Jack the Ripper's possible secret

[lynn cates]

point of departure

Hello Ally.

"In truth, we are used to the idea of killers (and detectives) whipping out their Rand McNally and plotting a demonic symbol on the streets of (Insert City Here) because we've been fed that story repeatedly in books, TV programs and movies. But in reality?"

And that sums up my point of departure--ideas we are used to versus what really happened.

Cheers.
LC

[Bridewell]

I have a made a big discovery in the case. New evidence you could say.
The following data below is what I found:
1: Jack's cross is not a cross but an arrow pointing sw to a spot on Mitre st. near the 4th crime scene.
2: This area had a Jewish Community there.
3: There was a synagogue behind the crime scene.
4: there are several jewish friendly butcher shops in the area. two of the butchers were jewish men.
5: the 5 crimes scenes of rippers cross also form the star of David.
6: the first crime scene is near a jewish cemetery.
7: Jacks message was " The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing".
This is just my first theory. I have more theorys for later times to tell. I have strong beliefs that Jack the Ripper was a Jewish Butcher in the community. I would like some input on my theory. I look foward to it.

Welcome to Casebook, American Ace,

I don't share your view that there is any intentional pattern to the murder scenes. Quite apart from anything else, there is still - and probably always will be - a great deal of debate about which of the murders were committed by the same killer. Without any certainty on that particular issue, I can't see any point in looking for a pattern, and personally I wouldn't do so.

Don't be discouraged by the negative reaction to the content of your first post and don't let it discourage you from further posting on this and other threads. We disagree on this forum and sometimes it can get pretty heated. Criticism of your first theory is not criticism of you personally. I look forward to reading further contributions.

[RivkahChaya]

You know what I've always wondered when reading a theory about the killer supposedly plotting out some great symbol in the body locations?

Where'd he get the map? How much did he pay for that?

If he lived in the area, he was probably capable of drawing a rough one. That would imply at least a modest education, and a familiarity with the concept of "map," and I don't know how often those things went together with someone who had lived in Whitechapel for some time, but there you are. I think there are much better arguments against the theory of making a symbol that plotted on a map, than the inaccessibility of maps.

The first is, that using a symbol seems to imply trying to make whatever the thing is, meaningful for someone else, or, on a very basic level, communicate something. I suppose it could have been to his god, but then I'd expect more symbolism if the murders were some kind of religious mania. People don't try to communicate and obscure at the same time (notwithstanding the Zodiac's ciphers, which were an attempt to keep himself in the public's consciousness, by playing a game). If JTR were forming a symbol, it would either be entirely obvious, or he would tell people to look for it.

Except he didn't. There is absolutely not a single coherent design that can be found in the zodiac murder locations.

Well, yeah, then, there is that.

While I'm a big believer that nothing is impossible, I am quite sure that many things are vanishingly unlikely. Like a pattern to Jack's murder sites.

I believe things are impossible. Severed limbs on humans do not grow back. Homeopathy is bunk, because water does not remember. But I think I still see your point. I started the "locations" thread a while back, to ask if the locations, while not forming a pattern, or being symbolic in relationship to one another, still might have individually held significance to the killer. Phil made a very good and well-reasoned post defending the idea that the women picked the locations, even if the killer may have picked the general areas, so I have officially given up any idea that the locations hold significance, other than offering cover.

But to play devils advocate, I would point out two things. There are people in the world whose spatial sense is extraordinary. They can picture the layout of a city with uncanny precision by having only walked around it.

That there are. I know a person with Asperger's, who, as a 7-year-old, could draw contiguous maps of Europe, Israel, the Near/Middle East, and the continental US from memory. People in Indiana, without having any extraordinary or "savant" skills about it, always know where the cardinal directions are. People in Indiana talk that way-- if you ask directions, they tell you to go so many miles east, then turn north, and it's meaningful for them. I guess if you grow up hearing people talk that way, it registers on you where the sun is, and therefore where north is, without you really thinking about it.

Serial killers who like to revisit dump sites, or who can take the police to burial sites years later, and be correct (because they dig and find the body), probably have that kind of sense. I don't think it's common to serial killers, or a mark of psychopathy-- but it's possible that killers who choose random sites, or obscure burials, and don't need to keep souvenirs, are that way because of a knack for finding the right spot again.

