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AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 964
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 2:13 pm: | 
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Thanks Erin
I actually have been in contact with a chap who has been studying this case for years now and does have some wonderful insights to the crimes, so I must get into contact with him again as a matter of urgency. His view into such crimes is even more radical than mine. I must see if I can bring him on board, though he is even more contrary than me! |
Erin Sigler
Sergeant
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 23
Registered: 1-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 9:30 pm: |
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Chris,
I think you're right (although the identified victims were not homeless), but I was wondering specifically how he was able to restrain them. It appears that many of them were decapitated while alive, and Andrassy had rope burns on his wrists. I'm trying to figure out how it is the Butcher was able to disable his victims in such a manner. Andrassy was not a small man and carried an ice pick. As I said before, I can't imagine him allowing himself to be tied up, although I suppose if there were something sexual going on it's possible.
A.P.,
Which one is that? Is it Badal or one of the others? I'd certainly be interested in hearing your man's views on the case, no matter how radical! |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 682
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 9:27 am: |
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Hi Erin
Yes you are right that the identified victims were not exactly homeless, although the 41-year-old prostitute Florence "Flo" Polillo could probably have been described as of "no fixed abode" as I recall, and that characterization might have fitted most of the killer's victims. I just think that it is probable that the majority of those not identified were drifters, although the state of decomposition of some of the remains hindered identification as well.
As for how the killer was able to restrain his victims, I believe most writers on the case appear to think that the killer was a physically powerful man. Powerful upper body strength would have been needed just to transport the corpses, unless he had an accomplice, which is not impossible but seems unlikely.
All the best
Chris |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 965
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 1:06 pm: |
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Thanks Erin
I've been in touch with my contact - no it's not Badal - and I do believe he will make a contribution to the discussion.
I'm still reading! |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 967
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 4:17 pm: |
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I’m not even into an fifth of this case yet but I did have to laugh out loud when I read the quote of a senior detective involved in the case where he said that the killer was so clever that he left no evidence behind him.
‘Not a scrap of paper!’ avowed said detective.
Errr… excuse me if I’m wrong but surely all the clothes of the victims were neatly wrapped up in sheaths of current newspapers placed carefully near to the bodies.
As I said I’m only just getting into this case, but such newspapers would have provided massive clues about the victims and their killer/s.
I’m also struck by the neatness of a killer who ensures that the clothes of his victims are carefully packaged and left near to their remains. This speaks volumes to me.
I also enjoyed the term ‘unfortunates’ when applied to the victims.
Somehow reminded me of another case?
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Dustin Gould
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 5:55 pm: |
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Patricia Cornwell. "Patron Saint of Unsolved Cases"...*snickers*...Suffice to say, I think this women has completely lost her marbles. Her obvious cashgrab with her last book was apparently not enough. Now, she feels her need to expand her ignorance into ther cases as well. With her seasoned detective skills, who needs the real thing?...*rolls his eyes*...Talk about a fountain of mis-information! |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 973
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 1:23 pm: |
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Although an incredibly useful study of a serial killer - particularly with regard to the inner workings and machinations of a police force and a political system with almost fifty years more maturity and experience under their belts than the Metropolitan Force in 1888, showing us that such a system and practise was bound to lead to a dismal failure to solve these crimes - there is a strong ‘sacrificial’ element involved in the crimes of the ‘Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run’ that is almost entirely lacking in the case of Jack the Ripper.
Although it would not be unreasonable to suggest that there were some very minor sacrificial elements involved in the crimes of Jack the Ripper - and here I think of the circumstances of Mary Jane Kelly’s death - it does seem obvious that these minor elements had no influence over the major motivating or distinguishing force behind the crimes.
By ‘sacrificial’ I do of course mean that there are strong indicators of some kind of ritualised process in the crimes of the ‘Mad Butcher’, as if he was following a process either set down in his own mind or possibly in the minds of others which he has discovered written down in dogma or cant within a book. Hence he appeared to have been working to some unknown formula which required very certain procedure to be carried out. Here I refer specifically to the decapitation of the victims; the removal of limbs; the wrapping of the body parts in burlap sacks; and the wrapping of the victim’s clothes in newspapers… newspapers which now appear to have had direct relevance to the crimes themselves.
