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Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 732
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 1:38 pm: | 
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Hi Burgho and AP
Here is a poem based on your ideas above--
The Killer
moves to the tune in his head, plays harmonica
and everyone dances along, washes her corpse
like the ritual washing of hands and feet
before entering a mosque for prayer, uses
oils, unguents, and spring water to prepare
her body; doesn't place her in a book, like
a pressed flower, but plants her on the side
of the mountain like a bulb awaiting spring.
Christopher T. George |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1055
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 4:58 pm: |
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Chris,
nice one.
None of the bulbs that Bundy planted on them mountains ever saw green.
I'm getting behind your MO here Chris, you only do poems after conference. |
A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 8
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 10:44 pm: |
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Thank you, Chris, for guiding the discussion in the right direction. Poetry and good folk songs played with harmonicas remind us of that magical other world to which we shadowy-faced indigent rail-riding questors, Knights of the Holy Grail, yearn for passage.
As the case of MBoKR waned in the public attention of Cleveland, so across The Big Pond began the Shoah, which was largely an enterprise of railroads.
In history there are thundering crescendoes played in celestial fantasy worlds of perfect acoustical engineering. And then there are some hoboes drifting off in a boxcar listening to a guy with a harmonica.
Is that us?
So, how about we convene RipperCon 2006 in a boxcar or two parked on a spur in Kingsbury Run?
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1058
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 3:35 pm: |
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Yes, Jack must have had a lantern up his arse
With which he could bring his teeth to grass
How else could he have found Merry Kelly’s bath?
And what’s more, just to continue farce
Said lantern blew up with terrific blast.
Then there was an image of batman that lit up the city
And in that image he discovered that Merry was pretty
And for the fact that he had killed her he found some pity
So two men whistled into eternity in a box car
One danced whilst other played harmonica
And they set the universe to right
As train thundered through the night
But not one person heard one single sound
Of the great theory the drunks did expound
For the locomotive drowned the screams
And bled the secrets of their dreams
And hoboes agreed to hack one another
Just because they were blood brother
But just before the final blow
To conference they agreed to go
To see why such thing inspired prose
Just before the bar would close
And daffodils grow well on the recently dead
I’m sure that I have that somewhere read
Or was it just something that burgho said?
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 9
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 9:35 pm: |
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For the sake of poetry I'll suffice to yield to my masters. Which means that for a response, I will settle for borrowing. I'm reminded of this tune from the Jethro Tull album "Heavy Horses", which was among my very favorites during my teen-aged years during the late '70s:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jethrotull/journeyman.html
It's so much better with the music, though. One of their very best works.
Next stop: Proxima Centauri, then Shaker Heights.
Cheers,
Burgho
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1059
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 - 10:41 am: |
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Burgho
sorry about the poesie, just slipped in somehow, late at night with a glass of fine brandy.
Anyway's back to the thread:
Having not delved too deeply into the subject of brain scans and the like, especially with regard to using modern medical procedure and technique to successfully identify existing or potential violent criminals, I would guess that the same indicators that might describe the brain-box of a potential killer would also describe artistic and creative genius of the ilk of Blake, Mozart or van Gogh. All suffered from extremely violent episodes in which they harmed themselves or others but their aggression was thankfully redirected into creative urges rather than destructive surges.
So I guess I have never viewed this as a valuable or viable avenue of detection or even prevention, unless of course we want to lobotomise such artistic and creative genius along with the criminally violent?
I guess to really understand what we view as the complicated mind of a serial killer, all we need to do really is to peer inside a simple hamster’s brain and then analyse exactly what is going on in there when an alien scent is introduced into the nest; and then isolate the specific chemical signal that triggers such a violent and evolutionary suicidal attitude.
Which sort of leads me to another highly contentious area I’m studying that seems to be telling me that all murder - and especially serial murder - is a slow form of suicide.
Each murder strike is also a serious body blow against the killer, mentally and physically, who is in fact vastly diminishing his fair chances of evolutionary survival, or social freedom - key requirements of any living organism - in direct relation to the number of times he commits the act of murder. He is obviously and patently fighting a losing battle.
So each victim he accrues actually lessens his chances of survival, the more he kills the less he will live, for the killer is exposing his soft underbelly needlessly like a shark swimming belly-up… which is suicidal.
I suppose I haven’t got there yet, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that the absolutely natural consequence of a killer remaining undetected over a spread of say five to twelve kills is that he will commit suicide, which is what he has been doing all along, he was just too scared to at the start but by the time he gets to the end has found the confidence and serenity to take his own life.
I reckon Bundy was about five minutes away from this point when he was finally captured for the last time.
I also believe the MBoKR topped himself.
Good riddance I say.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Police Constable
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 10
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 - 9:27 pm: |
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Don't apologize for the splendid verse, A.P. Most of the world thinks the days when a composition is both verse and a summary of recent events are forever gone. It's nice to see that there are still folk who dance the language, while medical technology is still working on scanning harmonicas.
Your observations with respect to an SK's progressive self destruction are a matter of fact, just like the "bisexual" nature of MBoKR's victim selection. In fact, all criminal behavior exhibits some inherent degree of self defeat.
So far, your picture of MBoKR involves the concept of religious sacrifice, an obssession about cleanliness, the historic progression of our collective perception of our "center of being", and a suicidal compulsion. I find it amusing to observe that with all this "neurochemistry" jazz, you've maneuvered me around into making an MBoKR of myself.
You're right, you've just begun on this case!
