|
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Author |
Message |
    
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 895
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 28, 2004 - 4:32 am: |       |
I think back to some of the points I laboured over in the Colony model, particularly with regard to colliding sexual castes within society, and how male soldiers could be corrupted by the signals of the colony into a ‘nest clearing’ mode where they might well view the female caste as the ‘enemy’. This when taken in context with the natural merging process that seems to be taking place between the sexes in the last hundred years or so of our development seems to throw up a very plausible biological motive for crimes of the nature we discuss.
I am reluctant to join in the debate concerning homosexuality etc. as last time I did my postings were deemed provocative and unseemly, however I do think - considering the latest Home Office research - it to be a very valid area of discussion, as many men serving sentences for offences committed against women do appear to have done so because of confusion about their own sexual identity. When their identity was confirmed to them and accepted by them they no longer represented a threat to either sex.
Jack’s crimes do seem to contain an element of obvious confusion which we blithely accept as destructive in its nature, but we may be misconstruing the evidence and contaminating it with our modern insight.
I found it salutary in some earlier posts that sex was championed as the clear motive for these crimes while the simpler and far more likely weak bladder of a whore who had taken on fifteen pints of gin was mocked in a good old playground fashion.
Yes I know people taking pee-pee or farting is ‘funny’ but please don’t chortle too loud or you’ll wake me up from my long dream of despair.
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 806
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 1:31 pm: | |
Hi AP,
The ‘Colin Pitchfork’ type of killer you see Jack as being is surely just one possibility. The problem is, or so it seems to me, that you have accepted the apparent motivations of a caught and convicted offender and are now trying to apply similar ones to a man who was never caught, and who was never expected to give an account of himself, or examined by analysts for clues about what lay behind his actions.
We all recognise that once a serial killer is captured and no longer free to offend, his former compulsion to attack tends to turn into a compulsion to deny responsibility and try to blame others for what he did when he had the chance. This is your ‘Colin Pitchfork’ pinball talking, just as you have described him in recent posts on this thread:
“Well, your honour, it’s like this. There was I, minding my own business, harmlessly flashing at this girl, when she suddenly did something unexpected, turning an innocent lark on my part into a ‘her’ or ‘me’ situation. This naturally must have caused me to have a panic attack, because the next thing I knew, she had got herself murdered and all cut up on the ground at my feet, and I found a kidney in my pocket. I never wanted to hurt her; I never meant to hurt her; I had no reason to hurt her. And I wouldn’t have done if only she had reacted like most of the others. So you see, it was totally out of character, your honour.
Oh, and when you have finished dabbing at your eyes with that hankie, and me poor arthritic mum has put down my absent father’s Stradivarius, I would like you to take five other pleas of self-defence – I mean five other offences – into account. I thank you.”
Now this sucks, doesn’t it? At least those who claim God told them to down all whores try to put the blame firmly back on their Creator, not forward onto their victims. If Jack had been caught during one of his funny little games, and had told such a tale, would it have been believed by anyone, apart from the odd one or two?
The thing is, caught serial killers don’t generally admit: “I am wholly responsible for all my own actions. I am a self-serving coward, and I did whatever I felt like doing to my victims because I have no concern for anyone else’s feelings or needs, or how they might be affected. I chose victims according to how little trouble I reckoned they could give me, and my intention was to get away with it for as long as I wanted to carry on.”
Yet if one ever did say this, wouldn’t we all say: “Now, ain’t that the truth?”?
Finally, your caged and isolated gorilla analogy still appears flawed to me. All animals, including the human animal, have extremely strong survival instincts. Your male gorilla, suddenly faced with the very real threat of his vital food supplies being shared or stolen by a newcomer, is going to do whatever it takes to keep those supplies to himself. The fact that a female of the same species was the living creature introduced to him is hardly relevant when he weighs up his immediate survival prospects.
The instinct for procreation (with the prospect of hungry baby gorillas’ mouths to feed too), or even recreation, won’t take priority all the while this bitch is casting her beady eyes on the only banana in sight until the keeper may or may not appear again with more goodies. So of course sex wouldn’t be the reason for him attacking and killing her. Fear, and a desperate need to secure his own survival, would be though. And that would be the case regardless of who was threatening to scoff whose banana. The strongest would kill the weakest, eat his meal, and only then might fret about how he was going to populate the planet single-handed.
