particular street on a single night. It's a pretty strong link, and a great example of the escalation/evolution of a killer, in my opinion.

Back on topic - I have a slightly harder time, though, seeing a killer switching back and forth so quickly between just two particular MO's, particularly the post-mortem treatment of the victims, mutilation/posing vs dismemberment/scattered packages... But access to indoors privacy -could- be the answer there, for sure.

[Ausgirl]

Just a curious aside - the seventh victim of the Cleveland torso murders also had her rectum plugged with cloth.

[Abby Normal]

Just a curious aside - the seventh victim of the Cleveland torso murders also had her rectum plugged with cloth.

And the prime suspect, who IMHO was probably the killer, was a doctor.

[Debra A]

Thanks for that information, Ausgirl and Abby. I've asked about this curious thing many times since I discovered it had happened.
BTW-I agree with Abby about a JTR/Thames torso link. It's a difficult call (depending on which way around you imagine events) but it is possible that at one point the torso killer was faced with a dead pregnant woman and he chose to remove flaps of skin from her abdomen and then 'operate' on her gravid uterus ,plus remove it (just like JTR) then dismember his victim. It's also possible he began to dismember and the pregnancy was an obstacle that needed to be worked around. There can never be a definitive answer can there?

[Ausgirl]

I saw this on a German forum, and I --think-- the source quoted is correct, sorry if it isn't. Anyway, interesting to me is the detail I bolded below, which I don't think I've seen before.. or have forgotten about/overlooked when previously mulling over this crime, I don't know how.. it's a pretty astonishing detail:


?? Illustrated times, 1902???

REVOLTING CRIME
Woman's Mutilated Body Found
What appears to be a terrible crime seems to have been committed in London on Saturday night, the remains of a woman, apparently a foreigner, and about thirty years of age, having been found sawn and cut in pieces in an alley on Broad Street, in a poor quarter of Lambeth. The body had not only been hacked in a most dreadful way, but the ten pieces piled together had also been baked or boiled, the head had been scalped, and the hands and feet were missing. The first to make the discovery was one of Doulton and Co.'s workmen, who left the main factory, and walked to a detached part of the works, several minutes' walk distant.
On going down Salamanea Street he came across the heap, lying in a slight recess of the pavement. It was quite light, but there was no one about at that night hour, except one or two men at the factory, the gate of which was not more than fifty yards distant. The man in charge of the gate, however, knew nothing of the incident, and was astonished and horrified by what he saw. His duties confined him to the works, and he had seen no one passing. The neighbourhood is noisy enough at night, and there were people moving about as late as two o'clock in the morning, so that the bundle can hardly have remained in the spot where it was found more than a couple of hours. The remains were removed by the police to the nearest mortuary.
On more careful examination, other points were noted about the body. It had been dissected in a very rough-and-ready fashion, in the manner that would be expected of an ignorant person, with no idea of anatomy. There was no blood about the remains, the treatment which they had undergone being sufficient to remove all traces. Some of the flesh had disappeared from the face, and all the hair from the crown of the head. What remained of it was the long, dark brown hair of a woman. The face was blanched and bloodless, but remained quite recognisable. The legs and arms had not been removed, but neither hands nor feet were left with the body, nor could any trace of them be found anywhere in the neighbourhood.
An employee of Doulton's was taken to the police-station during the day, and released after examination, and a medical inspection of the body was made without any direct result.
Since the horrible discovery the police have been busy in following up several slender clues, but at the moment of writing nothing tangible has resulted.

____

Boiled or baked? The hell is that? And what's with the scalping?

Such a strange, strange crime that one.

[Debra A]

That's what I find makes the four torso murders done between 1887 and 1889 so different to others, like this case.The 87-89 bodies were cut up using the same precise method of knife and fine toothed saw and disposed of- whereas, in a lot of the other cases, including solved ones, attempts had been made to boil and burn the remains or dispose of them by some other method first after being hacked up unskillfully with axes and similar instruments.

[John Wheat]

Yes Debs but the Torso murders in 1873 and 1874 have a lot in common with the Torso murders between 1887 and 1889.

[Debra A]

Yes Debs but the Torso murders in 1873 and 1874 have a lot in common with the Torso murders between 1887 and 1889.

Hi John.
Yes, I do recall one in 1873 which showed similar use of a fine toothed saw and sharp knife used with precision but then I also remember (maybe falsely?) that the joints weren't disarticulated in such a skilled way as in the four cases 87-89? I vaguely recall that the wrists were perhaps sawn across rather than disarticulated at the joint? It could be argued that the same killer may have progressed his skill at removing limbs at the joint which would show in later years, I realise and admit that possibility.

It's been a long time since I read anything on the earlier torso murders-was the 1874 case the one which had been treated with something like lime to try and decompose it quicker? This was the sort of thing I had in mind when saying some of the other murders involved the person disposing of the body attempting other methods of trying to get rid of it first.
Apologies if I haven't remembered correctly here. I also had in mind cases like the two 1884 torsos dumped in the streets of Tottenham and Salamanca Alley (as posted by Ausgirl) all apparently lacking signs of skill in dismembering and showing attempts to dispose of the body in ways other than just dumping.

[John Wheat]

Debs you are correct on the points about the 1874 case being treated in lime. And that the 1873 case showed similar use of a fine toothed saw. However on the Tottenham Court Road Mystery of 1884 Dr Jenkins, Divisional Surgeon, S Divison concluded that the parcel of bones found at the Mornington Cresent inclosure "had been skillfully dissected". All things considered I believe it is quite possible that all the Torso murders 1873, 1874, the two in 1884 and the four cases from 1887-1889 could have been commited by the same man.

Cheers John