Cheers,
Burgho |
A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 11
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 - 10:25 pm: |
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So, how about the "Shades of Whitechapel" aspects of this case? It seems that the further into the history of the twentieth century we go, the more fixed the basic patterns are.
1) "The Canonical Run"
Not to be confused with "The Cannonball Run". Both cases feature a series of victims which were highly publicized in the contemporary media. This series is fixed definitively by this one characteristic, but by no other.
2) "Victim Zero"
Both cases feature a closely related, shortly earlier crime which becomes retrospectively linked. The link is clear enough to establish a quorum of consensus on the validity of the link, despite it's not having been part of the initially prevailing common perception.
3) Pizer and Dolezal.
Almost all extended serial murder investigations will feature a "red herring suspect" who gains prominent attention and suffers extensive personal loss for casting just the perfectly wrong shadow. London can be very proud that all Pizer suffered was some bad publicity (the only he ever had). In other cases this suspect is wrongly imprisoned or even executed. In the Green River Case, he was delivered by the FBI profile.
4) The "Nazi" and "The Juwes"
Both of these cases are characterized by the advent of "grafitti" in the vicinity of only one of the several crime scenes, in a manner which cannot be connected with any of the other consistent characteristics of the crimes. The evidence will be treated as either entirely irrelevant, or prevailingly central to the mystery. Many researchers will divert to a path of interpretation which treats these small contributions of writing as the most important evidence.
5) Predators always hunt at the edge of the pack.
6) Supervillians and Superheores
This is the most significant observation I made when reading on this case, after having appreciated Paul Begg's "The Definitive History", and it deserves another chapter. And so I'm off.
What did I miss?
Cheers,
Burgho
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1067
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 2:24 pm: |
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I’d say, Burgho, that was a more than excellent summary regarding ‘Shades of Whitechapel’.
If I had to add, it would be the political machinations taking place between local government and distinctly separate policing authorities who appeared at loggerheads over an issue that was after all murder but they turned it into politics.
The relationship between the victims and the authorities was remarkably similar in both cases… remember both castes of victims were considered ‘unfortunates’, hence the killer was able to assume the mythical mantle of a monster who was cleansing society of the ‘scum’.
If I had to stab in the dark - which I do often just like Jack - I would say that my inclination is to see a very strong ‘social’ connection in both cases. What do I mean?
I don’t know.
I think I mean that in the two time slices there was violent social upheaval directly associated with the victim castes, the victims were not only on the cutting edge of the killer’s knife, they were on the cutting edge of society. They represented a threat to the cosy conception of family and home. You know, so if I had to make a guess about the next great bout of serial killing that is going to hit us, I would say the victim caste would be largely comprised of people addicted to drugs.
The killer seems to pop up at exactly the moment society requires him.
We see that society moves in two totally different directions when faced with a threat from within, you have your tree-huggers who want to save the poor souls through religion or social re-education and then you have your Jacks and Mad Butchers who just want to put the trash out.
Whilst government and authority openly move along with the doves - the tree huggers - its secret desires and wishes are firmly in the hands of the serial killers who are openly carrying out the slaughter that they believe necessary to put society back on track.
It’s all about signals.
Perhaps our only real insight into this shifting system of social signalling is when murder is officially sanctioned by society, as when the SAS shoot dead terrorists who have given up their weapons and wish to surrender, but the order from above is to trash them.
I honestly believe that such a signalling system is operating in both of the cases of which we speak. More subtle, yes, but nonetheless there.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 12
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 11:29 pm: |
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A.P. rocks. For once, though, the apprentice has led the master. For while on the matter of neurochemistry you've made a head-hunter of me, I've made a Begg fan of you. Time for me to recapitulate (no, that's "recap", not "decap") the whole "Begg Principle" and "Begg Index" thing from Yahoo. Because it was this case that first led me to it.
6) Supervillians and Superheroes
Paul Begg's "Jack The Ripper: The Definitive History" explores the question of how the Whitechapel mystery came to be the most famous of serial murder cases. In his quest, Begg covers the entire large-scale history of "Londinium" and the East End from the early first millenium.
I think he did a very good job of solving this mystery, being one within grasp while the identity of the Whitechapel serial killer will remain forever beyond.
And it took some diligence to reveal the inner "machinations" of our collective attention span. One aspect of it is singularity: there are heroes, and superheroes. There are villians, and supervillians. Superheroes like Winston Churchill and King Arthur will establish themselves in history far beyond any knowledge of the circumstances surrounding their actual lives. Their recorded memorials are singular in nature. Likewise, supervillians like Jackie and Butchie will blast a collective memory engram which far outlasts any appreciation of the people who surrounded them at the time.
Begg's effort is best summarized as an effort to revive the memory of the heroes - not superheores - who brought the spotlight to Jack, the supervillian. The non-singular heroes fall out of our collective memory, and only the singular supervillian remains.
But in Butch's case, there _was_ a singular singular focus of heroism: Eliot Ness. Because of this, the two lone figures of Ness and MBoKR remain inextricably intertwined as this case snowballs its own inevitable course down the hill of legend creation. "The Fourteenth Victim" and what have you.
