Blameless

[Cap'n Jack]

'Blameless'

Studying the Yorkshire Ripper murders in further detail, and how the modern police force of the UK approached those crimes, I was profoundly struck by the police description of the victims when they were not working prostitutes, but rather students or the like.
The senior police officers described such victims as 'blameless', implicitly implying as such by proxy that the working prostitutes who formed the majority of the victims were not 'blameless' but in fact to be blamed for their own savage murder and mutilation.
The vast majority of women have sex one assumes, so should a woman who charges for sex be treated any differently than any other woman, especially when it comes to a serious murder investigation?
I don't think so, apart that is from 'Wilson' world, where many here do live.
In fact I believe this shows a clear intention on the part of senior police officers in the UK to sweeten up such despicable crimes against women, simply because they are working prostitutes... and this is massively clear from the efforts made by the police in all of the major investigations into the murder of prostitutes from the long distant Whitechapel Murders, through the Yorkshire Ripper and then right up to the recent Ipswich murders.
In the 'Myth', back in 1993, I noted that Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, had been flagged five times in the card index cross reference system used by the police at the time, and I stated then that it was impossible to believe that the police did not respond to the information under their control, as five flags in such a system must indicate a serious suspect, when not the killer himself.
I now discover that Sutcliffe was in fact flagged a total of ten times in that system which can only mean one thing: he was the killer.
But the senior police officers in the case, refusing to acknowledge their own information systems, pursued a completely different suspect, much to the horror of the junior officers on the street who had interviewed Sutcliffe and firmly believed him to be the killer.
There is a clear alienation process at work here in the minds of the senior police officers involved in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper; and I believe that process to be available in the hunt for the Whitechapel Murderer as well.
In other words it couldn't be one of us, but must be one of 'them', a Jew, Johnny Foreigner or even a Geordie... just as long as he wasn't from our patch, because if he was we should have caught him by now, so to explain the obvious we create a myth, a serial killer who is invisible to all.
I firmly believe that this is what exactly happened in the hunt for the Whitechapel Murderer, that the real killer was right under their noses the whole time while the Yard chased Jews down Roadside.

[Sara]

A good post, and it still beggars belief that Sutcliffe wasn't caught much sooner.

But what that does show, is how both the fragmented and the heirarchical nature of police work, in those days at least, mitigated against finding a killer. Police in the past have always been reluctant to cooperate with other forces. Just as importantly, when a senior policeman gets a bee in his bonnet it can throw an entire enquiry off course. I believe that's what happened with the Sutcliffe case - the obsession with the tapes did for those girls.

It doesn't excuse police stupidity though. The awful thing is, now that senior police are taken in at Graduate level, we have another kind of stupidity going on... namely social engineering and political correctness.

The 'open-minded policeman' has for too long been an oxymoron...

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Sara
one has also to consider that many of the most highly rated writers and researchers in this strange field cling fanatically onto the words of the most senior police officials at the time of the Whitechapel Murders; and then these writers and reseachers proclaim these words as some kind of holy truth... just because they were spoken by the most senior police officials involved.
But the Yorkshire Ripper case does show us once and for all that it is the most senior police officials who haven't the slightest clue what is really going on, and are most likely to lead us in a totally false direction with their ill-founded and completely erroneous thoughts on suspects.
Just because a couple of senior police officials imply that the Whitechapel Murderer was a Jew, it doesn't mean to say he was, because quite honestly they didn't have a clue, just like the Yorkshire Ripper being a Geordie... by heck!
I believe we should turn this thing upside down and create a new formula that dictates the higher the rank of the police official involved then the less he actually knew.

[Malcolm X]

good posts, Sutcliffe highlights the problems with the Ripper case, it's a very good example to use in most arguements..... as is Bundy too.

the police had no idea, but this is maybe because none of the suspect descriptions were accurate enough/ none of them truly matched and maybe the ripper was never seen............. i dont think it's police incompetence quite as much as Sutcliffe was; but it still shows you how hard it is to catch a serial killer

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Malcolm
after the publication of the 'Myth' in 1993, I sent Sutcliffe a registered letter which contained the following ditty - which is on the 3rd page of the book - and nothing else:
'It's a very funny thought
that, if Bears were Bees
They'd build their nests
at the bottom of trees.
And that being so (If the Bees were Bears)
We shouldn't have to
climb up all those stairs.'
(A.A. Milne)
He wasn't able to reply, but then who could?

