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Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 654
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 4:14 pm: | 
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Melissa,
With all due modesty, I would suggest you buy the latest issue of Ripper Notes and read the article about the witnesses. For now, though, just a couple of comments. If Severin really changed little from the time he arrived in England initially until his arrest that would suggest he always sported that moustache that would have been the envy of Jerry Colonna -- and surely that expanse of "lip spinach" would have been remarked upon were he seen in close proximity to a victim just prior to her murder.
Secondly, if you do champion Severin as JtR you are better off with Hastings height of 5-4 -- for reasons you'll have to read the article to find out.
That said, I don't fancy him for JtR.
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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Dan Norder
Chief Inspector
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 812
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 6:46 pm: |
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Hi David,
Once again, please stop trying to hijack this thread. For all the points proving that your claims about psychopaths do not match reality, see the thread which already detailed them over and over:
The colossal waste of Casebook resources that was called "A?R"
As the thread was locked by management, trying to reopen it elsewhere by taking over a thread is not a good idea at all.
Hi Melissa,
Wolf's research on when Klosowski left England, as mentioned above, was presented in full in the July 2004 issue of Ripper Notes.
I cannot really know what anyone back then did on walks at night for certain, but it's a stretch to jump to thinking that they had to have been for notorious purposes. Lots of people were up at all sorts of odd hours. I personally think the whole Pedachenko thing was a complete fabrication with no basis in reality, so I can't say anything in favor of the idea that it was an alias of Klosowski. And as far as reasons for stopping, well, for one we don't know that he really did (the victim you include as his last one is not generally accepted as one of his, and if we include her with her differenced there were other victims later on that could have been Jack's as well, assuming more differences) but otherwise Glenn already gave some good answers.
Hi Glenn,
For a variety of reasons (largely as presented by Wolf in April issue) I would have to say that it's not at all certain that Elizabeth Long actually saw Jack the Ripper. Even if Wolf's conclusions about Annie Chapman's time of death turn out to be incorrect, we would still have to deal with several problems with Long's testimony. She recalled seeing a man and a woman somewhere in the vicinity of the crime (not in front of the house in question, as many assume) doing nothing suspicious or noteworthy (as Long admitted) at a time after Cadosch thought he already heard sounds people later surmised was the attack on Chapman. Long identified Chapman's body as the woman she saw, but as she had already turned a rather ambiguous encounter into a possible sighting of a killer and a victim in her mind she could very well have been mistaken about the body. It's not like the police did the whole switcheroo thing (as they were later able to do after the Double Event when there were two bodies) to test if she was just picking whatever corpse she was shown as the person she reported seeing.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
 Profile  Email  Dissertations  Website
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Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 3842
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 7:17 pm: |
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Hi Dan,
Yes I know, I have read Wolf's (a wonderful researcher) interpretations and they are interesting to some degree.
Anyhow, because of some of the inconsistencies in her testimony, Mrs Long can't be relied on totally. It is quite possible Long saw another client of Chapman, but personally I don't think so. But I agree on that she of course could have been mistaken about the identity of the woman.
I am only dealing here with those who some have claim had SEEN the Ripper. But let me add that Cadosh's testimony, on the other hand, I do not give much credence at all, and parts of it doesn't seem to work. The same goes for John Richardson. It is possible that Richardson and Cadosh might have been attention-seekers (maybe even Long, although her testimony works a bit better for me than the other two).
As to get back to the actual sightings of the killer:
Mostly because the disturbing fact that Mrs Long never saw the man's face (and because of the issue with the inconsistencies), I have to say - as I also implied in my earlier post - that Lawende might in fact have been the one who actually with relative certainty saw the Ripper, if any of the known witnesses ever did (possibly also Levy, although he for some reason appear to have been obstinate and very reluctant to give any information, which therefore excludes him from this particular context).
In any case, to rely on witness descriptions is a dangerous trail, since the descriptions to a large part are very general and not really point at any specific of value that makes the character they've observed stand out from the crowd of East End men of the day. And Klosowski hardly fit any of those descriptions to a satisfying degree anyway, if he in 1888 looked anything like the photos we have of him a few years later.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on August 03, 2005)
G. Andersson, writer/crime historian
Sweden
The Swedes are the men That Will not be Blamed for Nothing
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Frank van Oploo
Chief Inspector
Username: Franko
Post Number: 710
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 4:06 pm: |
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Hi David,
“But if an insane person were to do generally what JtR did, we would expect to find indication of deluded or irrational thought patterns at the crime scenes, such as shouting, flinging internal organs about, jittery behavior either beforehand or while walking away, and so on.”
This is a misconception about people and serial killers who are mentally ill. Not all of them have to act like raving lunatics, not all mentally ill serial killers are like Richard Trenton Chase or worse.
Here are two examples of two murderers who were diagnosed as schizophrenic.
In November of 1993 Robert Clive Napper got into Samantha Bisset’s apartment in South-East London using some excuse, killed her by stabbing her in the throat and chest a couple of times and then moved her to the living room to mutilate her in a way that was eerily reminiscent to what JtR did to his victims.
About half a year after this murder he was arrested. Napper worked at a plastic factory and lived in the neighbourhood. He seemed to have done well at school although he had had a childhood filled with misery. He’d eventually got a diploma that qualified him to work in the hotel and catering industry. After that he had had all kinds of jobs and had never been without one. (Ex-) colleagues told the police that Napper was accurate and worked fairly hard.
His apartment was quite clean and tidy. Neighbours told the police that he was known to make long walks and afterwards clean his shoes. It turned out that he had watched Bisset’s apartment on several occasions before finally killing and mutilating her.
The way the man had gained entrance to the apartment and the fact that he had remained there at least an hour without leaving many traces pointed to a man in control of himself and the situation. This also indicated that he calculated his risks carefully and that his self-preservation was important to him.
Paul Britton, the forensic psychologist that was involved in the case as a profiler, had formed the opinion that the murderer was paranoid. Whether it was schizophrenia or something similar, he couldn’t tell.
Britton was present at at least some of the interviews by the police and at those instances Napper behaved calmly and confidently. Before he went to court he was examined by 5 psychologists and they were of the opinion that Napper suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He’s now still being detained at Broadmoor and is being mentioned in connection with a murder that bears similarities to Tabram’s murder.
Another example would be William ‘the Mutilator’ MacDonald, who killed and mutilated male derelicts in Sydney, Australia, during the 1960’s. Here’s a little piece about him taken from the Crime Library:
“MacDonald offered Greenfield, a homeless, unemployed blacksmith, a drink from his bottle and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the pretext that he had more bottles in his bag. But there was more than beer in the bag. MacDonald had bought a brand new, long-bladed, razor sharp knife especially for the occasion.
MacDonald and Greenfield chatted away as they shared another bottle of beer on the half hour walk to the Domain, where they settled into a secluded corner. The need to kill Alfred Greenfield had by now become overwhelming but MacDonald controlled his urge until the man had drunk all of the beer and had fallen asleep on the grass. William MacDonald removed the knife from its sheath as he knelt over the sleeping derelict. He brought it down swiftly and buried the blade deep into his victim's neck. He lifted and plunged the knife again and again until Alfred Greenfield lay still. The ferocity of the attack had severed the arteries in Greenfield’s neck. Blood was everywhere but his killer had come prepared. He had brought a light plastic raincoat in his bag and had put it on before he attacked the unsuspecting Greenfield.
The Mutilator removed his victim’s trousers and underpants, lifted the testicles and penis and sliced them off at the scrotum with his knife. The Mutilator then threw Alfred Greenfield’s genitals into the harbor, wrapped his knife in his raincoat, put it in his bag and walked home.
The Mutilator stopped along the way and washed his hands and face under a tap. Nobody seemed to have noticed him as he walked home on that showery, dark night. If they did, they didn't remember him.”
Even long before he ever killed anyone MacDonald was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
So, David, these cases show that we wouldn’t necessarily find indications of deluded or irrational thought patterns at the crime scenes at all; no shouting, no flinging of internal organs about, no jittery behaviour either beforehand, during or while walking away.
All the best,
Frank
"There's gotta be a lot of reasons why I shouldn't shoot you, but right now I can't think of one."
- Clint Eastwood, in 'The Rookie' (1990)
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Frank van Oploo
Chief Inspector
Username: Franko
Post Number: 711
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 5:02 pm: |
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Hi David,
“The evidence is the evidence. He was trying to open up Nichols’ pelvis ventrally, which is what he also did to Chapman and Eddowes.”
“If he takes the uterus from Eddowes after a ventral entry, and he takes it from Chapman after the same, then what are we to think he was doing attempting to enter Nichols’s uterus ventrally?”
The evidence is that there was one deep wound on Nichols’ left side, there were 3 or 4 cuts on her right side running downwards and there were several incisions scattered across the abdomen. None of these wounds seem to have been connected to one another. This certainly wasn’t the case with Eddowes, who was cut open with only one very long incision.
If JtR quickly and efficiently wanted to open her up with a view of taking her uterus out and with him, why didn’t he make one (longer) circular cut or 4 in the form of a square that would enable him to do just that instead of several separate smaller cuts that apparently didn’t? That would not have taken more time.
Now, I’m not saying his aim wasn’t to eventually open her up and take whatever organ out and away with him, but, unlike in the other cases, he at least doesn’t seem to have been very to-the-point about it in Nichols' case.
All the best,
Frank
"There's gotta be a lot of reasons why I shouldn't shoot you, but right now I can't think of one."
- Clint Eastwood, in 'The Rookie' (1990)
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Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1986
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 9:48 am: |
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Hi Rodney,
You wrote:
I can see most of your points here, and maybe Caz has not entirely practiced what she preaches, as Monty puts it.
I don't get this. I make a comment about some highly personal insults with sexual connotations that appeared here under the guise of 'fun'. And three other posters suggest that I'm not practising what I preach. I sent private messages to the other two, saying that I don't recall using any highly personal insults, with or without sexual connotations (even when defending myself against people who do so regularly and without restraint). But I have yet to hear from either of them. Perhaps they are still searching for examples, but an explanation would have been nice.
Love,
Caz
X |
Jennifer Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 2785
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 10:05 am: |
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For gods sake people!
Me and Caz have our differences I'm sure, but let me just say this Caz was right in the first place about the sexual connotations (whatever we might think about the people in question, its not appropriate). I cannot recall Caz employing such methods.
As for the rest of it, i will shut up and hope we get back to the topic of this thread before i die!
Jenni |
Ally
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Ally
Post Number: 1007
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 6:46 pm: |
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Caz,
What I specifically replied to was this statement:
"Sometimes I could swear some posters see an entirely different set of rules at the top of their preview posts to the rest of us. "
Actually the rules at the top of the posts don't say anything at all about sexual connotations. It says don't post insults. You do post insults, they may not be sexual but they are insults. You are not pure.
What I replied was people choose when to follow the rules just as you yourself do. You break the rules as well. So no, you don't practice what you preach.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1993
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 8:09 am: |
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Hi Ally,
A quick reminder for all of us may be in order then.
...you DO have to retain a certain level of decorum if you want to remain as a poster on this site. Personal insults of any kind, direct or implied, aimed toward any other user of this forum, are strictly prohibited. Users who repeatedly post such comments will have their posting privileges revoked - PERMANENTLY.
Do you seriously see me as someone who goes out to break this particular rule? I tread on egg-shells to stop myself replying in kind to some of the worst offenders, because I'm human and it's often tempting to give as much as you get.
So if the odd one has slipped through and offended anyone, I'm sorry, but no one told me at the time. And that, frankly, is hard to believe, considering how many critics I've earned myself over the years, who don't miss a chance to have another go. And yes - I know I often ask for it. 
Love,
Caz
X |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2358
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 5:45 pm: |
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I recommend two gins and tonics, then fresh passion fruit and guava, with the pips and skin, just in case you are murdered, a splash of fresh lime and then blindfold yourselves and pour Mountgay rum in, sprig of mint, crushed ice in and around the glass which has to be in the freezer for an hour first... then you drink it, and get all sort of reflective, and love all the human race, even Ally, and even Caz.
Lovely people.
Just need to chill a bit.
If you ever need a good barmaid, give me a call. |
Frank van Oploo
Chief Inspector
Username: Franko
Post Number: 714
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 7:46 pm: |
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But you'd drink all the goodies yourself, AP...
"There's gotta be a lot of reasons why I shouldn't shoot you, but right now I can't think of one."
- Clint Eastwood, in 'The Rookie' (1990)
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Sir Robert Anderson
Chief Inspector
Username: Sirrobert
Post Number: 509
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 7:55 pm: |
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"If you ever need a good barmaid, give me a call."
I'm kinda thinking of you as a Borgata Babe, A.P.
