This is the full-text of A.P. Wolf's Jack the Myth, originally published by Robert Hale in 1993. It is reprinted here in its entirety, with new revisions, by the kind permission of A.P. Wolf. You may start reading it from the beginning, or you can jump to specific chapters by clicking the links below.
Chapter 3 - Motives in the Dark
Colin Wilson's assertion that the Ripper murders were the first murders of a sexual nature which could be placed in the same category as sex murders of today is an assertion that cannot be left unchallenged because the fact of the matter is that we do not know what motive lay behind the Ripper murders.
It is grasping at thin air to declare that they were 'sex crimes'. It is a simple explanation, too simple perhaps. Must we always assume, as Wilson and countless other writers on the subject do, that when a women is murdered and mutilated that the killer's motive was sexual gratification, even when there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that any sort of sexual contact took place? Of course, Colin Wilson is prepared to argue this point and he does so at considerable length in various different volumes and his complex theories are very neat and persuasive. For instance, to explain the activities of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper - who we have already mentioned in a previous chapter - Wilson links Sutcliffe's inability to achieve an erection or penetration to his subsequent murder and mutilation of the women. What Wilson maintains is that the ritualized stabbing became an obsession which allowed Sutcliffe to achieve orgasm. In other words, the Yorkshire Ripper was raping the women with a knife as a sexual thrill. Of vital importance to note here is that Wilson is basing his explanation on his, Wilson's, own opinion and not on the hard facts. The facts seem to indicate that Sutcliffe had no sexual ambitions towards his victims. On the contrary, his behaviour seemed to have been driven by an anti-sexual resentment at the activities of women who offered their bodies for money. It should also not be forgotten that Sutcliffe murdered most of his victims with a hammer by striking them across the back of the skull and it is impossible to equate this violent behaviour with a desire for penetration or to commit rape with a knife. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to substantiate the claim that the Yorkshire Ripper experienced any sort of 'sexual thrill' from killing or brutalizing his victims.
Wilson goes on to relate Sutcliffe's and a number of other murderer's motives - like Robert Hansen the Alaskan businessman who hunted twenty prostitutes down with his rifle and shot them or Joachim Kroll who killed, raped and ate his teenage victims - to that of Jack the Ripper's. He claims that in the Ripper type of killer, a feeling of inferiority is determined by the nature of the sexual impulse. According to Wilson those sex killers are typified by their twisted egos. But he is on very dangerous ground here. Hansen the killer-businessman did have sex with his victims first, and Kroll raped his victims when they were dead. Sutcliffe had no sexual contact with his victims and neither did Jack the Ripper. This is of enormous import and if Wilson had kept his comparison of the Ripper only to Sutcliffe, one could at least understand it from the point of view that neither of the men had sexual contact with their victims. But to make a comparison between a murderer like Hansen who was more than capable of sexual relations with the prostitute he was about to murder - and in fact often let the women go free unharmed if she satisfied him - and a murderer like Sutcliffe who went out with the idea of actually murdering a prostitute without any forethought of sexual contact is an obvious error.
The point being that Hansen viewed his victims as sex objects first and only secondly as murder objects when they failed to satisfy him sexually. Equally the German murderer Kroll viewed his victims as sexual objects but admitted that he was not able, due to a peculiar shyness, to have sexual relations with them while they were still alive, so he murdered them and then abused their corpses. Sutcliffe however seems to have had no intention whatsoever of having sex with his victims, they were to be brutally murdered full stop. Sutcliffe's testimony concerning the murder of his thirteenth victim, Helen Rytka, makes that absolutely clear. His confession was read out to the court:
'She undid my trousers and seemed prepared to start sexual intercourse right away in the front seat of the car, It was very awkward for me to find a way to get her out of the car.'
One can detect a note of panic here. He didn't want sex. He wanted to kill her. Finally he got her out of the car by suggesting that they had sex in the back seat and then he attacked her with the hammer but only struck her a glancing blow. Two taxi-drivers almost saw him so he pulled the woman to the ground and:
'I jumped on top of her and covered her mouth with my hand. It seemed like an eternity and she was still struggling. I told her that if she kept quiet she would be all right. As she had got me aroused a moment previous, I had no alternative but to go ahead with the act of sex as the only means of keeping her quiet. It didn't take long. She kept staring at me. She didn't put much into it.'
