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A Ripper Notes Article
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This article originally appeared in Ripper Notes. Ripper Notes is the only American Ripper periodical available on the market, and has quickly grown into one of the more substantial offerings in the genre. For more information, view our Ripper Notes page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripper Notes for permission to reprint this article.
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Heartless - The Evidence for a Copycat Killer
By Dan Norder
Dan Norder is the Executive Editor of Ripper Notes.
Imagine you are a detective investigating
a series of prostitute murders. Journalists
have been covering the crimes
quite extensively, and you have been hard
pressed, for a variety of reasons, to keep
details about the killings
secret from the
public. When another
woman turns up dead,
how would you determine
if she is a victim
of the same killer's
twisted psychological
urge to murder and
mutilate or the result
of some equally sick individual who read
about earlier cases in the news and is trying
to copy them?
Your first idea might be to look for
any noteworthy details about the most recent
killing that match the features of the
previous murders that have not become
publicly known. That would definitely be
a logical approach to take, and detectives
who find themselves in similar situations
usually follow it. But let's say that you
are unlucky enough to be investigating
cases which have had most every detail
- including the method of attack, the size
and location of all the wounds, and everything
else done to the bodies after wards
- well publicized far and wide thanks to a
coroner who demanded they be revealed
during the inquests and newspapers that
decided sales were more important than
keeping the information quiet. What other
aspects might be worth examining?
Well, if you could
not prevent the facts
from becoming public
knowledge in the first
place, you could look
at information that
was published about
the crimes that was
not accurate. If a new
murder is committed
and contains features that match the details
given in widely reported but false
news accounts, then you would know that
something rather extraordinary is happening.
This is exactly what appears to have
occurred with the Jack the Ripper crimes.
Although few people have ever commented
upon them, there are actually
quite a few disturbing similarities between
the mistakes that local newspapers published
about the Whitechapel murders and
what actually happened in the subsequent
killings. Specific actions demonstrated in
the deaths of Mary Jane Kelly, Catherine
Eddowes and Annie Chapman had already
been credited to the killer in press reports
before they happened.
An Intriguing Message
For all the atrocities that were committed
upon the body of Mary Jane Kelly,
there is one that is most often cited as
having been kept a closely-guarded secret
by the police: the fact that her heart had
been removed and taken away from her
room in Miller's Court. Working under the
premise that researchers in any academic
field should present a hypothesis and then
dispassionately explore the positives and
negatives of the idea, we could, as I did
in a thought experiment a few years ago,
propose that any message that claims to
be from the killer and asserts that he took
a human heart away with him might be
considered as having come from the actual
murderer.
It turns out that there is such a message.
Page 156 of Stewart P. Evans and
Keith Skinner's Jack the Ripper: Letters from
Hell has a photograph of a postcard that
fits this criteria. Although the authors call
the card "intriguing" it has not been the
subject of much discussion.
Addressed to "Mr. James Fraser, City of
London Police Offi ce," the body of the text
reads (with the spelling and capitalization
as in the original):
Fraser,
you may trouble as long as you like
for I mean doing my work I mean
pollishing 10 more off before I stop
the game. So I don't care a dam for
you or any body else. I mean doing it.
I aint a maniac as you say. I am to
dam clever for you
Written from who you would like to
know
But the most interesting parts of this
card are the illustrations. At the bottom
is a rather crude drawing of a knife that
is labeled, matter-of-factly, "my knife." At
the top are three additional images. The
fi rst is a blackened-in outline of a heart,
which has the word "hart" next to it. The
second is a cartoon face with the text "poor
annie" running sideways next to it. The
third is two circles with thick outlines
labeled "rings" above it. The text "I have
those in my Possesion good luck" sits at the
far right.
So let's take a look at the arguments in
favor of the authenticity of this communication.
We have a message written as if
it were from the killer and, perhaps notably,
that does not use the Jack the Ripper
name that is often believed to have been
created in a hoax letter by a journalist. The
card's author claims to have removed a
human heart and taken it away from a
crime scene. The fact that the Ripper did
remove that organ from Mary Kelly was
not well publicized at the time.
The arguments against this message
having been from the killer are more persuasive.
First and foremost, with all the different
organs and other body parts listed
in various alleged Ripper letters as being a
target, mentioning a heart could be merely
a coincidence. There's also the problem
that the card doesn't specifically say that
the heart was taken from Mary Kelly and,
in fact, strongly suggests otherwise. While
the date on the postmark did not survive
(it was on the corner that is now missing),
most of the message seems to be referring
to aspects of the Annie Chapman murder.
Her rings were taken from the scene (a fact
which was widely reported), and the 'poor
annie' undoubtedly must indicate Chapman
and not Kelly.
