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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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Connecting the Dots: Were the Ripper Crime Scenes Chosen to Form a Pattern?
By Dan Norder
Ripper Notes Editor
Dan Norder lives in Madison,
Wisconsin. He owns and operates the website at www.mythology.com and is writing a book examining
the origins of some popular modern legends.
Human beings are born with the desire to look at the details in
the world around them and try to make meaningful patterns out
of them. This is fortunate, for without this capacity we would
be unable to come to even the most basic conclusions about how
to plan for our lives and the future. The drive is so powerful,
however, that we often convince ourselves that some meaningful
pattern exists when it was actually nothing more than mere chance
at work. The same intellectual process is responsible for both
our greatest advances in science and also our most arbitrary superstitions.
For example, if it weren't for centuries of accumulated knowledge
about motion, chemistry and other fields built up from successfully
identified patterns, mankind never would have set foot on the
moon. On the other hand, improperly attributing the dark spots
on the face of the moon to an intentional design has led people
of various cultures to identify the markings as a rabbit, a girl
holding onto a tree in the wind, a man carrying a stick followed
by a dog, and many other figures. Elaborate stories and myths
were created as a result of these ideas, sometimes influencing
beliefs in other areas.
The man in the moon, to take the version most of us are more
familiar with, was at times believed to be the Biblical Cain or
the Wandering Jew, each damned by God for his individual offenses.(Note 1) The character symbolized
opposition to the rule of God, thus the full moon, which displayed
the figure's entire body, was believed to be a bad influence.
This belief still persists, minus the legends that helped shape
the idea.
Interestingly enough, there is a small but real possibility
that the name of Jack the Ripper himself may have been influenced
by these legends. Another folkloric character who was doomed to
wander the world forever borrowed some of the attributes of these
earlier man in the moon stories. This one got into trouble after
repeatedly tricking the devil, typically over money. He was refused
entry into hell by the upset Satan but had lived too sinful of
a life to be allowed entry into heaven. His name? Jack o' the
Lantern, as carved into the faces of pumpkins all across America
on Halloween and lit up to shine like the moon at night. You might
call him the original lunatic.
We now know those spots on the moon's surface are the result
of random collisions with meteors, as well as other astronomical
events that happened over millions of years. That didn't prevent
different people from weaving elaborate stories around the figures
they had convinced themselves they saw. The patterns they came
up with were often not the same as what people elsewhere imagined
there, even though the moon, thanks to gravitational forces that
locked its rotation to match that of earth's, always shows one
side of its surface to everyone on Earth. The exact same set of
meaningless spots were explained in completely different ways.
Some people have identified what they consider to be intentional
patterns formed by the locations where the Whitechapel murders
attributed to Jack the Ripper were committed. Unlike the spots
on the moon, we know that they aren't the result of a natural
process at work. An individual -- one with murderous intent --
is, in fact, responsible for them. Of course that by itself doesn't
answer the question of whether the killings were specifically
planned to form a pattern, as someone can set out to kill without
taking the physical location of each site compared to each other
into much consideration. But one thing the Ripper locations do
have in common with the figures imagined on the moon's surface
is that the unifying patterns that are described by various people
often don't match each other.
A surprisingly large variety of symbols have been advanced
as the supposed goal of the placement of the bodies. The ones
that have probably gotten the most discussion are a cross, an
arrow, a pentagram of sorts, and a figure shaped like the intersection
of two circles.
Let's spend a little time examining each of these alleged patterns.
The Cross
The first of the symbols mentioned in a theory that the Ripper
murder sites were planned was probably a cross.
Some people were (and others currently are) under the belief
that the Whitechapel murderer was on a religious crusade to kill
off sinners and had specifically targeted prostitutes for that
purpose. In such a case, a cross would be an unsurprising choice
if this kind of a personality were to pick an identifying mark.
People have in the past perverted the meaning of the symbols of
various religions by using them in ways that the vast majority
of its followers would find highly offensive. As one example,
white supremacists have burned crosses on the lawns where minorities
lived while following their own unique brand of Christianity.
Another related theory is that the killer may have wanted to
form the symbol of a cross not to advance that religious belief
(or a murderous offshoot of it, as the case may be) but to denigrate
it. A proven example of this concept at work is how the Nazis
used the Star of David to identify and persecute Jews. Here, the
theory goes, the killer considered himself an enemy of the Christian
religion, perhaps all the way to practicing Satanic rituals.