As soon as the taxi-drivers left he brutally murdered her. It is obvious that sex with the woman was the last thing on his mind. He wanted to kill her and if the taxi-drivers had not disturbed him he would have done so without any sort of sexual contact. He was forced to have sex with the woman to keep her quiet. One can only stare into a kind of wasteland of oblivion when considering his comment that the woman he had just beaten over the head with a hammer 'didn't put much into' the act of sex. But what is plainly obvious is that we are talking about two very different breeds of animal here. One kills for sex, the other kills for something else... but what?
Even more dangerous, perhaps, is Wilson's classification of the famous Bobby Franks murder case as a sexual crime. This took place in the 1920's in America where two wealthy, bored male students kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, to prove that they could get away with the 'perfect murder'. It is difficult to understand why Wilson should classify this as a sex crime when there was absolutely no signs of sexual interference but we are told that the chisel used to kill the boy was a symbolic penis and the culvert into which the body had been thrust a symbolic vagina. Wilson admits that his interpretation, based on Freudian reasoning, is simplistic, but he believes it does show that the murder had a sexual motive and demonstrates that such crimes are by their very nature 'baffling and paradoxical'.
And how! I can only add.
But Wilson's Freudian explanation also illustrates the contradictory nature of our Ripperologists who seem prepared to mislead us, either with their fantastic suspects or complicated theories about the nature of the crimes of Jack the Ripper. There is anyway something quite bizarre about using Freudian interpretation today. One shouldn't forget that Freud maintained that adult women who stimulated their clitoris to achieve orgasm were being 'childish'. The Hite report on female sexuality demonstrates conclusively that at least 70% of all women need to stimulate their clitoris to achieve orgasm.
Freud just didn't like the threatening idea of a woman being able to achieve orgasm without a male partner, and I suspect neither does Wilson.
But to get back to Wilson and his theories. It is well worth examining some of his other statements when it comes to murder and sex. For instance where he ponders over the plight of female murder victims he cites the case of Blanche Fisher who was beaten and murdered in Vancouver in 1949, and wonders why such an attractive woman had remained unmarried. It is almost as though Blanche Fisher had invited murder by being attractive and unmarried. Is Wilson implying that such a woman has no right to enjoy a healthy sex life? But there is worse to come when Wilson discusses sexual crimes against children, maintaining that we are generally disposed to believe that children are the innocent victims of 'lust-crazed maniacs'. He points out that it is, in fact, often the child that instigates sexual activity with the adult. Yes, Colin Wilson is quite right, children do often initiate harmless sexual games, but it is most certainly adults who turn these harmless sexual games into reality and sometimes murder.
An innocent child's quest for the facts of life, however, can never be offered as an excuse for rape or murder.
Equally bizarre, perhaps, is Wilson's thinking on the case of the 22-year-old woman who accepted a lift from two men in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1970. They drove her to a nearby quarry and raped her. During the night she was cut and stabbed with a knife and threatened with murder and the next day was raped and beaten consistently. The next night she had to go through the ordeal again, being eventually released the following day when she promised not to go to the police. She did go to the police and the men were quite rightly jailed for what were pretty horrific crimes. Wilson does admit that the woman was attacked by two sadists but also claims she was equally to blame. If the reader is perplexed by that assertion, the implication being presumably that women should not accept lifts (although it is important here to note that the woman did know and trust the men) Wilson goes on to claim that a female who makes a habit of wearing low-cut dresses can be to blame if she is murdered.
Why?
Surely a normal masculine reaction to a well-displayed pair of female breast is pleasure and not murder. Does Wilson really feel that the murder rate goes up and down depending on the year's fashion of cleavage exposure? Do miniskirts incite murder?
If his theory is correct then surely we must find that the murder rate at naturist clubs is significantly higher than at golf clubs?
It is almost as if Colin Wilson is putting his considerable influence towards excusing the mass murderers he is writing about. The victims have invited murder, either by wearing low-cut dresses, accepting lifts off strangers or being a pretty, unmarried woman or even a child who seeks an explanation of the facts of life. Perhaps even more alarming is the behaviour of some obviously disturbed people who appear to have read some of Wilson's work. One famous example was William Macdonald, a homosexual mutilator who savagely murdered and hacked to pieces men he picked up around Sydney, Australia. Police on his trail discovered a copy of Wilson's novel 'Ritual in the Dark' wrapped in a bloodstained pillow in Macdonald's house. This story from Wilson concerns the activities of a homosexual mass murderer. Later when police arrested him in Melbourne they found a copy of Wilson's 'An Encyclopedia of Murder' in his possession and asked him why he wanted to read such a book. His reply was: 'It's the only thing I get any pleasure from.'
