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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through January 19, 2000
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Medical / Forensic Discussions:
JTR's Hysterectomies:
Archive through January 19, 2000
Author: Thomas Ind
Saturday, 15 January 2000 - 07:43 am |        | Spellcheck
You'll have your work cut out with me if you wish to persist |
Author: Jeff D
Saturday, 15 January 2000 - 10:33 am | | Hello All !
Thanks Wolf for your comments. You have concurred with my own thoughts that the throat slash did appear to have a purpose for the killer. I too believe that it was more than simply to avoid being splashed, though I do carry this thought on further to indicate someone who was very experienced at killing (silently & quickly). I would still like to hear a professional opinion as to whether it would make any difference when performing the abdominal mutilations, and whether anyone feels that this was the primary purpose. I would tend to think it would make it much easier for the killer to rummage around by sight or feel in the victims abdomen, with the majority of blood having already been let through the throat. This does appear obvious to me, and very purposeful on behalf of the killer. Remember that this was done with extreme time limitations, in places where the killer could have easily been discovered, yet he was still able to find and take away trophies of his exploits, walking away relatively clean and unmussed. This guy knew exactly what he was doing, take Chapman for example, with all her horrible mutilations, a small splash of blood against the fence, a foot or so from the ground was all that was splashed, the rest (as in the others) drained and soaked up by the ample clothing.
Thanks again Wolf !
BTW; I read with great interest your posts on alternative theories and times of death a while back. I appreciate that you did appear to take a bit of a bashing, though I felt you had made some excellent observations raising some good questions. After all isn't that what these boards are all about? As long as we are not discussing fantasy such as diaries and Royal conspiracies alternative views can open up whole new avenues of research.
Cheers, I shall now leave this board to the medico's for their observations on medical aspects of the murders, which so far I have found very enlightening. Thank-you Tom & Villon (and all) for some interesting stuff !
Jeff D |
Author: D. Radka
Saturday, 15 January 2000 - 09:42 pm | | Perhaps the orbital throat wounds can be grounded in his general killing technique, which he doubtless chose to avoid being splashed by blood on his clothing. Assuming he was not an educated man or a doctor, he may have felt that the heart might restart while he was mutilating, and more blood would pump out the neck and splash him if he only cut the carotid artery one time. So he cut it several times, going all around the neck, to make absolutely sure that all the blood that was going to drain out of that neck wound had already drained out, as of the point in time he would be beginning the abdominal mutilations. Maybe this is the way he was thinking. There is no other way to explain the orbital throat cuts I can imagine that does not bring in something tangental to the evidence. I mean, maybe he thought he was playing ring around the rosy when he made the orbital cuts, but there is no other evidence of ring around the rosy at the crime scenes. How does this sound to y'all?
David |
Author: Wolf
Sunday, 16 January 2000 - 02:04 am | | To spellcheck, so sew mea. Thanks for the kind words Jeff. Dave, I have always thought that the deepness of the cuts were simply part of the viciousness of the attack. The need to create as much damage to the body as possible in order to gain his sexual gratification. if you catch my drift.
Wolf. |
Author: Spellcheck
Sunday, 16 January 2000 - 05:14 am | | Wolf,
Do I need a writ or needle and thread? |
Author: Thomas Ind
Monday, 17 January 2000 - 01:03 pm | | | Just posting a message to keep this in the 'Last day' tree. I'm hoping that Villon will post when he returns. |
Author: Diana
Monday, 17 January 2000 - 06:46 pm | | If Jack worked in a slaughterhouse (and I believe there were a lot of them in the district) he would have anatomical knowledge. Experienced in dressing out carcasses, he would have some rude surgical skill thus satisfying Dr. