My attempt to decipher the MJK in situ photograph

[Robert St Devil]

Hello C4

You are right. If you focus in on her lips (yes, full and attractive ), the face starts to take shape. Mostly the left eye. True, many of the pics look like a gooey mess on the Internet so ive been wondering how B. identified her by "eyes and ears".

As for the right hand, it may just be an illusion. Kinda looks like a hand (above the left hand) "clamped" onto that white fabric (sheet?).

[ChrisGeorge]

So for a longtime I've had a lot of difficulty looking at this photograph - it's indistinct enough for me to kind of blank at it whenever I try to figure out exactly what I'm looking at. At length I've decided to try to show you what I see when I look at it, and I hope some of you can tell me if I've got the right of it or not.

I've kind of tried to keep it color co-ordinated. And I hope you can read my paint-writing; I did this in a bit of a hurry, and it looks a bit like a toddler did it. At any rate, am I looking at this properly?



In particular, I'm trying to figure out why it looks as if Mary Kelly doesn't have much of a pelvis, whether or not her left arm and right leg are under covers or exposed, and what it is that's underneath the table.

Several observations....

The so-called initials "MF" on the wall are low down, just above the body but not so obvious in the sepia version of the photograph that you show. The alleged initials are vaguely visible above the horizon of the body, as it were, in this detail of the same photograph --



It is a tin bath below the bed and there is a bolster on the dry sink on the other side of the body. On the side table to the right of the photograph are body parts cut from the victim (breasts and other fleshy parts) as well as another bolster visible on the second smaller photograph taken in the room. The part of the mutilated body that you said looked "like a knife" is the exposed right femur of the victim.

I would agree that the left arm of the victim looks unnatural as it lays across her midriff, and believe that the body was purposely posed by the killer for dramatic effect.

Best regards

Chris

[curious4]

Hello C4

You are right. If you focus in on her lips (yes, full and attractive ), the face starts to take shape. Mostly the left eye. True, many of the pics look like a gooey mess on the Internet so ive been wondering how B. identified her by "eyes and ears".

As for the right hand, it may just be an illusion. Kinda looks like a hand (above the left hand) "clamped" onto that white fabric (sheet?).

Hello Robert

I think that should be eyes and hair (it is in some versions). Cockneys drop the "h" in the beginning of words and I think he was misunderstood. Makes more sense, her ears being partly cut off.

Best wishes
C4

[Chris2307uk]

I have to agree with ChrisGeorge.... I've always believed that the 'knife' shaped item here is actually her right femur. This would be evidenced by the coroner who stated that the right thigh had be "denuded down to the bone".

My take on why her arm is placed across her midriff is thus: To eviscerate her I would assume that the logical way to do this would be to have both arms spread wide or at least down to her side. Maybe after JtR had finished this he sat on the side of the bed, and in order to do so moved her arm there out of his way.

I, for one, have never been able to make out any part of the poor womans face

[spyglass]

Hi all,

In the new book by Bruce Robinson, he claims that MK wasn't wearing a chemis and the puff sleeve is in fact a large flap of skin ( part of a masonic message ).
The more you look at it, the more I see what he means.
Remember one doctor reported her as being naked.

Regards.

[curious4]

Hi all,

In the new book by Bruce Robinson, he claims that MK wasn't wearing a chemis and the puff sleeve is in fact a large flap of skin ( part of a masonic message ).
The more you look at it, the more I see what he means.
Remember one doctor reported her as being naked.

Regards.

I've spent YEARS saying that was not a puff sleeve! Skip the masons though. Trouble is, nothing fits the description. The spleen I think was said to be on that side, but it doesn't look like a spleen to me.

Cheers
C4

[Robert St Devil]

I've spent YEARS saying that was not a puff sleeve! Skip the masons though. Trouble is, nothing fits the description. The spleen I think was said to be on that side, but it doesn't look like a spleen to me.

Cheers
C4

I dont know about puff shirts BUT it looks the continuation of a sheet(?) that is running between her left leg and her forearm. Like it runs under her arm and wraps over it (making the puffy appearance). If it is a sheet, inwas trying to tell if its that white favric that is trailing off the right side of the bed.

[curious4]

I dont know about puff shirts BUT it looks the continuation of a sheet(?) that is running between her left leg and her forearm. Like it runs under her arm and wraps over it (making the puffy appearance). If it is a sheet, inwas trying to tell if its that white favric that is trailing off the right side of the bed.

Hello Robert

Yes, it could be a sheet, but I would have thought it would be more bloodstained in that case. It looks like intestines to me, with a piece between the arm and body and you find this with Eddowes (piece of intestine placed in this way) and also with Annie Chapman. Except that the doctor's report places the intestines on the other side. Mystery within a mystery.

Best wishes
C4

PS. Mind you, I do have a large-sized bee in my bonnet about this.