I do wish that we knew more about these newspapers as it is my distinct impression that these would hold the defining clues to the identity of the killer and his obscure motive.
Jack the Ripper on the other hand killed haphazardly - by chance almost I would suggest - and without any due regard for ritual. Jack’s crimes were so fast that he had no time to organise proper disposal of his victims or clothing. I don’t see the ‘Mad Butcher’ in any sort of hurry. He’s taking his own sweet time and thoroughly enjoying the ‘slow-motion’ ritualised aspects of his sacrificial crimes.
I don’t believe the sacrificial element to these crimes involved religion. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me at all if such a killer as the ‘Mad Butcher’ had found his inspiration for such crimes in a ‘Marvel’ comic.
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Gary Alan Weatherhead
Chief Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 587
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 3:55 pm: |
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Hi Dustin
Please don't tell me that Corny is going to close the case on the 'Torso Murders'.
AP
When you finish reading the sites you have located I wish you would post some of them as I can only locate a couple of worthwhile sites.
All The Best
Gary |
AP Wolf
Chief Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 974
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 5:08 pm: |
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Gary
apart from the few sites usually referenced I have been ploughing back through personal exchanges on this case via sites very close to this one; and as usual firing a few rubber bands at the sun to see what comes back.
One thing that I think you have mentioned - and others - is that I for one do not believe that the 'Mad Butcher' was attempting to hide, disguise or hinder the identification of his victims by removing their heads and hands, rather that this formed part of his strict ritual. I don't believe this killer would have had any problems with confronting authority regarding his crimes. He probably would have enjoyed the experience. |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 687
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 11:44 am: |
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Hi, Gary and Dustin:
Let me clarify something that might have misled you in my post of Wednesday, April 23, 2003 - 10:30 am in which I said that investigators in Cleveland proposed "to do the same thing Cornwell attempted to do in the Ripper case--to link letters sent to the authorities with the DNA of local physician-surgeon, Francis E. Sweeney, the man suspected of the murders by Cleveland safety director, Eliot Ness."
I have no evidence that Patricia Cornwell has any connection with what was attempted in Cleveland, in fact, I'm certain she is not involved. Rather, I have been told that the proposed investigation was not even inspired by Cornwell's work using DNA to test the Ripper and Sickert letters but was suggested independently by someone connected with the Cleveland crime lab's work on more recent cold cases. And incidentally the attempt is on hold because the local archive that owns the letters was not willing to allow them to be tested.
Best regards
Chris George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
(Message edited by ChrisG on March 27, 2004) |
Vincent
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 10:20 pm: |
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Hi Chris. It seems to me that the Cleveland Police Department would simply need to subpeona the letters and there would be nothing the owners could do about it. Or is this a private investigative effort?
Regards, Vincent |
Dustin Gould
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 10:43 pm: |
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Christopher,
Thank you for the clarification. It would chill me to the bone, to know for certain that Cornwell was contracting out to do DNA work on the Torso murders, as she did with the Ripper case. Talk about unethical! As if those lab technicians in the firm she hired wouldn't feel compelled in the slightest, to make an attempt to give her her money's worth!
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Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 697
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 29, 2004 - 5:37 pm: |
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Hi, Vincent and Dustin
To give you the full story, this is what we ran in a recent issue of Ripperologist:
Background on Possible Cleveland Torso DNA Investigation
In our November issue, we reported that in September a hitch occurred in a proposed investigation to test for a possible match of DNA on a postcard sent in the 1950's to former Cleveland, Ohio, safety director Eliot Ness and the DNA of Dr. Francis E. Sweeney, a suspect in the city's torso murders of the 1930's. The request by Cuyahoga County coroner Elizabeth Balraj to perform such testing was turned down by the Western Reserve Historical Society, who stated that they did not want to risk damaging the postcard. We were wondering if by any chance the investigation was prompted by Patricia Cornwell's attempts to do DNA testing on the 'Ripper' letters and thus sent some enquiries to Cleveland to find out if that was the case.
