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Erin Sigler
Inspector
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 191
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 5:01 pm: |       |
Cludgy, most serial killers feel the need to "fortify" themselves with alcohol and/or drugs before going out to committ murder. I don't see why Jack would differ; in fact, if he was the type of man A.P. and I think he was, a little liquid courage would have been a necessary component to his nightly forays. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that he actually picked up (or was picked up by) some of his victims in or around pubs, although I think I read somewhere that the pubs closed at a certain time. Besides, as Glenn pointed out, alcohol (and drugs, for that matter) was readily available to anyone who had a few pence to spare. Perhaps he offered to share, or the victims asked him for a nip, which he took as an invitation. It would certainly have helped to break the ice, as it were.
A.P., interesting question about Brudos. I don't really know for sure how he raped his victims, because I've never really read that much about him. Since any sort of forced penetration is considered rape by most jurisdictions in this country, there needn't have been full intercourse involved. I suppose he could have just as easily used an object; didn't this occur with one of the Boston Strangler's victims?
I think Cutbush is, as you suggest, an excellent model from which to build a character portrait of the Ripper. I would be interested in knowing whatever became of him after his incarceration--if he ever committed any more crimes, for example. I too think it would be worthwhile to examine the available records for someone like him, but I think we could go back even further than five years, perhaps seven to ten, particularly if cruelty to animals was a punishable offense in that era. Looking into Cutbush's past might throw some further light onto the type of individual for whom we're looking. Makes me wish I were in the UK, and could take part in such research, although I know it would be time-consuming. It's definitely something to consider for the future.
You've mentioned Richard Trenton Chase in comparison with the Ripper in the past, and I have to say I think you're right on the money with him. I remembered him from Ressler's book, but after I'd refreshed my memory using the Crime Library web site I was struck by the similarities in the way Chase treated his victims. A paragraph from Crime Library about one of his murders should suffice, although I should warn everyone that it's not for the squeamish:
"Her sweater was pulled up over her breasts and her pants and underwear down around her ankles. Her knees were splayed open in the position of a sexual assault. Her left nipple was carved off, her torso cut open below the sternum, and her spleen and intestines pulled out. Chase had stabbed her repeatedly in the lung, liver, diaphragm, and left breast. He also had cut out her kidneys and severed her pancreas in two. He placed the kidneys together back inside her."
Sounds awfully familiar to me! Looking at Chase's early life and crimes might prove similarly enlightening. I know the time periods are vastly different, but the behavior is so similar I think it would be folly to ignore such a useful example. Cutbush + Chase = The Ripper? |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 741
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 6:16 am: | |
Yes, Erin, it would indeed be a folly to ignore or dismiss modern cases in their application to the crimes of Jack, and I still do not yet understand why so many posters on these boards are so reluctant to work with such a useful tool, but there does seem an enormous reluctance on the part of many to grasp this positive working instrument and apply it to the crimes of Jack. Perhaps it is some kind of weird jealously in that these particular types wish their Jack to be totally unique and do not wish to see their hero diluted in comparison to other more modern killers?
I don’t know, but it is self-defeating.
Just today I have been reading of the horrific case of a mother who murdered her very young daughter here in England, and this case puts me very much in mind of the crimes of Jack. Before you dismiss this, allow me to explain. You see this woman did have mental illness problems but it was thought by all who saw her that these were but of a minor nature that would have no harmful impact on her family, friends or society in general, and it seems that they may have been right in their judgement. However what they - and other professionals - hadn’t reckoned with was the terrific and terrible negative impact a single individual can have on these otherwise fairly sane people, in this case it was the woman’s very young daughter whom she obviously perceived as some kind of primitive threat to her status in the family and society, and as a consequence of which this woman created a bizarre altar out of the child’s room and then ritualistically slaughtered the poor child by stabbing her fifty times with a knife. This is what I would term as a ‘private insanity’, in other words it is not apparent to even close members of the individual’s family, or friends, or anyone else for that matter, only the specific individuals who become the targets - and hence victims - of this private insanity.
Therefore we must be very, very careful in our concept and portrayal of such individuals whose madness would only be ultimately known to their victims.
I do see Jack as such.