Digging around through newspaper
articles in the press reports section of
Stephen Ryder's Casebook: Jack the Ripper
site (at www.casebook.org/press_reports/)
shows that there were, in fact, reports that
Chapman's heart had been removed. Already
on the same day of her murder, Sept.
8, 1888, the Star wrote that "the throat was
cut, and the body ripped open, but the horror
was intensified by the fact that THE HEART
AND LIVER WERE OVER HER HEAD." [emphasis
as in the original]. Similarly, headlines
in the Evening News of that same date
shouted, "THE ENTRAILS AND THE HEART
CUT OUT," with the accompanying article
later stating that "her bowels, heart, and
other entrails were lying at her side." Among
the other papers that presented this same
information were the Woodford Times of
Sept. 14 and the East London Observer of
Sept. 15.
The origin of the idea that Chapman's
heart had been removed from her body
is unknown, but we can make some educated
guesses. We can be reasonably sure
that these news reports did not uncover
actual case evidence that the police had
otherwise managed to keep secret. Despite
Dr. George Bagster Phillips' stated belief
that it would be "a very great pity to make
this evidence public" (going so far as to call
revealing the details "highly injudicious"),
once Coroner Wynne Baxter pressed him
on this point, it appears, based upon the
contents of internal police records, that he
gave full and accurate details of the murder.
It is all but certain that if Chapman's
heart had actually been removed by her
killer there would be some reference to
this fact in the existing police statements.
It seems far more reasonable to think that
the journalists simply got this, like many
other alleged facts that were published at
the time, wrong. Perhaps they interviewed
one of the people who saw her body before
the police arrived and that individual
had confused some part of the intestines
for other organs. It could also have been
just another example of a wild rumor that
came from nowhere but made it into print
anyway.
Although it isn't highlighted in any
book on the topic, the concept that the
killer was out to literally steal his victims'
hearts became quite well known.
This wasn't just some minor mistake that
was published and then forgotten. The
idea continued to pop up time and time
again.
One particularly interesting incident
related to this was described in the Star on
Sept. 12, 1888:
IN THE POLICE COURTS TO-DAY.
His Imagination Fired by Hanburystreet.
A woman living in Whitechapel
asked at Worship-street for protection
against her husband, who
had threatened to cut her heart out
and burn it. - Mr. Saunders: But he
would not do that. It would be no
use to him. - Applicant: But he says
he will. - Mr. Saunders: Well, I will
send an officer to caution him.
There's probably no way to know, but
I wonder if someone in the police later recalled
this threat after the Mary Kelly murder.
What initially may have sounded like
nothing of any importance may be seen
in an entirely different light after a victim
was found dead with her heart missing in
a room with a recently used fireplace. This
could certainly explain why the police returned
to Miller's Court to sort through
the ashes for clues - but of course there
are other possible reasons as well.
The papers, having created this legend
in the first place, continued to promote
it with similar incorrect claims
about the murder of Catherine Eddowes.
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper of Sept. 30th and
the Freeman's Journal and Daily Commer cial
Advertiser of Oct. 1st both stated in reference
to that murder that the "whole of the
inside of the murdered woman, with the heart
and lungs, appeared to have been wrenched
from the body" and that they were found
"scattered about the head and neck." Of course
that was true for her intestines, but, again,
official records show that it was not true
for her heart or lungs. The Freeman's Journal
explicitly notes that the information
that these organs had been scattered about
the scene came from the Press Association,
which means that it was also included in
a number of other papers.
Another reference to the heart legend
is more well known, but its significance
has typically been overlooked. The Times
of Oct. 4th ran a letter by a writer calling
himself Nemo. In it, the author argued
that the "mutilations, cutting off the nose
and ears, ripping up the body, and cutting out
certain organs - the heart, &c. - are all peculiarly
Eastern methods and universally recognized..."
Some commentators have suggested
that the mention of the heart here
was just a mistake of the author. Others
have claimed that the killer himself wrote
this letter and was giving a hint about
his intentions for the future. Based upon
the previous references it should be clear
that the writer simply picked up this misinformation
from one of the newspaper
accounts.
The myth was still going strong up
through the end of that month. For example,
the Evening News of Oct. 29th
reported: "It is stated that the words, 'I shall
do another murder and will receive her heart,'
have been found written in chalk on the footway
in Camplin-street, Deptford." One day
later the Poplar Police Station was said (by
later reports in the Evening News and the
Illustrated Police News) to have received a
letter claiming to be from the killer that
read: "Dear Boss - I am going to commit three
more murders, two women and a child, and I
shall take their hearts this time. - Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper."
