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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 232
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 2:24 pm: |       |
Hello everyone,
I wanted to get some response on what can be a minor question regarding profiling criminal suspects.
I am considering what would be the profiling of two of the suspects - George Chapman and Thomas Neill Cream.
In the case of Chapman, is he simply going to be considered a poisoner because of the three known
murders of his three wives? Anything regarding reports of non-poisoning activities are disregarded totally? Chapman was reported to have killed a woman in Poland, and rumor said he cut her head off (I don't remember where I saw that rumor, but I recall seeing it). In the account of the arrest of Chapman in Inspector O'Neill's memoirs it was mentioned that Chapman had a loaded gun on him when arrested. How does that get discounted in profiling Chapman - not valid unless he shoots someone with the gun?
With Cream it is another matter. Nothing about the use of non-poison murder methods here, but one glaring note. His victims are usually women, most of whom (in Canada and the U.S.) were seeking abortions, while those in England were prostitutes. Why the switch - is the key to profiling here is that his victims are all weak and vulnerable (pregnant and ashamed; social outcast prostitutes)? Then how to explain the murder of Daniel Stott? Stott's murder in 1880 would lead to Cream's period in Joliet Prison (his alibi for the Whitechapel killings). But it is a murder of man not a woman. Quite unusual. It is a sick man, who would be weak and vulnerable, but he is a property owner. And in this case, Cream may have worked with Stott's widow. How would this be explained in criminal profiling?
Best wishes,
Jeff |
MayFlowerMark
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, December 17, 2004 - 12:26 am: | |
Two known quantities from the same time and place as Jack the Ripper--far from being minor, they hold the key.
Both are European serials and show European tendencies--hot-blooded domestic violence in one case and the killing of men in the other. (The use of poison by both may be another one.)
One of the two, of course, went to America: known killer of London prostitutes, Neill Cream who identified completely with Jack....
So before anyone pulls the trap door on Cream, let me just say, there's more than one meaning to the words,
"I am J--!"
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Dan Norder
Inspector
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 435
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, December 17, 2004 - 10:54 pm: | |
Hi Jeff,
The reason the distinction is made is that most profilers would break the cases down into highly hands-on messy murders of complete strangers because the killer enjoyed that versus sneaky clean murders of known people for some sort of rewarding result (money, getting rid of person interfering in love life). The basic argument is that those are done by entirely different people.
Now, certainly if the Ripper were someone with a poor grasp of reality who broke down after the killings, cool and calm poisoner years later makes no sense. But if Jack were actually fairly organized and with a bizarre fetish, I can see him turning to poisoning people later. In that case you have to break it down by the method that makes sense for the victim. Poisoning random person and waiting around for a few days to then try to dig around inside makes no sense, nor does knifing your wife or girlfriend and hoping to get away with it. Random killings would be fast and furious, personal killings would be clever.
Of course that's linking quite a few what ifs together -- organized, in control, knows about poisons, stop mutilation killings or hid them extremely well after a while, etc. -- so on general weight I'd think it's not as likely as other things. I don't rule it out though.
Cream I rule out, of course, because of the prison time overlapping the Ripper murders and the claim that he said "I am J-" of anything similar seems to be a spurious legend attached to the case. Plus he was a bloody idiot who got himself caught by drawing attention to himself, there's no way he could have kept Ripper style killings secret.
Stott's grave isn't all that far from where I live though, so I might stop in sometime to pay it a visit. Cream is an interesting guy in his own right, and it's not like I have graves of actual Ripper victims anywhere nearby.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
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