Not too long after the end of the murders of the victims now
known as the canonical five, the following theory was advanced
in a London newspaper :
"Further, in the practice of evocation the sacrifice of
human victims was a necessary part of the process, and the profanation
of the cross and other emblems usually considered sacred was also
enjoined. In this connection it will be well to remember one most
extraordinary and unparalleled circumstance in the commission
of the Whitechapel murders, and a thing which could not by any
possibility have been brought about fortuitously. Leaving out
the last murder, committed indoors, which was most probably not
committed by the fiend of whom we speak, we find that the
sites of the murders, six in number, form a perfect cross. That
is to say, a line ruled from No. 3 to No. 6, on a map having the
murder sites marked and numbered, passes exactly through
Nos. 1 and 2, while the cross arms are accurately formed by a
line from No. 4 to 5. The seventh, or Dorset-street murder, does
not fall within either of these lines, and there is nothing to
connect it with the others except the mutilations. But the mutilations
in this latter case were evidently not made by any one having
the practical knowledge of the knife and the position of the respective
organs which was exhibited in the other six cases, and also in
the mutilated trunk found in the new police-buildings, which was
probably the first of the series of murders, and was committed
somewhere on the lines of the cross, the body being removed at
the time. Did the murderer, then, designing to offer the mystic
number of seven human sacrifices in the form of cross - a form
which he intended to profane - deliberately pick out beforehand
on a map the places in which he would offer them to his infernal
deity of murder? If not, surely these six coincidences(?)
are the most marvellous event of our time."
-The Pall Mall Gazette,
Dec. 1, 1888
(Note 2)
This particular piece is noteworthy not only because it advanced
the cross theory but also because it contributed to getting its
author, Robert Donston Stephenson (a.k.a Roslyn D'Onston),(Note 3) named by others as a
Ripper suspect.
There are a few aspects of this excerpt which deserve further
explanation for those readers who might not have studied the case
in-depth yet. (The rest of you can bear with me for the length
of this paragraph.) The first is that, although these days we
are quite used to hearing that Jack the Ripper had five victims,
the murders were originally thought to have started with the deaths
of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram earlier in the same year as the
"canonical five" victims. So when Stephenson mentions
drawing a line from victim three to victim six, he is actually
referring to the women generally accepted these days as the first
(Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols) and the fourth (Catherine
Eddowes) of the series. Similarly, his numbers four and five would
be our second (Annie Chapman) and third (Elizabeth Stride) victims
of the string, while number seven on his list is the last (Mary
Jane Kelly) of the canonical five. The "mutilated trunk"
he mentioned refers to the human torso that was found in early
October and called the "Whitehall Mystery."(Note
4) The police never linked that to the Whitechapel
murders, and only a small minority of modern researchers think
there is any connection.(Note 5)
Other than the inclusion of Smith and Tabram, an idea which
has fallen out of favor, this description contains many features
that we will see over and over.
First, the theorist ends up picking and choosing which people
to count as Ripper victims based upon the geometry of where they
were found and not upon other criteria. Stephenson ignores Kelly
and tries to explain away her death by coming up with an alternate
scenario -- in this case, that her death supposedly doesn't show
the same features as the others so must have been caused by some
other hand. While many modern Ripperologists argue over whether
Stride should be considered as one of the Ripper's victims, Stephenson
and others would not even entertain such an idea for the simple
fact that all of their various alleged patterns don't work if
the location of her body were removed.
Second, they start mentally making connections that are rather
arbitrary. Connect-the-dot puzzles that children play are actually
numbered so there's an objective process for linking them together.
The only rules the crime scene pattern theorists use is whatever
they have to do to get some generally recognizable figure. There's
no concrete reason to see a cross formed from four locations instead
of, say, the outline of a diamond or a skewed letter Z. (A letter
Z? Quick, someone check to see if Zorro has an alibi!)
Third, there is apparently some amount of wishful thinking
when looking at the arrangement of the locations. Here Stephenson
claims that bodies fall "exactly" on a straight line
when they actually don't, and the claims other use that the four
main spots are at perfectly equal distances don't appear to hold
up on the maps that I've seen. On the other hand, I do have to
concede that any murderer trying to form a pattern may have been
using a map that didn't line up with the ones I'm looking at,
and the four major locations are at the very least spread out
so that they'd probably be close enough for a mad killer's purposes.