Considering what happened to Mary
Kelly less than two weeks later, it would
be understandable how someone might
wonder if one or both of those threats
came from the killer. In the context of a
long line of earlier references to removing
hearts, however, it seems far more likely
that they were both written by hoaxers.
There is some room for doubt, though, in
that both messages are worded in a way
that suggests that taking that organ would
be something new instead of a repetition
of a feature of an earlier killing.
What is the significance of all of this?
Well, besides documenting a widespread
mistaken belief about the killer that somehow
seemingly went unnoticed before I
started tracking these references down
a few years back, there's the question of
what this might tell us about the murder
of Mary Kelly.
Was Kelly the Victim of a Copycat?
I've always been quite skeptical of the
idea that the person responsible for the
Nov. 9th, 1888, murder of Mary Jane Kelly
wasn't the same person who killed the
earlier victims. In fact, it'd be fair to say
that I went beyond mere skepticism to
sheer disbelief.
The fundamental problem with believing
that Kelly was killed by a copycat
has always been coming up with sensible
reasons why her murder should be singled
out as different from the others that would
outweigh the rather overwhelming similarities
between them.
The arguments in favor of considering
her death as unrelated to the others have
always seemed rather weak. The fact that
she was killed inside instead of outdoors
would seem to depend solely upon where
each victim practiced prostitution - it's
likely that the Ripper never pre selected
any crime scene and merely found himself
wherever each woman happened to
bring him. Being mutilated more severely
than the others is a logical end result of
being in a private room, and it's also in
line with the increasing violence demonstrated
in most of the previous murders.
Her relative youth is certainly a difference,
but it's also one very likely to have been
insignificant to the killer. And having had
an ex-boyfriend, or two, who might possibly
have had a motive for killing her under
the right circumstances is really no different
from any of the other victims.
If you pick any of the other women
named by Melville Macnaghten as the
ones he considered to be the only true victims
of the killer (usually referred to as the
"canonical five" Ripper victims, though
Robin Odell's term of the "Macnaghten
Five" is more fi tting), there are all sorts of
other artifi cial reasons to separate them.
Chapman had gotten into a fight with
another woman shortly before she was
killed. Eddowes, at least according to some
dubious reports, claimed to know the killer.
Nichols had recently acquired a new
bonnet. Stride was from Sweden. Any of
the murder scenes can be cut off from the
rest by drawing arbitrary lines on a map
(though Kelly's location would be the one
most difficult to so separate). Each of the
murders and all of the victims were different
enough from every other one to be
unique in some way or another.
Instead of just picking things to try to
exaggerate differences, we need to focus
on those things which are most significant. When we do, the reasons for considering
Kelly a Ripper victim are quite
persuasive. Being the most severely mutilated
is not really a difference but the
most compelling indicator: what are the
odds that someone else capable of that
would be in that area at that time? Kelly's
crime scene was between the places where
Eddowes and Chapman were killed, and
anyone who has walked between those locations
can tell you how surprisingly close
together they are. If you go by the killer's
signature, Kelly, Eddowes and Chapman
are clearly most closely linked because
they all were gutted and had organs removed.
If you want to further narrow it
down, Kelly and Eddowes were the only
ones with facial mutilations. These are all
very telling clues.
Deciding that a crime was committed
by a copycat killer should be based upon
some quantifiable and significant difference.
The murder of Jane Beadmore on
Sept. 23, 1888, is a good example. It included
vicious knife slashes that targeted
her neck and opened up her abdomen so
that her intestines were found protruding.
Both the methods and the date clearly
have strong similarities to the earlier killings
of Nichols and Chapman. But, significantly, the crime happened not in the
crowded East End of London but almost
300 miles away in the village of Birtley.
And, as Alan Sharp pointed out in Ripper
Notes #25 in "A Ripper Victim That Wasn't:
The Capture of Jane Beadmore's Killer" -
also found online at www.casebook.org/
dissertations/rn-beadmore.html - the man
responsible, William Waddell, was captured
and successfully prosecuted. Waddell
confessed to the crime before his execution,
claiming he had been influenced by
reports of the Whitechapel murders.
Besides location, other main indicators
of a copycat at work are significantly
different dates or major differences in the
killer's signature. Again, all of those criteria
in the case of Mary Jane Kelly point
strongly to the idea that the person who
killed her also killed Catherine Eddowes
and Annie Chapman.
Granted, there is always the slight
chance that Kelly was killed by someone
else, but why even bring it up for consideration
if that chance isn't more likely than
that of any of the others?
I may be a bit cynical, but a number
of the people who suggest that Kelly was
killed by someone other than Jack the
Ripper seem to be doing so for reasons
that are suspect-based instead of evidence-based.