[DarkPassenger]

It wasn't that they were to blame because they charged...it was because they charged too much

I think there is a hated of prostitutes culturally because they are making money immorally. Maybe it's envy; most people work legitimately for a living, while prostitutes, through no fault of their own, are forced into a situation where they make money (apparently) through pleasure (although this is not the case, obviously), tax-free. I'm not kidding. It's the backlash of a work ethic using abstract "morality" to take offence at people not working within the ethic; the same phenomenon causes a hatred of benefit claimers.

[Cap'n Jack]

I dunno, DP.
Perhaps it is - and was then - just another long held police prejudice against a minority grouping; and that being the case then some and certain police officers might well view the activities of a serial killer like Sutcliffe as 'just cleaning up the streets' on their behalf.
This in turn produces a half-arsed police investigation, that is until a 'blameless' victim is slain... as the police admitted in the Sutcliffe case.
I think it to be a great lesson to learn that in the Ipswich murders there were two clear links between all the victims: prostitution and drugs.
Prior to the murders there had been several public meetings with the local police and council where local residents demanded that the police should 'clean up the streets by removing the prostitutes and the drugs'.
Hey presto!
A serial killer appears to answer their demands... or should that read 'prayers'?
And this is where the heart of the matter doth rest.
For Whitechapel experienced a similar demand from local residents to rid the streets of prostitutes, brothels and gin.
As Jack will tell you, dead women drink no gin.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

A serial killer appears to answer their demands... or should that read 'prayers'?
And this is where the heart of the matter doth rest.
For Whitechapel experienced a similar demand from local residents to rid the streets of prostitutes, brothels and gin.
As Jack will tell you, dead women drink no gin.

Hi A.P. - I was browsing through The Ripper File last night and noticed a comment from Dame Henrietta Barnett, wife of the founder of Toynbee Hall, reciting the slang names for gin : "Blue ruin, max, duke, gatter, jacky....."

Jacky ? You thinkin' what I'm thinkin' ?

[Ally]

A woman smokes 2 packs a day and develops lung cancer and dies.
A woman is a health conscious non-smoker, develops lung cancer and dies.

A man is driving his car obeying the speed limit using all possible precautions, sneezes violently, loses control at a bad moment, crashes his car and dies.
A man gets drunk, takes his car out in an ice storm and plows into a tree and dies.

A heroin addict overdoses and dies.
A person gets the wrong prescription at the pharmacy and dies.

In each of those scenarios there is one death where the person died due to no contributing action of their own. They are therefore "blameless". They did not engage in risky behavior. It is not a mindset that is limited only to hookers and the sex trade. In each of those scenarios, there is one person whose actions were risky and they made choices that put them in a situation where the likelihood of them dying was increased. They engaged in risky, pointless, stupid behavior with a full understanding of the possible outcomes. They are not blameless in their deaths.

Which is not saying that they "got what was coming to them". But yes, the blameless person who did not in any way engage in behavior that contributed to their death is always seen as more of a loss than the person who died of predictable or likely outcomes.

[The Good Michael]

AP,

You say:

"in other words it couldn't be one of us, but must be one of 'them', a Jew, Johnny Foreigner or even a Geordie... just as long as he wasn't from our patch, because if he was we should have caught him by now, so to explain the obvious we create a myth, a serial killer who is invisible to all."

This is a tremendous leap of logic where Sutcliffe is concerned. Because senior officials had a different suspect, does not mean that they couldn't believe one of their own was a killer. It means they put their money on a horse and the horse came up lame. To then impose this flawed logic onto the LVP is a mistake. The idea of a Jew being the Whitechapel murderer, in your mind, is about creating a bugbear to scare the children. In fact, there is a lot of logic in suggesting it was someone of the poorer class who lived in the very heart of the Kill zone, as that kind of person would know the ins and outs. It just so happens that a lot of these people were Jewish immigrants. If you combine the socialist movements which were predominately made up of non-religious Jews, and the problems that stemmed from that quarter, it is no wonder that a Jewish suspect (or two) was looked at.
Remember that it was a handful of officials who thought this way, and some after the fact. That hardly constitutes some conspiracy to create a villain, does it?

Cheers,

Mike

[Crystal]

Bananas...

It's called Blame Absolutely Nobody Anywhere Near Anyone Syndrome, Mike.