We received the following reply from David C. Holcombe, Executive Director of the Cleveland Police Historical Society:
'The postcard DNA issue came about in the following manner. [Documentary director] Mark Stone was here filming material from our collections for his The Fourteenth Victim: Eliot Ness and the Torso Murders, when he mentioned that he wanted to set up an appointment to "shoot" the postcards. Mark knew that I had previously worked at the Western Reserve Historical Society, and asked me whom he should contact. I gave him a name, and the discussion turned to the bizarre nature of the postcards.
'As it happened, one of our trustees, Patrol Officer Tom Armelli no. 618, was in the office, and wondered if the postcards had pre-printed postage, or if they were stamped. When I confirmed that they were stamped, he immediately suggested that they should be tested for DNA. I know that Tom was not aware of Patricia Cornwell's efforts. I believe Tom was thinking of the recent advances our department has made in solving cold cases through DNA evidence.'
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 2
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, April 09, 2004 - 9:44 pm: |
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A. P. invited me in to comment on this case, but I wonder where to start. I'm reading Badal again and enjoying it: this is one of the very best, intensively detailed and verification devoted true crime books I've read, even if he does like to string his commas along for quite a stretch. The author has more intense hours of honest and exhaustive research than several average true crime authors combined.
The recent posts on this thread are all well merited. There are a couple of points I'd like to bring to controversy, though:
1) "Must've been a doctor"
I put a post on Yahoo once suggesting "Jack the Butcher", and A. P. very wisely pointed out that because someone starts using a knife doesn't mean they first took the trouble to get the PhD. As I looked into other SK cases I found this true: the "PhD" was more likely to come from "schools" like the shack in Dahmer's back yard. I also noted that ALL cases involving precision post-mortem knife work seem to bring up the "must be a doctor" response. It comes up in this case, the Short case, and with Chikatilo. Since Chikatilo got caught and turned out to have no medical training whatsoever, his case (the one which to me seems to be most mimetic of JtR's post-mortem behavior) is the best case for the skepticism.
2) Bisexual
A very rare situation, worthy of close examination. It's a technical fact for the sake of counting victims. It's a question with respect to sexual orientation, because one severed head is as good as another, and the victims might as well be chickens. Here, I'll contraverse in favor. I tend to believe that Merylo left off investigating "The Chicken Farmer" too soon for bad reasons. There are many good reasons to continue the suspicion: there is the obsessive fixation on decapitation, the compulsive need to see it acted out live, and absence of distinction in preference even for animal specie, let alone male or female.
So, I find myself evaluating Badal's impressive collection of evidence for the plausibility that this "semi-organized" SK could have had modest intelligence, and the results are tantalizingly ambivalent.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1017
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 10, 2004 - 3:38 am: |
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Welcome on board, Burgho.
Good and provoking musing. I'm just off to the pub to muse a bit myself with a few dear friends in the shape of bottles and glasses filled with rocket fuel; and then I'll get back to you if I can part the clouds of alcohol. Well, it is a Bank Holiday weekend over here. Jack enjoyed those celebratory days as well.
I'm still reading through the case - for about the 20th time - and there is a hell of a lot of politicking involved, which does cloud the issue somewhat, but then that is also true in the case of our Jack the Lad. But what struck me more than anything else in this present case we discuss was the enormous tidyness of the individual concerned.
Yes, the point about knifework and personal history is particularly relevant in the Jack case.
Back later. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1019
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 10, 2004 - 1:12 pm: |
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I sobered up now.
If a killer targets solely male or solely female victims is that an indication of the killer’s sexual orientation?
What if a killer targets both sexual groupings?
Is that also an indication of sexual orientation again?
Our basic - and usually correct assumption - is that a male killer who targets females is heterosexually orientated, and that a male killer who targets exclusively males is homosexually orientated.
So does it then follow that if a male killer targets both sexes he must be bisexually orientated?
Well, why not? It is no great secret that spread right throughout our society are many individuals who do have a bisexual nature and are as happy to conclude their sexual dealings with either a man or woman.