Donald Rumbelow, for example,
explicitly states in Jack the Ripper: Scotland
Yard Investigates (coauthored with Stewart
P. Evans) that his favored suspect is
Timothy Donovan, arguing that "Mary
Kelly has to be excluded from the Ripper equation
because Donovan died shortly before she
was murdered." He admits, however, that
his opinion here could be chalked up to
"unreasoning instinct" taking over. While
I greatly value his incalculable contributions
to the field, that isn't much of an
argument against Kelly's inclusion as a
Ripper victim.
I don't want to suggest that everyone
who separates Kelly out is doing so to force
facts to fi t a theory. There's clearly more
to it than just that. I do, however, think
the trend can be chalked up to two main
reasons. First, some of those who think Dr.
Frances Tumblety was the Ripper chose
to ignore the Kelly murder when it was
argued that he was in jail when she was
killed. Second, the people who blame Joseph
Barnett have argued so long for a domestic
angle to the killings that it appears
as if some people have just given up and
handed them the Kelly murder as some
sort of bizarre consolation prize.
But of course guessing someone's motives
is difficult, especially when it's uncertain
whether an argument was created to
fit a conclusion or the conclusion arrived
at because the argument was genuinely
convincing. That's why debates should
try to stick to the merits of the arguments
themselves. And it was a result of trying to
do just that which caused me to reconsider
whether Mary Kelly's murder was committed
by a copycat.
After looking at all the reports of the
Whitechapel killer removing his victims'
hearts, for the first time I had what could
be solid evidence for an imitator at work
in that case. It wasn't just that there were
some random differences in what happened
to Kelly compared to the earlier
killings. The most defining characteristic
of the Kelly murder was something that,
while a completely new detail among the
medical reports of the ongoing murders
in the East End, was also something that
had already been widely discussed in the
news media.
In short, if someone had wanted to try
to mimic the methods of Jack the Ripper
but only had news reports to work from,
this is exactly the sort of result we should
expect to see.
I personally think that this, while certainly
far from proof that Kelly's murderer
was a copycat, is probably the most reasonable
argument that has been made in
its favor so far.
While not convinced that it was anything
more than a coincidence, I admitted
to others on the Casebook message boards
and in some emails that I had reconsidered
my strong stance against the copycat
theory and softened it somewhat, pointing
out the curious nature of the news reports
about hearts having been removed
in the Chapman and Eddowes murders.
Although I had announced back in 2004
that I would be writing an article about
this topic, it soon became clear that I
should spend more time researching the
theory. I wanted to see if there was a way
to test the hypothesis before presenting it
as a serious possibility.
It's important to remember that the
significance of any fact, piece of evidence
or potential clue can only be weighed in
context with other information. We can't
say, for example, how likely any witness
description is to point toward any specific suspect without considering how
many other people could also be a match.
Similarly, the ultimate importance of
there having been widespread reports of
the Whitechapel murderer removing the
hearts from his victims before it ended
up actually happening can only be determined
based upon a comparison of other
distinctive actions and previous incorrect
news items. I needed to see if any other
Ripper murders duplicated false but widely
reported features of the earlier killings.
And this is where things got a little
eerie.
Was Eddowes the Victim of a Copycat?
Catherine Eddowes, with a couple
of exceptions, has always been accepted
as a genuine victim of Jack the Ripper. If
we can find aspects of her murder that
were not present in earlier cases but were
mentioned, inaccurately, in previous news
reports, then the problem of Mary Kelly's
heart having been removed is not a
unique one. There are three main differences
with the Eddowes murder that could
meet this criteria.
Perhaps the most defining feature
of the Eddowes murder is that her kidney
was missing. While there was never
a case in which a victim had the exact
same body parts taken as were taken from
the previous victim, this case was probably
closest. The kidney removal was new,
but her uterus was also missing, which
matches, at least partially, the murder of
Annie Chapman.
Although there was not, at least as far
as I have discovered, any widespread public
belief that the killer was out looking for
human kidneys, certainly the idea that he
was removing organs was quite well established
by this point. The papers had widely
publicized the theory argued by Coroner
Baxter at the end of the Chapman inquest
that the murders were committed in order
to harvest human organs. An argument
could be made, though perhaps a
bit forced, that the kidney was removed in
the Eddowes case as a direct result.
An even more speculative notion
would be that Eddowes' killer was familiar
with the reports that her liver had been removed
(it was that organ and a heart that
were said to have been found by Chapman's
head in the Star article previously
discussed) and had tried to copy that but
could not tell the difference between a
kidney and a liver.