So I just don’t see how a male serial killer who attacks only women could ever be compared with an animal, including a human animal, fighting because his very survival may depend on it. Serial killers are worse than animals. They are not fighting for their survival when they select a victim weaker than themselves for murder and mutilation and trophy-taking, and they know it. They often don’t give their victims a chance to fight for their survival. But I can see the appeal for a captured killer claiming that nothing more than some sort of primitive instinct made him do it, or having people around who will believe it.
As I’ve said before, if there were more examples of females picking on weaker victims and attacking them serially and at random, and for no apparent reason, I might give a more ‘sympathetic’ hearing to such claims.
Love,
Caz
(Message edited by Caz on March 01, 2004) |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 904
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2004 - 1:28 pm: | |
Well Caz, you doing a pretty good job of a female picking on a lesser organism right now, but I don’t mind, I’ll share my banana with you.
I think our basic problem here is that you do honestly believe that Jack’s crimes must have been sexually motivated in some manner or form, as you are at a loss to explain them otherwise, and hence you disparage any other motive, deeming it to be absurd, unlikely, incredible or even laughable.
But where you see the impossible and improbable, I tend to see the possible and probable, and again unlike you I’m prepared to accept any and all possible and probable motives - including a sexual one and including a whore relieving herself- and then fit that motive into a social pattern established by our knowledge of other killers and their behaviour.
You say sexual
I say social
Let’s call the whole thing off.
Have you read ’The Blooding’ by Joseph Wambaugh? If not, I strongly suggest you do, as that volume provides a wealth of material on dear old Colin Pitchfork, and there is much to dwell on, particularly his interviews with the investigating force.
I’m afraid in this particular case I can’t go along with your thoughts concerning killers trying to either simplify or nullify the impact of their dreadful and savage attacks on innocent women and children - normally I would agree with your thoughts as killers often prevaricate in such a manner in an attempt to lessen the seriousness of their motive and crime.
However Pitchfork is from another planet I’m afraid and he will not fit into this loathsome category easily, for he enjoyed talking about his crimes, both the murders and his lesser offences, and has never given the impression of a man in any sort of denial about his crimes.
Clearly his behavioural patterns before his arrest are the most valid and crucial indicators of his real desires and wishes - untainted as they are by dialogue, impression or interpretation.
So we have a man who enjoys exposing himself to women on a daily basis - it was his hobby - and he has been doing this for his entire adult life without ever physically harming his hundreds and hundreds of victims. To carry out his hobby of flashing he must find secluded and lonely areas fulfilling two strict criteria:
He must not be seen by any other than his intended victim.
Although secluded and lonely the chosen site must allow for individual women to pass through the area at specified times so that Pitchfork is properly able to organise his ‘sting’.
Now, as you can see, he has created not only the ideal situation to expose himself, but he has also created the perfect environment to murder those women.
I’ll give you a chance to answer this question before I do, Caz:
‘Why, out of more than a thousand women Pitchfork exposed himself to, did he kill only the two and not more?’
|
Monty
Chief Inspector
Username: Monty
Post Number: 833
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 12:37 pm: | |
AP,
Ive read the book. Didnt like the 'country bumpkin..aint it quaint' angle on it though.
Being from that area I remember Pitchforks crimes as if they happend yesterday.
I agree, a survival instinct kicked in with him. A panic.
IMHO anyway.
Monty
PS Ive sent you a private message. |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 909
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 1:27 pm: | |
Thanks Monty
got your note and I'll respond presently.
It was a good book, but you are right, Wambaugh handled the local touch badly, but I suppose as an alien American in rural little England he was bound to.
Yes, survival was certainly a key factor in his crimes. |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 910
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 1:31 pm: | |
Caz
Regarding your point concerning why murder almost exclusively is male on female orientated and not the other way around.
I do see this as clearly linked to a simple evolutionary trait which appears to dictate that the male of the species is larger, physically stronger and has been ear-marked by biological process as the aggressive dominator - and incidentally the protector - of the less able female of the species (and I do mean this purely in the physical sense).
It would be entirely anti-evolutionary and biologically illogical if the less able female of the species was to flip the coin and start murdering the stronger male class - although this does on occasion happen as some posters have pointed out recently, but often the male target of their murderous intention, interestingly enough, usually proves to be a homosexual - as that stronger male class was obviously designed to protect the female class from ‘stranger’ males.