And lastly, once a pattern is identified, it's typical to declare
that it had to be intentionally planned because things like that
just don't happen by coincidence. Here we are talking about visual
shapes, but the same sort of argument is advanced over and over
in various other theories about the case. We'll discuss this whole
question at the end of the article.
The cross theory was picked up and modified by various other
people over the years. The major change everyone who has used
it has made is to drop Smith and Tabram so the figure has four
points instead of six. While there has been a movement by some
to reintroduce Tabram to the list of Ripper victims, her location
doesn't fit the crime scene pattern theories very well. Smith
is almost never included as a Ripper victim, based upon her testimony
(she survived for a few days after her attack) that she was assaulted
by two or more men and the differences in the wounds. It's possible
that Stephenson said those two lined up with Nichols and Eddowes
based upon a map of the crime scenes published in the Nov. 10,
1888, edition of the Daily Telegraph.(Note
6) On this map, locations are marked with
little daggers and numbers so it's hard at glance to tell which
is which. Between that and the little inaccuracies that creeped
into the illustration, it would be easy to believe that Smith,
Tabram, Nichols and Eddowes formed a straight line. Of course
it's likely that similar maps were put together by other papers,
so it's uncertain what map Stephenson was using.
The Arrow
"But the biggest clue of all was only just becoming evident:
the placement of the bodies. [...] If you draw lines from Mitre
Square to the other three sites, a perfect arrow becomes apparent.
If you have an intentional arrow, it must point somewhere. It
goes southwest, directly to the heart of government, the Houses
of Parliament at Westminster."
-Sue and Andy Parlour
(Note 7)
The arrow theory is essentially the same as the cross hypothesis,
other than the fact that it connects the same four locations in
a different way. Instead of connecting dots on opposite sides,
it connects Eddowes' location to the three others.
Once again, one has to wonder just where the choice of lines
connecting the dots comes from. It's not like Eddowes' apron was
found under graffiti explaining that her body was the head of
an arrow (not that the whole Juwes thing, if he wrote that, was
much clearer). With four spots to choose from, you can make an
arrow pointing in four completely different directions. One way
isn't any more obvious or natural than another. It seems to me
that someone explicitly trying to make an arrow would put two
of the bodies closer to the spot they intended to be the head.
Of course that could have also been interpreted as another type
of cross. Without more points to work with or some other message
to get the same point across, it's all rather ambiguous.
This theory again ignores Kelly's death, but with a different
rationalization for doing so. Like many versions of the Royal
Conspiracy, the Parlours believe that Eddowes was killed by accident
in an attack that was meant for Kelly. This unlikely idea is based
upon Eddowes' use of an alias similar to Kelly's name on the night
of her death. But then if a group of killers had actually thought
that this plan (killing prostitutes in bizarre ways over the course
of a month to respond to a secret allegedly known by one of them)
made sense, it's not a stretch to believe that they would accidentally
kill someone who not only looks nothing like their main target
but is more than a decade older.
Of course, even if that were the case you'd think that maybe
one of these conspirators would, call me crazy here, read the
newspapers or something and realize they had the wrong woman.
Once they knew that Kelly was still alive they would naturally
want to finish the job right away. Are we supposed to believe
they'd just let her run around for more than a month knowing this
terrible secret and potentially telling it to everyone she knew?
It just doesn't make much sense.
The idea of a giant arrow over Whitechapel is probably one
of the least outrageous parts of the whole theory. On the other
hand, there's not really anything to support it either.
The Pentacle
"You can't outrun it, Netley. It surrounds us... This pentacle
of Sun Gods, obelisks and rational male fire, wherein unconsciousness,
the Moon and Womanhood are chained. Its lines of power and meaning
must be reinforced, according to the ancient ways... What better
sacrifice than 'Heiros Gamos'? Than Diana's priestesses?"
-William Gull,
as imagined by Alan Moore
(Note 8)
This one is another variant of the Royal Conspiracy theory
but is probably even less logical.