Sir Robert
'Tempus Omnia Revelat'
SirRobertAnderson@gmail.com
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2359
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 6:51 pm: |
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Frank, I would certainly do my best.
I hope, Sir Robert, that you are not thinking of the following quote from CNN when you refer to my good self?
'The Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa warned its female servers, also known as "Borgata Babes," that they could be suspended from their job if they fail to maintain their sexy figures.
The company told CNN/Money Friday that the new policy applies to male and female waiter and waitresses who gain more than 7 percent of their body weight.'
For I am as thin as gin. |
Sir Robert Anderson
Chief Inspector
Username: Sirrobert
Post Number: 511
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 6:58 pm: |
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"I hope, Sir Robert, that you are not thinking of the following quote from CNN when you refer to my good self? "
Why, yes, I was, AP. Please allow me my reveries. Sorta like the Ten Bells for the 21st century...
Sir Robert
'Tempus Omnia Revelat'
SirRobertAnderson@gmail.com
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2362
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 7:57 pm: |
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Rest assured, Sir Robert, that the only time anyone ever gets 7 percent off my body weight is when they manage to snatch the brandy bottle out of my hand.
Then I knock them for Ten Bells into the 21st century.
Your reveries are always of utmost enjoyment. |
Ms C
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 6:03 am: |
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Hmm - modern psychiatric assessment for many reasons is a far from exact science, though clinicians who undertake it are naturally not disposed to readily admit that (or sometimes even acknowledge the fact to themselves).
A diagnosis/assessment of an offender's mental state relies heavily on the information that individual 'shares' with the clinician as to his subjective mental experience. This information may or may not be true, and how much credence a psychiatrist places on the information depends on how convincincingly it is presented, and his own personality - some are more easily persuaded to hand out labels than others. I have known psychiatrists who merely need two or three of the right buttons pushed to come back emphatically with a diagnosis that an individual is psychotic, though none of their other behaviour would suggest that. Couple this with the involvement of the legal process (when individuals develop a strong vested interest in achieving a particular diagnosis) and the judgement can be very complex. For example, the fact that an offender may have said he/she intends to 'fool' a psychiatrist into believing they are suffering from a serious mental illness like schizophrenia will make a clinician more wary of offering such a diagnosis, but such a stated intention would not necessarily rule out that they are genuinely schizophrenic or otherwise suffering psychotic symptoms (Peter Sutcliffe I believe was an instance where something of this nature was the case, though I am not implying any judgement as to how genuine his 'voices' actually were).
Moreover, all these diagnoses are ultimately atificial constructs we try to match individual pesonalities and behaviours to. That doesn't make them invalid (any more than a weather forecast is), but you have to bear in mind we are dealing with paradigms that are slippery, shifting and constantly evolving/ being refined. I say this only because it doesn't hurt to remember that when we begin citing text-book definitions and classification systems for mental disorder
Also, I remember a lecturer of mine saying years ago that in his experience individuals presenting with one clear and apparent disorder are only rarely considered to be candidates and assessed for other secondary ones. Some conditions may mask others, some symptoms overlap, but he felt that though statistically you might expect the incidence of say paranoid schizophrenia to be the same amongst individuals with personality disorders (and vice versa) as amongst the general population (unless there is some 'protective' mechanism at work we as yet don't understand), multiple diagnoses are not as common as you'd expect.
My two cents (for what it's worth) - Klowsowski reads to me like a lot of 'psychopaths' I have had dealings with. As for the perpetrator/s of the 4/5/6+ crimes variously attributed to JTR: with only the disputed results of his 'handiwork' to go on and no personal background information, any kind of speculation is fairly meaningless, beyond stating the obvious :-
That psychotic people's thought processes can be distorted in ways that either impairs their perception of 'right & wrong' or makes them believe themselves not to be bound by the same rules as 'ordinary' folk;
that individuals in acute psychotic states behave noticeably erratically and would have difficulty 'holding it together' in the face of scutiny, but that people (apparently like the two cases Mr Van Oploo cites) whose psychosis is active but at a less acute level can do so ;
that psychopaths can be very good at covering their tracks, often for long periods of time;
they find 'normal bonding'and attachment with others problematic;
they lack the human empathy and moral 'brakes' that most of us are blessed with, and for that reason may be liable to act out violent and destructive fantasies if they have them.
So, the SK who committed at least the 'core' of these crimes probably suffered from a personality disorder and/or psychosis of some type. I know - it's hardly earth shattering stuff;-)
Cate |
Rodney Peters
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 12:10 pm: |
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Hello Caz.
I have re-read your posts, and as a result, would you please accept my apologies for misunderstanding you.
I was so incensed by the totally un-called for "sexual" comments made by Mr.Wescott to Mr.Radka & Scott Nelson, and as a result, misread your comments.
With blushes.
ROD |
Melissa Turcios
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 2:22 am: |
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Hey all, ^_^;;
Goodness! I'm sad to see that all of my sources are woefully outdated. ...but I'm also relieved that we're back on topic.
Dan- did Rumbelow really have no proof to support his Pedachenko/Klosowski theory? I mean, in his book it's not really airtight, but the Levisohnn quotes do match up with Dr. Williams'. I don't know.
All of this fact-checking, you'd think witnesses and writers were trying to elude the truth.... ::sigh::
'Night! |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 2004
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 7:49 am: |
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Hi Cate,
Interesting post. I think that while, as you say, psychopaths find normal bonding problematic and lack human empathy and moral brakes, what makes the intelligent ones even more dangerous is that they are good mimics, and can pretend to possess the normal gamut of emotions and sensitivity, and consideration for their fellow man. This means that it is at least possible for some to have and maintain relationships at home and work with no one being any the wiser.
Aware that his mask may slip under certain circumstances, the 'sociable' psychopath is likely, IMHO, to organise things so he can get periods of total privacy, when he can switch off the act and be himself, without awkward questions being asked.
Love,
Caz
X |
Ms C
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 10:39 am: |
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Yes Caz, I think that's very true - and that psychopaths are also quite good at homing in on people that will tolerate a certain degree of 'semi-detachededness' within a marriage or partnership that will give them that space.
This would include, for example, those who possibly have underlying psychological difficulties themselves (again, Sonia Sutcliffe comes to mind) and are willing or only able to sustain relatively shallow emotional ties. The social stability/ respectability that having a home, and perhaps spousal status confers, seems to make the lack of what seems like real emotional intimacy worthwhile for them. The same is true of partners who lack the sense of self esteem or confidence to break what can be very abusive relationships with controlling and distant 'petty tyrants'- the 'stand by your man' ethic apparently remains stronger amongst these women than in the the community at large nowadays, and more as it would have been in Klosowski and Maybrick's day perhaps.
Having said all that though, I do find the number of apparently normal, independent and sensible women who are so regularly taken in (if only for a temporary period) by a psychopathic individual's 'charm' to the point at which they will hand over savings and control of important areas of their lives disconcerting. A comment I have heard several times is that this man 'really listened' to them in a way most men don't in their experience. The 'sociable' psychopath (excellent description) indeed often appears to have a rare skill in sussing out needy areas in other peoples emotional makeup, and derives a real pleasure in manipulating a specific response from them, not just because it is useful or gratifying to have that person's affection, but from the feeling of power they get from what they see as their 'cleverness' in doing so. I have wondered if Klosowski's need to serially 'change' wives in part arose from a craving for that 'buzz' yet again.
Cate |
D. M. R.
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Sunday, August 14, 2005 - 6:29 pm: |
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Hello Ms C,
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I hope we can have a reasonable dialogue concerning psychiatric evaluation of the case evidence. I have excerpted salient passages of your excellent remarks below.
You wrote:
1. “A diagnosis/assessment of an offender's mental state relies heavily on the information that individual 'shares' with the clinician as to his subjective mental experience. This information may or may not be true, and how much credence a psychiatrist places on the information depends on how convincincingly it is presented, and his own personality - some are more easily persuaded to hand out labels than others...”
>>The way I see it, working on the Whitechapel murders is simply not done in a clinical psychiatric situation. In discussing the case evidence and proposing a solution, we are not clinicians sitting across a table from a patient making a diagnosis of his subjective mental experience. How diagnoses happen in the clinical situation has little or nothing to do with reasonably determining what kind of psychiatric problem the Whitechapel murderer may have had, despite that the clinical situation may be a part of our personal experience, and however much we may wish to think it important and valuable, or that it may be directly extended into the casework situation in a commonsense, one-for-one manner. In contradistinction, in working on the Whitechapel murders we need to develop a sophisticated methodology appropriate to context to overcome our own personal relativism. Further, we are incapable of obtaining a clinical diagnosis of the perpetrator in any event—we don’t have him available to interview. But that doesn’t mean we can’t develop an adequate comprehension of his psychology from his actions as documented in the case evidence, with reference to psychiatric texts and case histories. This has frequently been done by psychiatrists with respect to historical figures they were unable to interview, but of whom they felt they had sufficient historical personal information. For one example, Dr. David Thoreson Lykken offers an interpretive analysis of the life of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, especially concerning his relationship with his wife Ladybird, concluding he had likely been a psychopath. (Granted Lykken had biographical information about Johnson, and we don’t for JtR.) It seems to me that Ripperology is mostly composed of a lot of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, and for each, butchering, baking, and candlestick making, respectively, seems right as the center of Ripperology because it is the center of their own worlds. Everyone feels called upon and delighted to lend his or her own special talents to the joint, herd-like project of once and for all preventing JtR’s escape. Thus when working on the Whitechapel murders we often find common sense rearing its head as the adversary of intellectual freedom.
2. “I have known psychiatrists who merely need two or three of the right buttons pushed to come back emphatically with a diagnosis that an individual is psychotic, though none of their other behaviour would suggest that. Couple this with the involvement of the legal process (when individuals develop a strong vested interest in achieving a particular diagnosis) and the judgement can be very complex. For example, the fact that an offender may have said he/she intends to 'fool' a psychiatrist into believing they are suffering from a serious mental illness like schizophrenia will make a clinician more wary of offering such a diagnosis, but such a stated intention would not necessarily rule out that they are genuinely schizophrenic or otherwise suffering psychotic symptoms…”
>>I can’t see what these situations have to do with Ripperology, Ms C. We are attempting no diagnosis of a live interviewee in Ripperology. We do not know what the behavior of the Whitechapel murderer was beyond the empirical case evidence. Nobody has a vested interest anywhere. In fact there is no patient-subject. There is nothing political about the matter. There are no legal implications involved. No psychiatrist is functioning in his or her professional capacity. None of the problems you mention are problems the Ripperologist has.
3. “Moreover, all these diagnoses are ultimately atificial constructs we try to match individual pesonalities and behaviours to. That doesn't make them invalid (any more than a weather forecast is), but you have to bear in mind we are dealing with paradigms that are slippery, shifting and constantly evolving/ being refined. I say this only because it doesn't hurt to remember that when we begin citing text-book definitions and classification systems for mental disorder {Ms C’s passage breaks off here.}”
>>As best as I can determine, what you are saying in the above passage is that textbook psychiatric definitions don’t necessarily apply to particular individuals in a one-for-one manner. A particular patient-subject may have part of one disorder and part of another, and thus we’d have to study him or her very thoroughly to determine exactly how to categorize. And since we don’t have the Whitechapel murderer personally available to study, therefore categorization of his problem would be even more difficult, and we’d have to be especially wary of applying textbook definitions to him. Is this your basic position, Ms C? The way I interpret you, however, you seem to be insisting on clinical criteria to diagnose, you want to simply extend your personal experiences into Ripperology, with all your own expectations of how diagnosis works intact. When you find it won’t work, you just shrug your shoulders and offer the blanket conclusion that we just can’t know much about the psychology of the Whitechapel murderer. I disagree with this position. It is possibly but not necessarily true that he had a particular psychiatric disorder we’d absolutely have to see him to ascertain. If he had a combination of psychopathy and paranoid schizophrenia, or perhaps an extremely sadistic mother leading to a peculiar general psychosis stemming from fear and related compensation regarding maternal authority, then we’d have to see him. If on the other hand he were just a psychopath, we probably wouldn’t. Since one of the characteristics of psychopathy is the inability to be much different from other psychopaths, we should be able to draw general conclusions from the referent group of all psychopaths, and apply them interactively to an analysis of the case evidence. This might give us an enlightened view, or a better cause-and-effect understanding of the empirical evidence, assuming the evidence is extensive enough. I’m sincerely interested in what you think of this strategy.