Perhaps there is a blank point in our own contemplation of bisexuality in that it defies our own sexual logic - assuming that we are as bystanders sexually orientated to either one group or the other - as it is a concept so alien to us that we unable to grasp it, and perhaps we fear to and as a consequence deliberately avoid staring into that black pit just in case that black pit stares back into us.
Whatever… the simple logic of serial killers would seem to imply and provide that a bisexual individual would target both sexes.
Fine.
But the smelly crutch piece of this discussion is that firstly we must - and I mean ‘must’ - accept the crimes of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run as crimes of a sexual nature… for if they were not, then the sexual orientation of the killer plays no part in the selection of the victim.
That’s the rub… a dub.
On very much a personal note, I find the obsessive neatness of the crimes - and the crime scenes - to really rule out a large degree of sexual motive in the killings.
Sexually orientated killings are generally speaking messy old affairs with clothing hastily ripped about and discarded - in fact in the majority of cases the crimes have been so quick and violent that clothing is merely tugged down or up - and the victim tends to be covered in muck and mire. Everything has the feel of a video running on fast-forward, but with the crimes of the MBOKR someone has selected the pause button, settled down comfortably on the sofa with a beer and taken their own sweet time.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 3
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 2:19 am: |
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Thanks for the invitation, A.P. As usual, you're rockin' the house like Jerry Lee Lewis.
Bisexuality is a confounding concept to most of us. We respond to the vagary by trying to find a package deal of explanations more comfortably reconciled to common sense. Bisexuality is one of those things that catches us all up short and makes us roll our eyes up trying to comprehend it. Psychologists and sociologists call this "cognitive dissonance", which is a 3-pence way to describe the "Uh-oh, this doesn't make any sense, and it might affect me" response. Academicians gloss over the "dissonance" by presenting sexual orientation as a continuum, with everyone being some percent both heterosexual and homosexual. OK, so, we're all bisexual. That explains it all! On the count of two and on the cue, everyone sigh with relief. We get out of the problem by deciding that the phenomenon doesn't exist, or exists universally in an abstract way.
And yet, for all the effort that crime analysts have put into typifying the offenders, nothing defines as narrow a band of typified human characteristics as a single SK's choice of victims. In contemporary cases often a poster is offered with pictures of all the subject's victims. It's uncanny how they all seem to look so very much the same.
IMHO, this is an important aspect of the human problem we're up against, and the understanding is still well beyond the conscious apprehension of either the detectives who study it or the criminals who do it. In fact, it's usually not spoken of.
MBoKR is one of the only bisexual SKs we'll find on the books. My "cop out", or "gloss over" is to explain it in terms of paraphilia, or "fetishism", which works on a more primitive level in failing to distinguish between men, women, or chickens. A head popping off is a head popping off.
I suspect I oversimplify, as I suspect that we all do. "Bisexual" is a concept which immediately invokes in all of us the instinctive need to quickly oversimplify.
Sure wish I could hear Pete Merylo talk about this. I can only hope that in my next life I'm privileged to "fail" half well as he did.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1021
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 12:25 pm: |
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Burgho
Your choice of the word ‘primitive’ is both apt and highly appropriate to the circumstances of these crimes. There is something awfully, and indeed awesomely, primitive in the decapitation of a fellow human being - almost a crime of a tribal nature and purpose - so yes ‘fetishism’ is exactly the right word.
Totems and Taboos, and a clear message to what is perceived as the ‘enemy’.
But as primitive as the crimes may appear we may well have to accept the fact that they are intrinsically ‘modernistic’ in their nature and purpose, for society has only very recently accepted the brain as the ultimate source of power, reckoning and thought - and here I talk on scale of millennia - and prior to this it was the heart that was thought to be the ultimate instrument of power, reckoning and thought.
Man acted upon his heart and not his brain in primitive times.
Even the most advanced society of those primitive times, the Ancient Egyptian Dynasties, held the heart rather than the brain as the immortal coil of life, and man’s future in the after-life rested upon a decision made by the god Anubis after carefully weighing the ’deeds of the heart’.
Even today in Islamic cultures when two men meet, they shake hands and then touch their hearts to demonstrate a willingness for dialogue rather than combat.