Reading Wilson's considerable output of material related to murder can prove to be a disturbing business. One has to question much of what he says and there are some very 'grey' areas of his speculation indeed. To take just one other casual statement from him where he claims that the root of the male sex drive is aggression, a desire to be the master. On the contrary, many men admire aggressive and strong qualities in women and on a physical level view the act of sex in terms of pleasure seeking rather than aggressive behavior. The 'Hite Report on Male Sexuality' makes that quite clear, and it also shows that the vast majority of men see sex on an emotional/psychological level as supplying them with the feeling of being loved and accepted. Many men describe sexual intercourse as the ultimate act of acceptance, and many enjoyed sex as an act of pleasurable domination by their female partner. It is clear in this important report on male sexuality that men see sex as an expression of masculinity rather than an act of aggression, only a very small group of males view sex as being aggressive, dominant or conquering and many of these recognized the futility of their behaviour and sought to modify it. What might also surprise Wilson is that 35% of men enjoy being the submissive partner in sex.
Hite's conclusions are of enormous import to the subject which Wilson so casually deals with and Wilson would do well to study his subject before making such facile comments. Hite concluded that the act of sex was one of the only times when a man could drop his masculine, aggressive and dominant role and react in an affectionate manner to the female partner. If Wilson had restricted his comment to the activities of criminal rapists then he might be right but to classify all male sexual behavior as having its origins in aggression is terribly wrong... and highly dangerous.
To get back to Jack the Ripper, there are two other points about Wilson's psychological portrait of Jack the Ripper that must be challenged as well. This is not intended as a campaign against Colin Wilson, but it must be stressed that he is seen as the 'clearing house' for Ripper theories and his opinion and theories generally carry enormous respect. Where he goes others tend to follow and this is why he must be challenged.
Wilson claims that it wasn't until about halfway into the nineteenth century that sex crime first reared its ugly head, maintaining that the vast majority of murders up till then had been economic in nature. This is why he views Jack the Ripper as the herald of a new age of 'sex crimes'. Clearly this is a mistaken view when there is strong evidence indicating that cases of criminal sexuality have been known since man first started recording his history, for instance as early as 1200 BC.
Equally startling is Wilson's claim that the rise of pornography dates from the 1820's. What about the Karma Sutra? Or the famous illustrations from the reign of Rameses XI - 1153-1070 BC - showing the king indulging his harem in a variety of sexual adventures? No, pornography has been with us probably just as long as the written word.
But back to his contention that most murders were economic until halfway through the nineteenth century. Two cases of brutal rape and murder are graphically documented in the Old Testament. The first from Judges 19:22-30. A wandering Levite and his concubine seek to stay overnight in the city of Gibeah and are taken in by an old man who gives them supper. From the Bible:
'While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, 'Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.' The owner of the house went outside and said to them, 'No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this dreadful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing.' But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, 'Get up; let's go.' But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.'
An unpleasant tale, perhaps more so because of the attitude of the Biblical men to their women rather than anything else, but it does contain all the ingredients of a 'real' sex crime much as we might read about in one of today's newspapers: threatened homosexual rape, aggressive gang rape and the vicious murder of a helpless woman.
The next example involves the planned rape of a sister by her brother and comes from Samuel 13:1-22.
Amnon, the son of the king, was in love with his sister Tamar but as she was a virgin it was impossible for him to be alone with her. Finally feigning illness he persuaded his father, the king, to allow Tamar to feed him on his sickbed. The Bible:
'And Tamar took the bread she had prepared and brought it to her brother Amnon in his bedroom. But when she took it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, 'Come to my bed with me, my sister,'
'Don't, my brother!' she said to him. 'Don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel. Don't do this wicked thing. What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; he will not keep me from being married to you.'
But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her. Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her.
Amnon said to her, 'Get up and get out!'
'No!' she said to him. 'Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me.'
But he refused to listen to her. He called his personal servant and said, 'Get this woman out of here and bolt the door after her.'
A clear case of brutal rape, and incest. The Old Testament gives us a very clear insight into the sexual and criminal behaviour of man in those far off days and this insight shows us that Wilson is absolutely wrong to suggest that the Jack the Ripper murders were the first crimes of a sexual nature, similar to those we are familiar with today or what he affirms was the 'increase of sexual crime towards the end of the nineteenth century' as though rape with or without murder had hardly existed before. That is manifestly untrue, and is almost as naive a position as believing that sexual perversion is something new, perhaps yet another symptom or malady of modern man. It is all there in the Bible: homosexual rape, sodomy, sex with animals, gang rape, incest, murder and mutilation. Moses himself handed down the laws which said:
'Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.' (Leviticus 18:22)
'If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.'