Culturally (in Britain, America and Canada), the most significant numbers and most popular numbers are 1, 3, 7, 10 and 12. As someone to pick a number, most pick one of these, or a multiple of one of these (barring 1. since everything multiplies by one).

If you visit magician websites, you'll find out that when asked to pick a number between 1 and 100, an unusually large number of people pick 37-- this has been studied a few times, and the result is usually that something like 20-25% of responders pick 37. "Mentalists" like the Amazing Kreskin exploited this, and could subtly coach an audience into picking 37 at a rate of about 80%. He'd do that to "prove" that most people had latent psychic abilities.

[RivkahChaya]

The rub is this: There are so many believers of some sort of coherent ritualism in the ripper murders, and each espied ritual contradicts the last one.

It reminds me of a friend's comment on the various claims that other people, rather than the man of Stratford, wrote the plays that have comes down to us as "Shakespeare." She said that all the claimants used basically the same evidence, including, in the case of the Earl of Oxford, and Bacon, pretty strained inter-textual cryptograms. She said, "They can't all be right, on the same evidence."

I'm also suspicious of anything that finds something like repeating numbers. Stride had five fingers on her left hand, the exact same number of toes Eddowes had her right foot, and Chapman had two feet of intestine removed: 5 + 2 = 7, the day that Martha Tabram was killed. Also, Polly Nichols was 43 when she died, and 4 + 3 = 7, which is really uncanny, because Nichols had just had a birthday, and if she'd been killed just six days earlier, she would have been only 42-- and 4 + 2 = 6. Not to mention that 7 + 6 = 13, which was Mary Kelly's address in Miller's court.

I could go on and on.

Lists like that are convincing only if they are very specific, and more importantly, predictive. In other words, if the victims' birthdays happen to be on the 4th of February, 1968, 12th of March, 1971, and 31st of December, 1972, yeah, they are sort of in numeric order, but I'm not impressed. However, if they are the 2nd of February, 1972, 3rd of March, 1973, and 4th of April, 1974, in that order, you have my attention. I'd also suggest you look for another victim who was born on Jan. 1st, 1971.

[Errata]

I'm also suspicious of anything that finds something like repeating numbers. Stride had five fingers on her left hand, the exact same number of toes Eddowes had her right foot, and Chapman had two feet of intestine removed: 5 + 2 = 7, the day that Martha Tabram was killed. Also, Polly Nichols was 43 when she died, and 4 + 3 = 7, which is really uncanny, because Nichols had just had a birthday, and if she'd been killed just six days earlier, she would have been only 42-- and 4 + 2 = 6. Not to mention that 7 + 6 = 13, which was Mary Kelly's address in Miller's court.

I could go on and on.

Lists like that are convincing only if they are very specific, and more importantly, predictive. In other words, if the victims' birthdays happen to be on the 4th of February, 1968, 12th of March, 1971, and 31st of December, 1972, yeah, they are sort of in numeric order, but I'm not impressed. However, if they are the 2nd of February, 1972, 3rd of March, 1973, and 4th of April, 1974, in that order, you have my attention. I'd also suggest you look for another victim who was born on Jan. 1st, 1971.

That's why I think there is a difference between significant, and significant to the killer. I was first diagnosed as OCD because I had a song stuck in my head for a year. A least. Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega. When they first started treating me, I went a little mad. Not a lot, just a tiny bit. But over the course of 6 months of the song permanently looping in my head, occasionally I would hear someone use a word right when that same word would be sung in my head. Which statistically had to happen sometime. But because I was slightly mad, that meant something to me. And I was so harassed by that damn song, that on the occasions it did happen I became deeply suspicious of the person who said it. Like they were reading my mind, or mocking me. Now if I had killed someone for shouting "coffee" at just the wrong moment, the word coffee would be significant to me, but not significant in some wider context. Had it been a different song and the word had been "satan", people would assign a significance to the word, but it would be completely different than what was significant to me.

The irony is, there could be some significance to the locations where he killed. He could have targeted any prostitute who was soliciting near a member of his family, or by street signs that didn't have the letter E in them. But because those things are not significant to us, we don't see the pattern.

[RivkahChaya]

That's why I think there is a difference between significant, and significant to the killer. I was first diagnosed as OCD because I had a song stuck in my head for a year. A least. Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega.