In the interest of not overwhelming the bandwidth, I will divide my pursuit of the matter into multiple posts. But it's very interesting to me to observe that in the reality of the human dreamworld, it's possible for more than one iceberg to share the same tip. The "tip" I see is the tip of serial killers seen vs. unseen. The "tip" A. P. sees is the tip of this Internet vs. the ancient unseen, unknown, and unobserved Internet (the "Signal Network"). I'll take up the former, and I'll let the master poet teach us about the latter.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
__________________________________________
"Welcome To The Machine", Pink Floyd, from the "Wish You Were Here" album
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1070
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 4:50 pm: |
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Burgho
It’s like a fancy wedding cake, many tiers, and everyone gets a bite at the cake. Like you get rats so you do the ‘humane’ thing and put poison down - which freezes the rat’s blood and kills ‘em most horribly - but hey you got feelings so instead of employing a decent pit-bull terrier that will rip the throat and guts out of any rat - and no rat will enter premises where such a beast is employed - you are prepared to have the rats dying in your wall and roof spaces and stinking the place out for months as maggots drop through your ceiling and turn into big Jack flies that buzz around the clouds in the ceiling of your mind, but hey, you did the right thing.
No blood involved.
Same as we go to the supermarket and buy our neatly packaged and sealed slices of bloody flesh that we cook up for the family, it’s not flesh, it’s some form of plastimo protein, but just you get yourself down to the slaughter house with the screams, squeals and gushing blood and you want an egg, boiled not fried and no easy over ever again.
Wafer thin ham. It’s like so much not meat.
So rather than cut the throat of a specific threat to society, the signal makers in society teach most of us to control it through sophisticated techniques that do nothing to actually solve the problem, in fact they worsen the problem, but at the same moment in time the signal makers are busying themselves like hell by making sure that specific individuals within that society do hear their realistic overtures to do something about the problem that threatens the society that they aim to control and direct.
They slip the collars of the mad dogs. The dogs of war.
The anti-social warriors who snap at the heels of society through their own particular madness become useful soldiers to society in times of want and stress. Hence training procedure for special services personnel is part of an alienation process to distance themselves from ‘normal’ members of society so that they in turn become an ‘elite’ with special powers to kill.
‘Special powers to kill’ being the crutch piece of the argument, for it is not easy to kill unless you have been trained to do it. So empowered by the state, soldiers kill the targets that they have been taught to kill and are covered in glory for the pleasure.
But these are the obvious soldiers of a society that is seeking a cleansing change in structure and strata, and it is the unobvious soldier we must concern ourselves with, the Jacks and the Butchers.
For they too have been instructed by society to react in a certain manner to certain events, those events being a spiralling of certain sectors of that society into an uncontrollable spin that does threaten the very fabric of society at specific intervals in its vague development… these threats being most often of a moralistic nature or intent, and less often of an economic thrust.
We talk not of religious quagmire or persuasion here, for that is the ultimate smoothing and soothing tool available to the signal makers, a broadband device that generally smothers everything in its path; we talk of simpler things.
A child who thinks that all mothers are whores.
He will be nourished by the signals out there.
A man who thinks that all tramps and whores are trash.
He will be nourished by the signals out there.
As you might have noticed, I got on the wrong end of a badly fine bottle of brandy tonight and just emptied the trash of my mind into the waste bin of my body.
Good point about Ness.
Have to find him a loch.
Cheers.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 13
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 9:20 pm: |
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I think I see where you're going here, AP, and I like it. One of the joys of starting up on a new board is the fresh opportunity to recycle all of the cr*p I've core dumped out onto other forums, so bear with me because I'm going to repeat myself tirelessly.
I've always been fond of the theory that the sum of human aggression is an unyielding constant which works like an air bubble caught in a tarp sealed at all edges. We can push it around, but it's still the same amount of air. If we kind of flatten it around into evenly distributed little bubbles, then it looks like it's not there. That's the "illusion of peacetime". Many of those tinier bubbles are the solitary rogues we call "serial killers".
We're far more comfortable when there's a big bubble pushed into the corner farthest away from us. As long as we only see our corner, we enjoy yet another form of the illusion.
I think I've entertained you before with my own interpretation of The Great World Depression. What happened here is essentially a Dust Bowl drought of peacetime, and the ensuing culture shock suffered by a humanity for whom "The Big War" was an old reliable constant of the status quo for all history. Without "The Big War", we all just sat down and started to die, because we just don't know what to do next. The aggressor cultures which ignited WWII were a decade late to do their necessary job, which was to put another quarter in the jukebox and start up everyone's favorite song again. That was an occasion where your "signaling network" delayed a little bit in making sure that a group like the Third Reich appeared at the point where and when it was most needed. When the ants of your "colony" needed to be gathered up into their happy, neat lines again.
And it certainly helps your point to observe that the most uniformly universal characteristic found in all of SK history is the prevalence of the predatory behavior pattern. This behavior pattern is the most ancient adaptation of the animal kingdom. When we observe lions stalking a herd of zebras on the Serengeti, we consider it "the necessary and proper order of nature". We react differently to the other subject.
So, let me see if I can summarize your approach. You're suggesting an nth degree of determinism: God and Nature wrote the whole program of human behavior right at the beginning, and therefore all of our behaviors are the correct behaviors and they all occur at the correct time. So, both "criminal" and "peacetime" are illusions.
There's another interesting way to approach this: a collegue of mine described the basic tenet of Chaos Theory to me as: in order to completely describe any one point in the spacetime continuum, we must describe the entire history of all points in the universe. So, I guess that means that Jack's not only in the mirror, but that the universe murdered Kate Kelly.
Having fun yet?
Burgho |
A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 14
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 10:17 pm: |
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6) Superheroes and Supervillians
Not done here yet.
Here's the rub. A-dub. in interpreting this relationship between the villians and the heroes.
Since the heroes who brought the spotlight to the "supervillian" in the East End are out of sight to the collective short-term or long-term memory, the first thing common wisdom leads us to assume is that Jack created his own infamy by the spectacular atrocity of his crimes. This leads us to believe that SKs stand up and account for themselves in the historic roll call, and that we know where they all are or were.