4. “Also, I remember a lecturer of mine saying years ago that in his experience individuals presenting with one clear and apparent disorder are only rarely considered to be candidates and assessed for other secondary ones. Some conditions may mask others, some symptoms overlap, but he felt that though statistically you might expect the incidence of say paranoid schizophrenia to be the same amongst individuals with personality disorders (and vice versa) as amongst the general population (unless there is some 'protective' mechanism at work we as yet don't understand), multiple diagnoses are not as common as you'd expect.”
>>We can’t know personally if JtR had multiple psychiatric disorders, because we can’t know him at the species level. Analysis of the empirical case evidence is all we have to go on to get an idea of what his disorder or disorders may have been. I agree with your basic thought, though—if JtR were psychiatrically very complex, it would be hard to determine this complexity from the case evidence, and apply it back to the case evidence to determine cause-and-effect relationships within it.
5. “…As for the perpetrator/s of the 4/5/6+ crimes variously attributed to JTR: with only the disputed results of his 'handiwork' to go on and no personal background information, any kind of speculation is fairly meaningless…”
>>The ‘results of his handiwork’ may not be so ‘disputable’ if we had a reasonable psychiatric hypothesis to go on. The evidence is complex, and it may include various relationships that remain hidden from ordinary sight.
I’d be very happy to continue this discussion with you if you wish, Ms C. Thank you for a refreshingly different approach.
David
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 2021
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 9:33 am: |
|
Hi All,
I hadn't really thought about it much before, but I suppose there is one very good reason why Jack remains so elusive. 'Jack' only really existed for the relatively brief duration of each crime he committed. Signs were left for the world to know about it, but by then everyone was looking for a man who managed to exist for 99.9% of the time as a non-murdering member of society.
Jack wasn't being Jack between crimes. So short of catching him in character and costume, it would have been one hell of a job to identify him correctly from a hotchpotch of men who were judged to live the sort of life and do the kind of things that, in the opinion of one or other contemporary commentator, Jack did - presumably when he wasn't actually up to his armpits in dead prostitute.
But how could they have begun to make any such comparison, since the real 'Jack' didn't exist for any of them beyond this picture of him and their - quite individual - imaginations?
Love,
Caz
X
(Message edited by caz on August 16, 2005) |
Ms C
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 9:35 am: |
|
Hi David
Thank you for your very detailed and interesting response. I indeed find the discussion fscinating. And consequently I'm about to bore the pants off you at great and tedious length;-)
The way I see it, working on the Whitechapel murders is simply not done in a clinical psychiatric situation. In discussing the case evidence and proposing a solution, we are not clinicians sitting across a table from a patient making a diagnosis of his subjective mental experience. How diagnoses happen in the clinical situation has little or nothing to do with reasonably determining what kind of psychiatric problem the Whitechapel murderer may have had...
The way I interpret you, however, you seem to be insisting on clinical criteria to diagnose, you want to simply extend your personal experiences into Ripperology, with all your own expectations of how diagnosis works intact
No, I don't do either of those things, I think. I absolutely agree with your first point here. You cannot 'clinically assess' a subject when his identity and personal history are completely unknown, and without direct clinical access to him; he is in no sense a 'patient'. I don't expect to extend my 'personal experiences into Ripperology' - what I would like to do is offer my personal experience of the limitations of the clinical process to counsel using individuals assessed under that process as sources of analogy and parallel - which is very commonly done (I do it myself)- with great care.
The points I was making about the 'vagaries' of clinical assesment were in regard to those 'modern' cases. Apologies, as I obviously didn't make that clear. When we speculate as to the psychological makeup of the Whitechapel killler, we are frequently find ourselves arguing from cases that resemble those murders. I think that is entirely valid as a method, as long as you bear in mind that the diagnoses attached to known individuals who perpetrated similar murders might be flawed in themselves, for the reasons I suggested. We need to exercise caution because it bears on their potential reliablity as models. And if psychiatrists and other clinicians have problems making these diagnoses (and believe me they do) with access to live subjects, we should be doubly cautious when we try and use the same frameworks of understanding for aberrant behaviour of individuals unknown and long dead, based solely on surviving records of their crimes.
When you find it won’t work, you just shrug your shoulders and offer the blanket conclusion that we just can’t know much about the psychology of the Whitechapel murderer.
- No, but I don't think it hurts to veer towards the conservative in our assessment of what we can 'safely' deduce on the matter;-) In fact as I said, I think given the evidence it is pretty certain he was severely psycho-sexually disturbed, and either psychotic or psychopathic. I suspect he was more likely to be the latter, but I can't see any compelling evidence that rules out the former as a tenable hypothesis. Neither can I see any real indication that he might not have been (like I have a hunch - no more than that - that William MacDonald was) possibly both. I am just wary of drawing definitive conclusions on the matter from the evidence of the murders themselves.
It is possibly but not necessarily true that he had a particular psychiatric disorder we’d absolutely have to see him to ascertain. If he had a combination of psychopathy and paranoid schizophrenia, or perhaps an extremely sadistic mother leading to a peculiar general psychosis stemming from fear and related compensation regarding maternal authority, then we’d have to see him. If on the other hand he were just a psychopath, we probably wouldn’t. Since one of the characteristics of psychopathy is the inability to be much different from other psychopaths, we should be able to draw general conclusions from the referent group of all psychopaths, and apply them interactively to an analysis of the case evidence.
Well I have to say in my experience 'psychopathy' (as evidenced by real live pychopaths, not as written up in textbooks) is a continuum like any other; and the point at which it shades into other 'personality disorder' is often blurred. I have known a fair range of people designated as psychopaths - yes they have specific traits in common, but they also vary widely in the way their disorder manifests itself in behaviour, manner and mien. And I have to ask (I am intrigued) which type of elements in a crime/series of crimes (independent of any background knowledge or communication from the perpetrator) might indicate to you a straightforward case of psychopathy (allowing such a thing exists)? In general though, it seems to me your viewpoint is not dissimilar to my own here - we can draw broad conclusions as to certain aspects of the killers psychology, but making complex judgements is another matter. For that we need background detail and knowledge.
>>We can’t know personally if JtR had multiple psychiatric disorders, because we can’t know him at the species level. Analysis of the empirical case evidence is all we have to go on to get an idea of what his disorder or disorders may have been. I agree with your basic thought, though—if JtR were psychiatrically very complex, it would be hard to determine this complexity from the case evidence, and apply it back to the case evidence to determine cause-and-effect relationships within it.
You sum the difficulty up beautifully. In my experience, he wouldn't need to be psychiatrically 'very' complex - a degree of complexity is common in the mentally disturbed. As I say, when we try to define the nature of their disturbance, we are aiming at 'best-fit' with the classification systems we have, so the evidence of psychotic or psychopathic motivation we might see in the Whitechapel crimes (based on similarities with those 'known' psychotics or psychopaths) can only be tentatively identified.
This might give us an enlightened view, or a better cause-and-effect understanding of the empirical evidence, assuming the evidence is extensive enough. I’m sincerely interested in what you think of this strategy.
I think an interactive approach of this type is pretty much the only way we have to go. Given our ignorance of the killer himself, we are thrown back on building theories about him pieced together in a way something akin to both a jigsaw and a house of cards - we build on the surmises we have already made, and then again (if the theory seems to hang together to our satisfaction in a way we find plausible and persuasive) draw further layers of inference from those new conclusions. At each stage we test our theory by offering what we have created up to see if it matches with all the evidence, factors and circumstances as we know them. Where they don't we either tweak and adjust until they do, or if necessary make more radical reassessments of our earlier ideas, aiming for 'best-fit' each time. Again as a method I think this is valid and viable, though the temptation is of course to overreach. I catch myself doing it all the time, and doubtless just as often fail to spot when I'm doing it. One of the major advantages of boards like this is other folk will help do that for you.
It seems to me that Ripperology is mostly composed of a lot of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, and for each, butchering, baking, and candlestick making, respectively, seems right as the center of Ripperology because it is the center of their own worlds. Everyone feels called upon and delighted to lend his or her own special talents to the joint, herd-like project of once and for all preventing JtR’s escape. Thus when working on the Whitechapel murders we often find common sense rearing its head as the adversary of intellectual freedom.
Yes, that rings true, which is a pity, because the breadth and depth of expertise and experience from that huge variety of input ought to be (and at it's best is) one of the great strengths of 'Ripperology'.
I like your point that "The ‘results of his handiwork’ may not be so ‘disputable’ if we had a reasonable psychiatric hypothesis to go on. The evidence is complex, and it may include various relationships that remain hidden from ordinary sight." Indeed that 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' is precisely what we are seeking when we engage in this process - an overall theory that accommodates what we know of the Whitechapel cases and what we know of the criminal and violent mind.
It's darn tricky to achieve though because the argument so easily becomes circular - How do you build a profile of the killer and identify his pattern? From the evidence of the crimes. Which crimes? The ones that fit the pattern and profile of the killer. Another big problem is that the fact we have found a 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' that will fit the facts as we know them doesn't make it the true one. You have to keep your mind open, with so many variables at work, to other ones that might be equally as plausible.
Method and signature are notoriously difficult to separate when an investigation into serial killings is underway. Similarly, in the case of JtR, the issue of the 'maternal' appearance of his victims for example is hard to determine - the three pretty much unchallenged cases were strikingly of this type (and so was Tabram and other potential victim 'candidates' like Carrie Brown). Stride and Kelly don't fit that criteria (or others) so well. This might be contributary 'evidence' of what though? That Stride and Kelly weren't victims? That Tabram/Brown was? Or if on balance of other factors one wants to include Stride and/or Kelly as JtR victims, that the age and lack of personal charms of the others was either co-incidental, or a characteristic associated with their real appeal, which was their availability and vulnerability. That their 'maternal' appearance maybe connected to the killers method indirectly, but is not part of his signature. All of these positions are regularly argued on these boards, and depending on the conclusion favoured, other inferences as to the killer's psychological make-up drawn or not. I don't think the evidence points clearly in one direction or another, so I would attempt to do what seems to me honest - hold all those balls in the air as theories, think through the implications for other areas of the case if each scenario were the case, see if that fits or chimes with other features/facts we know, bear in mind that is only as good as that evidence and might need to be revised if the evidence proves shaky - and see what light new discoveries or insights into the case brings.
This calls for great subtlety and flexibility in approach. We balance off what we know of other killers, their psychology, of patterning in serial killing in general, of the minutiae and details of these killings, of Victorian police methods, of the personalities of the policemen themselves, the victims, suspects, the geography and social history of the East End and its culture, and what we know of rage/resentment/anger/disgust/desire/jealousy/cruelty/remorse etc in our own experience. And in the face of the enormous variety of answers we observe other very able minds to have reached on the same basis, we keep sifting and reasoning and trying.
Of course as we keep at the process we also need to bear in mind always the limitations and frailties of each of those elements, and keep a leash on our imagination and egos. It's very easy to get carried away with a particular lead or train of thought, and become entrenched in our own ideas and pet theories. But then maybe that's also part of the fascination of Ripperology - and it certainly makes for some rigorous debates to help test them out;-)
Best
Cate
|
Ms C
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 9:18 am: |
|
Hi David
Thank you for your very detailed and interesting response. I indeed find the discussion fscinating. And consequently I'm about to bore the pants off you at great and tedious length;-)
The way I see it, working on the Whitechapel murders is simply not done in a clinical psychiatric situation. In discussing the case evidence and proposing a solution, we are not clinicians sitting across a table from a patient making a diagnosis of his subjective mental experience. How diagnoses happen in the clinical situation has little or nothing to do with reasonably determining what kind of psychiatric problem the Whitechapel murderer may have had...
The way I interpret you, however, you seem to be insisting on clinical criteria to diagnose, you want to simply extend your personal experiences into Ripperology, with all your own expectations of how diagnosis works intact
No, I don't do either of those things, I think. I absolutely agree with your first point here. You cannot 'clinically assess' a subject when his identity and personal history are completely unknown, and without direct clinical access to him; he is in no sense a 'patient'. I don't expect to extend my 'personal experiences into Ripperology' - what I would like to do is offer my personal experience of the limitations of the clinical process to counsel using individuals assessed under that process as sources of analogy and parallel - which is very commonly done (I do it myself)- with great care.
The points I was making about the 'vagaries' of clinical assesment were in regard to those 'modern' cases. Apologies, as I obviously didn't make that clear. When we speculate as to the psychological makeup of the Whitechapel killler, we are frequently find ourselves arguing from cases that resemble those murders. I think that is entirely valid as a method, as long as you bear in mind that the diagnoses attached to known individuals who perpetrated similar murders might be flawed in themselves, for the reasons I suggested. We need to exercise caution because it bears on their potential reliablity as models. And if psychiatrists and other clinicians have problems making these diagnoses (and believe me they do) with access to live subjects, we should be doubly cautious when we try and use the same frameworks of understanding for aberrant behaviour of individuals unknown and long dead, based solely on surviving records of their crimes.