I also do enjoy a comparison between Richard Chase and Thomas Cutbush, as I strongly feel it does reward our efforts to understand the entire picture without being clouded or influenced by a preconception that just because Thomas and Richard are like terrible twins then this must mean that Thomas was Jack. Far from it, but I still feel it useful to explore Thomas’ weird world.
Regarding Brudos, I’m still having a problem with this fellow. I’ve trawled through dozens of web-sites and read myself stupid, but still cannot actually see this chap either raping someone or fathering a child, his normal behaviour towards women just doesn’t seem to allow for something so normal as a sexual relationship of any nature, including rape. At the time his crimes were committed the investigating forces hadn’t really got their heads around the concept of ‘magical transference’ and perhaps didn’t even consider this and would have just accepted the fact that semen found inside a victim had got there in the normal fashion.
This still doesn’t explain the uncomfortable fact that his wife conceived a child supposedly through him, again I’m not convinced and I have the very strong suspicion that he probably married this girl because she was with child from someone else. This would fit his character so much better.
But hey, until I know better I’m just grasping at floating straws as I drown.
Thanks Erin.
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Frank van Oploo
Inspector
Username: Franko
Post Number: 152
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 9:06 am: | |
Hi Erin & AP,
I agree completely with your idea to pursue all the available records from five years or more prior to when Jack committed his murders in 1888, as I also believe there’s every chance Jack committed other ‘smaller’ crimes like stealing women’s underwear, voyeurism, exhibitionism, assault and rape. I think Jack will be there somewhere.
All the best,
Frank
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Erin Sigler
Inspector
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 196
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 3:05 pm: | |
A.P., I know exactly what you mean about the young woman who murderered her child, and I won't dismiss it at all because I think it's an excellent example of the kind of damage that unchecked mental illness can do and how families choose to deal with a member who is ill. Remember the woman in Texas who systematically drowned all five of her children? While her husband and family knew she was a bit "off," they never considered her to be a danger to herself or others, and if medicated properly, she probably wouldn't have been. Furthermore, she truly believed that by killing her children she was actually "saving" them from a fate worse than death--the fires of hell. I'm sure the young woman in England truly believed what she was doing was necessary and even correct. It's unfortunate that instead of getting these women the psychiatric help they so desperately needed family members felt that they could "handle" the problem, within the family, without calling in professionals. Some people feel that if Jack had been some deranged lunatic his family or friends surely would have reported him to the police, but I think this misses a crucial and unfortunate truth about mental illness that still lingers to this day: No one wants to admit that their son or husband or brother is insane, that he could be capable of such atrocities; most families will do whatever they can to protect their loved one no matter what the cost. Furthermore, there was and still is such a stigma attached to mental illness in the Western world that people are ashamed and thus reluctant to admit that one of their own could be "damaged," by its effects. My own mother will seldom discuss my aunt's mental illness and gets tremendously upset if she think I've mentioned it to "strangers." Like drug abuse, mental illness is something that is to be kept "in the family," invisible to outsiders and suffered privately. I don't think it's at all out of the question that Jewish or not, Jack's family (if he had one) may have sheltered and shielded him from the prying eyes of law enforcement, believing that they could "manage" him themselves; and when the task became too much, quietly committed him to an asylum where he died without anyone knowing his true identity.
I'm at a loss myself to explain why certain individuals are so reluctant to utilize the very useful models provided by men like Cutbush and Chase. Your theory to explain this behavior is as good as any I could come up with; probably better, in fact. No one wants to see the most famous serial killer of the modern era reduced to some sad, pathetic loser in need of psychiatric care; it's much more "romantic" to see him as a roguish, evil genius, who remained uncaught not because he flew under the radar and the police were ill-equipped to deal with such crimes, but because he outsmarted everyone. Even I was a bit nonplussed when I had my first glimpse of the notorious Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway. The most prolific serial killer in American history was not a terrifying monster who had six eyes and breathed fire, but a rather nondescript, ordinary little man with glasses. He didn't look like a man who had strangled 48 women to death and evaded the police for 20 years; he looked like an accountant, or maybe your mailman, some guy that totally blends into the crowd and no one would ever suspect. This was the Green River Killer? Surely not!