But the consistent implication we see between these two cases is that visibility of the monster is not created by his own monstrosity. It's created by the brilliance of those near him.
OK, so: how many wolves in the fold are there who weren't or aren't surrounded by brilliant people?
This gets even worse, as I continue later.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1072
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 2:30 pm: |
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Thanks for that Burgho.
Your posts always leave me grasping for the nearest bottle of anything containing alcohol, they are just too on the cutting edge; and I find alcohol allows me to peer into your creative visions better.
You summed up where I was going before I even got there, and obviously I'm going to dwell on what you say.
There is another thing that figures strongly in all this though, and that is the fiercely individual nature of the beast, like when you and I endlessly read about some chick in the newspapers who claims that she was sexually used by a celebrity we probably bin the paper and switch on the Discovery channel; others might turn the pages with increasing interest; but you can bet your most bottom dollar that there will be one individual out there who will carefully fold his newspaper and say to himself:
'Well, I think I'll just go out and kill someone.'
And does just that.
That is the nature of the beast.
I'll be back to you very soon.
cheers. |
A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 15
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 7:40 pm: |
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That's a damn shame, A.P., because I have observed without reservation that you are singularly brilliant and inspired person. I'm a chronic alcoholic myself (like this wasn't obvious yet). You, Sir, have way too much left to give to this world and it's curious and wondering people, before you feed your liver to the daffodils. Even though that's where all of ours, along with that of King Ozimandias, will end up.
Do I speak to the James Joyce of Ripperology? Joyce was an author who would like to assert his intellectual dominance in absolution. Failing that, he strains his neck muscles harder, and then grabs a bottle of brandy at Safeway to relieve the tension of such a grand fight, and even better to fool himself into thinking that he's accomplished that. All the while not appreciating the amazing accomplishments he's done, because it's all worthless if he doesn't hold the grail in his hand. All or nothing.
Joyce, like all Ripperologists to date, failed. Or did he?
In some schools alcoholism is understood as the desire to return to the prenatal condition, the death before life. Wombs are the pink and springy things that Andrei Chikatilo claimed he only nibbled on and tossed aside, to minimize the embarassment of needing to admit that he ate them whole, sometimes cooking them in frying pans he brought from his family house.
And then there's the James Joyce of science fiction, Samuel R. Delaney, whose impressively massive tomes like "Dhalgren" and "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" imposed upon me as books I couldn't finish. I need to go back and try to finish them, just like I came back to "Jack The Myth" and tried to swallow it one digestible bite at a time. Nibble, nibble.
Most often, we hide our eyes from the blaze of Ahken-Ahten. It's too bright and painful. It's what we do. It's a survival trait not to bend too far in the solar wind. This is the wisdom of the "British revolution".
The Whitechapel ripper put wombs, like whole universes, into his pocket like grains of sand. There, I think, was another fellow with the James Joyce problem. Like so many of us. Like me, like you, and the mirror.
The Queen's English is not an instrument of domination, it's an instrument of sharing. It's a standard issue sword we sharpen as comrade soldiers on the eve of a battle on a distant, unknown, and alien home field. It may be a decisive edge, or just plain useless. Jack and Butch fell asleep during the marching orders. They put down the newspaper before they were finished reading. That's what WE do when we decide to toss it aside and have a drink.
Gee, did I cut your head off with the brilliance of this post? Will you cut off mine with next? So typical the establishment (the "ritual" or "procedure") of male-to-male friendships: we spar with the swords until we assure equivocation. Butch apparently never found it. I think it's true among sociopaths that they win too often to grow. But if we get past this part, then we can lie down among the two-year-old yellowed issues of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in the rickety old rolling boxcar and dream of sunshine, knocking off a tune on the harmonica or two. Booze brings the blessing of a Sun God which is always there.
So here I am, with no brain on my shoulders, understanding that this whole business is a matter of love and passion, not the OED. We love Flo and Kate. We hate Jack and Butch. Especially the part of the latter we see in ourselves.
Damn it's bright and hot out here. Maybe I better go grab a bottle and crawl back into the boxcar, before I make more any more of a sap of myself. Before I really violate The Proper Order of Things. Before the marching line gets scattered.
But then again, maybe what I need is a really long sunbath on a discarded girder. And if I do this, am I the murderer or the victim?
Mamma always told me not to stare into the eyes of the sun.
But, Mamma! That's where the fun is.
...Bruce Springsteen
Beers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1076
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 2:07 pm: |
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I enjoyed that post immensely, Burgho.
Riding boxcars is good for the mind.
And I could see a song like ‘The Midnight Special’ being firmly in the mind of a killer like the Butcher. It was the era, the era of killing tramps and trash. Am I mistaken in the believe that ‘good folk’ actually set fire to some of these shanty towns - like Kingsbury Run - full of tramps and trash, to drive them on elsewhere, and that quite a few of the trash got burnt to death?
But hey, they were just trash after all.
Perhaps that is why I see a ‘social anger’ in the crimes of the Butcher rather than a personal anger… just as I do in the case of Jack, but for different reasons. I don’t think Jack was putting the trash out, I think he was killing the image of himself as a child in the womb that was eventually spat out of a horrific slimy orifice that belonged to that most hated of all things to him, his blessed mother.
If you hate your mother then I reckon that all things creative, feminine or sexual would be absolutely abhorrent to you.