It strikes me that as the male class has slowly lost its iron grip on the female class over the course of some thousands of years, then that female class has rapidly become more mobile and hence encounters far more ‘stranger’ males than is perhaps normally acceptable in the biological sphere that was designed for our race by evolution. For the fact of the matter is that some of these ’stranger’ males will attack and kill ’stranger’ women.
Some time ago I did make the analogy between human society and the social structure of the wolf pack. I pointed out that in a single wolf pack there was a strictly enforced social order which ensured that levels of aggression were kept to a manageable proportion, and that individuals of either sexual class were safe within that pack as long as they obeyed the rules. This type of strictly enforced social and sexual hierarchy is broadly similar to that of mankind’s own social and sexual codes way back in biblical times; or even today in modern Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia, where women are strictly controlled to a degree that does ensure they will not meet ’stranger’ males. Hence you will find that such crimes as the murder of women by ’stranger’ males do not exist in strict Islamic nations. Yes, women may be brutalised and even sometimes murdered, but it will be by their own male relatives.
Yes, the wolf pack is a superb model of social and sexual order, but just throw two wolf packs together and you suddenly have mayhem, murder and wholesale slaughter, that is until a new social and sexual order has been established through blood-letting and one pack is formed from the two.
In our present human condition the social structure never has a chance to coalesce, as there is a constant flux of ’stranger’ males, and as women attain more and more social and sexual freedom they are bound to become targets for the ’lone wolf’ practising his art on the edge of society.
|
Natalie Severn
Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 369
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 1:54 pm: | |
Hi AP and Monty
It struck me as I was reading these posts that there does seem to have been a tradition of sorts amongst certain psycopathic type women of marrying
elderly men [and sometimes not so elderly] for their money.Sometimes they have been in league with a lover or male accomplice to do this but at others they simply seem to have taken it upon themselves to kill unsuspecting males for gain.
Some such women seem to have been serial killers in this way and their seems to have been quite a history of it going back as far as Chaucer.
I wonder what your thoughts are on these sorts of crimes-just as deadly after all and needing planning and execution in the same way as Chapman"s did.
Best Natalie |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 853
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 12, 2004 - 10:50 am: | |
Hi AP,
I was specifically talking about the rarity of examples of females picking on weaker victims and attacking them serially and at random, and for no apparent reason.
I wasn’t arguing that Jack was specifically or exclusively sexually motivated. Nor was I suggesting that I would expect to see equal numbers of female serial killers attacking men, or those physically stronger than themselves, if your theory is right, and if testosterone plays no part in your average serial killer’s make-up.
I did describe your Colin Pitchfork type as one possibility for the kind of man Jack was. But I don’t believe it’s the only possibility, and I assume that you don’t either, although it’s hard to tell sometimes from your posts. You seem to veer from ‘always non-sexual’, or ‘not motivated by social or sexual inadequacy and the resulting compulsion to show the ladies and the world who’s boss’, to ‘AP keeps an open mind but prefers to think social in Jack's case’, while ‘Caz insists on sexual in every case’ (as in getting sexual release from the crimes, which I never do insist and never have insisted, although I do think it can be an element for some killers, if not the primary driving force).
Incidentally, Nat (hello!), females who kill more than once generally target people they know, and have pretty obvious motives such as greed or sexual jealousy. The only women I would really think of as serial killers are those like Beverley Allitt (sp?). She was the nurse who killed children in her care in the hospital where she worked.
Love,
Caz
|
Natalie Severn
Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 427
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 12, 2004 - 11:21 am: | |
Hi Caz yes you"re right but was George Chapman a serial killer or not then?Because he too knew his victims and killed them one after the other.What I"m saying is I am not sure of terms and definitions here--- we almost need a glossary of terms here ![and "Hello There Caz to you too!]
Best Nats |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 934
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 12, 2004 - 1:10 pm: | |
Well said Caz.
I think the root of our problem perhaps lays deeper than ‘social or sexual’, and I’m inclining more towards ‘motive’ or ‘motiveless’ - but as you quite rightly point out, not shutting out one or the other - and as you know I have from the very start always viewed Jack’s crimes as lacking motive or purpose, they are not ‘solid’ crimes which we can point a finger at and say ‘Ah yes!’; crimes like that of Bundy or Duffy where a ‘sexual serial killer’ has gone out with the specific task of capturing a female to gratify his strong sexual urges and then kill her to avoid capture. Simple but solid, we have something to grasp onto, for we can understand the motive and purpose. These type of men do not kill females for a ‘sexual thrill’, they kill women after raping and abusing them, and no, they do not get a ‘rush of power’ from doing so, they are simply taking care of business in a matter of fact manner that helps them elude capture.