These sorts of arguments, while not
inherently any worse than the idea that
Kelly's killer removed her heart because of
the earlier reports, certainly are not well
supported by the evidence.
A second aspect of this murder, however,
is much more promising. In a move
that was unique in this series of crimes,
the killer took part of Eddowes' apron as
he escaped and then left it a relatively
short distance away on Goulston Street,
near (sometimes said to be directly under)
a message on the wall (or possibly the door
jamb) of a tenement building. This was, of
course, the famous Goulston Street Graffi
to. It was written in chalk and, according
to police constable Alfred Long's notebook,
read: "The Juwes are the men that will not be
blamed for nothing."
What is remarkable about this fact is
that reports of the Chapman murder three
weeks earlier also featured claims that a
message had been left by the killer. The
Times of Sept. 10th, 1888, for example, although
admitting the report was uncorroborated,
repeated the rumor that "the
murderer left a message on the wall in the
yard, which was made out to read, 'Five; 15
more, and then I give myself up.'" Other newspapers
made similar claims, often without
any sort of disclaimer that it might not
be true.
Police documents make it quite clear
that no such message was found at the
scene of the Chapman murder, but I think
there should be no great mystery how this
mistaken notion came about. Part of an
envelope was found by her body, and the
way it had been torn left some letters of
an address visible. The police originally
thought this may have been left by the
killer. Thanks to the way stories get distorted
as they are retold, the envelope could
have quite easily been the original basis
for the rumor of a message on the wall.
This hypothesis would seem to be confirmed by the fact that the Daily Telegraph
of Sept. 10th mentioned that one version
of the story making the rounds said the
message had been found "written upon a
piece of paper that was picked up."
Although the Pall Mall Gazette of the
same date concluded that the story was
false, other papers were more irresponsible.
It was still being repeated in some
papers as if it were true months and even
years later.
Worse than that, reports of other
chalk messages claiming to be from the
killer soon became numerous. Especially
notable is the Sept. 29th Evening Times
report that police had discovered a message
in chalk claiming to be from "Leather
Apron" (the common nickname for the
killer until the publication of the Dear
Boss letter made "Jack the Ripper" famous)
that read "Five more, and I will give myself
up." It was accompanied by a drawing of
a man pointing a knife at a woman. The
Echo of the same date confirmed the story
and specified that the message was discovered
on Kingsland Road.
Less than 24 hours after this story was
published, Catherine Eddowes was dead
and a portion of her bloodstained apron
was found by another chalk message.
We are yet again faced with an example
of a widespread but mistaken belief
about what the killer did at the Chapman
murder that apparently came true as part
of a later killing. If the person who killed
Eddowes in the early morning of Sept. 30th
wrote the message found on Goulston
Street, it seems quite certain that he was
doing so in imitation of, or as a response
to, the earlier news reports.
Now, granted, there are some commentators
who believe that the apron
may have just been dropped coincidentally
in a location near where a chalk message
already existed and that the killer did
not write it. It could be argued that the
very reason the police had thought the
writing was significant was specifically because of
the ongoing belief
that the murderer
would write
messages on walls.
This is certainly
plausible. It'd be
nice if there were
another example
of Eddowes' killer
having copied earlier
news reports...
and I think there
may very well be.
The third major difference between
Eddowes and the previous Whitechapel
murders is that her face was mutilated.
Although we tend to look at the series of
killings with the benefit of more than a
century of hindsight and the disadvantage
of having had the "canonical five"
drummed into our heads so that it's difficult to see beyond its constraints, back in
1888 the public was caught up in the day
to day rumors of other attacks and killings.
One of those was the case mentioned
previously: the murder of Jane Beadmore.
Although we now know that she was killed
by a copycat, police were originally unsure
and news accounts presented her as
though she were part of the Whitechapel
series. In fact, even as late as after Mary
Kelly's death, the Beadmore case was still
being included in some papers' lists of the
known victims of Jack the Ripper. And,
although her killer confessed to being inspired
by reports of the deaths in London's
East End, he got one aspect wrong: he cut
her face.
The Beadmore murder was on Sept.
23rd, and London newspapers covered
it that week. The Illustrated Police News
printed an artist's depiction of the corpse
- including facial
mutilations - on
Sept. 29th. Then,
sometime before
1:45 a.m. on the
30th, the murderer
of Catherine Eddowes
made the
first facial mutilations
in the Whitechapel
series.
Was this act
inspired by news
coverage of Beadmore's
death? It's
uncertain, but it
does seem very plausible, especially if the
message in Goulston Street was based upon
earlier news accounts. This may also impact
the argument that facial mutilations
mean the killer personally knew the victim.