The Butcher had other social causes, and maybe that is why I might ease myself gently away from the conception of a bisexual killer, for trash can be white or black, or male or female. When we zap a rat we don’t turn it over and examine its genitals as confirmation for our deed, we just whack it and put it in the garbage, usually wrapped in a newspaper… but we don’t grease it up or wash it down.
That’s crucial. I haven’t got that yet.
I haven’t forgotten or ignored your previous post, I’m just pushed like hell for time at the moment, but I got a day off Wednesday so I’ll apply myself then.
This alcohol business is a pure pleasure.
Thanks for the kind words.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1082
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 2:07 pm: |
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Scum of the Earth?
Burgho
Yes, I suppose I am suggesting an nth degree of determinism (or do I mean pre-determinism?).
The program was certainly written by ‘someone’ - my best guess would be due evolutionary process - and just like any other program has its fatal flaws and viruses, hence sometimes the stalking Serengeti lion gets trampled, kicked and chased away from the herd by a determined zebra stallion who glimpses his reproductive end in the mad red eyes of a big cat, and then the all-powerful supreme biological mechanism that exclusively dominates all thought process and decision making on this planet, the flight or fight switch, clicks in with the stallion on fight mode.
The lion’s own switch - previously wired on fight - suddenly switches to flight.
Role reversal at the flick of biological switches! Whatever next?
Interestingly enough I’ve been rereading through ’When London Walked In Terror’ by Edwin T. Woodhall, and it is very educational and rewarding to get into the mind of a man writing about the events of 1888 in 1937 - forty or so years later - rather than us far-removed representatives of a modern age who appear quite determined that we are able to solve the mystery with our new fangled techniques and tactics.
Fat chance!
Even in 1937, Woodhall saw the irony of the JtR situation when he wrote:
‘On the one hand, his hunters - the police! On the other hand, his prey - the unfortunates.’
So there you have one predator chasing another predator as prey whilst the second predator is chasing other prey, and they all chase their own tails into some kind of rare oblivion, just like us Ripposaurs today.
I suppose it’s all a question of age.
It is well nigh impossible for us to step back to 1888 and set our minds in tune with the events as people who were actually living there then.
Here’s just a few of Woodhall’s descriptive terms for the poor folk who inhabited Whitechapel in 1888 - written down in 1937 when we were all supposedly more educated, civilised and tolerant:
‘Scum of the Earth.’
‘The most undesirable of undesirables.’
‘Verminous people.’
‘Foreign scum.’
And Whitechapel itself was a ‘Alien infested locality.’
Now I am often taken to task on these boards for using similar terms to describe the ‘unfortunates’, but all I attempt to do is inject a little reality into the discussion, so it is rewarding to realize that I might have been travelling on the right road, for if Woodhall could feel that strongly forty years after the events of 1888 just what the devil would the middle and upper class of the Late Victorian Period have thought of the ‘Scum of the Earth?’
So Burgho, my dear chap, we can see that when the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run put on his hat to go out and remove other person‘s hats along with their heads - in his age - he very likely thought just like dear old Mister Woodhall that he was dealing with the ’Scum of the Earth’.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 17
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 9:56 pm: |
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A.P., "Shades of Whitechapel" is about the absence of change. The things these cases have in common don't flicker, they don't move, there's no smoke, and there's no mirrors. Profilers only chip away at the tip of the iceberg. They're ALL the same.
So far my research on SKs has brought me this insight about us: the more sameness we see from one behavioral context to another, the more ancient it's origin. There's lots of sameness from SK case to SK case. Problem is, we can use this observed recalcitrance to understand the basis for other "more sophisticated, more civilized" behaviors we see which bear similarity. The SK uses caste to identify victim opportunity. Hence, that's what we ALL have ALWAYS use castes for. Now, let's count how many different times each day we all use that ancient rule. Usually without noticing it. Thin-sliced cold cuts, right?
Jack's in the mirror.
The SK is like a shark or a cockroach. This is a life form which has always been abundantly successful in what it does, so it doesn't evolve. The rest of us have buried all the same rules the SK follows under cerebral convolutions of many folds: from abstraction and indirection, to an honest yearn to believe otherwise, and many other such tricks. We use our basic "nine neurotic defence mechanisms (like 'denial')". We have smoke and mirrors, SKs don't. They still look pretty much like sharks and cockroaches.
I think we repeat each other alot here, don't we!?
Jack is in the mirror. Did I say that? Well, just in case I forgot: Jack is in the mirror. We murdered Mary. But now, we want a reprieve. We'd like another dance with her.
Another way to say it: "The more things change, the more they stay the same.". You explained very well a couple of posts back, with the cold cuts.
Late now, but one day I'll search this site for the word "love" and see where it hits. Diving for diamonds in the dustbin. Is love something real, or just another form of Denial, Incorporated?
Yeah, you're right. I have scope control issues.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1087
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 2:19 pm: |
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Enjoyed that Burgho.
So the winds of change don’t blow through the shaded alleys of Whitechapel?
You bet your pink arse they do.
I know what you are saying, and I guess I grasped at that same straw when I postulated that as society moved forward then folk like Jack walked them right back to where they come from… but I wavered then and I waver now. Was Jack really doing that, maintaining a constant in society that we all could follow even many years later, or was he giving society a mighty kick on its shins to swing it back onto its evolutionary track?
No Burgho, evolution is the monster here, it positively and absolutely does not allow for any of us to sit still and enjoy the view, we are all caught up in the monster’s screaming path and rushed headlong into a future which we neither understand or want. But it happens.
Even the Jacks in society must move to its solemn chord.