When you find it won’t work, you just shrug your shoulders and offer the blanket conclusion that we just can’t know much about the psychology of the Whitechapel murderer.
- No, but I don't think it hurts to veer towards the conservative in our assessment of what we can 'safely' deduce on the matter;-) In fact as I said, I think given the evidence it is pretty certain he was severely psycho-sexually disturbed, and either psychotic or psychopathic. I suspect he was more likely to be the latter, but I can't see any compelling evidence that rules out the former as a tenable hypothesis. Neither can I see any real indication that he might not have been (like I have a hunch - no more than that - that William MacDonald was) possibly both. I am just wary of drawing definitive conclusions on the matter from the evidence of the murders themselves.
It is possibly but not necessarily true that he had a particular psychiatric disorder we’d absolutely have to see him to ascertain. If he had a combination of psychopathy and paranoid schizophrenia, or perhaps an extremely sadistic mother leading to a peculiar general psychosis stemming from fear and related compensation regarding maternal authority, then we’d have to see him. If on the other hand he were just a psychopath, we probably wouldn’t. Since one of the characteristics of psychopathy is the inability to be much different from other psychopaths, we should be able to draw general conclusions from the referent group of all psychopaths, and apply them interactively to an analysis of the case evidence.
Well I have to say in my experience 'psychopathy' (as evidenced by real live pychopaths, not as written up in textbooks) is a continuum like any other; and the point at which it shades into other 'personality disorder' is often blurred. I have known a fair range of people designated as psychopaths - yes they have specific traits in common, but they also vary widely in the way their disorder manifests itself in behaviour, manner and mien. And I have to ask (I am intrigued) which type of elements in a crime/series of crimes (independent of any background knowledge or communication from the perpetrator) might indicate to you a straightforward case of psychopathy (allowing such a thing exists)? In general though, it seems to me your viewpoint is not dissimilar to my own here - we can draw broad conclusions as to certain aspects of the killers psychology, but making complex judgements is another matter. For that we need background detail and knowledge.
>>We can’t know personally if JtR had multiple psychiatric disorders, because we can’t know him at the species level. Analysis of the empirical case evidence is all we have to go on to get an idea of what his disorder or disorders may have been. I agree with your basic thought, though—if JtR were psychiatrically very complex, it would be hard to determine this complexity from the case evidence, and apply it back to the case evidence to determine cause-and-effect relationships within it.
You sum the difficulty up beautifully. In my experience, he wouldn't need to be psychiatrically 'very' complex - a degree of complexity is common in the mentally disturbed. As I say, when we try to define the nature of their disturbance, we are aiming at 'best-fit' with the classification systems we have, so the evidence of psychotic or psychopathic motivation we might see in the Whitechapel crimes (based on similarities with those 'known' psychotics or psychopaths) can only be tentatively identified.
This might give us an enlightened view, or a better cause-and-effect understanding of the empirical evidence, assuming the evidence is extensive enough. I’m sincerely interested in what you think of this strategy.
I think an interactive approach of this type is pretty much the only way we have to go. Given our ignorance of the killer himself, we are thrown back on building theories about him pieced together in a way something akin to both a jigsaw and a house of cards - we build on the surmises we have already made, and then again (if the theory seems to hang together to our satisfaction in a way we find plausible and persuasive) draw further layers of inference from those new conclusions. At each stage we test our theory by offering what we have created up to see if it matches with all the evidence, factors and circumstances as we know them. Where they don't we either tweak and adjust until they do, or if necessary make more radical reassessments of our earlier ideas, aiming for 'best-fit' each time. Again as a method I think this is valid and viable, though the temptation is of course to overreach. I catch myself doing it all the time, and doubtless just as often fail to spot when I'm doing it. One of the major advantages of boards like this is other folk will help do that for you.
It seems to me that Ripperology is mostly composed of a lot of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, and for each, butchering, baking, and candlestick making, respectively, seems right as the center of Ripperology because it is the center of their own worlds. Everyone feels called upon and delighted to lend his or her own special talents to the joint, herd-like project of once and for all preventing JtR’s escape. Thus when working on the Whitechapel murders we often find common sense rearing its head as the adversary of intellectual freedom.
Yes, that rings true, which is a pity, because the breadth and depth of expertise and experience from that huge variety of input ought to be (and at it's best is) one of the great strengths of 'Ripperology'.
I like your point that "The ‘results of his handiwork’ may not be so ‘disputable’ if we had a reasonable psychiatric hypothesis to go on. The evidence is complex, and it may include various relationships that remain hidden from ordinary sight." Indeed that 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' is precisely what we are seeking when we engage in this process - an overall theory that accommodates what we know of the Whitechapel cases and what we know of the criminal and violent mind.
It's darn tricky to achieve though because the argument so easily becomes circular - How do you build a profile of the killer and identify his pattern? From the evidence of the crimes. Which crimes? The ones that fit the pattern and profile of the killer. Another big problem is that the fact we have found a 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' that will fit the facts as we know them doesn't make it the true one. You have to keep your mind open, with so many variables at work, to other ones that might be equally as plausible.
Method and signature are notoriously difficult to separate when an investigation into serial killings is underway. Similarly, in the case of JtR, the issue of the 'maternal' appearance of his victims for example is hard to determine - the three pretty much unchallenged cases were strikingly of this type (and so was Tabram and other potential victim 'candidates' like Carrie Brown). Stride and Kelly don't fit that criteria (or others) so well. This might be contributary 'evidence' of what though? That Stride and Kelly weren't victims? That Tabram/Brown was? Or if on balance of other factors one wants to include Stride and/or Kelly as JtR victims, that the age and lack of personal charms of the others was either co-incidental, or a characteristic associated with their real appeal, which was their availability and vulnerability. That their 'maternal' appearance maybe connected to the killers method indirectly, but is not part of his signature. All of these positions are regularly argued on these boards, and depending on the conclusion favoured, other inferences as to the killer's psychological make-up drawn or not. I don't think the evidence points clearly in one direction or another, so I would attempt to do what seems to me honest - hold all those balls in the air as theories, think through the implications for other areas of the case if each scenario were the case, see if that fits or chimes with other features/facts we know, bear in mind that is only as good as that evidence and might need to be revised if the evidence proves shaky - and see what light new discoveries or insights into the case brings.
This calls for great subtlety and flexibility in approach. We balance off what we know of other killers, their psychology, of patterning in serial killing in general, of the minutiae and details of these killings, of Victorian police methods, of the personalities of the policemen themselves, the victims, suspects, the geography and social history of the East End and its culture, and what we know of rage/resentment/anger/disgust/desire/jealousy/cruelty/remorse etc in our own experience. And in the face of the enormous variety of answers we observe other very able minds to have reached on the same basis, we keep sifting and reasoning and trying.
Of course as we keep at the process we also need to bear in mind always the limitations and frailties of each of those elements, and keep a leash on our imagination and egos. It's very easy to get carried away with a particular lead or train of thought, and become entrenched in our own ideas and pet theories. But then maybe that's also part of the fascination of Ripperology - and it certainly makes for some rigorous debates to help test them out;-)
Best
Cate
|
Frank van Oploo
Chief Inspector
Username: Franko
Post Number: 732
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 20, 2005 - 9:19 am: |
|
Hi Cate,
"In fact as I said, I think given the evidence it is pretty certain he was severely psycho-sexually disturbed, and either psychotic or psychopathic. I suspect he was more likely to be the latter, but I can't see any compelling evidence that rules out the former as a tenable hypothesis."
Could elaborate on why you suspect he was more likely to be psychopathic (versus not too severely paranoid/paranoid schizophrenic)?
Thanks!
Frank
"There's gotta be a lot of reasons why I shouldn't shoot you, but right now I can't think of one."
- Clint Eastwood, in 'The Rookie' (1990)
|
David Radka
Police Constable
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 1
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 20, 2005 - 10:54 pm: |
|
1. Mr. Radka wrote: “But if an insane person were to do generally what JtR did, we would expect to find indication of deluded or irrational thought patterns at the crime scenes, such as shouting, flinging internal organs about, jittery behavior either beforehand or while walking away, and so on.”
Mr. van Oploo responded: “This is a misconception about people and serial killers who are mentally ill. Not all of them have to act like raving lunatics, not all mentally ill serial killers are like Richard Trenton Chase or worse.”
>>I honestly don’t believe I have a misconception, Mr. van Oploo. I’d like to hear what you think upon further explanation by me. Generally speaking, I’m not forgetting about various empirical psychiatric cases concerning serial killers who may have combinations of pathological factors. I’m aware that certain insane people can control their behavior. I’m aware that certain insane people don’t lose control over their lives. Instead, I’m questioning whether the Whitechapel murder could conceivably have been one of them, based on the empirical case evidence. I believe I’m talking about something different than what you think I’m talking about, Mr. van Oploo. Let me set the context: Let’s assume that JtR had a psychosis, that he was insane. Therefore, the reason he commits the murders is because he has this psychosis. He cuts up Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes et al because he is being driven by delusions of some sort. Fine and dandy. But now let’s have a look at the nature of the evidence. We have a man who repeatedly takes fantastic risks to accomplish his murders. He’s mutilating just around the corner from scores of people. The whole city is looking for him, but he keeps killing semi-publicly anyway. When he kills Annie Chapman, two dozen people are just about to arise and look out their back windows right down on him, or even step over him to get to their privy. If he’s psychotic, then he’s irrationally bucking these odds because he’s psychotic. He may think he’s got a magic amulet that confers invisibility, or that he has the power to cloud minds by mesmerism, or he may be driven by such intense passions of murderous delusions that he just can’t stop himself despite some awareness of the risks. If he’s insane, then we must be seeing his insanity in the evidence, in that he murders in such a manner to indicate he’s lost control of his life. How can we consider a man who did what the Whitechapel murderer did not to have lost control of his life, whatever his psychiatric problem may have been? Whoever he was, this murderer had to have had a totally irrational concept of what was good for him, and if we posit that he were insane, then must we not also posit that this irrational concept must have been caused by his insanity? Follow me so far? Notice I haven’t said anything about specific types of insane people, I’ve just commented on the Whitechapel murderer in particular, hard by the evidence. Thus, of anyone who advances an account of the evidence that this murderer was insane, we can ask the question: “How could he have lost control of his life only selectively?” What accounts for the fact that signs of insanity appear only selectively in the evidence, related only to his decision to commit these murders in the manner he did? How was this insane person able to quite brightly coordinate police rounds, architectural features, diurnal and momentary schedules of hordes of people, and many other factors to enable his escape every time? If he’s lost control of his life sufficiently to do these murders at all, then how can we then think of him capable of such prudence in execution? Why no sounds from the murder scenes? Why no running up to the first policeman he sees following committing a crime, hoisting out his knife, and boasting of his deed? Losing control means losing control, we can’t have it both ways. Why are there no signs of his insane frenzy at the murder scenes? If he was driven by insane passions, where is the evidence that he flung internal organs about, rolled in his victim’s feces, changed his mind compulsively concerning what he was about, hooted or proceeded wildly in some other way? (Granted Tabram in being repeatedly stabbed may indicate something of frenzy, but she would have been his first victim, before he’d worked out his M.O. He may have rather just been fooling around with her body.) Why does he lay Mary Kelly’s organs and flesh neatly on the bed and night table? And reciprocally, if he’s rational enough to escape time after time, he must be able to measure what’s going to happen to him if he is caught. But then what is he doing committing these irrational crimes in the first place, at such an immeasurably high coefficient of risk?
2. “Here are two examples of two murderers who were diagnosed as schizophrenic. In November of 1993 Robert Clive Napper got into Samantha Bisset’s apartment in South-East London using some excuse, killed her by stabbing her in the throat and chest a couple of times and then moved her to the living room to mutilate her in a way that was eerily reminiscent to what JtR did to his victims. About half a year after this murder he was arrested. Napper worked at a plastic factory and lived in the neighbourhood. He seemed to have done well at school although he had had a childhood filled with misery. He’d eventually got a diploma that qualified him to work in the hotel and catering industry. After that he had had all kinds of jobs and had never been without one. (Ex-) colleagues told the police that Napper was accurate and worked fairly hard. His apartment was quite clean and tidy. Neighbours told the police that he was known to make long walks and afterwards clean his shoes. It turned out that he had watched Bisset’s apartment on several occasions before finally killing and mutilating her. The way the man had gained entrance to the apartment and the fact that he had remained there at least an hour without leaving many traces pointed to a man in control of himself and the situation. This also indicated that he calculated his risks carefully and that his self-preservation was important to him…”
>>What you are saying in the above is that a psychotic sexual serial murderer capable of mutilation like JtR might well be calm in the way he plans and carries out his crime. But Napper’s behaviors appear to me consistent, assuming he was a psychotic, whereas JtR’s seem inconsistent, assuming he was the same. Whatever was driving Napper to kill Bisset didn’t drive him far enough afield of prudence to do so in a manner in which he’d very likely be caught in situ, and this compares reasonably to his patience and tranquility at the crime scene. While Napper believes things that are not the case, this doesn’t prevent him from taking precautions adequate at least for the immediate present. Lots of psychotics are like that. But if JtR were a psychotic, whatever was driving him to kill was also making him do it in a manner extremely likely to get him caught. Why he thereupon wasn’t caught despite the risks throws our consideration of him as psychotic out of balance, it seems to me, because at the same time he’d have lost control of himself he’d also have to be committing himself to logical escape and other behavioral planning.