That was true of Beadmore (Waddell
was her ex-lover), but it could have been
imitation of that crime at work with both
Eddowes and Kelly. At the very least, the
claim that Kelly's killer copied earlier news
reports cannot be accepted as proof of a
different killer in that case without admitting
the same possibility with Eddowes.
So, what do we have here: Two different
copycat killers responsible for one
death each? Someone who murdered both
Eddowes and Kelly but not the earlier victims?
Just a series of bizarre coincidences?
Or something else?
Well, perhaps continuing the search
for evidence of imitative behavior in previous
murders might help answer that
question.
The Problem with Stride
Elizabeth Stride has always been the
odd one out in the Macnaghten Five. She
is the single example of a decrease in
severity between attacks. We won't find
anything like a missing heart or facial mutilations
to work with in this case. There
might, however, be other aspects of her
murder that are worth examining.
Two different articles (Bernard Brown's
"New York, New York" and Tom Wescott's
"A Murder in the Neighborhood") in issue
#27 of Ripper Notes briefl y discussed a man
named William Seaman. He is noteworthy
for two reasons: having robbed and severely
beaten the shopkeeper of a store in Berner
Street on Sept. 8th, 1888, (the same day
Annie Chapman was killed) and then for
viciously stabbing and killing two people
during another robbery nearly eight years
later. Although we know that Seaman could
not have been responsible for Stride's
death, it seems a rather odd coincidence
that both events happened on Berner
Street, and relatively close to each other
at that. The store that Seaman robbed was
at #82 Berner Street. The club at which
Stride was killed three weeks later was at
#40. About halfway between these two
locations, in front of #63, is where Stride
was reportedly seen kissing a man (the one
who uttered the now-famous "You would
say anything but your prayers" quip) about
an hour before her death. The distance
can be walked across in only a couple of
minutes.
Assuming that the person who killed
Stride also killed Eddowes, there's also
another curious coincidence to be considered.
Their murders are collectively referred
to as the "double event" thanks to
that phrase being used in the "Saucy Jacky"
postcard. But the public had already heard
about a previous double murder, one that
turned out to be false. The Evening News of
Sept. 8th reported: "Shortly after ten o'clock,
this morning, a rumour was current in the
East-end, that the body of a young woman,
with her throat cut, had been found in the
graveyard attached to St. Philip's Church, at
the back of the London Hospital." Killing two
victims on the same day was thus already a
feature of the ever-widening legends about
the crimes. If Stride and Eddowes are both
victims of the same man, it's possible he
got the idea of a double murder from this
rumor and then later made it happen for
real. This could be yet another example of
a copycat effect at work.
Mythmaking and Chapman's Murder
We have seen that some of the most
memorable aspects of the Kelly, Eddowes
and Stride cases match inaccurate news
reports and rumors about Annie Chapman's
murder. The question now becomes
whether there were any earlier myths that
might have influenced what happened to
Chapman.
The Sept. 8th murder is probably most
notable for being the first case in which
part of a victim's body was taken. Books
typically mention that her uterus was
missing, but we also know from medical
testimony that parts of her belly wall and
bladder were also not present.
I have looked for any example of a
news report covering the pre-Chapman
Whitechapel murders (which, according
to the press and public perception at the
time, includes not only Mary Ann Nichols
but also Emma Elizabeth Smith and Martha
Tabram) that might have suggested
anything similar. I momentarily thought it
was significant that Coronor Baxter asked
at the Nichols inquest if any of her organs
had been removed; even though the answer
was no, just raising the idea might
suggest it as something the killer would be
likely to do, and, as we have seen, expectation
often become reality. But the Nichols
inquest continued for so long that this
question was actually raised after Chapman
had already been killed.
If we were to keep trying to find some
source that might have suggested the idea
of removing organs there would be no
end to the possibilities if we force something
to fit, but picking anything with any
similarity out of thin air is not the same
as finding an actual indication of a causal
relationship. Although those kinds of arguments
are common in this field, they
aren't very persuasive - or at least they
shouldn't be. What we've been trying to
find are events with a significant chance
of being directly related. It looks like we
come up short on the issue of Chapman's
uterus and other missing parts.
On the other hand, some authors have
suggested that the organs weren't actually
taken by the killer. Paul Begg's Jack the Ripper:
The Facts offers up a scenario in which
Chapman's missing parts might have just
been lost somehow between the backyard
of 29 Hanbury Street and the mortuary.
Authors Bob Hinton and Trevor Marriott
have separately presented arguments to
try to explain the disappearance of the
organs without requiring that the killer
was responsible - though their ideas are
not confi ned to the Chapman case and
have not been well received by other researchers.