'If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own head.' (Leviticus 20:15-17)
It must follow that if such laws had to be passed then it was for the express purpose of stopping the people from indulging in such acts. The Old Testament law makers were, one assumes, not merely indulging their own tortured fantasies. Equally there were strict laws laid down governing cases of rape:
'If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death - the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbour, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no-one to rescue her. If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.' (Deuteronomy 22:23-9)
Again it must follow that if laws had to be passed to protect women against rape then rape must have been of common occurrence.
The Hittites - circa.1680 BC - also viewed rape and bestiality as capital offences, plus there is a single fragmentary account from this time which records the rape and murder of a child and the subsequent trial of the killer. There is also substantial evidence from the Egyptian 6th Dynasty - circa 2,500 BC - that homosexual rape was considered to be a fate worse than death and was commonly practiced on captors after battle.
No, sexual crime is nothing new, it has been with us in every step of our evolution.
But perhaps the weakest aspect of Wilson's theory that the sexual criminal is somehow a product of our new age - and in particular he means serial killers like Jack the Ripper - is that he has not taken into account the massive and rapid advances in communication systems which took place in the same period as he is writing about. This is much like a man who has got the ticket but has anyway missed the train. For the unprecedented growth of the media since the middle of the nineteenth century - pony express, telegraph, telephone, radio, television and now Internet and instant communication throughout the world by satellite - has surely played a pivotal role in the rise of sexual crime, or better said in the reporting of that sexual crime. Today we, like millions of other people all over the world, can pick up our morning newspaper or switch on the television and read or hear about a murder that has taken place minutes before on the other side of the planet.
Even the crimes of Jack the Ripper were headline news in America soon after they happened. If the crimes had taken place 400 years before it is unlikely that a person living in Portsmouth, seventy miles away from London, would have ever heard about them. Equally so the mass murderer Pedro Alonzo Lopez was able to go on a spree of rape and murder between 1978 and 1980 which accounted for 350 young girls before he was apprehended. This was because he operated in a remote area of Ecuador populated by native Indians with little or no communication network. If he had carried out the crimes in Central London in the same years there is no doubt he would have been caught a lot quicker. This is the point, the rapid rise of communication systems and the consequent rise in the establishment of and improvement in policing methods in the same period that Wilson is talking about has made life harder for the serial killer or any other type of criminal than ever before. But it has made the reporting of their crimes easier, so we know about them.
The situation, in fact, could be the exact reverse of what Wilson claims and that 500 years ago there could have been more 'sexual criminals' and crimes than there are today. A Ripper could have traveled through a country 500 years ago, or even several countries, raping and murdering and the inhabitants would have believed each murder to have been a separate unrelated event because they did not possess the means to communicate with one another that we have today. The final message of this is that we should really be writing a book about Pedro Lopez who raped and murdered 350 young girls rather than a book about an unknown who murdered less that a dozen women. The reason we are not is the massive influence of today's media. We all know of Jack the Ripper's crimes but who ever heard of Pedro Lopez?
It is tempting to go further into the subject of 'sex crime' - and we will to a certain extent in a later chapter in an attempt to build up a profile of Jack the Ripper - but the subject is colossal and not in the scope of this present work, but hopefully we may be at the stage where we are able to view the crimes of Jack the Ripper without the prejudice of assuming that the murders were the 'first sex crimes in our modern sense of the word'.
Rather than sitting back and allowing our Ripperologists to dominate the theoretical scene completely, let us for once go on the attack. Let us develop a line of thought - no matter how ridiculous it may seem at the start - that they regard as untenable. Reach right into an area of the Ripper's possible motives which they, as a pack, dismiss out of hand. In his psychological portrait of Jack the Ripper, Wilson claims that the earlier popular belief that the Ripper could have been a religious maniac with a murderous bent for killing prostitutes is highly unlikely. But can we be so sure in dismissing religious mania as a possible motive for the Jack the Ripper murders?
There were some very strange characters running around the streets of Whitechapel in 1888. Aaron Kosminski was a typical example, a Polish Jew hairdresser - and incidentally a man three Ripperologists have set their money on as being the Ripper or at least a very strong link to him - who was regularly hauled off to the lunatic asylum where on one occasion the doctor who certified him said: 'He declared that he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the gutter for the same reason.'
But more of Aaron Kosminski later. It is now necessary to look in detail at the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.