This of course leaves us with the problem of Jack, for he certainly did not decapitate anyone, but did seem to have a fondness for the heart. So was Jack the primitive killer obeying a rule of fetishism? Or was the Butcher a modernistic killer who went straight to the heart of the matter by removing the brain?
It also strikes me that the decapitation process is the act of a mature and assured killer whilst Jack’s random and haphazard fumbling in the innards of his victims is very much the hallmark of a very immature and nervous killer.
Kind of neat that.
As the two killers do themselves reflect man’s development and understanding - from the primitive to the more modernistic - of the power, reckoning and thought of the heart and brain.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 5
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 10:07 pm: |
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Wow! A.P., are you headed toward an interpretation involving "symbolic emasculation" to parallel the "symbolic efemination" we see with the Whitechapel crimes? Because that's how I'd tend to see it.
Your last post draws out that pattern in a very clear and compelling way. And it's my point of difference: I'm inclined to see both killers doing very well what they intended to do without knowing what that was.
I do believe that where the superficial appearances of things vary widely and wildly, the unconscious will still chart a precise and unwavering pattern. And you're pretty darn good at sniffing the pattern out, even when you're engaged in something unrelated, like comparing assurance vs. nervousness.
JtR might have been less sophisticated, but both killers, when enjoying their private relationships with their victims, did exactly what they wanted to do with equal accomplishment.
Both had aspects of disaffected procedure, and both had whimsies such as hanging around the dump site to only partially bury heads in the dirt, or deciding that the removed parts of the body should be stuffed under the head and feet.
"Fetish" doesn't relate to measures we conventionally use to characterize behavior. The main issue with SKs is the degree to which fetish rules over the other motives of life.
The primitive vs. modern continuum you mention is very relevant, but I have a very different take on it (mostly brought to me by the little I've learned from Dr. Freud).
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1037
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 4:46 pm: |
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Nice to hear from you Burgho.
The only place I'm heading at the moment is to emasculate a full bottle of brandy.
Get back to you when I recover.
I don't believe Jack had a private relationship with his victims. It was like two trains heading towards each other on separate tracks... in the Mad Butcher's case someone switched the points and the trains collided, in Jack's case he just held his knife out of the window as the train passed through a station. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1041
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 1:54 pm: |
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Burgho, further to that, now I sobered up.
I have always felt that a killer of the nature of Jack is actively 'seeking' something, engaged on a search or quest if you like... whereas a killer of the like of the Mad Butcher has found what he is looking for.
Just because you may have missed these musings on the poetry thread I quote them again for you:
'Fatal Flaw in Flow
It can be remarked that in many differing species - social and solitary animals included - that an obsessive and compulsive urge to ‘nest’ does play a major contribution in the successful procreative continuation of the species. The ability to seek seclusion in an isolated and safe location; and then to give birth to and raise the offspring in such privacy and safety, without any doubt improves the survival prospects of both parent and offspring.
Generally speaking, animals that do selectively choose this method of concealed procreation make exceptionally devoted parents, prepared to care for and defend their offspring with their own lives if required. Animals familiar to us who follow this steady course of procreative action are, bears, certain sub-species of the wolf family - like the Artic wolf - and of course even the humble hamster would fall into this category.
The concern here with such species is the bizarre signalling process that appears to take place in the individual animal’s brain when it is in a ‘nesting’ phase. For as a ‘third party’ one is very easily able to influence this nesting behaviour by introducing what appears to be a ‘fatal flaw’ into the natural flow of procreation… with totally catastrophic results.
One must simply introduce an alien scent into the intimate nesting area of the breeding animal - or even animals - to initiate what to us is a most shocking series of events, for the previous doting and caring parent animal will actually viciously attack the offspring, killing them by biting through the neck, ripping them apart, limb for limb, eviscerating and cannibalising them and finally scattering the unrecognisable body parts all over the nesting area in what we would happily term as a ‘bloodbath’ or ‘slaughter’.
So what we witness here is some form of chemical and or electrical impulse or influence - contributed by outside chemical or electrical influence - on the most sacred sanctum of an animal’s basic survival instincts; to wit, a transition from loving parent to mindless killer in a vital second which spells doom for its entire evolutionary development.
