| Author |
Message |
    
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1165
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 10:30 pm: |       |
On page 222 of the Diary the Diarist wrote: 'I have left the stupid fools a clue which I am sure they will not solve.' This was after the Hanbury Street murder.
On page 79 of Shirley Harrison's narrative, she wrote that she believed cotton merchant James Maybrick was referring to the strand of cotton that was left in one of Annie Chapman's tin boxes. The strand, she says, was mentioned in three newspapers however wasn't mentioned in police records.
The official police record mentions 'scrap of muslin'. My dictionary says that 'MUSLIN' is fine cotton cloth.
At Annie Chapmans inquest Inspector Chandler said: "As the body was removed [to the mortuary] a piece of course muslin and a small pocket haircomb case were found."
The piece of muslin was described as a cotton handkerchief in several newspapers. I wonder if the strand of cotton that Ms Harrison refered to was the piece of muslin cloth.
LEANNE |
Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 908
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 1:21 am: | |
Leanne
Immediately after the line you mention there is the rhyme about two farthings and two pills. I assumed that was the clue the writer was referring to.
One thing I just noticed in the diary version of the Chapman killing is the writer claims he left, returned to the body and further mutilated it.
"I was vexed with myself when I realised I had forgotten the chalk. So vexed in fact that I returned to the bitch and cut out more. I took some of it away with me."
Chris |
Harry Mann
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 2:50 am: | |
'I have left the stupid fools a clue which I am sure they will not solve".
A clue to what or who?.
To the clever person who committed the hoax.
Is it a challenge to the readers?.
Has the whole episode been nothing more than a joke all along,or more likely,a contest.
The hoaxer versus the rest.
I wonder.
A non believer.
H.Mann. |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1168
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 2:27 am: | |
G'day,
CHRIS: According to the diarist Annie Chapman's bits were taken on two seperate visits, not with 'one sweep of the knife' as Dr. Phillips thought. She was missing part of her vagina and two-thirds of her bladder.
Diarist: "So vexed in fact that I returned to the bitch and cut more out." He was angry because he just realized that he had left his chalk at home. So angry that he was prepared to risk being caught! Likely?
LEANNE |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1169
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 4:04 am: | |
G'day,
'returned' suggests that he left the crime scene and came back to the crime scene again. After Cadoche heard something fall against the fence at about 5:30a.m.? It would have been daylight, and a big risk!
LEANNE |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1170
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 4:12 am: | |
G'day,
If the Diarist killed her, merely went to fence to write something on it, then 'returned to the bitch and cut more out', it still would have been risky to wait around in the yard with day-light approaching!
LEANNE |
Paul Stephen
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 11:20 am: | |
G'day Leanne
I think you may be mixing up your murders here! Chapman and Eddowes?
Chapman didn't have any tin boxes, but Eddowes did, and one contained some cotton.
I don't have my diary in front of me here, but I'm sure all he says is "returned to the bitch and cut more." One word but a big difference.
I'll check later.
regards
Paul
|
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 194
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 1:26 pm: | |
Paul Stephen wrote:
I don't have my diary in front of me here, but I'm sure all he says is "returned to the bitch and cut more." One word but a big difference.
Actually, Shirley Harrison's edition of the text says neither "cut more out" nor "cut more", but "cut out more".
Chris Phillips
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Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1172
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 5:50 pm: | |
G'day Paul,
I see what you mean by mixing up my murders. Thanks for pointing that out. Shirley Harrison was of course referring to murder of Catharine Eddowes when she mentioned the strand of cotton supposedly left by the Diarist.
Catharine obviously liked sewing/mending clothes. On the police list of her possessions was '1 piece of Red flannel containing pins and needles.'
On page 222 when the Diarist wrote about leaving a clue, he was referring to Annie Chapman's murder. He still claimed to have 'returned to the bitch and cut more out'. The clue he left I believe was the wrenching of the two rings from her finger, because the Diarist wrote: 'It makes me laugh they will never understand why I did so.'
LEANNE |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1173
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 5:58 pm: | |
G'day Paul,
Which of Kate's tins contained the cotton? Was it the '1 Tin Box containing tea', '1 do do do Sugar' or '1 Tin Match Box. empty'??????
LEANNE |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1174
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 7:38 pm: | |
G'day,
The Diarist's exact words were: 'I returned to the bitch and CUT OUT MORE. I took some of it away with me. It is in front of me. I intend to fry and eat it later ha ha.'
LEANNE |
Paul Stephen
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 7:31 pm: | |
G’day again Leanne…!
Apologies for my faux-pas, but I knew I didn’t recognise the phrase from the diary as you quoted it. I was at work having a sneaky peek at the casebook at the time.
Having checked the diary again, all you had done was to reverse the words “more” and “out”.
It’s good to see that someone else sees some significance in this part of the diary. Twice the diarist refers to having returned to Chapman’s body to mutilate further due to his frustration. “Return, return. Essential to return. Prove you are no fool.”
Some diary critics have slammed the diary for containing no new facts concerning the murders, and simply following conventional wisdom. It’s impossible to verify either way of course, but I should have thought that the murderer returning to one of his victims for a second go was a very significant deviation from the generally accepted view of things.
I see that a few people now are referring to the diary as a “clever” hoax, rather than the previous “shabby” hoax. If it is a hoax, then it is indeed a very clever one.
The tin box containing cotton on Eddowes body was mentioned by The Times, I believe, and not by the police. The cotton seems to have been cotton thread rather than a piece of material, and could have been in the box with the pawn tickets. The times report actually says it was in a “match box”.