A pentacle is a figure shaped like a five pointed star formed
by connecting alternating points with line segments. It is also
variously known as a pentagram, pentangle or pentalpha. As probably
the most well recognized magical symbol by the general public,(Note 9) and considering that
most people believe Jack killed five victims, it's not too surprising
that it has been suggested as a symbol that the Whitechapel murderer
was trying to form.
Without even taking a look at the locations in question, however,
it seems difficult to reconcile the idea of a figure with five
equal sides when others are proposing ones with four equal sides.
For each of those two concepts to work, the points would have
to be spread out in very different formations. In fact, the five
crime scenes (now including Mary Jane Kelly) are not distributed
in a way that one could make a figure with five equal sides.
Trying to draw a pentacle from these locations leaves us with
a very lopsided figure. Alan Moore suggests (at least for the
purpose of his story) in his graphic novel From Hell that
it was made that way so that Christchurch in Spitalfields would
serve as its mystical center. The problem with that idea is that
the church isn't in the center of these five killings, as it is
located only a short distance away from Kelly's room in Miller's
Court. The map that artist Eddie Campbell drew to illustrate Moore's
concept places a number of the killings in incorrect spots, most
notably with Eddowes erroneously located most of the way to Goulston
Street (where the apron taken from her body was found) instead
of in Mitre Square where she was actually found.
This alleged pentacle is described by another writer offering
enthusiastic support for a wide range of conspiracy theories centered
around black magic(Note 10)
as an asymmetrical pentagram. What this person fails to acknowledge
is that any five points, random or not, will form an asymmetrical
pentacle, as long as no three of those points line up on a straight
line. As a matter of fact, Kelly's body is not all that far from
being on a straight line between the places Chapman and Eddowes
were found. The lack of symmetry in this supposed pentagram is
quite extreme.
To sum up, if a group of killers actually had been trying to
make a pentacle with the bodies of dead prostitutes in 1888, they
sure did a lousy job of it.
Vesica Piscis
The most recent of the more popular theories about an alleged
pattern is championed by author Ivor Edwards and fans of his theory.(Note 11) I won't go into much
detail about it for the simple reason that another article in
this issue is devoted to it. But, briefly, the first four canonical
killings form the cross as described in Stephenson's earlier theory
and then Kelly's location is used to further define an area. This
creates what Edwards sees as a vesica piscis figure, an almond
shaped object formed by the overlap of two circles that is symbolic
of a womb, and thus fertility, rebirth and so on.
The biggest difference between this theory and the others is
that it suggests a pattern composed of curves instead of straight
lines. It's rather difficult to visualize a shape like this from
a small number of spots without outside reference. And, similar
to what happens with all the previous theories as well, once you
are told what to look for there's always the possibility that
you see it because you expect to and not because it was created
that way intentionally.
And talk of possibilities and trying to determine whether something
was random or intentional leads us into the next section...
The Probabilities
Most of the people promoting these theories have claimed that
the pattern they identify is extremely unlikely to have happened
purely by chance and then try to use that belief as support for
their particular suspect or scenario. This general strategy was
followed by assorted writers for years without attempting to actually
quantify the probabilities involved. This all changed when Melvin
Harris claimed to have had the statistics for his favored theory
calculated. Here's how he explained it:
"Jay Clarke and John Banks, the two Canadian criminal lawyers
that I mentioned in the interview, took a close look at yet another
aspect of D'Onston's 1 December 1888 article in the Pall Mall
Gazette. They considered his idea that there was a deliberate
choice of sites leading to a giant cross straddling Whitechapel.
This involved the placing of the four outdoor bodies at the essential
four tips of the cross. They took this question to a university
professor who specializes in statistics: How do you calculate
the probability of finding four bodies randomly distributed in
a city so that they form the points of a cross? They were advised
to draw a map of the area and mark it with a grid: Eight squares
down and eight across will do. All calculations could then be
based on these squares. The results were startling. The odds against
D'Onston's Ripper Cross scenario being wrong were one in fifteen
million, two hundred and forty-nine thousand and twenty four.
Repeat: 15,249,024! This was reached using a markedly course grid.
If the squares were made smaller and increased in number, and
they could quite legitimately, then the odds would soar even higher.