I think also part of the problem may be that if Jack was indeed a lunatic along the lines of Richard Chase, that somehow negates his responsibility for the murders. Someone, after all, must be to blame; someone must be punished--we can't just let them "get off" on an insanity defense! There was a similar outcry when President Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley, was found to be a mentally unstable loser who wasn't all that interested in politics--in fact, people are to this day protesting the fact that he was committed to a psychiatric hospital rather than imprisoned, as if the former were somehow less of a punishment than the latter. (I doubt anyone who believes thus has actually been to a mental institution, particularly one for the criminally insane, but that's another story.) This is why Richard Chase is sitting in a prison cell in San Quentin rather than in Atascadero State Hospital where he belongs. Someone must be to blame; someone must be held responsible; someone must be punished. Never mind that the individual in question has no more grasp of the heinousness of his crimes than a monkey would. Mentally ill or not, people want to see him pay for his actions.
Okay, off my soapbox! I must confess I don't really know all that much about Jerry Brudos, but I can't say I would be surprised if your suppositions about him turned out to be correct. I do believe that he had more than one child, however. True crime doyen Ann Rule, writing under her nom de plume Andy Stack, has a book out about Brudos called Lust Killer which is available on Amazon.com, among other places. Rule isn't squeamish or prudish, so I'm sure she explores such issues; her books are usually quite insightful and well-written.
Frank, that's so often the case with these guys. I can't imagine Jack would be any different. Asylum records might also be a good place to search, although I'm not certain if adolescents were housed with adults in Victorian institutions. Definitely something worth looking into; makes me wish I weren't stuck here in the middle of nowhere! I'd love to take part in such a project. |
Cludgy
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 10:06 am: | |
Glen you wrote,
"I don't believe that the time Chapman was murdered had something to do with that he deliberately wanted to show off. The risks involved do not correspond the gains connected with such a conduct".
I wasn't actually linking the fact that JTR killed Annie chapman almost at Dawn to show her body off to anyone who may find her. Thus gaining satisfaction from these actions.
I was thinking more along the lines of he wanted to kill her in the early light in order to view the mutilations( in a better light), for his own satisfaction.
In other words to better record the ghastly sight in his memory, so he could in his minds eye relive the incident.
In the recent U.K. Channel four Documentary, "The Camden Ripper", the killer(who's name escapes me), took photograph's of his victims in the most grotesque poses, fortunately we were spared viewing these photo's.
It was the general consensus, that he did this in order to view them, at his leisure, and relive the thrill the murder provided . These killers would murder more frequently given the chance, photography may give them the relief they need, to get by between murders.
So what of JTR, he couldn't take photograph's, did he wan't to get as best a view of Chapman's mutilated body as he could, and took the risk(and it was a risk as I wrote in my last post) to kill Annie Chapman as Dawn was breaking?
Of course, just as easily, he could of killed Annie Chapman, as he was on his way to work.
One last thing. In the documentary, "The Camden Ripper", the police are shown interviewing the killer. One of the questions put to him was if he could reveal the whereabouts of the head and hands of one of his victims? "No Comment", was the reply.
There was a footnote to this, as at the end of the documentary, one of the detectives revealed that off the record the killer had told him that even if he had wanted to reveal the whereabouts of the missing body parts, he couldn't. The reason? He had been too drunk at the time to remember where he had put them.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 667
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 9:59 am: | |
Hi Cludgy,
Albert Fish claimed he couldn’t even remember the gender of a child victim of his, while the female body parts were there in the room with him. He had spent some hours luring her to his house and interacting with her before killing her, yet said he had the impression shortly after the event that he had just killed a boy.
I think there could be a lot in what you say.
We have evidence that Jack wanted to relive his attacks – the organs he took away with him, Chapman’s missing rings. (We don’t know what else could have been taken, that no one but Jack and his victim would have known about.)
Assuming he didn’t have the means or opportunity to lure these easily available and vulnerable women back to wherever he was hanging his hat at the time, he had little choice but to leave his handiwork before being able to savour it to the extent that he might have wished.
He may even have felt cheated to think that others would soon be able to survey fully and at leisure every horrible detail, while he was all too quickly left with nothing but his powers of recollection and the following day’s newspaper reports. Even his memories could have been hazy or sporadic, or impossible to conjure up except in the form of flashbacks or nightmares, where reality might be barely distinguishable from fantasy, depending on his state of mind during the attacks, substances taken beforehand and so on.