It is almost as if the brain has gone haywire for a brief instance, as if this tiny outside influence has ‘fused’ the entire logical and biological processes that are there, solidly in place in the brain, to ensure the successful procreation and survival of its own species.
What is going on here?
Can we really see the base and natural elemental urge to murder and mutilate - brought on by simple chemical or electrical influence on the brain - in a highly developed social animal such as man? Are we but over-sized hamsters responding to subtle signalling devices that we neither understand or will acknowledge? Hiding in the dark night of our success as a supreme social animal whilst the bright daylight of our humble origins drags us back to the slaughter our sons and daughters just because they don’t smell right?
When I view the carnage of a simply disturbed nesting animal I do get the strong feeling that the disturbed animal is actually looking for something that is no longer there. The scattered body parts seem to represent a ‘search’, for something that is suddenly missing, as if the breeding animal no longer recognises the outer appearance of its offspring and is frantically searching for internal confirmation of its status… or maybe even its own existence.
You see, as strange as it might appear, I do believe Jack was looking for something, and I do believe that ‘something’ was confirmation of his ‘self’. The mirror did not reflect the correct image so he went out to correct that image through the internal machinations - and mutilation and mayhem - of the universe.
By chemical or by electricity, he was ordered to kill.
A chemical Jack.'
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 6
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 10:39 pm: |
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Funny, that quest thing. It gives me another occasion to appreciate the Holy Grail as a womb symbol, and to muse on the relic's role in the cannibal/vampire ritual which is still very popular in our civilization today. In earlier writing on this thread you've tended toward a cult ritual interpretation of MBoKR, and the speculations are very compelling. Once again we find religious and serial murder behavior very closely related. As you pointed out in "Myth", a prophet like Ezekiel would have no problem confusing Sir Galahad and the Ripper.
I'll also raise a Bud Light to your identifying the relationship between the sexual serial killer's variety of dysfunctional "reproductive behavior" and the example of "mass murder" you've detailed. Yes, I'll buy into an instinctive evolutionary origin for the SK problem. I'll go along with the behavior pattern being atavistc. The fact that so many different cases have so many ubiquitous aspects of similarity bespeaks that.
Let me see if I interpret you right: you're suggesting that a SK actually responds unconsciously to a set of trigger stimuli which current behavioral science doesn't observe. The "compulsive" nature of the subsequent criminal behavior is exactly that, and occurs in a sequence which neither we nor the criminal understand.
This is an excellent research opportunity. It suggests that maybe we can take care of this whole problem with a little pill which provides just the right synaptic blocker.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1042
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 5:10 am: |
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Burgho
I believe they now make a ‘Bud Light’ that has 5% alcohol in it?
Now that’s what I call evolutionary progress.
Yes, I do see something almost ‘missionary’ in the crimes of the MBoKR where great care has been given to a seemingly timeless and ageless ritualised process, in fact the crimes remind me of that weird song by Lee Scratch Perry - the father of ‘Ska’ music and now living in a rubbish skip somewhere in London in a Kingsbury Run setting - where the lyrics tell us to: ‘wash it down, scrub it down, wash your face, wash your hands, wash your feet,’ etc. The meaning of the lyrics being to clean ourselves up bodily to clean our minds and then get closer to some kind of god. Sorry, I forgot the name of the song now.
So, much like the ritualised washing of the hands and feet before entering a mosque for prayer then. You know, the use of oils, unguents, water and other liquids in the preparation of corpses has long and ancient history that does speak very loudly of specific ritual and intent. Our problem being we don’t understand that ritual or intent, so just as you say we run to the familiar… shout out rude names in the playground like ‘queer’ or ‘AC/DC’ and then run away, smug and satisfied that we have cracked the problem by labelling it. But we ain’t.
In this case, the local police would do better talking to anthropologists than criminal profilers.