If any of these explanations
are correct for Chapman but inapplicable
with Eddowes, then the first case of organ
removal in the Jack the Ripper series can
be pushed back three weeks - well beyond
the point when people around the world
already thought of it as a defining characteristic
of the killer.
Of course, in fairness, none of those
possibilities seem to be very reasonable
ones to me. But then I don't think we need
to establish that all of the major features
of the Whitechapel killings were likely
to have been imitations of earlier news
reports to present an argument that some
sort of copycat effect was at work. The
existence of a few reasonably strong indicators
should suffice, and I would suggest
that the heart removal, the facial
mutilations and probably the message
on the wall should qualify. I also think
that there's another major one we haven't
looked at yet.
Probably the most memorable aspect
of the Chapman murder to the individuals
who saw her body in the backyard of
29 Hanbury Street was that she had been
gutted quite severely: her intestines were
pulled out and placed up by her head. The
shocking nature of this act is all too often
forgotten. Because of the medical testimony
that Mary Ann Nichols' intestines
were protruding from a large knife wound
in her body, Chapman's evisceration has
been considered to be nothing more than
a simple progression in the level of violence.
I think that conclusion misses an
extremely important point.
The fact of the matter is that we don't
know that Nichols was disembowelled by
her killer. The protruding intestines were
only noticed after the corpse was brought
into the makeshift mortuary. No, I am
not suggesting that she was eviscerated by
some disturbed mortuary worker, a medical
student fi shing for organs, or anything
of that sort. But what most people fail to
consider is that intestines are coiled up
inside a body pretty tightly, and if they
aren't being actively held in they can and
do spill out all on their own. The opening
was described by Dr. Llewellyn as a
"very deep wound" that was "jagged." We
also must keep in mind that the body had
been jostled quite a bit before it was fully
examined. At the very least it had been
picked up off the street (probably bent
at the waist in the process), placed on an
ambulance (which at that time was little
more than a fancy wheelbarrow), carted
off to a building a fair distance away, and
then picked up again and carried inside to
a table. Honestly, it's no wonder her intestines
were protruding after all that.
The cursory examination by the doctor
and police at the scene of the crime
didn't look at her abdomen because her
dress was covering it up. Earlier, though,
when Charles Cross and Robert Paul
found her body, the dress was pulled up
above her stomach. While it was certainly
very dark at the time, the two men could
make out some features. They knew, for
example, that the shape on the ground
was a woman, and they could see that
her dress was in a position that would expose
her groin if anyone should happen by
with a light. They did not report seeing her
intestines exposed, though it's likely they
would not have noticed. After pushing the
dress down to protect her modesty, Cross
and Paul left in search of a constable.
If she had been left uncovered, there
would be no question one way or another
if she had been disembowelled on
the pavement of Buck's Row. Based upon
what we do know, however, I think she
probably wasn't. If the killer had actually
pulled out her intestines, even just a little,
I think they would have been much more
exposed than they were by the time they
were finally examined.
Either way, the papers were certainly
guilty of exaggerating her condition. The
Evening News and the Star of August 31st,
for example, both reported that: "She was
immediately conveyed to the Whitechapel
mortuary, when it was found that besides the
wound in the throat the lower part of the abdomen
was completely ripped open, with the
bowels protruding." By Sept. 1st the Star had
already progressed to referring to Nichols
as "the woman who was found yesterday
morning in Buck's-row completely disembowelled
and with her head nearly gashed from
her body".
Regardless of whether her intestines
were protruding in Buck's Row or if that
only happened later, Nichols was not
"completely disembowelled." That is, however,
a reasonable description of the condition
in which Chapman was later found
- and, for that matter, Eddowes and Kelly
as well. Is that a coincidence? It might be,
but I suspect that it wasn't.
Bringing the Legend to Life
Although we started out looking for
signs of a copycat killer, the evidence
points to something much more startling
than that.
Many commentators have fought
back against the prevailing myths and
nonsense in this case by limiting themselves
(and, by extension, those who read
their books) to a very narrow view of what
is worthy of study. This happens in many
different ways, but nowhere is it more evident
then in the rush to declare certain
attacks as being unrelated to the Jack the
Ripper case.
For many years now the field has used
the "canonical five" list of victims as our
common frame of reference in discussing
the Ripper's motives despite the fact that
there's no solid reasoning to rule out most
of the other cases in the White chapel murder
files (or even other possibilities). Comparing
those aspects that are most unique
in a killer's signature results in a list of
those murders with the strongest links to
each other, not an excuse to just declare
all other cases irrelevant. Worse than that,
the trend in recent years has been to try to
remove even more names from the list of
accepted victims. Certainly there is room
for an open mind, but in some cases the
claims have gone way beyond that.