3. “Another example would be William ‘the Mutilator’ MacDonald, who killed and mutilated male derelicts in Sydney, Australia, during the 1960’s. Here’s a little piece about him taken from the Crime Library: “MacDonald offered Greenfield, a homeless, unemployed blacksmith, a drink from his bottle and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the pretext that he had more bottles in his bag. But there was more than beer in the bag. MacDonald had bought a brand new, long-bladed, razor sharp knife especially for the occasion. MacDonald and Greenfield chatted away as they shared another bottle of beer on the half hour walk to the Domain, where they settled into a secluded corner. The need to kill Alfred Greenfield had by now become overwhelming but MacDonald controlled his urge until the man had drunk all of the beer and had fallen asleep on the grass. William MacDonald removed the knife from its sheath as he knelt over the sleeping derelict. He brought it down swiftly and buried the blade deep into his victim's neck. He lifted and plunged the knife again and again until Alfred Greenfield lay still. The ferocity of the attack had severed the arteries in Greenfield’s neck. Blood was everywhere but his killer had come prepared. He had brought a light plastic raincoat in his bag and had put it on before he attacked the unsuspecting Greenfield. The Mutilator removed his victim’s trousers and underpants, lifted the testicles and penis and sliced them off at the scrotum with his knife. The Mutilator then threw Alfred Greenfield’s genitals into the harbor, wrapped his knife in his raincoat, put it in his bag and walked home. The Mutilator stopped along the way and washed his hands and face under a tap. Nobody seemed to have noticed him as he walked home on that showery, dark night. If they did, they didn't remember him.” Even long before he ever killed anyone MacDonald was diagnosed as schizophrenic.”
>>Here again, the perpetrator’s behaviors seem consistent for the sort of schizophrenic chap he was. If he were so insanely driven to kill Greenfield that he would do so immediately or in a high-risk locale, he likely would have been unable to calmly walk home unnoticed, washing his hands in a tap. But the passage clearly says “…the need to kill Alfred Greenfield had by now become overwhelming but Mac Donald controlled his urge until the man had drunk all the beer and fallen asleep on the grass.” MacDonald is exhibiting the same control and awareness of the likely consequences of his actions before the crime as after. He plans and executes calmly. This is different from JtR who, if psychotic, can’t stop himself from spending time killing and mutilating in astonishingly compromising places, but beyond that behaves prudently and thoughtfully.
4. “So, David, these cases show that we wouldn’t necessarily find indications of deluded or irrational thought patterns at the crime scenes at all; no shouting, no flinging of internal organs about, no jittery behaviour either beforehand, during or while walking away.”
>>It seems to me, Mr. van Oploo that the difference between us is that I speak of the case evidence within its own context, whereas you break contextual connection to append outside empirical information about various psychotic of schizophrenic people to your analysis. And this, it seems to me, is indicative of the main bane of Ripperology as I see it: over-reliance on the British empirical tradition. Since Napper and MacDonald can be empirically “experienced,” they seem apropos, but developing reasonable thought patterns out of the case evidence, because not all of them can be “experienced” (i.e., we don’t have JtR available for interview to determine what his psychiatric problem may have been) do not. Whereas I’ve trained myself to look within the case evidence for my questions, the traditional Ripperologist veers away from it, and seems to have little or no conscience about the matter.
Looked at logically, in context sensitive to the case, it seems to me that we have two serious alternatives for JtR’s psychiatric problem: (1) psychopathy (my thesis) and (2) tertiary syphilis (Martin Fido’s thesis.) I say this because these are the only two conditions I know of (and I’d love to hear from anyone who may know another one) where someone can be lost with respect to controlling his life but still be spot on with controlling his immediate behavior. With respect to the former, a psychopath can be so superficially engaged with life that he confidently fails to imagine or comprehend real dangers present to him while outwardly behaving entirely normally, and with respect to tertiary syphilis there is a brief period, lasting perhaps 1-3 months, occurring after the spirochaetes have eaten enough of the subject’s neural tissue to make real sanity no longer possible, but during which conventionalized thinking can briefly continue mostly unchanged. Concerning syphilis, imagine an old-fashioned vacuum tube radio. After it’s been operating for a while it’s built up enough impedance in its massive conducting materials to very briefly continue to play the radio station after the current is switched off. Think of the announcer’s voice as behavior, and the electrical current as sanity. If you switch the current off, you can still hear his voice for a few seconds before it too dies.
Now, I don’t mean to just drop these ideas on you and consider the matter finished. What I say is open to question, and I’d much appreciate hearing what you think. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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David Radka
Police Constable
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 2
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, August 20, 2005 - 10:57 pm: |
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1. Mr. Radka wrote: “The evidence is the evidence. He was trying to open up Nichols’ pelvis ventrally, which is what he also did to Chapman and Eddowes.” And…“If he takes the uterus from Eddowes after a ventral entry, and he takes it from Chapman after the same, then what are we to think he was doing attempting to enter Nichols’s pelvis ventrally?”
Mr. van Oploo responded: “The evidence is that there was one deep wound on Nichols’ left side, there were 3 or 4 cuts on her right side running downwards and there were several incisions scattered across the abdomen. None of these wounds seem to have been connected to one another. This certainly wasn’t the case with Eddowes, who was cut open with only one very long incision. If JtR quickly and efficiently wanted to open her up with a view of taking her uterus out and with him, why didn’t he make one (longer) circular cut or 4 in the form of a square that would enable him to do just that instead of several separate smaller cuts that apparently didn’t? That would not have taken more time.”
>>Evidence may be taken in the context of a whole. Your technique seems to want to take it instead disjointedly, as bits and pieces. I don’t believe there is any absolute way to reckon which methodology is better than the other. The A?R methodology, however, is fruitful. It produces by rational argument an explanation of all the case evidence taken as a whole, based on the empirical evidence of the case. The A?R account of the markings on Nichol’s abdomen are only “better” than the disjointed approach in this sense. With respect to what the specific contents of JtR’s mind were at the time he made those marks, your guess is as good as mine. I don’t attempt to determine why he didn’t immediately use what would be to our way of thinking a more practical or competent approach to hysterectomy under the circumstances. However I do note that the cuts were on the ventral pelvis, which is the same location where cuts were made in the two cases (Chapman and Eddowes) where the uterus was taken. He may have never taken out a uterus before, and just didn’t know how to approach the matter. A psychopath is more than capable of superficially believing he’s got all he needs to be successful in an act when he doesn’t. BTK is a good current example. Rader was honestly surprised how much pressure it takes to kill a human being by strangulation; his hands went numb the first time and he had to develop his strength by exercising them strenuously for later work. This is notwithstanding that he had strangled smaller beings like cats before. Rader revealed at his trial that he just didn’t know what he was doing in this respect at first, and this I think was because he does not have an adequate personal connection to the reality in which normal people live. In the same sense we ought not take JtR as a normal man so as to make it easier on ourselves to analyze his actions and motivations, because the evidence says he was far from a normal man.
2. “Now, I’m not saying his aim wasn’t to eventually open her up and take whatever organ out and away with him, but, unlike in the other cases, he at least doesn’t seem to have been very to-the-point about it in Nichols' case.”
>>I agree, he wasn’t very to- the-point in the case of Nichols’ hysterectomy. If he’d been more direct with Nichols but then not to-the-point in this respect with Eddowes, I’d have an entirely different position.
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 3962
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 2:39 am: |
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Hi David,
Welcome and congratulations to your registration.
I was a bit disappointed not to see a picture on your profile page, though.
"Thus, of anyone who advances an account of the evidence that this murderer was insane, we can ask the question: “How could he have lost control of his life only selectively?” What accounts for the fact that signs of insanity appear only selectively in the evidence, related only to his decision to commit these murders in the manner he did? How was this insane person able to quite brightly coordinate police rounds, architectural features, diurnal and momentary schedules of hordes of people, and many other factors to enable his escape every time? If he’s lost control of his life sufficiently to do these murders at all, then how can we then think of him capable of such prudence in execution? Why no sounds from the murder scenes? Why no running up to the first policeman he sees following committing a crime, hoisting out his knife, and boasting of his deed? Losing control means losing control, we can’t have it both ways."
No, actually, this is where you are wrong, and I think this is exactly the kind of arguing I believe Frank was objecting to.
An irrational, insane killer CAN actually display what is referred to as 'organized' traits along several steps in the process. We have some very illustrious examples of this. Jeffrey Dahmer was a rather disorganized character, apparently suffering from delusions and also with quite a dirty appearance, but still he managed to lure his victims to his apartment and commit several bizarre murders - to say the least - before the police got hold of him.
But an even better example is Hadden Clark - whom I have pointed at several times here - who was a disagnosed paranoid schizofrenic, but who in spite of his medical condition managed to kill several young women (he was sentenced for only two but it is suggested that he killed loads more) under a long period of time totally managing to elude the police. He had rather clever and well thought out plans to get away and dump his victims unseen, and when he finally was questioned, he played with the police for over a week on his own terms, manipulating and being in control of the situation just like we connect with a psychopath.
So you see, your view upon insane, disorganized killers are a bit too narrowed. They do not belong to a great majority but those who exist do have enough organized - or rational - traits in the middle of all irrationality, in order to be capable of pulling these things off.
Your reasoning is still based on the fawlty belief that an insane killer is a raving lunatic who is irrational all the time - some kind of David Cohen character.
Now, get me a cup of coffee, Constable.
All the best
G. Andersson, writer/crime historian
Sweden
The Swedes are the men That Will not be Blamed for Nothing
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4820
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 7:24 am: |
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Hi David and welcome to the Boards. 
Anyone who quotes Nietzsche can't be all bad.
Robert |
Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 698
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 11:09 pm: |
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David,
Welcome aboard Police Constable Radka -- and please rustle up some tea for all the Asst. Commissioners and Chief Inspectors. 
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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David Radka
Police Constable
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 3
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Monday, August 22, 2005 - 8:13 pm: |
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Dear Ms C,
I read your post with sincere appreciation. It is one of the best I’ve encountered in ten years’ of reading and posting this forum, equal to those of Scott Nelson, Mephisto, and R.J. Palmer. I took my time answering, wanting to do justice to it. Thank you, and please continue to post this web site! Wherever you post, you raise the bar of study of the case.
1. You wrote: “…What I would like to do is offer my personal experience of the limitations of the clinical process to counsel using individuals assessed under that process as sources of analogy and parallel - which is very commonly done (I do it myself)- with great care.”
>>This is a commendable attitude. I appreciate the many social, political and other complexities engendered by the “labeling behavior” of psychiatrists, having studied Szasz. I can see how Sam has his own personal problems in living, and may be like Joe only in some respects. However I think we are talking about two different things here. In using psychiatric criteria when studying the Whitechapel murders, we aren’t saying the Whitechapel murderer’s problems are similar to Joe’s, because we don’t have the murderer available for study. We are not comparing Sam to Joe, we are comparing the actions of the murderer—and by this I mean all his actions for which we have evidence, not just the killing and mutilating—with actions and motivations observed in various psychiatric referent groups. This process is different from clinical work and avoids some of the problems, but it makes certain others, such as the need to make value judgments. It really isn’t so clinical; it’s more logical or philosophical.
2. “…When we speculate as to the psychological makeup of the Whitechapel killler, we are frequently find ourselves arguing from cases that resemble those murders. I think that is entirely valid as a method…”
>>You correctly state what Ripperology has been doing for many years. Open a hundred or more Ripper books, and this is what you will find. It is basically an outgrowth of the criminal detection-oriented school of thought, wherein we examine the “clues” and compare them to “similar” criminals and cases. But while this methodology may be valid and useful in some ways, I feel it is not the best method we could employ. When we use it, we conflate people with various different psychiatric problems under the rubric “sexual serial murderer,” then try to predicate on this animal. But some of these animals have antlers and hooves, whereas others have wings or scales. Sure they all have the same observable behavioral pattern, but can taxonomy be based on behavioral patterns? Various sexual serial murderers may have different kinds of personal issues, personalities or brains. Consider how different Berkowitz is compared to Bundy, but then how similar Rader is to Bundy—couldn’t we therefore be in a more logically clean place comparing Rader and Bundy to some dysfunctional mother of Muncie, Indiana than to Berkowitz? I don’t think we have any evidence there exists a definite “sexual serial murderer type,” but I do think there are identifiable types of people who compose the population of sexual serial murderers. Where we consciously or unconsciously let the archetype lie is decisive to how we later make determinations, so we ought to be in critical control of the archetype we use.