I just cannot see Jack in this category.
That’s why I like to compare his known behaviour to the known behaviour of what I would term as ‘vacuous killers’, chaps who don’t seem to know their arse from their elbow and actually treat their victims like they are dolls or something. I do see that in Jack, very strongly actually, and that is why I think killers like Sutcliffe and Pitchfork are good building blocks for this study. Truth of the matter is that you couldn’t have ever met two greater prats in your life than Peter and Colin. Complete and utter berks who both enjoyed the nickname of ‘No dick’. Now nobody is going to call Bundy or Duffy that, are they?
Particularly with Colin Pitchfork it is obvious that when he set out on the day of his murder he neither knew he was going to commit murder or even intended to do so, for he had no motive for that act, his motive was way up the hill from there, and when he murdered he did so simply because he lost his temper, and then just like the twit he is attempted to make it look like a sexual killing… for the sake of his own ego.
Now Jack, didn’t even attempt to make his crimes seem sexual - I know you going say ah but the posturing of the victims and their clothes in disarray means this and that, but that because you read too many criminal profilers at work - so I do believe he didn’t have a clue what sex was all about as a principle of pleasure but did have a crucial understanding of the procreative process and it was this that both fascinated and repelled him. He was a spotty nerd I’m afraid and could have just as easily collected model soldiers as sliced up women.
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 875
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 9:27 am: | |
Hi AP,
What I can’t see is how it can be ‘obvious’ to anyone but the (convicted) killer himself that he didn’t know he might attack someone, and never intended to do so, because he simply had no ‘obvious’ motive beforehand. There is a paradox here, surely, because, assuming the (convicted) killer was mentally capable of articulating all this after the fact, and conveying it to his listeners in a way they could understand and believe, it also assumes that he was not mentally capable, during the period of his offending, of simply avoiding the very situations that he later recognised as having caused him to lose his temper and end up murdering and mutilating strange females who were physically weaker than himself, and taking away various body parts.
You obviously don’t know what I am going to say because I keep agreeing with you that Jack wasn’t necessarily getting off sexually with his murders, or even trying to make his ‘public’ think he was all-powerful in the trouser department. In fact, his choice of earlier victim suggests quite the opposite – that Jack was such an inadequate little so-and-so that this was the only class of woman he could ever have got his wicked way with had he wanted to – dowdy, desperate or dead.
Maybe he could just as easily have collected model soldiers as sliced up women – but he did the latter. And I don’t believe it was those naughty women who distracted him from his model soldiers. I’m beginning to believe that many serial killers, whether they be Jack, Pitchfork, Sutcliffe, Christie, you name ‘em, do it because they never got the attention they craved, and make up for it by demanding somebody’s undivided attention, starting - and sometimes ending as well - with the victim, and in some cases making the whole world sit up and take notice of the invisible ‘nerd’. If caught, the consolation prize is more undivided attention, and I’ve no doubt some will quickly warm to the task of making the most of what they get.
Only the offender can say precisely how his murder victims reacted to him, and that this reaction was the sole cause of him losing his temper and lashing out. If no victim survives to confirm or deny it, what’s to stop him from making something up? If your spotty nerd were suddenly stuck on a desert island, all on his lonesome, there would be no girls doing rude things to spoil his view. And flashing would hardly have the same appeal with no prospect of an audience, unless you count crabs giving him furtive sideways glances.
So your nerd attacks when his attempts to impress another human being are failing once again. Wherever he goes there are women who are only too willing to act as reminders of his anonymity, and the latest expression – status anxiety. Tolerated and humoured at most by those he associates with, but never really looked up to or admired in the ‘right’ way and by the ‘right’ people – bless him.
Love,
Caz
|
|
Use of these
message boards implies agreement and consent to our Terms of Use.
The views expressed here in no way reflect the views of the owners and
operators of Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Our old message board content (45,000+ messages) is no longer available online, but a complete archive
is available on the Casebook At Home Edition, for 19.99 (US) plus shipping.
The "At Home" Edition works just like the real web site, but with absolutely no advertisements.
You can browse it anywhere - in the car, on the plane, on your front porch - without ever needing to hook up to
an internet connection. Click here to buy the Casebook At Home Edition.
|
|
|
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page