The lawyers concluded: With odds like that, logic says the distribution
was planned." (Note 12)
Others followed and used this argument themselves without really
understanding where that number originated from. They assumed
that if the odds for a cross randomly appearing were that bad,
then the chances that, say, the points of the cross would happen
to form in a specific order would be even worse. That would be
a logical conclusion, provided the numbers given by Harris were
correct. But they aren't.
We are lead to believe that a math professor came up with the
conclusions, but what Harris says about it is quite vague on the
details. The most important point the idea that the math shows
the sequence had to have been planned is expressly shown as the
opinion of the lawyers instead of the professor. That's important
not only on its own but also because it implies that the professor
may not have had much input into the other conclusions they presented
either.
It turns out that Harris' statement has two fundamental errors
in understanding of the statistics involved, either one of which
completely invalidates this particular argument. On top of those
two mathematical mistakes, he also made some other errors that
would make the statistics a lot less relevant, even if they were
done right in the first place, which they weren't. I'll explain
all those in just a minute, but we need a little bit of mathematical
background first.
The professor suggested using an arbitrary grid that is 8 squares
across and 8 squares down to start with. This is a pretty reasonable
basis upon which to try to calculate odds for these locations
appearing randomly. What that gives us is 64 different possible
squares that a body could appear in. If a murder were to happen
randomly in an unplanned location, the odds that it will take
place in any one square on that grid is 1 in 64. So far that's
easy. The number they end up with here, 15,249,024, comes out
to be 64 x 63 x 62 x 61. That means that, for the sake of calculating
the statistics, they decided that once someone was killed in one
square that the killer wouldn't kill a subsequent victim in the
same square. So first there are 64 possible end results for the
initial crime location, then there are 63 left because one square
is used up, then 62, then 61. That's where this long number comes
from. It's the odds of that exact sequence of specific locations
in that specific order.
Unfortunately for Harris' argument, that's not only not
the odds of forming a cross on a grid by chance (which is much,
much more likely to happen on a purely random basis), it's also
completely meaningless as a way of determining whether the distribution
was planned or not. Let's take a look at the second of these fundamental
flaws first.
Coming up with the statistics for specific sequences like this
proves absolutely nothing. What you end up getting with this method
is the mathematical equivalent of circular reasoning. When doing
calculations of this sort, the size of the number alone in no
way proves whether something was random or not. It just proves
that there are lots of different possible outcomes. There is no
valid threshold using this method at which you can legitimately
claim that something must have been planned.
This is a difficult concept for the average person, who typically
doesn't have a background in statistics, to understand. It's probably
easiest to explain with the use of an example.
Let's go back to this imaginary grid. If it has 64 squares
on it, it's basically a typical game board on which you could
play chess or checkers. If you took a board like this out and
set it up on the floor, you could randomly drop checkers, coins,
or other small objects on it. Assuming that you ignored any that
fell off the board or landed on a square that wasn't empty, you
could quickly end up with a sequence of four specific squares
in a specific order, representing where and when the checkers
or coins landed. If you wrote your results down and then figured
out the odds of that happening, you'd find out that there is only
a 1 in 15,249,024 chance each time you do this experiment that
you'd end up with that specific sequence.
Wait a minute, wasn't that the same number Harris was using?
And wasn't his argument that, because the odds of that happening
were so low, it must have been planned ahead of time? What, were
you trying to aim for specific squares? If you aren't sure, wear
a blindfold, number the coins, and drop them again. Whatever your
results are, the odds of that specific sequence of four spots
happening in that order was again only 1 in 15,249,024!
Does that number prove that the results couldn't be random?
Absolutely not. On the contrary, it's mathematically exactly what
you'd expect from a random result in that situation.
Harris also claimed that using more and smaller squares on
the imaginary grid would increase the numbers dramatically. Well,
that's true, but it's also meaningless. Say you set up four chess
boards together so they formed a square and pretended that the
area represents the East End of London. The odds of one killing
(or dropped coin) ending up on any specific square is now only
1 in 256. Plot any four killings (canonical or non-canonical ones,
it doesn't matter) or drop coins onto it and the odds for that
specific sequence showing up are only 1 in 4,195,023,360. The
number changes as a result of the way you model it, but that doesn't
suddenly make it any less random.