Some have argued, for example, that
it's not only within the realm of possibility
that Stride or Kelly was killed by someone
other than the Ripper (which, while true,
could also apply to all the other victims
as well) but that it's likely that a copycat
was responsible. The basic problem here
is that every time someone tries to split
off another case with the rationale of trying
to be realistic about the evidence, the
end result is essentially the opposite. Any
attack that we believe was not related to
the Ripper has to have been committed
by someone else. Just as it's unreasonable
to assume that Jack was responsible for
every murder across England (or the rest
of the world) for a decade (or even longer,
according to some theories), it is equally
ridiculous to expect that there were three
or more mutilation murderers active all
within one square mile in the autumn of
1888, not to mention an additional mob
of individual killers with similar methods
working separately in the East End over a
five year span.
But what about all of the examples
of the murders mysteriously matching
important details of earlier incorrect news
reports? The killer would certainly know
that he hadn't disembowelled Nichols,
mutilated Beadmore's face, left a message
on a wall in the backyard of 29 Hanbury
Street or removed Chap man's heart. If
those weren't true aspects of the Ripper's
desires, why do very similar actions then
turn up later as actual events? Although
some (primarily Peter Turnbull in the book
The Killer Who Never Was) have argued that
the whole series was just an epidemic of
copycats, I think there's a more logical
conclusion.
If one accepts the possibility that
some one could be influenced by the news
media to commit a murder in a specific
way, the next thing to consider is who
would be most likely to do so. We know
from studies (see Loren Coleman's book
The Copycat Effect, though I would caution
that some of the author's conclusions seem
unsupported by the evidence he cites) that
the desire to act out in some way can be
expressed via methods that differ from
the original incident, as demonstrated in
a statistical increase in suicides after news
coverage of school massacres or accidents
with significant fatalities. The people who
mimic the most violent actions, however,
are those who were already unstable to
begin with, individuals who knew they
wanted to do something quite dramatic
but were looking for inspiration.
For all the talk over the years about
how the media-created legend of Jack the
Ripper has influenced popular culture and
other killers over the ages, most people
have seemed to miss that the influence
would have worked both ways. In the massive
hysteria surrounding the murders as
they happened, the person who would
have logically had the most reason to pay
attention was the killer himself.
A lot of people seem to operate under
the belief that the Whitechapel murderer's
urge to rip the bodies open and remove
body parts was fully formed in his head
from the very beginning of his rampage.
This is not how serial killers operate, however.
They might start out knowing they
want to attack someone, or even roughly
what kinds of depraved acts sound most
interesting, but they learn what they like
to do by trying different things out and
then seeing what works and what doesn't.
If Jack had attacked Nichols without the
desire to pull out parts of her body, the
nature of the public response could have
influenced what he did in later killings.
If this theory is correct - and I offer
it up as nothing more than one potential
way of explaining what happened back
in 1888 - then we would need to rethink
what we thought we knew about the killer.
It would also raise a couple of additional
possibilities to consider.
The first is that there could be some
other ways the killer tried to imitate his
own legend that we haven't yet identified. Perhaps the killer did end up writing
one or more of the Ripper letters. But, as
mentioned at the beginning of this piece,
the difficulty there is determining how to
separate a genuine message by the killer
from all the rampant hoaxing that was
going on.
The second is potentially more significant. If the killer didn't come up with the
idea of gutting his victims on his own, it's
possible it was never his primary desire.
After the carnage in Miller's Court, where
he had unrestricted access to any parts he
wanted but took only one, he may have
decided that such extensive mutilations
just weren't worth the risks for what he
got out of them. If there's any truth to this
- and it is something that has happened
with other serial killers - then he may
have returned to the motivations which
prompted him to start killing in the first
place. If so, any murders after Mary Kelly
would probably more closely resemble
what happened to Mary Ann Nichols.
If the killer had been unsuccessfully
trying to live up to his inflated reputation
and then decided to continue killing on
his own terms he may have finally found a
way to surpass his own legend. Conversely,
all the authors who have tried to state
unequivocally what the Ripper did and
did not do by tossing out what they consider
to be long-standing misconceptions
about the case could have been chasing
the myth instead of the man. But, when
it gets right down to it, if it's possible for
irresponsible journalists to inadvertently
print accurate details about murders
that hadn't even happened yet, no matter
whether it was all just a remarkable coincidence
or if there is some more meaningful
explanation, then it's clear that there
are still whole new ways for the Jack the
Ripper case to continue to surprise and
confound us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Thanks to Tom Wescott and Kelly Robinson
for their suggestions on this article.