I don’t know why some people think Jack would have had perfect recall of his crimes, let alone rational and logical thoughts, after doing the kind of things we know he did. His whole world must have been a crazy mix of fantasy and reality, trying out stuff he didn’t know would work or be satisfying, or worth repeating and improving on. If he needed booze or drugs to get him way past everyone else’s reality and beyond his own fantasising, who knows how much coolheaded reality would be restored to him between attacks?
Love,
Caz
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Sarah Long
Chief Inspector
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 520
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 10:30 am: | |
Caz,
"He may even have felt cheated to think that others would soon be able to survey fully and at leisure every horrible detail, while he was all too quickly left with nothing but his powers of recollection and the following day’s newspaper reports."
What you say here actually makes a lot of sense to me. This would explain why he took some of the organs away. What I want to know is where he put them. If he didn't take them home, due to living with someone he must have thrown them away but surely someone would have found them and also that would contradict your theory which I think is a good one.
Sarah |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 756
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 1:55 pm: | |
Caz
Nicely put.
Fish was a very, very complicated little man, and he often said things that were deliberately designed to shock the listener, and I do feel this expression of confusion as to the sexual identity of his victim might have been one of those occasions. You have to remember that when he was being led to the electric chair he told the priest that the execution would be the culminating point in his life. Obviously it wasn’t, it was the bare and bald end of his sad little life, but he always felt the need to shock people. (I actually didn’t realise what I had just written, that’s quite funny).
I’m not one to go along with this trophy business either, I have often seen this argument used with killers who revisit sites where their victims are buried and it is said they do this to gloat and relive the experience… nah, no way, they probably do it for the simple reason of making sure that the body hasn’t been discovered. It is something motivated by fear rather than pleasure. Same with the personal items removed from the victims, one shouldn’t read too much into it when a killer removes distinguishing items from his victims for it is most often fear of discovery that drives this purpose.
Jack has always struck me as a killer without true purpose apart from his strange habit of removing certain bits and bobs, and this may well have been his purpose. Sort of rearranging his universe and then eating it.
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Glenn L Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 1048
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 7:26 pm: | |
I go along with AP: last thoughts here; I personally don't believe that the Ripper had any true purpose with what he did, and I am not even sure of the fact the'd belong to those kind of serial killers that wants to get personal attention with his crimes (although I can't rule out the trophy thing).
There have been cases, though, where throphies have had an erotic deja vu effect, important for the killer's personal needs (yes, do cork up that brandy now, AP), so I don't agree that this is not something that can be completely disregarded.
Cludgy,
"I was thinking more along the lines of he wanted to kill her in the early light in order to view the mutilations( in a better light), for his own satisfaction.
In other words to better record the ghastly sight in his memory, so he could in his minds eye relive the incident."
So why didn't he continue to do so? Stride (if we include her) and Eddowes were killed at night while it was still completely dark -- not early in the morning. If he would have had such an urge to display the bodies in a better light either for himself or others (or both), then it doesen't appear to be a consistent behaviour pattern or something that interested him enough to follow along those lines after Chapman.
Of course, in Kelly's case there was a fire that lit up the room, but that could just as well have been for practical reasons.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on January 23, 2004)
Glenn L Andersson
Crime historian, Sweden |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 674
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 26, 2004 - 7:08 am: | |
Hi AP,
Not all of your observations concerning other killers can be applied to Jack, of course. Fear of discovery did not cause Jack to remove distinguishing items from his victims, for example. In fact, Sarah made the point that it would have been risky for him to keep items as distinctive as a kidney (or the brass rings) at his lodgings, if others lived there with him. There was still a risk if he had his own room(s) in someone else’s house, because of the police house-to-house searches.
Imagine if the police had knocked on the door of the sender of the Lusk letter, just as he was plopping the kidney piece into its little box. I wouldn’t fancy his chances of explaining that one away, whether he was just a very practical joker or a savage serial killer in mid cooling-off period.
Love,
Caz
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AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 775
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 26, 2004 - 8:32 am: | |
Good points Caz, and I do accept them, however I do not believe the killer would have been too bothered by house to house searches and the like if he just happened to be staying in the home of his dear old uncle Charles who just happened to be the most senior serving police officer resident in the area of the search.
I'm afraid we have to take that into consideration when we judge the killer's behaviour, before, during and after the crimes were committed. |
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