If that weren't bad enough, there's also the other fundamental
flaw: There's more than one way to make a cross on a grid. You
can't talk about the statistics of one specific cross pattern
as if they were statistics for forming a cross in general. The
larger the number of different sequences that can form a pattern,
the easier it is for it to happen completely by accident. To prove
this, let's start by actually showing the locations of the four
victims in question on an arbitrary grid. In order to visualize
the patterns easier, I'll rotate the orientation so the cross
shape lines up with the rows and columns of the grid.
The murders happened in order with Nichols first in the square
with her circle in it, then Chapman second with her square's circle,
then Stride and lastly Eddowes. This sequence does form a kind
of cross on this grid, but that's not the only cross that could
show up at random in that grid not by a long shot.
First up there are crosses that are like the current one but
moved horizontally or vertically. Imagine that the murders had
happened in unplanned locations, but one square to the left of
the current ones on this grid. That's shaped and formed exactly
the same way, but it's another one out of those 15,249,024 possible
end results, and it should also count. OK, so what about one space
to the right? Two spaces to the right? Those both work too. How
about one space up? And then there are all the cases where you
go one space up and also either to the right or left. Already
the odds are 8 times more likely than the lawyers told Harris,
and we're just getting started.
There are a lot more ways to make a cross fit in the grid.
You can change the size of the cross. You can change the location
of the crossbar so it is farther up or down the length of the
other side. You can rotate the cross. You can also make the crossbar
longer or shorter in comparison to the other side. And you can
do all of those in combination, so you might have the cross smaller,
rotated, moved over and shaped more like a typical Christian cross
with the smaller bar father up the length. (Although if you were
doing all of these for real, you'd have to be careful, because
some combinations would end up repeating themselves. Rotating
the current cross 90 degrees, for example, is the same as lengthening
the horizontal bar and shortening the vertical one.)
If you add these all up, you'll find that the really large
number we had to start with is getting whittled down very quickly.
And there's another thing to consider that also makes it easier
to make the cross.
So far we've been assuming that the killings start with Nichols
and then progress the way they did historically. That's all fine
and good, but if we're trying to find the odds of a cross happening
randomly, the order of each of the four points makes no difference
at all. If the killer had started with Eddowes, gone to Nichols,
then Chapman and then Stride, we'd still have the exact same pattern
on the map. It's the odds of that pattern happening by chance
that we're concerned with, so we need to take that into account.
In this case, there are 24 different sequences that can be made
by switching the order around on four events. This number comes
from four different points you could start at, times three that
are left to choose from for the second location, times two that
are left after that, and then whatever one remains at the end.
That's 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. That means for each of the different crosses
we can come up with on this grid, there are 24 possible ways they
could be put together. (But, again, for some shapes there would
be an overlap between rotating the figure and changing the order
of the points of the cross. You'd need to keep that in mind if
you tried to count all the variations by hand.)
Taking into account all the many and varied ways a cross could
show up purely by chance, the final odds that I calculated for
the probability of four randomly distributed bodies forming the
points of a cross would be a not too terribly bad 1 in 100, roughly.
This is a much more accurate measure of the odds of the pattern
forming than what we started out with. One way we can tell that
it's more mathematically sound is that changing the grid size
doesn't make such extreme changes in the end results. Increasing
the grid to 9 squares across by 9 squares down gives about 1 in
110 odds.(Note 13)
Those odds would be for any cross with a perpendicular crossbar
that isn't at the edge. So tau crosses (T-shaped) and crosses
with lines that are not at 90 degree angles to each other aren't
included in these numbers. If they were included, the possibility
of a cross forming by pure chance would be even more likely.
Of course even there those numbers have to be taken with a
grain of salt, because they are just the odds of a specific pattern
we are looking for. If the killings were random and they had happened
differently, then we might be looking for the odds of an F appearing,
or a Y, or a T, or a straight line, or any other number of patterns
that could have happened. Odds are good that no matter how the
bodies would have fallen, someone out there would have convinced
themselves that they saw a pattern of some sort.
I also had mentioned that there were some mistakes that would
make these numbers less relevant than they appear to be. One of
the most immediately obvious ones is that the people who see patterns
are picking and choosing which victims to include and which ones
not to. Mary Jane Kelly is typically excluded from the cross making
odds for the simple fact that she doesn't fit. If you are doing
best four out of five to try to make a pattern, the odds of randomly
making a cross, or any other symbol for that matter, go up quite
a bit.