I agree that there is a calculable consistency, but surely that is as inherent as the behaviour patterns of the Tasmanian Tiger which doesn’t exist anymore? Evolution has passed it by, and a serial killer who does not operate to the constraints of the time zone he occupies will suffer the same fate. He will be rapidly out-evolved by more successful species.
He must change… or disappear.
That change is conceptual, this I will give you along with my four pence, but the cry remains the same, as the number 18 bus grinds its way up Aldgate High Street and disgorges its sea of humanity:
‘All change!’ shouts the conductor whose ancestors were kidnapped from the Ivory Coast and sold into slavery in South America and shipped to the Caribbean as sugar cane labour but then his great grandson who came to London to earn a better living than he could in Trinidad has gone back to Trinidad and just won the Noble Prize for literature.
And as Jack stands there which victim would he pick from his old territory?
The crack-cocaine dealers?
The ‘Yardies’.
The whores?
At fifty pounds, and with Arnie to make sure you pay?
Jack is marginalized by evolution just like everyone else.
Jack wouldn’t last five minutes in Whitechapel today.
Good post though, Burgho.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 18
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 9:41 pm: |
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Damn, AP. You've really got to favor us another book! You're pretty awesome as a random striker, one shudders to think of an organized attack.
I guess we've sized up our little pack of cold cuts pretty well, with respect to the image of a cat tearing out the throat of it's prey. It's all very different, it's all the same.
I still like the flavor of your previous posts, though, which emphasize that we humans really haven't changed that much. We've just moved the bubble out to the edge, or flattened it so that it doesn't look like it's there. Steps of removal, words instead of swords.
I also like to think that we haven't even begun to appreciate irony, as Mr. Woodhall has. We may be posting the three hundred quadrillionth word of speculation on a site devoted to a mystery imposed on us by the violent behavior of a trainably retarded (bordering on idiot) lunatic. Someone who could have been dumber than Poe's orangutan. We're still that far away from getting anywhere here. We'll never know who he was. And why does that matter so much? What kind of control do we think we assure ourselves of if we could accomplish that?
We're not going to know Jack, but at least we can begin to appreciate how little we understand about ourselves. The Shantytown Raid was a perfect example of how common sense utterly fails when applied to the more ancient, unseen, and unknown logic of sharks and cockroaches. The "signal network", the "collective unconscious". Ness was a common sense lawman, and didn't stand a chance with the Butcher. It's OK, he kicked butt everywhere else he went, and it was a good thing. I don't think he was "the fourteenth victim", but here we can see how the defiance of common sense which SKs confront us with becomes larger than life and transforms into legend. Like a crack in a door to a lighted room for the local insect life. Like a corpse in a field to horseflies. Like a crowd gathering around Mitre Square early Sunday morning. We all go here. We gather around the improbable tragedy, like gawkers at car wrecks. We want to know what we need to do to control it.
We really need to believe we can do that.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1088
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 30, 2004 - 1:45 pm: |
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Thanks Burgho
you are fairly formidable in the front row too.
I enjoyed that last post immensely and shall dwell on it with a few jugs later on tonight.
Here's some moonshine for you:
Counting Crows…
A quick delve into the mysteries of population dynamics and biological mechanics will no doubt benefit this quest for Jack and friends.
The ‘Hydra-Factor’ is my own term for the most peculiar fact that if you were to take your 12 gauge shotgun out onto your farmland and blast joyfully away at the resident and pestilent population of fifty crows who have been systematically stripping your land bare; and in doing so shot thirty of the varmints, you would probably pat yourself on the back and give yourself an ice cold Bud.
But you would be wrong to do so.
For what you have unwittingly done is released a biological monster who will raise itself from the dead bodies of the crows and spread its vast and deadly wings over your farmland for centuries to come.
For the remaining crow population reaps untold inspiration from its dead fellows, and a positive frenzy of nest building and copulation ensues with eggs and chicks being blasted out of orifices at a prodigious rate - it is not unknown for crows under these auspicious circumstances to nest three or four times one after the other such is their joy - so prodigious is this ‘Hydra-Factor’ that within three months you will have 500 crows decimating your land instead of the original dynamically stable population of fifty you began with… back in the good old days before you had that ice cold Bud.
This buggeration of a natural law applies universally to all living creatures, although man likes to feel he is exempt from it, I’m afraid he is not.
Now, if we are able to strip away our emotional attachment to the subject of murder for a moment, what exactly does the murder of several individuals mean to the population in general?
It is obvious on a massive scale such as in the gigantic blood-letting of a world conflict, for we do most assuredly see a popular resurgence after the mass slaughter, human beings enjoy an unparalleled sexual freedom under such circumstances and babies are shot out like popcorn all over the place; houses are built, supermarkets fill with fresh produce once again and society finds itself in the swell.
I suppose if one were to take a small island population of let’s say 30 folk and then set a serial killer of the ilk of Jack amongst them for a couple of months, and allowed him free reign to indulge his peculiar hobby, then I do believe the results would be not only highly interesting but also positively startling.
Obviously this is something we cannot do.
Also obvious is that the ‘Hydra-Factor’ becomes increasingly difficult to detect in sizeable populations - in ‘peacetime’ conditions I mean of course - and so when a killer knocks out say five of a population of 250,000 people, the ripples would hardly wash across our toes.
But that doesn’t mean to say they ain’t there, especially if one considers that the five victims all belonged to a very rare and select social grouping consisting of perhaps only a thousand members.