3. “…as long as you bear in mind that the diagnoses attached to known individuals who perpetrated similar murders might be flawed in themselves, for the reasons I suggested.”
>>And I feel also we need to bear in mind that the diagnoses attached to known individuals who perpetrated similar murders were different diagnoses, flawed or not.
4. “We need to exercise caution because it bears on their potential reliablity as models. And if psychiatrists and other clinicians have problems making these diagnoses (and believe me they do) with access to live subjects, we should be doubly cautious when we try and use the same frameworks of understanding for aberrant behaviour of individuals unknown and long dead, based solely on surviving records of their crimes.”
>>Do we really need a personal model to stand in the place of the Whitechapel murderer in order to understand him? Or can we instead develop a general analytical concept by matching the context of his actions with that of various referent groups, and then tentatively concluding on the group he represents? All we really need is a tentative conclusion in this respect, it seems to me, because we can thereupon test the case evidence in various ways to see which of various possible ones may be the most fruitful in determining cause and effect relationships among his actions taken. Who cares if we have a personal representation of Jack the Ripper as hard, impressive and stirring as the stone statues of Easter Island? What good would that do us?
5. “…I don't think it hurts to veer towards the conservative in our assessment of what we can 'safely' deduce on the matter;-) In fact as I said, I think given the evidence it is pretty certain he was severely psycho-sexually disturbed, and either psychotic or psychopathic. I suspect he was more likely to be the latter, but I can't see any compelling evidence that rules out the former as a tenable hypothesis.”
>>But developing a tenable hypothesis on the murderer’s psyche is just the beginning. We still have to solve the case. If we make a comprehensive review of all the case evidence and we get only a punky, less-than-satisfying solution based on psychopathy, couldn’t we try schizophrenia instead? After all, there are some mighty peculiar items in the case evidence, like the Lusk letter, the cessation, the double event, the Leather Apron affair, and so on. We’ve got a lot of details to account for, and not every diagnosis in our sack is going to succeed in explaining all of them satisfactorily.
6. “Neither can I see any real indication that he might not have been (like I have a hunch - no more than that - that William MacDonald was) possibly both. I am just wary of drawing definitive conclusions on the matter from the evidence of the murders themselves.”
>>Are there really very many people who are both psychotics and psychopaths, where one disorder doesn’t supercede the other? There are a few people with multiple disorders of even strength, but not many. On the other hand I can see how a psychopath might catch a brain virus that causes schizophrenia and be both. There’s nothing to prevent a schizophrenic from catching syphilis or developing a brain tumor, either. And I can see how a psychiatrist may affix a multiple diagnosis because he or she can’t imagine that the thinking or behavior of one type could be present in another, when it indeed may be. If the Whitechapel murderer was a genuinely, evenly, multiply disordered person, then I think we’re just about dead in terms of predicating a case solution on the evidence, since we’d have no reliable basis for interpreting the whole of it. We’d probably just have to see him in order to identify his problems—we couldn’t deduce anything that complicated from the evidence we have. This I think is a quandary endemic to a psychiatric approach to the case, though it need not be a glitch.
7. “…In my experience 'psychopathy' (as evidenced by real live pychopaths, not as written up in textbooks) is a continuum like any other; and the point at which it shades into other 'personality disorder' is often blurred. I have known a fair range of people designated as psychopaths - yes they have specific traits in common, but they also vary widely in the way their disorder manifests itself in behaviour, manner and mien.”
>>I’d think what you say is true. Individual psychopaths each have a personal history, upbringing, and life experience, plus being a member of a respective social group is a part of how one would carry himself. Where a psychopath is located and what his education and occupation is would provide him different opportunities and kinds of people he would be taking advantage of, and different specific strategies. The syndrome itself varies in acuteness, permitting virtually unlimited combinations of pathology, normalcy and occasionally other disorders among psychopaths. As Cleckley says:
“(Psychopathy,)…like other psychiatric disorders, appears in every degree of severity and may constitute anything from a personality trait through handicaps of varying magnitude, including maximum disability and maximum threat to the peace and safety of the community.” Hervey Cleckley, “The Mask of Sanity,” fifth edition, 1988, page 387.
But psychopathy looks different when viewed through a wider lens. Please consider the following:
“(The) psychopath engages in behavior so unlike that of others and so typical of his disorder that no act can be reported of a patient from Oregon seen ten years ago without strongly suggesting similar acts by hundreds of psychopaths carried out in dozens of communities last Saturday night...This disorder is so common that no one need feel that any specific act of a psychopath is likely to be distinguishable from acts carried out by hundreds of others.” (Cleckley, pages 23-24)
and…
“When there is an opportunity to follow the career of a typical psychopath, his pattern of behavior appears specific--something not to be confused with the life of an ordinary purposeful criminal or of a cold (hypocritical) opportunist who, in pursuit of selfish ends, merely disregards ethical considerations and the rights of others.” (Cleckley, page 25.)
and…
“(Reflecting on hundreds of cases of psychopathy personally observed by a psychiatrist)...all of these people, when their records over the years are considered, strike one as remarkably similar...(Their) personality disorder shapes and hardens into the outlines of a very definite clinical entity or reaction type...” (Cleckley, page 188.)
I believe in the first quote Cleckley is taking more of a one-on-one diagnostic view similar to your own, and in the remainder a more referent group-oriented view. What do you think?
8. “And I have to ask (I am intrigued) which type of elements in a crime/series of crimes (independent of any background knowledge or communication from the perpetrator) might indicate to you a straightforward case of psychopathy (allowing such a thing exists)? In general though, it seems to me your viewpoint is not dissimilar to my own here - we can draw broad conclusions as to certain aspects of the killers psychology, but making complex judgements is another matter. For that we need background detail and knowledge.”
>>There are many reasons to preliminarily hypothesize the Whitechapel murderer straightforwardly or predominantly as a psychopath. I’ll list a few briefly here. (1) The murder series has an overriding antisocial flavor to it, with morality flagrantly, needlessly and publicly disobeyed and disrespected to a maximum degree. The murderer thus considered is demonstrating his feeling of immunity from ordinary human rules and restrictions. He goes out of his way to repeatedly perform acts that are grounds for arrest. (2) It also has a distinctly narcissistic flavor, with everyone in the city and eventually much of the civilized world focused on him and his next move. (3) The murders were executed with ice water coldness, discipline and keen compliance with timing and escape routes, yet the surrounding ultra high-risk conditions indicate the perpetrator had at the same time let himself go, that he had fallen victim to his own superficial overconfidence, and had no adequate consideration of what was good for him in a real sense. (4) Following each murder, he walked through the streets showing no effects of what he’d just done, indicating good cognitive intelligence at the same time as a lack of emotional intelligence. (5) Glibness and superficial charm are indicated by his ability to get prostitutes to work for him, despite the Terror. (6) There is a sense that the murders were fun and thrilling for the murderer, possibly indicating a need to relieve boredom. These are various qualities of psychopaths I draw from the referent group. Please keep in mind we’re not trying to diagnose anybody here—all we need is an analytical basis on which to predicate more detailed interpretations of the evidence.
9. “…We are aiming at 'best-fit' with the classification systems we have, so the evidence of psychotic or psychopathic motivation we might see in the Whitechapel crimes (based on similarities with those 'known' psychotics or psychopaths) can only be tentatively identified.”
>>I feel we are aiming for a ‘best fit’ for the most part in our preliminary work. To get started, we need to arrive at a tentative hypothesis of the murderer’s psychiatric disability in order to know him as closely as possible. But then following we have to test that hypothesis by using it to try to fully explain the case evidence chronologically, event by event. If the hypothesis can’t seem to explain why everything was done the way it was done, then perhaps it wasn’t the correct hypothesis, and we would be able to test another. If we can find one hypothesis that allows us to predicate the whole of the empirical case evidence, then it is the epistemological center, and we are left with an as orderly as possible statement of empirical truth about the case. This statement alone could thereupon be considered the reaching of a solution in the asymptotic sense, and it could serve as a guide for how to hunt for and interpret possible artifacts if a more concrete empirical solution is desired. Please see my “A?R Summary” in the Dissertations section for this detailed predication on psychopathy.
10. “I think an interactive approach…is pretty much the only way we have to go. Given our ignorance of the killer himself, we are thrown back on building theories about him pieced together in a way something akin to both a jigsaw and a house of cards - we build on the surmises we have already made, and then again (if the theory seems to hang together to our satisfaction in a way we find plausible and persuasive) draw further layers of inference from those new conclusions.”
>>Precisely. I love your use of the phrase “to our satisfaction.” I’ve been trying to get readers of these boards to understand the principle of logical satisfaction for over a year.
11. “At each stage we test our theory by offering what we have created up to see if it matches with all the evidence, factors and circumstances as we know them. Where they don't we either tweak and adjust until they do, or if necessary make more radical reassessments of our earlier ideas, aiming for 'best-fit' each time. Again as a method I think this is valid and viable, though the temptation is of course to overreach. I catch myself doing it all the time, and doubtless just as often fail to spot when I'm doing it…I like your point that "The ‘results of his handiwork’ may not be so ‘disputable’ if we had a reasonable psychiatric hypothesis to go on. The evidence is complex, and it may include various relationships that remain hidden from ordinary sight." Indeed that 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' is precisely what we are seeking when we engage in this process - an overall theory that accommodates what we know of the Whitechapel cases and what we know of the criminal and violent mind.”
>>I feel you are brightly confirming the A?R methodology here in your own way; you may be interested to know that you are one of the first three or four people who’ve been able to see and understand it for what it is since I published the Summary in April 2004. I do think the detail and complexity of the case evidence reduces the chances of overreaching somewhat, but I know what you mean and agree. This is risky business.
12. “It's darn tricky to achieve though because the argument so easily becomes circular - How do you build a profile of the killer and identify his pattern? From the evidence of the crimes. Which crimes? The ones that fit the pattern and profile of the killer.”
>>”Darn tricky” is one thing, “stupid” is another. Most people commenting on A?R here are simply beaten by the theory, and default to describing it, and me, in the sense of the latter. Or else I just haven’t got what it takes to make cogent explanations to them despite many efforts. I think the trick to beating circularity is knowledge, ethics, and reason. You have to know enough about your center on the one hand and the case evidence on the other to keep them separate until you identify precisely where and how they logically fit together, point by point. You have to be totally in control of the many fit-points, able to give the reasons for each. A patient hermeneutical review of the chronological case evidence, asking questions, opening doors, and making use of logical oppositions in the form of a plethora of subsidiary arguments constitutes the method. If you do this fairly, then I think you are letting the bulk factotum of information about the case interactively tell you what is and isn’t the evidence.
13. “Another big problem is that the fact we have found a 'reasonable psychiatric hypothesis' that will fit the facts as we know them doesn't make it the true one. You have to keep your mind open, with so many variables at work, to other ones that might be equally as plausible.”
>>Right. The solution to the case, being analytical in nature, would naturally permit it to be questioned. This isn’t effortless work; it’s not for people who want to make things easy on themselves. The questions to be asked of every alternative solution would be: Which solution is best? Which does the most satisfying job of accounting for all the case evidence? Which is more complete?
14. “Method and signature are notoriously difficult to separate when an investigation into serial killings is underway. Similarly, in the case of JtR, the issue of the 'maternal' appearance of his victims for example is hard to determine - the three pretty much unchallenged cases were strikingly of this type (and so was Tabram and other potential victim 'candidates' like Carrie Brown). Stride and Kelly don't fit that criteria (or others) so well. This might be contributary 'evidence' of what though? That Stride and Kelly weren't victims? That Tabram/Brown was? Or if on balance of other factors one wants to include Stride and/or Kelly as JtR victims, that the age and lack of personal charms of the others was either co-incidental, or a characteristic associated with their real appeal, which was their availability and vulnerability. That their 'maternal' appearance maybe connected to the killers method indirectly, but is not part of his signature. All of these positions are regularly argued on these boards, and depending on the conclusion favoured, other inferences as to the killer's psychological make-up drawn or not. I don't think the evidence points clearly in one direction or another, so I would attempt to do what seems to me honest - hold all those balls in the air as theories, think through the implications for other areas of the case if each scenario were the case, see if that fits or chimes with other features/facts we know, bear in mind that is only as good as that evidence and might need to be revised if the evidence proves shaky - and see what light new discoveries or insights into the case brings.”