I would say that the MBoKR had a fetish about cleanliness before his gods, so took to the obsessive washing of hands, feet and head, washing his hair like four times a day and scrubbing his fingernails… so what do you do when the fingernails get too long and you can’t get the dirt out no more, that’s right, you clip them down; short hair is easier to clean than long hair, shave it off, go bald, oh buggar it just chop off his dirty head and throw it in the bath, yes, come into my place of worship, but you better be clean, physically and morally I demand cleanliness… he killed dirty people didn’t he?
‘Wash it down, scrub your hands, scrub your feet, clean your mind, wash your heart,’ says Lee Scratch.
Yes, Burgho, I do honestly believe that there is a signalling system at work here which we do not yet understand. Obviously there will be the usual dilemma here between nurture and nature, and certain environmental elements do play a key issue in the development of killers, but as has been said many times, siblings reared under identical physical circumstance do not go on to be killers. So that can only form a small part of the building process.
This is something I am still working on.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 7
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 1:37 pm: |
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A.P., you have constructed a very plausible profile of MBoKR here. However, like all perfectly plausible interpretations, it recedes into a large crowd of equally plausible interpretations and becomes improbable by sheer power of numbers.
"Devotional sacrifice" and the murder which goes with it remains a mysterious central theme to all of human history. Part of the mystery is that it presents itself on all scales of numbers in participation. We can move through this dimension from one extreme to another. Billions of Christians today regularly celebrate the sacrifice/murder of Jesus the Christ, part of which involves the Holy Communion ritual to which I referred. Moving down the line from the toppling of the Twin Towers, the Crusades, and all the rest of the endless history of religiously mandated murder, down to the behavior of small cults like the Manson Family and the Branch Davidians, all the way to the end of the scale manifest in the behavior of apparent "cults of one", such as JtR and MBoKR.
Jack is in the mirror.
It's kind of interesting how this works. We stare into the pit and we are accustomed to seeing certain familiar eyes stare back. We can't reconcile the scattergram of the Butcher's victim selection to any familiar variety of monster, so we seek the assurance of an alternative. It can't be the sex monster, so maybe it's the religion monster. It's got to be one of the regular old sorts we're familiar with.
Without the burden of familiar truths, men find no reason to murder.
On the matter of a neurochemical origin of the disease, it's interesting to appreciate that the serial murder behavior pattern we observe doesn't resolve any arguments between determinists and existentialists. On the one hand, the prevailing evidence is that the behavior occurs in the general absence of brain activity which inhibits it. PET scans done on repeat offenders reveal an absence of prefrontal brain activity, just like they reveal an absence of parietal activity in "maniacally religious" people. On the other hand, there have been serial murderers who demonstrated a rapacious, ravenous, and rabid onset of the "disease" at very young ages: right at the advent of puberty. The Dahmer case in particular raises the suggestion that the "disease" can overpower the mind of a very young person who has otherwise developed a perfectly healthy conscience.
So, presence of the devil or absence of the angel, take your pick. I tend to think that a neurochemical solution is worth pursuing.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1047
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 2:06 pm: |
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Burgho
As ever your stuff just wipes me out.
However I aint about finished with this MBoKR yet, in fact I only just got started with this particular varmint.
I was struck by the ‘dirty killer’ angle, not necessarily the ritualised behaviour or the religious connotations - though I do think that of import - you see I was thinking that one is quite able to slot a killer by examining his victims rather than his own behaviour and routine.
The world of predators fixating on very particular prey.
I thought of Ted Bundy and his oh so nice clean victims, no dirt there. He went for the unsullied, for the picture book ‘clean college girl’… and then we get someone like Jack who is knocking off old toothless whores, full of disease and gin. I mean these ladies never got a chance to take a shower, they lived rough, they slept rough, they were rough.
No disrespect to the girls intended. I talk life and all its rotten circumstance.
Sutcliffe was the same. Went for what many happily termed the ‘scum’ of society, then he made an error and knocked out a flower.
Got caught then.
There has got to be a radical difference between a killer who specifically seeks out the dregs of the society that infests him, and a killer who wants to take out the flowers of a society that socially elude and exclude him.
Yeah, the victim dictates the crime.
The killer is just moving along to the song in his head.
And as you said if he can play a harmonica then everyone dances along.
I’ll be studying your note in the morning.
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