Another thing that affects how the statistics play out is that
it's likely the killer wasn't being completely random in choosing
locations even if he didn't try to make a pattern. The method
we've been using assumes that the Ripper wouldn't kill another
victim in the same square (or general area, since these squares
are only hypothetical) that a previous one had been killed in.
If that's a reasonable exception to the concept of pure randomness,
which it probably is, one might also suggest that a murderer would
want to pick a site at least two squares from the previous one.
Even a rather straightforward modification like that vastly increases
the odds that some sort of pattern can be identified.
Looking at the psychology of it, the Ripper's real rules were
probably more complicated than that. He might have decided, for
example, that having a new murder site close to another was less
risky if it had been a while since he last killed someone. Or,
if he were experiencing hallucinations, it could have been largely
based upon which of the gas lamps seemed like they were possessed
by demons, or some other strange concept that we couldn't know
about unless he had been caught. You never can tell what could
influence the mind of a killer.
One important consideration when choosing sites would be where
the main roads are located relative to where you intend to kill
people. One might point out that Jack obviously wouldn't attack
someone in the middle of Whitechapel Road where anyone could be
watching. That might lead one to try to find the squares on the
grid that contain a major road and remove them from consideration
when calculating our odds. Of course looking at the grid with
this in mind makes it clear that we can't exclude those squares
without ignoring some of the very areas the crimes happened in!
No, Jack didn't kill anyone in the middle of a major street,
but the locations were quite close to them. This could be so he
could make an easy escape, or it might just be that the prostitutes
were looking for customers where foot traffic came by on a regular
basis. Taking this one step further, looking at the map shows
that the main roads, although somewhat irregular, mostly form
the shape of a cross all by themselves.
In other words, most of the features of the patterns people
see in the crime scene locations were already present in the layout
of the East End before the Ripper killed his first victim.
Odds and Ends
So we've looked at the statistics and the layout of the streets
and concluded that apparent patterns behind the sites could have
been completely random. Does that necessarily mean that these
theories are nonsense?
No, actually. Showing that something could have been
accidental by itself doesn't prove that it was accidental.
For example, if a person (or group, if you wanted to go the conspiracy
route) did want to create a symbol by killing people in specific
spots, it would make sense to do so working with the street design
in mind. There really isn't a reliable way to answer the question
of whether they were planned that way or not. If a suspect could
be traced to a prediction of a specific symbol or one or more
exact locations before the killings took place, that would at
least be a pointer in favor, while specific pointers against would
have to be something along the lines of one of the killings happening
in a location that would have been impossible to plan for. No
examples of such a thing come to mind. Proof, as all too often
happens in this field, is frustratingly elusive.
The main argument against these theories is that the process
of selecting sites beforehand would add an extra layer of complexity
in trying to successfully pull off these already rather audacious
murders. It's one thing to simply place a dead body in a specific
location, but it's a whole other thing to not only kill them there
but also to gut them out in the open where someone could wander
along at any moment. Many authors have commented on the amount
of sheer luck or cleverness the killer had to have possessed,
but to do it all with a master geographic plan in mind would be
just that much more difficult. Of course that doesn't make it
impossible.
The best hope to trying to sort it all out is to look at the
rest of the details of a particular theory and see how well they
hold up on their own. Other than the parts already discussed briefly
as we went along, that kind of analysis is beyond the scope of
this article. If you are interested in the rest of the details
of these theories, I suggest picking up the books that support
them.
Keep in mind that, although I've been specifically talking about
whether the crime scene locations were random or planned, the
same debate of whether some detail in the Ripper case is significant
or just a coincidence is played out all the time over different
aspects.
Some people think they see letters in the middle of bloodstains
on the wall in Mary Jane Kelly's room in the famous photo of her
on her bed. The police at the time, as well as many others later,
believe that the graffito found near where the piece of Eddowes
apron was dropped must hold some key significance. Patricia Cornwell
claims that Walter Sickert must have been Jack the Ripper because
of certain aspects of his paintings she considers significant,
or based upon a mathematical possibility that partial DNA on a
letter from someone claiming to be the killer may have been Sickert's.
Each of these arguments wants you to believe that some perceived
significance is real instead of merely coincidental. Out of all
the different potential conclusions that are offered up in this
case, some are probably right and most would have to be wrong,
simply based upon the sheer number of them which are contradictory.