>>If more people were like you, Ms C, we’d have far fewer problems on these boards. It’s all about asking questions, and you ask good ones and are developing a methodology right before our eyes. I agree with what you do.
Concerning the appearances of Stride and Kelly: Stride does look pretty maternal to me, I wonder if others would like to comment. Kelly of course doesn’t, but she’s the one with the room. Notice he didn’t take her uterus with him although he’d removed it—he left it under her head. He wanted, I think, to purloin the uteri of maternal women when he killed on the streets, but he wanted that room on the night he killed Kelly. Tabram I believe was his first murder, and he likely wasn’t up to speed with all he wanted to do yet. Please consult the A?R Summary for more lengthy dispositions of these evidentiary pieces.
I cannot determine that he killed any more than six—Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly--from the evidence.
15. “This calls for great subtlety and flexibility in approach. We balance off what we know of other killers, their psychology, of patterning in serial killing in general, of the minutiae and details of these killings, of Victorian police methods, of the personalities of the policemen themselves, the victims, suspects, the geography and social history of the East End and its culture, and what we know of rage/resentment/anger/disgust/desire/jealousy/cruelty/remorse etc in our own experience. And in the face of the enormous variety of answers we observe other very able minds to have reached on the same basis, we keep sifting and reasoning and trying.”
>>There can be a more critical, overarching approach. We can ask ourselves: Why hasn’t the case been solved in all these years? The methodology of Ripperology almost universally has been connected to British empiricism, but what might happen if we based it instead on its logical opposite, continental rationalism? This may allow us to see the rage/resentment/anger and others you mention in novel or innovative ways.
16. “Of course as we keep at the process we also need to bear in mind always the limitations and frailties of each of those elements, and keep a leash on our imagination and egos. It's very easy to get carried away with a particular lead or train of thought, and become entrenched in our own ideas and pet theories. But then maybe that's also part of the fascination of Ripperology - and it certainly makes for some rigorous debates to help test them out;-)”
>>To an extent on the self-control, but hey: leash, schmeash. Really. Conservative, reserved, it-must-be-experienced-to-be-true British empiricism has been in charge for 117 years, and what has it brought us? Three hundred crank books? Crank “journals?” Jack the Ripper porcelain figurines? I say imagination is crucial in solving the case, we must learn how to open our doors, not leave then shut. I feel the key is asking questions.
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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MsC
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 6:55 am: |
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Frank and David
Thank you for you replies - I am going to respond when I have proper time (which I may not do for a few days) as I want to think through your thought provoking posts and reply with the attention they deserve before I do.
And If no-one objects, I'll do so in a new thread on the Medical/Psychological board, as we have drifted a ways from Mr Klosowski and his noxious potions.
Cate |
David Radka
Police Constable
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 4
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 7:16 pm: |
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1. “Israel Lipski” wrote:
“An irrational, insane killer CAN actually display what is referred to as 'organized' traits along several steps in the process.”
>>My argument about JtR on this point is not an organized vs. disorganized argument, it is a psychotic vs. psychopath argument which is in turn based on a “being in control of one’s life” / “not being in control of one’s life” argument appropriate to the circumstances of the case. And also, I’m not claiming that, if he were psychotic, JtR could not be both rational in some respects and irrational in others at the same time—I’m aware that some psychotic people are like that. What I’m wondering at in my argument is: If he were psychotic, how could his psychosis bend and shape itself so perfectly in circumscribing his decision to commit the murders the way he did, which is essentially a will or intention to commit suicide, while at the same time leaving him able to prudently escape the murder scenes and avoid detection in all other respects, which is essentially a will or intention to self-preservation? What JtR did, according to the evidence, is equivalent to someone dropping his annual retirement account contribution into the bank’s deposit slot with his left hand, while at the same time blowing his brains out with a pistol held in his right. These are mutually self-contradictory intents. If he’s planning for his retirement that mean’s he intends to live, but if he’s putting a bullet through his cranium that means he intends to die. While I am aware that insane people sometimes commit suicide for irrational reasons, I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here concerning JtR. He was evidently prudent and disciplined enough to plan and execute several narrow escapes, while at the same time committing crimes in a manner tantamount to jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. If it were a psychosis driving him to commit the crimes, it must have been a wondrous psychosis indeed to limit itself perfectly to the madman’s intention to commit the crimes, which means he’s lost control of his life, but leaving him free to intend normally in other respects at the same time, which means he’s got control of his life. While I’m aware that someone can be insane and not lose control of his life, such a person is not in control of whether or not he loses control of his life—his psychosis just works out for him that way. No insane person can control the limits of his insanity; if you are insane, then what part or parts of you go insane are not left to your voluntary decision. But JtR if insane would almost certainly have to miraculously be maintaining such voluntary control in order to lose control of his life in just a certain way and not in other ways. In other words, just as no one who wants to talk about change can honestly avoid talking about change changing (mutatis mutandis), no one who wants to talk about insanity can honestly avoid talking about insanity “insaning.” I’m willing to discuss your cases below, but I feel I must say at the start that I know of no better explanation for JtR’s condition than psychopathy. A psychopath can throw himself away while completely sane. As Cleckley says,
“...(A psychopath) heedlessly causes sorrow and trouble for others, usually puts himself also in a position that would be shameful and most uncomfortable for the ordinary man or (even) for the typical criminal...A large part of his antisocial activity might be interpreted as purposively designed to harm himself if one notices the painful results that so quickly overtake him.” (Hervey Cleckley, “The Mask of Sanity,” fifth edition, page 262.)
And Hare adds,
“Psychopaths are always getting into trouble, in large part because their behavior is not motivated by anxiety or guided by cues that warn of danger. Like individuals who wear dark sunglasses indoors, they look ‘cool’ but they miss much of what is going on around them.” (Robert Hare, “Without Conscience,” page 194.)
2. “We have some very illustrious examples of this. Jeffrey Dahmer was a rather disorganized character, apparently suffering from delusions and also with quite a dirty appearance, but still he managed to lure his victims to his apartment and commit several bizarre murders - to say the least - before the police got hold of him.”
>>I wouldn’t call Dahmer insane, at least in the legal sense, or even disorganized. I don’t believe he experienced delusions except perhaps as occasional, brief psychotic events; he knew what he was doing. He wanted to avoid losing people, so he tried to gain control over them by turning them into “zombies,” and eating them. His behavior it seems to me corresponds to normal human social and personal needs, despite that it was perversely overstated. I think Dahmer was so riddled with fetishes, neuroses, maladjustment, mis-development, and probably half the disorders discussed in the DSM-IV except the overtly psychotic ones, that he defaulted into a most bizarre creature, bordering on insanity, but not quite. I remember viewing prison interviews with him, and he appeared intelligently sane. How was he disorganized, Glenn? He had a plan of murder, kept all the evidence under wraps, and got away with I believe 17 cases before he was caught. Dahmer didn’t lose control of his life at any point, Glenn, and thus we can’t compare him to JtR, who, by the evidence, had lost control by murdering under the circumstances he did.
3. “But an even better example is Hadden Clark - whom I have pointed at several times here - who was a disagnosed paranoid schizofrenic, but who in spite of his medical condition managed to kill several young women (he was sentenced for only two but it is suggested that he killed loads more) under a long period of time totally managing to elude the police. He had rather clever and well thought out plans to get away and dump his victims unseen, and when he finally was questioned, he played with the police for over a week on his own terms, manipulating and being in control of the situation just like we connect with a psychopath.”
>>I haven’t studied Clark. However, some paranoid schizophrenics are known to not lose control of their lives. There can be one who sincerely believes, for example, that the CIA has installed a computer inside the plaster walls of his apartment to record and report everything he does, including his bowel movements. Such a person may be able to work successfully at his job, and provide for himself indefinitely. Did Clark kill openly? Did he boast about it to his friends? Did he wear his victims’ teeth around his neck when visiting the supermarket? What JtR did was tantamount to these things.
4. “Now, get me a cup of coffee, Constable”
>>Glogg is better!
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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Brad McGinnis
Inspector
Username: Brad
Post Number: 264
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 11:30 pm: |
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Hey David! Good to see you registered. Welcome! Though I cant buy into your theory, youve always been good for keeping the boards thoughtful and at times amusing. Good to have you aboard, now its more like the old Casebook! Brad |
R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 699
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 2:47 pm: |
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Mr. Radka--Can't you see that the obsession of Ripperologists with the murderer's pathology is misplaced? The psychology angle is too narrow. You and Andersson & co. can argue the proper diagnosis until the cows come home; all it is really telling you is that the man lacked inhabitions. But we already knew that, didn't we? Put it this way. Let's say you're right. Let's agree that the man is a psychopath. That's fine. But this mere diagnosis doesn't tell you why he's hacking up women rather than becoming CEO for Enron, does it? Same thing with Andersson's diagnosis of psychosis. It's superficial. It only tells you what's in the gas-tank; it doesn't tell you why the car is driving in that direction. RP |
David Radka
Sergeant
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 21
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 - 2:48 pm: |
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In a post now archived, Mr. Palmer wrote:
1. “Mr. Radka--Can't you see that the obsession of Ripperologists with the murderer's pathology is misplaced? The psychology angle is too narrow. You and {Glenn} Andersson & co. can argue the proper diagnosis until the cows come home; all it is really telling you is that the man lacked inhabitions. But we already knew that, didn't we?”
>>Thank you for this interesting question. I believe that you are basically taking up the traditional British empiricist view here, or if not, some view that amounts to the same thing. You recognize that we can’t interview the murderer, and therefore we can’t know with certainty what his pathology was. We can’t have an empirical experience of knowing the murderer’s pathology. Since we can’t, the matter of his pathology is rendered negligible with respect to its ability to provide information useful for solving the case. But Glenn Andersson and I differ in that I use the pathology of the murderer as an epistemological center. In the A?R theory, the notion of center is coequal to and inseparable from the notion of pathology. In other words I do not follow British empiricism, I use continental rationalism instead. Pathology under rationalism behaves differently than pathology under empiricism. Under rationalism, we avail ourselves of the avenue of asking whether or not the whole of the case evidence can be subsumed under the center; if it can the center is proven, if it can’t, we need a new center or, failing that, we revert to empiricism. Under empiricism, pathology is a nonstarter because we can’t experience what it was.
2. “Put it this way. Let's say you're right. Let's agree that the man is a psychopath. That's fine. But this mere diagnosis doesn't tell you why he's hacking up women rather than becoming CEO for Enron, does it? Same thing with Andersson's diagnosis of psychosis. It's superficial. It only tells you what's in the gas-tank; it doesn't tell you why the car is driving in that direction. RP”
>>At least as far as psychopathy goes, the diagnosis is not superficial, it has multiple implications for how the case evidence can be interpreted, and these implications act as doors. In one sense a door lets you go through, and in another if you go through one door you are limited, because you didn’t go through a different door instead. In other words, the diagnosis is in some ways enabling, in others limiting, but both the enabling and the limiting help us solve the case. If JtR were a psychopath, then we recognize that what he did he did out of antisocial sentiments. Do you see the sense of psychopathy being both an opportunity and a limitation here? If his primary function is antisocial in nature, and if he takes the uterus from every maternal-appearing woman when the chance avails, then we know he has antisocial sentiments contrary to the maternal power of mothers. We might thereupon posit that he’s got a beef against mother-power, and then go looking for a case of someone like that in the evidence. And if we look for it, and only because we look for it, we find it. We identify a male relative or associate of Aaron Kosminski, such as Woolf Abrahams or Morris Lubnowski, as being in this position. And thus we interpret the original incitement for the murders being Aaron’s position in such a man’s home during the Terror. I believe you may be forgetting that we have a good deal of empirical case evidence to go on, and all we need is some factor to get us going in one direction in order to make many dominoes fall.
Thanks again for a thought-provoking question, Mr. P. I look forward to dialoguing with you here.
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 716
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 7:02 pm: |
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"I believe that you are basically taking up the traditional British empiricist..."
Mr. Radka--Be patient, I'll respond in due time. But no, I'm not arguing the empiricist view. The concern I have is that the Ripperologists' obsession with the man's medical/psychological pathology is too narrow. It's only one tip of the triangle. The mistake some stumble into is overemphazing the idea that disease causes the behavior; this is a bogus cause-effect explanation. A schitzophrenic in 14th Century France doesn't behave like a schitzophenic in the Australian outback. Tertiary syphilis doesn't explain Neill Cream's blackmail notes, it only explains why they are clumsy.