The diarist isn’t really claiming to have left a clue with Eddowes in that part of the diary other than his “left my mark”, so I have never really thought of the cotton being of any great significance myself. The “mark”, I am certain, referring to the “M” either side of the cut off nose which was in the way of his handiwork!
Regards
Paul
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 751
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 6:31 am: | |
Hi Paul, All,
I think the line ‘Her nose annoyed me so I cut it off’ is one of the cleverest and most inspired in the diary. It shows exactly how little rational motivation the diarist knew was needed for this type of killer’s acts of violence. It was presumably a dead nose the ripper hacked from a dead woman’s face. The idea that such a thing could annoy anyone to such an extent had to come from someone with a fair bit of insight.
Love,
Caz
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paul Stephen
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 6:51 am: | |
Yes Caz
This part of the diary is indeed underplayed by many. It comes over as very real to me that the murderer started a letter M, but there wasn’t room due to her nose and that irritated him, so he simply removed it to allow him to finish.
Regards
Paul
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Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1176
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 4:30 pm: | |
G'day,
If the diarist had the time to deliberately write an 'M', cut her nose off, and was prepared to risk capture, he must have really wanted to leave his initial as a clue!
LEANNE |
Paul Stephen
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 7:32 pm: | |
G'day Leanne
Whether it was Maybrick or not that's exactly what JTR did though. We know that for a fact as we have the contemporary reports to prove it. Diagrams and all!
Regards
Paul. |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1180
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 1:51 am: | |
G'day Paul,
Yes, that's a fact but my vote's in favour of swift, random slashes...two invereted 'V's. It takes a lot of imagination to read them as a deliberate 'M'
LEANNE |
Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1181
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 5:17 am: | |
G'day,
Ignoring the sketch of the facial mutilations for a minute, take a look at her mortuary photos here under 'Victims' /'Catharine Eddowes'. Now tell me that you can make out an 'M'.
I am not saying that the sketch was wrong, only that I don't think the inverted 'V's were meant to be an 'M'.
LEANNE |
John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 228
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 7:35 am: | |
Paul and Leanne,
Just a few quick comments. My furnace died yesterday and it's 40 degrees in here so I'm typing with gloves on so please forgive the brief reply.
I have to agree with Leanne that it doesn't look like the killer was trying to make an M. The mortuary photos make it perfectly clear that if the killer WAS trying to do so, there was more than adequate room to do so without removing the nose.
I don't think they were random scratches however, in the sense that they probably made some sort of sense to the killer. But I don't think he was trying to leave clues, just "playing". My own speculation (And it's just that) is that it ties in with the cuts on the eyelids and that the killer was attempting to draw "tears of blood" or something similar on her face.
In any case, they're only 2 aspects of a heavily mutilated face and to try and read them as an M is a bit of a stretch IMO. Also, if we're to take the diary literally, the nose went before he "left his mark".
Warm regards despite the cold,
John
|
Paul Stephen
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2004 - 6:12 am: | |
G’day Leanne…!
I see what you mean, but for JTR to repeat the same pattern of cuts either side of the face seems a bit more than random to me.
They must have been reasonably carefully done surely to get two cuts to meet properly at the apex of the V shape? It’s my opinion that the nicks to the eyelids could be part of the same pattern, and caused by the same stroke of the blade. You can’t see it in the mortuary photos it’s true, but then again the bodies had been cleaned and stitched up by the time those pictures were taken, and you can’t make out much detail in any of them anyway.
Take the Kelly crime scene picture as an example, we can’t even really say what’s bedding and what’s human can we?
As far as I’m aware, it’s the diary that first brought it to light that this might be an attempt at an M. No one had considered that before.
All I’m saying here, and I think what Caz may be saying too, is that this bit of the diary is an inspired bit of writing if it is a hoax. The diarist gets it so supremely right, and it has a real ring of truth and believability to it.
Regards
Paul
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Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 762
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 12:41 pm: | |
Hi Paul,
I was talking more about a dead nose having the capacity to annoy Jack to the point of hacking it off – that rings horribly true to me somehow, and it must have done to the diarist as well.
The ‘left my mark’ bit is nice and vague, as usual. But we don’t really know if Jack’s ‘mark’ had to be anything more specific than any mark that would signify that the killer had singled out yet another ‘slave’ as the unique property of her ‘master’. It doesn’t have to be an initial, although it could have been a crude attempt at one.
But it was most definitely the hunter branding the hunted. And the diarist picked up the scent just fine.
Hi John,
Hope your hands are nice and warm now! 
Love,
Caz
|
Tom Mitchell
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 9:56 am: | |
Anyway, back to the original thread!
When the diarist writes that he 'returned to the bitch' (sorry, my diary copy is downstairs, I may be slightly misquoting here), I too was struck by the implausibility of finding no chalk causing him to become angry causing him to return to the body. Why would he leave before realising he'd left the chalk behind?
I suspect the diarist meant that he stood over the body, looked in his pockets for the chalk, realised he'd left it behind, grew angry at this, and in his anger 'returned' his attention to the body and mutilated it further. Although I don't have the diary in front of me, I'm sure this makes for a very reasonable interpretation of the comment.
This would mean, of course, that the diary therefore provides no added insight into the crimes at this point (as he would not therefore have physically returned to the scene of the crime). In my opinion, the 'lack' of new detail in the diary is more than compensated for by the reference to the 'FM' on Mary Kelly's wall. That is the key to the diary in my eyes. Way too convenient for any forger to hope for, the letters on the wall need accounting for!
Tom Mitchell |