Now, there’s an open avenue for research.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 22
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 10:54 pm: |
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AP,
Now you're not just talking about famous serial murder cases. Now, your're talking about counting crows in the cornfield. That's perfect. That's EXACTLY what we're doing. That, and nothing more. Now we're _really getting nowhere_. And we're getting nowhere fast. That's progress. And that's exactly where this whole Super-turbocharged Hi-Test Midnight Rocket Express has always been bound. Now, you're talking about how real life works. 30 crows and one Bud at a time.
And your last post illustrates insight into how this balance of good and evil, the dance of ages, works. There are short-term extremities, on very large and very small scales, and then there is the long term agenda, to which we have many clues but no solution. Your observation that a flourish of life follows a flourish of death does well to illustrate how just one more day in paradise this whole enterprise is.
Keep it up. Put another quarter in the jukebox.
Heaven help us, but here's a fellow who might actually put a florin in the jukebox. Just what Queen Guenivere and Annie Siffey always dreamed of. A true knight of the realm.
There will never be a florin in the jukebox. The girls will still always hope. They will turn away the local lads and wait.
In the second verse, Jack breaks our hearts. In the third verse, our boyfriend comes back home and kick's Jack's butt. In the fourth verse, we all live happily ever after.
If we delve 116 years back into history and hang a name on a serial murderer who had a three-month stretch of activity, then we get a Bud Light for that. Just one. If we want another one, we'll need to pay another six million bucks. Maybe we need to start on rum. That's ALWAYS worked. Annie apparently thought so. She's among the most celebrated women of history. Who are we to question?
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1103
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 1:41 pm: |
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Nicely put, Burgho
But sometimes that ‘ol juke box don’t work and you got to give it a damn good kicking to make it play your tune, and then the barman shouts out:
‘Hey! That aint no pinball machine!’
And you shout back:
‘The sonabitch swallowed my quarter and didn’t play my tune!’
That’s when you get thrown out the door and your Bud light sits there on the bar losing its life through the little bubbles that burst from the bottom and die on the top.
So to ‘Counting Crows’ - an excellent band by the way, check out ‘Butterfly in Reverse’ - and unlike you I don’t see this as part of a journey to ‘nowhere’. For my point was that - as clever as we may think we are - we are probably responding to deep rooted biological urges and desires - which we neither understand or can control -in all our natural inclinations, and that those inclinations are formed and struck by mute chords within society… we can’t see or hear them but nonetheless they are of powerful import. My subliminal signals - if you like - from the Colony model.
Right at the outset of my nefarious career in this sometimes brilliant but often tedious, vain-glorious and pox-ridden world full of lumbering Ripposaurs, I did recognise that subtle and subliminal signals and messages formed the very essential background and history to the world of the serial killer. I talk not of far-fetched conspiracy here, far from it, for I talk of the strikingly obvious and the day-to-day life of society as it blunders into the smoke and mirrors of its own natural consequence.
Allow me a small example.
I have always maintained that the great body of Colin Wilson’s work will act as a powerful stimulant and catalyst on the imagination and fantasy of a disturbed young man - and are not all young men disturbed? - who might then just go out and kill an innocent woman with a knife because he has read in Wilson’s work that this is ‘sex’.
Such as Wilson do very much supply the affirmation of the ‘weird idea’ that mutilation and murder are somehow connected to ‘sex’, and such social affirmation, written down in books and magazines, widely available to all, do form the essential building blocks of a serial killer’s progression from ‘weird idea’ to murderous act.
When the young man finds out that murder and mutilation are not ‘sex’ at all but something despicable and entirely self-defeating, he then in his anger and frustration strikes out again and again, hoping to find the ‘sexuality’ in his deeds, but of course he never does, so as a final act of utmost despair masturbates over the dead body… and then says ‘Yes, this is sex now, just like Mr. Wilson says in his book.’
And all them flatulent Ripposaurs lift their heavy old heads out of the swamp and start nodding because they can smell fodder and royalties.
You see, every single time someone repeats the lie in print or media form that ‘sex’ might be achieved through using a knife on a woman they are contributing to the ultimate success of the subtle signal Colin Wilson sent out many years ago, and they are reinforcing the ’weird idea’ whilst sacrificing the stark reality of the true situation:
That it aint no fun to kill and mutilate a woman with a knife, and it is certainly not ’sex’ in any form or manner.
Sex is when you smile at a woman or a man and you like each other enough to get it on.
This is the signal that we should be sending to young men, and women.
Instead the Ripposaurs gleefully toss gasolinos on the burning fire of their own youth… and I for one hope they get their fat arses badly burnt.
Me?
I apply ice to the wound, and try to get young men to smile.
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A Rusty Ol' Hound Dawg
Sergeant
Username: Burgho2004
Post Number: 23
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 11:06 am: |
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A.P sez...
"That it aint no fun to kill and mutilate a woman with a knife, and it is certainly not ’sex’ in any form or manner.
Sex is when you smile at a woman or a man and you like each other enough to get it on."
Thank you, AP. You've summed up the mission very nicely.
Defending the honor of what sex and love is is very much about what this whole Ripperology business is about. We really don't care who this local lunatic was as much as we'd like to reclaim an appropriate reverence for sex and love from his plundering clutches.
I'm not sure why you choose to focus this argument toward one criminologist, a one Mr. Wilson. It's a crime of which most of us are guilty. It's mostly a denial problem. It's an instinct to flinch when looking into the eyes of the sun, Ahken-Ahten, or whatever we choose to call it.
Mr. Wilson hold no primary franchise on how to avoid the reality that the progression of our lives is very much a matter of counting the murder of crows in the cornfield. Why argue with him in particular? It's a problem we all have.