The trick is to try to figure out which is which.
When coming to your own conclusions about what is or is not
a significant detail, don't underestimate the power of sheer coincidence.
NOTES:
1. Anderson, George K., The Legend of the
Wandering Jew, Brown University, 1965. (Back)
2. As quoted on the JTR Forums website,
www.JTRForums.co.uk
(Back)
3. The article, titled "The Whitechapel
Demon's Nationality: And Why He Committed the Murders," was
written under the byline of "One Who Thinks He Knows."
The writer has been identified as Stephenson based upon comments
that the paper's editor, W.T. Stead, made at a later date, as
well as similarities between other parts of the article and a
letter he wrote to police in October. (Back)
4. For a copy of the inquest and period newspaper
articles about this incident, see: www.casebook.org/victims/whitehal.html
take note that there's only one L in Whitehall in that address.
(Back)
5. For one who does propose a link, see R.
Michael Gordon's The Thames Torso Murders (McFarland &
Co., 2003), which attempts to link a series of similar crimes
to his Ripper suspect, Severin Klosowski. (Back)
6. See the second page in the last photo section
of Evans, Stewart P. and Skinner, Keith. The Ultimate Jack
the Ripper Companion, Carroll & Graf, 2000. (Back)
7. Parlour, Sue and Andy, "The Jack the
Ripper Whitechapel Murders," The Mammoth Book of Jack
the Ripper, Carroll & Graf, 1999, edited by Maxim Jakubowski
and Nathan Braund. (Back)
8. Moore, Alan & Campbell, Eddie, From
Hell, Top Shelf Productions, 2004, collected reprint of a
comic book series started in 1989. (Back)
9. In fact, it's so iconic of the concept
of black magic that one is featured on the cover of Ivor Edwards'
Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals (John Blake, 2003)
even though that book offers the theory that Jack was drawing
a vesica piscis symbol with the bodies and not a pentacle. (Back)
10. See: econcrisis.homestead.com/JTR2.html (Back)
11. See the previously referenced JTR
Forums website or Edwards' book. (Back)
12. Harris, Melvin, "Roslyn D'Onston:
An Exclusive Update," Ripper Notes, March 2000. (Back)
13. This number was arrived at in the following
way: The first step in making a cross is to draw a line. Any two
dots, random or not, can be used to draw a line, so the first
two don't matter statistically. Then we can make a grid around
two dots. I'll use 9 squares across by 9 squares down since locations
on an odd numbered grid are slightly easier to explain. It's a
hypothetical construct, so we can place it however we like. The
two dots are put in column 5 (middle column, with four others
on either side), in the top square (row 1) and bottom square (row
9). Any square that lands in rows 2 through 8 that doesn't end
up in column 5 can be the next point in the cross, so the odds
of one of those happening are 56 out of 79 (a 9x9 grid has 81
squares, but two are already used). Now, on the last dot, it has
to specifically match the third one, but on the opposite side
of the middle column. At this point only one specific square will
work, so the odds of that are 1 in 78 (81 minus the three squares
already used). Multiply 56/79 by 1/78 and you get 56/6,162, or
about 1 in 110. (Back)
SOURCES:
Anderson, George K., The Legend of the Wandering Jew, Brown
University, 1965.
Begg, Paul, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, Robson Books,
2004.
Cooper, Geoff and Punter, Gordon, Jack the Ripper Whitechapel
Map Booklet 1888, ripperArt, 2003.
Edwards, Ivor; Hebblewhite, Tyler and Brown, Howard, JTRForums
messageboards, www.JTRForums.co.uk
Evans, Stewart P. and Skinner, Keith. The Ultimate Jack
the Ripper Companion, Carroll & Graf, 2000.
Harris, Melvin, "Roslyn D'Onston: An Exclusive Update,"
Ripper Notes, March 2000.
Jakubowski, Maxim and Braund, Nathan, The Mammoth Book of
Jack the Ripper, Carroll & Graf, 1999.
Moore, Alan & Campbell, Eddie, From Hell, Top Shelf
Productions, 2004, collected reprint of a comic book series started
in 1989.
Ryder, Stephen P., Casebook: Jack the Ripper website,
www.casebook.org