I agree that your diagnosis is inherently better than the standard lust murderer diagnosis (Andersson, Fido, Ressler, Krafft-Ebing, Norder/Vanderlinden, et al. ad infinitum) which is a transparent tautology.
"He golfs, ergo he is a golfer." Yes, and he chops wood, ergo he is a wood-chopper. Tell me something I don't know. So, yes, you avoid this somewhat by describing his condition, rather than his behaviors. But more anon. RP
(Message edited by rjpalmer on September 29, 2005) |
Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4074
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 8:15 pm: |
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"You and Andersson & co. can argue the proper diagnosis until the cows come home"
Excuse me... when did I suddenly become a psychiatrist? And in co-operation with David Radka???
I can't recall I have ever 'diagnosed' Jack the Ripper - or at least for the last year or so. Even I know that is fruitless and impossible.
I have said, though, that judging from the little crime scene information we have, he appears to be more 'disorganised' rather than organised, i.e. more psychotic rather than psychopathic, although some minor indications also points towards the organised direction (needless to say, I feel they are nevertheless in a minority).
But seriously DIAGNOSE a killer committing crimes 117 years ago...???? And someone, as correctly has been pointed out, we can't interview...?Get real, folks. I admit I find criminal psychology interesting and that such efforts may help us narrowing down the suspect list to some degree, but the quite uneliable result still has to be a matter of speculation and personal interpretation anyway.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on September 29, 2005)
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 719
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 10:20 am: |
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Mr. Andersson--My sincere apologies. Maybe I have failed to get my point across. How about a horror story to illustrate?
The year is 2008. There is a convention in Oslo, and you, I, and Mr. Radka find ourselves attending. None of us has planned ahead and we find, to our great alarm, that we must share a single, small hotel room.
We draw straws and you win the bed. Radka gets the sofa, and I'm stuck in the bath tub.
During the night, there is a strange scurrying noise in the kitchen, but no one thinks much about it.
At 6:30 A.M. we three go into the kitchen. A great mystery! During the night, someone has scrambled an egg! There it is, on a small dish on the table.
I immediately accuse Mr. Radka of having done it, but he denies it. So do you.
We began to investigate. You do the sensible thing, and pop open the fridge. Inside is a carton of eggs...and there are only eleven eggs inside of it! A clue!
But there is more. You notice that some of the eggs have brown shells, some of them have white shells, and some of them are speckled. You examine the scrambled egg but can find no sign of a shell in it. The garbage pail also has no shells in it. But you begin to work out an interesting set of observations.
You divide the eleven eggs into three groups (white, brown, and speckled) and suggest that perhaps the brown eggs are the ones that make scrambled eggs. You further cite an interesting study by a certain Heironymus Ressler that discussed the differences between scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and poached eggs, and the attributes of each, which might give us some insight.
Radka is outraged. He slaps his balding pate.
"No," he shouts, "this is all wrong. What matters is what's on the inside of the egg."
He proposes a complex method, (which neither you nor I can comprehend), based on an interesting theory about the yolks.
And it is indeed, quite interesting. Pretty soon there is a lively discussion based on the different yolks of eggs. It is so interesting that we break open all eleven eggs. Some have yolks that are pre-scrambled! Some have two yolks, and some (gasp) have no yolks at all. (We'll call these the psychopaths).
The scrambled egg on the table is, indeed, very very pale. It does indeed seems almost yolk-less.
Now I, meanwhile, have spent the night in the bath-tub. As you can imagine, I haven't slept well. I'm not thinking very clearly and I'm in a bad mood. But I think I have an insight.
'Wait, gentlemen," I say. "Maybe describing the eggs by their shells is strictly descriptive, and really doesn't tell us much. The inside of the yolk theory is fascinating in itself, but is it, too, perhaps a bit misleading? Why is it that some white eggs end up scrambled and some don't? Why can both yokeless eggs and two-yolked eggs both end up scrambled and on the table?" Can some other force be at play here that we aren't considering? Perhaps we need to consider the puzzling mystery of why both brown eggs and white eggs, both yokeless and non-yokeless all ended up scrambled."
In short, I'm interested in the shape of the fork.
I bid you a good breakfast. RP
(Message edited by rjpalmer on October 01, 2005) |
Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4080
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 10:53 am: |
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Mr Palmer,
You see, my only point was, that you referred to me as some kind professional psychiatrist basing all ideas abut Jack the Ripper on psychological analysis and profiling; I was merely surprised to see myself named in such a context -- fact is, the psychological angle is far from the only one I explore in the Ripper case, and - I might add - not the most important one. I am a historian - not a psychiatrist.
I admit I am not very good at analogies, but I liked the Agatha Christie atmosphere and I am truly grateful that you let me be the one who got the bed.
I am very impressed -- you should devote your talents to mystery writing.
As for Radka's ideas about 'epistemological center', I leave that for you to dissect. I have never understood them and never will. And unlike Radka I don't think it's a sane starting-point to base a complete theory on that the suspect was a psychopath.
Nor do I think it's wise to give more space to the same theoretical pie and mash that already once has resulted in chaos and closing down of a thread here on Casebook. A?R has had its chance and this thread is not the place for it. I believe this thread is about Klosowski?
The eggs on toast were very nice, thank you.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on October 01, 2005)
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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David Radka
Sergeant
Username: Dradka
Post Number: 23
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 11:42 am: |
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Lars,
Thanks so much for the lovely nude photo! I'll be sending you mine by email as soon as I can get it scanned and ready. I finally figured out how to keep the tripod from shaking.
<smack!>
David
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4081
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 12:07 pm: |
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Very entertaining, Mr Radka. I see you haven't lost your touch.
Now, don't make any efforts on my account, though.
Well, at least you got the sofa and not the bath tub.
All the best
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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David O'Flaherty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 1041
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 12:58 pm: |
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R.J.
Post of the Year!
Dave |
Ally
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Ally
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 4:38 pm: |
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Someone's going to say it, might as well be me.
Egg-celent post, RJ
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Steve Swift
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 8:07 pm: |
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It is easy to 'diagnose' someone AFTER they are caught.
This killer has not been caught.
Mr. Radka--Can't you see that the obsession of Ripperologists with the murderer's pathology is misplaced? The psychology angle is too narrow. You and Andersson & co. can argue the proper diagnosis until the cows come home; all it is really telling you is that the man lacked inhabitions. But we already knew that, didn't we? Put it this way. Let's say you're right. Let's agree that the man is a psychopath. That's fine. But this mere diagnosis doesn't tell you why he's hacking up women rather than becoming CEO for Enron, does it? Same thing with Andersson's diagnosis of psychosis. It's superficial. It only tells you what's in the gas-tank; it doesn't tell you why the car is driving in that direction.
Could not agree more. Even profilers very very rarely take a shot at diagnosing a suspect before he is caught.
I wouldn’t call Dahmer insane, at least in the legal sense, or even disorganized. I don’t believe he experienced delusions except perhaps as occasional, brief psychotic events; he knew what he was doing. He wanted to avoid losing people, so he tried to gain control over them by turning them into “zombies,” and eating them.
It is also generally accepted that Dahmer made up those stories of his attempts to 'make zombies' to fool people like you.
'Psychiatric Criteria' did not catch Bundy or Lucas or Fish or Kurten because it was simply not known what was driving these killers,because they did not 'conform' in any way shape or form to what was KNOWN.
This killer was butchering women in 1888 not 1928,not 1948 or 1988. His needs and wants,his motivations were simply not the same as the killers interviewed in more modern times. |
David Cartwright
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 11:26 am: |
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Hi Glenn.
I've just poked my nose in to say that I don't understand half of the stuff in Mr.Radka's marathon posts. I'll leave all that for the Professional Psychologists to decipher.
What I WILL say, is that I always have been, still am, and always will be, in total agreement with all your views on Mr.Klosowski as a Ripper suspect, which is what this thread is supposed to be about.
Best wishes Glenn.
DAVID C. |
Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4085
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 02, 2005 - 6:03 am: |
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Hi David,
Thanks. Yes, beats me how this thread about Klosowski turned into A?R and psychiatric stuff. I guess I had something to do with the latter, although I suspect that much of what can be said about Klosowski in the Ripper context has already been said ten times over.
Hope you are OK, David.
Steve,
"It is also generally accepted that Dahmer made up those stories of his attempts to 'make zombies' to fool people like you."
Dahmer never fooled me and I don't think he tried to create zombies. The only thing I've heard as an explanation to WHY he committed the killings is because he was lonely and that he by eating them tried to make his victims stay inside him, and that he therefore saw it as an act of love).
I am well aware of that he talked a lot of crap in order to get off by pleading insanity - that doesn't mean you have to be 'organised' or intelligent. I said earlier that it was wrong of me to say 'in the legal meaning of the word'; it is a fact that Dahmer was regarded guilty and sane in the legal sense, although the legal definition of sanity is merely based on that the killer is aware of his actions and can take responsibility of them.
The point of it all was - that he in many ways differed from very 'organised' people like Bundy and - I feel - Klosowski. And personally I can see things in him that reminds me of the Ripper, and the same goes for Sutcliffe.
But as you say, profiling and psychology can lead to too narrow interpretations and I personally believe one shouldn't lay too much weight upon it or draw too firm conclusions from it (let's remember that much of profiling - without its arty and academic overload - is nothing but ordinary common sense and crime scene deduction used in police work), although not totally disregard it either, if you want to see through the reasons of the crimes.
"This killer was butchering women in 1888 not 1928,not 1948 or 1988. His needs and wants,his motivations were simply not the same as the killers interviewed in more modern times."
I absolutely can not agree with that tedious statement and in my opinion that is total rubbish. A murderer's driving forces were the same in 1888 as they are today. It is just the environment and some the social context that changes.
Several cases of both serial murders and domestic killings that we know of from the 1800s and earlier, show very little difference in approach, motives (or lack of motives) and personal driving forces compared to modern ones, and most forces that drives these killers seem to be universal in a way that they tend to be driven by basic instincts and physiology just as much as social factors.
And some of the so called 'social factors' - incest, abuse, rejection, sexuality etc. - are as old as humanity itself. Some things just never change through history.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on October 02, 2005)
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4086
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 02, 2005 - 6:12 am: |
|
As for Klosowski, I believe this whole psycho babble emerged from the discussions regarding Klosowki's contra the Ripper's motives and behaviour, and the point that Klosowski showed every sign of being a true psychopath, while the Ripper's 'condition' is more uncertain and display other traits that does not fit with Klosowski.
Again, in contrast to the Ripper, Klosowski had very defined motives for his crimes (to get rid of his wives in order to marry the next one) and he never seems to wanted to get his hands dirty - usually what is referred to as a 'coward's' method - and he stuck to poison throughout, which is stupid in the end, since sooner or later people will find that suspicious (which is what happened to Cream as well).
Klosowski's wives all died from the same symptoms and at the end of the day, it was a very dangerous and stupid game by Klosowski to stick to murdering his wives with poison - if he was the person that changed his MO because of the circumstances, he would have stopped using poison sooner than he did and instead again used another method. But he didn't, he stuck to it although it was obvious that he would be found out sooner or later.
In short, like other well known poisoners, he used poison because that was the only method he knew and felt comfortable with.
All the best
(Message edited by Glenna on October 02, 2005)
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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c.d.
Sergeant
Username: Cd
Post Number: 16
Registered: 9-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 04, 2005 - 3:46 pm: |
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Glenn,
Hi. I think that you will admit that Klosowski was quite successful in using poison and had no reason to "change horses in the middle of a stream" or as you put it "get his hands dirty." His downfall came from not knowing when to stop.
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Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 4111
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 04, 2005 - 4:28 pm: |
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c.d.,
It doesn't matter how successful he was. Fact remains that if someone find one of the deaths suspicious and subsequentely puts two and two together - as they rather likely will sooner or later - they will soon notice that all of your wives has had the same symptoms and died in the same way. Therefore to continue to kill close relations in such a manner is stupid in the long run, but strangely enough common for people with sociopathic behaviour, who thinks they are more clever than anyone else.
Look at most of the well known serial poisoners we've got. They have all more or less been found out and discovered due to such carelessness and arrogance. But more importantly: they have all stuck to their method and their poison throughout and have not changed their MO spite of the fact that they could have. Serial poisoners stick to poison because it fits their personality and because that is what they feel most comfortable in using. Very few serial poisoners have changed that behaviour or have performed serial killings in another way.
To say that Jack the Ripper changed his MO when he got married and then turned to poison because it was convenient is pure rubbish and a whopping fib. Absolute rubbish from start to finish.
In my opinion.
All the best
G. Andersson, writer/historian
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