That is a very sticky song. It probably has spawned more earworms than "American Pie," "It's a Small World," "Baby Got Back," and Abba's top 10 hits combined.

I'm going to bang my head against the wall now, thank you.

ETA: also, "Hand in My Pocket." I'm glad Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette cannot have a child together.

[Paddy]

Justification

When the itch got itchy and Jack got twitchy
When opportunity was there with no one to care
They must have known they would meet me.

They were waiting for it thought Jack !

[RivkahChaya]

Ignoring Paddy, because that is trolling of the most disgusting kind, Errata makes a point that the locations could be significant, but not symbolic.

For example, and I'm making this up, it's what's known as a hypothetical, JTR could have gone off with prostitutes with every intention of doing what is usually done with prostitutes, but then something about the location, a smell, or draft, could have made him unable to perform, something he perceived as deliberate on the part of the women, who maybe were trying to get money for nothing. They may have died for that.

People who have that kind of reaction are not foaming at the mouth crazy, or even psychotic, but they have the sort of pathological narcissism that Ted Bundy had, where everything was about him. It wasn't quite the same as paranoia, but it looked like it sometimes. A paranoiac thinks people who are whispering are whispering about him because he's paranoid, and he usually thinks they are plotting against him. A narcissist thinks people are talking about him, because he thinks he is as important to everyone else as he is to himself, and thinks people may be talking about how attractive he is, or planning to give him something, and gets angry when the gift doesn't materialize.

Anyway, a narcissist isn't going to assume that the women just took him to any old place, or their usual place; they took him to a place with his specific needs in mind, and if it turned out badly, then she must have planned it that way.

Now, I realize that seems to assume that Eddowes was actively soliciting, but not necessarily. If she was the only woman around, and our killer is a pathological narcissist, then she is there for him.

I know I have argued that Eddowes was not soliciting, and I still think that was the case, but I also think if she were accosted by someone who assumed she was, and playing along seemed the best way to get out of the situation unharmed, she probably would have done that. Or maybe not, and that was the "mistake" she made. Or, she didn't play it well enough.

The long and short is that he killed because he was a killer. Asking why those particular women, or those particular spots is a lot like asking why an alcoholic drank that particular beer, or walked into that particular bar. If it hadn't been that one, it would have been another.

[Paddy]

Songs in the mind

I wonder what they call it when one has a song in ones mind, and on turning the radio on it is playing ??? I get this all the time.
RRD radio reception disorder?
Errata I think OCD touches us all in many ways, I do sympathise if it was for a year !

Pat

[Paddy]

No Trolling intended

I just had to look up what that meant Ryfkah ! I'm a bit shocked !

I can assure you I was just giving my opinion, as you were. I am sure it was no more off topic than your Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morrissette ?
It was meant to be my view, if thats allowed?
Not to offend !

Pat

[RivkahChaya]

I just had to look up what that meant Ryfkah ! I'm a bit shocked !

I'm sorry. I was just teasing, because I thought you were teasing to begin with. I thought this

When the itch got itchy and Jack got twitchy
When opportunity was there with no one to care

was a bit of doggerel offered up as potential earworm material.

[niko]

SEVEN !! murder sites.

Hi everybody, I supose the majority, if not all of you think I'm crazy about thinking the location's of the murder sites form an ARROW !! The reason and only reason I say this is from when I saw the map of the seven murder sites which was published in THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWS !! Saturday, November, 17, 1888.

I supose thousand's of Londoner's saw this map, I wonder if any of them saw an ARROW shape which to me seem's to be pointing South - West. What's your opinion does it look like an ARROW or not ?

Someone mentioned how did Jack get hold of a map ? "easy" If this newspaper printed the map of the seven murder sites who say's that in previous newspaper edition's had'nt printed map's of London, all the best.

Niko

[Fisherman]

Eh - what happened to Millerīs Court ...?

Fisherman

[niko]

Eh - what happened to Millerīs Court ...?

Fisherman

Fiherman I supose you'll have to ask that to The Ilustrated POLICE News who were the ones that printed the map with the murder sites, all I've done is circled and highlighted them, all the best.

Niko.

[The Good Michael]

I see a dagger. I also see nonsense.

Mike