Please bear with me through the time lapses. I'm still on the train. This criminal investigation is something we all do mostly while we're asleep, lulled by the swaying of the cars and clickety-clack of the tracks. I'm impressed with the advancement of the modern age in laying down continuous tracks. Funny to observe how the motivation to accomplish this could be more psychological than a matter of physical economy.
The passengers no longer fall asleep to a heartbeat, natural or otherwise.
Cheers,
Burgho |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1113
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 1:56 pm: |
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Sorry Burgho
I have not been ignoring you or anything like that, and I did post replies to your last couple of messages but they got vapid in some ill wind that was blowing and frisked off elsewhere. Lost in transit.
I suppose I tip my lance at Wilson because he is there, and he shouldn’t be, he should be growing F1 geraniums in a potting shed somewhere in the outback of Devon - and he is - so just like F1’s can’t procreate I try and ensure that neither does his Freudian comedy on murder most foul.
You know all this comes from seeds left by the clever crows who do know that their very survival depends ultimately on the continuation of the alien crop, planted by some distant farmer with a shotgun under his arm and a cold Bud waiting for him in the fridge when he goes home to count the crows.
And from this cast off seed doth come a crop and Wilson counts his pound of crows.
As a child I was much influenced by the idea that a flock of crows was much like a pack of playing cards thrown up into the air, and as they blew here and there in the vagaries of weather one could pluck a card out of the air and say ‘that is it!’
52 cards and every one is right… when ‘you’ pluck it out of the air.
Instead I let them all fall to earth and studied the patterns where they lay,
and that my dear fellow led me to tip my lance at the man who had plucked the crow out of the air and said ‘this is it!’
For he had but found a seed left by the crows, and everyone else imagines that the sum of the flock is correct.
I do not believe that to be the case.
Anyways, lovely to hear from you, and I shall dwell on all the things you say as the train is shunted into a siding for the night.
We should play cards to while away the hours, or count crows.
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Erin Sigler
Sergeant
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 34
Registered: 1-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 28, 2004 - 2:53 pm: |
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I'm beginning to see your point, A.P. I realize the Butcher emasculated at least one of his victims, but I think that could be more of an attempt to depersonalize his victims utterly rather than a simple sexual assault. However, in the same way I feel that by removing the sex organs of his victims Jack was attempting to remove that which was simultaneously fascinating and threatening to him, the Butcher's removal of Andrassy's genitals could indicate a denial--or a confusion about--his own sexuality.
Of course, I'm intrigued by the suggestion that the Butcher's mutilations were part of a bizarre, possibly religious ritual. I've always thought the Ripper murders contained somewhat ritualistic aspects, which I chalked up (no pun intended) to a disturbed mind. The same could be true for the Butcher, except that his murders seem far too organized--mechanized, even--to be the work of a madman. He displays a certain degree of control over both his victims and the situation that the Ripper seems to lack. It's not out of the realm of possibility that he was, like I believe the Ripper to have been, mentally ill; but I feel that either the Butcher was in an earlier stage or had a less severe form of a similar disorder.
Well, that's enough psychobabble from me! Hopefully it wasn't too incomprehensible.  |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1123
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 28, 2004 - 5:25 pm: |
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Erin
I think you are almost right here, but what is for sure is that both crimes represented ‘confusion’, and not only in the mind of the killer but in society as a whole. My reasoning here is based on something I have said before on this thread - and also linked to your last post on another thread - and that was that I seem to remember that at the times of the crimes of the Mad Butcher there was in American society a general trend towards despising ‘hobos’ and the like who inhabited the shanty towns such as Kingsbury Run… in fact this trampist segment of American society was considered shameful and abhorrent to all the ideals of the time, and people were actually encouraged by local politicians and sheriffs to go and burn down their shanty towns and get rid of the ‘scum’.
I also noted that the term ‘unfortunates’ was used by officials in both the Jack and Butcher crimes to describe the victims, and I felt this to be a very important view into the social aspects of the crimes.
So the whores of the LVP and the hobos of the Great Depression were both ‘unfortunates’, not unfortunate because we felt sorry for them, but unfortunate because they were there and life would have been so much more ‘fortunate’ if we could burn down their slums and kill them off… that’s according to the signals the male leaders of society were throwing out at those times.
I have said all along that I earnestly believe that serial killers do target sections of the population that are perceived by society in general as a threat to them - society is largely unaware of this trend - and these two cases are marvellous illustrations of that belief.
Without a doubt one is able to track the targets of serial killers through the last hundred years and then equate those targets with perceived threats to a confused male dominated society.
In a nutshell:
Ted Bundy battles Linda Lovelace in ‘Debbie Goes to Dallas’.
Jack the Ripper battles Merry Kelly in ‘Down on Whores’.
Mad Butcher kills the hobos in ‘King of the Road’.
Two serial killers who target young black men right in the middle of the black gang crack cocaine wars.
Well, just name the particular ‘bogey man’ of society at any particular time and you’ll find your serial killer putting out the trash.
Good post, Erin, enjoyed it.
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Stanley D. Reid
Inspector
Username: Sreid
Post Number: 199
Registered: 4-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - 7:46 pm: |
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Hi all,
I've always wondered about a possible religious aspect to these crimes. The D.C. in the "X" letter has always been assumed to stand for Doctor of Chiropractic but an old meaning for that was Doctor of Canon Law, a degree that would now be called Doctor of Divinity.
I see now that Jack Wilson of Black Dahlia fame is being pushed as a suspect in this case as well but he would have been too young for the earlier murders. That is, unless you think he was another Peter Kurten.
Best wishes,
Stan |
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