[Pierre]

I think its really creepy how the arm is placed over the abdomen like that. What is your interpretation of this?

He had a reason for doing that.

Regards Pierre

[RockySullivan]

He had a reason for doing that.

Regards Pierre

Thanks for the helpful post. And the reason was?

[spyglass]

Hi all,
Someone once wrote "If you solve the mystery of Mary Kelly,you would proberbly solve the JTR case"

Well I have been thinking a lot about the MJK murder over the last few months, and I am seriously coming to the conclusion that the whole thing ( including Hutchinson ) was completely staged and set up.
It would certainly help explain all the contradictions ect from all the participants, with loose ends not completely tieing up.

It would have been done by the police/special branch or some simular agency, but I can not think of a reason why.
I'm not aware of anyone else going down this route of thinking,but would be intrested to hear/read it.

regards

[Semper_Eadem]

My attempt to decipher the MJK in situ photograph Good luck and bon chance to you, my thought is what a god awful mess.

[Karl]

Hi all,
Someone once wrote "If you solve the mystery of Mary Kelly,you would proberbly solve the JTR case"

Well I have been thinking a lot about the MJK murder over the last few months, and I am seriously coming to the conclusion that the whole thing ( including Hutchinson ) was completely staged and set up.
It would certainly help explain all the contradictions ect from all the participants, with loose ends not completely tieing up.

It would have been done by the police/special branch or some simular agency, but I can not think of a reason why.
I'm not aware of anyone else going down this route of thinking,but would be intrested to hear/read it.

regards

Well, the police would certainly have no desire to do such a thing - quite the opposite, in fact. The police were unpopular enough as it was, and the last thing they needed was another brutal murder they could not solve.

That the murder scene could be staged is not entirely unthinkable, and I can think of two possible motives:

1) MJK was killed for entirely different reasons and the killer made it look like a JtR murder to cover his tracks.
2) The victim was not Mary Jean Kelly, but the real victim was mutilated until she could pass for Mary Jean Kelly.

Those are the only ones I can think of immediately, and there is a major issue with both of them: it requires an exceptionally strong stomach for someone who hasn't done this sort of thing before. It is hard to imagine that such a person would not only match JtR's past merits, but indeed exceed them by a good margin. Not impossible, but personally I would say improbable.

Unless, of course, this new killer had been a latent serial killer all a long, and had an "awakening" as he was carving the victim up. Also possible, but also a long shot.

I should mention at this point that the possibility of #2 first occurred to me after reading this very interesting article by Des McKenna:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-desmary.html

The motive, of course, would have to be that MJK for some reason needed to relocate and be considered dead. There are, in turn, two potential motives for this that I can think of:

1) If she had a substantial life insurance, and, say, Joe Barnett was the beneficiary, he could claim the money and they'd relocate and live happily ever after. Problem: did she have life insurance at all? Unlikely. Did Joe Barnett relocate after the event? Possibly, there's a gap in what we know of him from 1888-1906, but it is not until 1919 that he is listed as having a wife, a certain Louisa Barnett. For Louisa to have been the actual Mary Jean Kelly, one would think she would be known as Joe's wife a little earlier than 1919.
2) If she was in trouble with criminal elements, perhaps because she was an informant (as I have seen suggested elsewhere) and thus was in mortal danger. This I consider far more believable of the two, but it still rests on the victim being someone other than MJK.

What speaks for it is the severe disfigurement of MJK, especially the facial disfigurement. The lips, cheeks, nose and eyebrows were all mangled or cut off, but the eyes were left alone. We know MJK had blue eyes, and the victim certainly had blue eyes. And I find it interesting that the killer left them alone when he could easily have removed or destroyed them as well. So to substitute MJK with another required someone who was of similar height, hair, eye colour, teeth and jaw shape. Those are still some pretty vital factors, but it should be remembered that Mary Jean could only be identified by her eyes and ears. And Joe Barnett was the one to do so: if she was mangled to hide the fact that she was another, he "only" needed to do so to such an extent that people who only casually knew her could be fooled. If Joe was in on it, and he was the one of all MJK's acquaintances who got to scrutinize her up close, he could say "that's her" regardless.

I still think it's a bit far fetched, however, as it relies on a lot of "if"s. And certainly, until we can establish that Mary Jean did have a suitable motive to have another poor girl slaughtered in her place, this should not be the going theory.

[Pierre]

Thanks for the helpful post. And the reason was?

It was a message to the police.

I am really sorry but I canīt tell you anything more about this.

Regards Pierre

[Rosella]

^ Did Jack leave the eyes in order that MJK (I do believe it was Mary) could 'see' what was being done to her? "You were once thought pretty" he may have thought, 'Now look at you!'

The killer didn't destroy Kate Eddowes eyes either, though her face was disfigured by his knife. I think he got enjoyment from redesigning Kate's face and decided to do a proper job with Mary. I don't believe it was for purposes of misidentification.