Or you could just call it the Social Other - The Barbarian of Antiquity - as I'm sure you'll know, from the Greek origin - Bar Bars - so called because they considered the 'Other' couldn't speak properly. I think you'll agree that that particular prejudice is alive and well today, even if the BarBar has changed its spots.

But back to the bananas - Most societies seem to have a version of this one - you can blame your neighbour for petty offences - this is quite normal, the one up manship of human nature - you can see it here on a regular basis! I'm quite good at it myself, as it happens!

But when something outside normal social parameters occurs, people tend to blame the social 'Other' for the offence.

This is an interesting thread, and lots of stuff to think about - my take is that yes, many Polish Jews were poor, and the killer could well have come from this social class, but on the other hand, the popular perception of the Jew was also that of Hutchinson's suspect - the wealthy Jew - who is not legitimately wealthy, but gets his money by preying on those in financial difficulty.

This one was old, even then. Obviously it stems ultimately from the belief that the Jews were responsible for the Death of Christ (Uh Oh, what was that I was saying yesterday about religion and politics? )

Now I should think people generally cared a good deal less about all that a hundred years earliler, or even fifty, but thanks to the great social reforming, doing up of innumerable churches, building of countless more, educating of the masses (in the Christian Way) etc, Society was once more well acquainted with the Evil Jew cariacature.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, the Jew was an obvious target, and since there are plenty of contemporary social reasons for blaming Mr Jew, it's extremely difficult to drag out the real possibility that he might not have been blameless.

Coffee Time!

[Malcolm X]

they had great trouble catching Sutcliffe because their filing stystem/documentation was far too large and ineffective, plus there were way to many ``hoax`` bum leads..... this isn't anything to do with prejudice at all, or social stereotyping.

the JEWS are extremely unpopular, maybe more so today than ever before.. but this is due to many reasons ..... Hutchinson realised this too!

but he wasn't that smart..........more like very suspicious instead, because he totally screwed up his statement...........it's not so much riddled with faults as way too ``targeted``

[Crystal]

You're right about Sutcliffe, Malcolm. I think the thing is there, as with many other serial killers, that, social stereotyping notwithstanding, most of them don't look like anyone - they're just the bloke (or girl) next door. The more ordinary you are, the harder you are to spot.

That's one of the things that I just love about Mr Astrakhan - of course he's not real! That's just silly!

He's such a social stereotype that it is inprobable that he was real. That Hutch in all likelihood made him up - and that nobody apparently thought anything of it (at the time) - may serve to demonstrate just how pervasive these images were in contemporary society. If Hutch - assuming he was just your average, working class George - dodgy geezer, serial killer or not - could invent this fiction on the spot, I guess anyone could.

[Malcolm X]

You're right about Sutcliffe, Malcolm. I think the thing is there, as with many other serial killers, that, social stereotyping notwithstanding, most of them don't look like anyone - they're just the bloke (or girl) next door. The more ordinary you are, the harder you are to spot.

That's one of the things that I just love about Mr Astrakhan - of course he's not real! That's just silly!

He's such a social stereotype that it is inprobable that he was real. That Hutch in all likelihood made him up - and that nobody apparently thought anything of it (at the time) - may serve to demonstrate just how pervasive these images were in contemporary society. If Hutch - assuming he was just your average, working class George - dodgy geezer, serial killer or not - could invent this fiction on the spot, I guess anyone could.

hi Crystal

yes the Ripper was almost definitely a Joe Average.....the closest is maybe the Lawende sighting.

but that could be anybody, because i expect he changed his appearence often to fool the police, well i would anyway............

dont forget that HUTCH had two days to get his suspect description right, so he described a JEW that was bound to deflect attention away from the actual killer.

the problem i have with Hutch is............( regardless of him being Toppy or not, and i refuse to get involved in that lot ) is why did he stop killing?......... he didn't just quit for 2 years like other serial killers then start up again.......the Ripper never killed again as the Ripper; here in the U.K, but these 2 HUTCH's were still around, this is the only weakness with HUTCH as JTR and it really is a huge problem........this is compounded by the strong possiblity that HUTCH is indeed, the HUTCH we all know.

G.Chapman, yes i understand easily the need to switch his M.O.........but Hutch no, this is a real problem.

[Cap'n Jack]

Mike
afore I reply to your good and reasonable points, would you broadly agree with me that it is both unusual and rare for a serial killer to kill outside of his own social, racial and ethnic grouping?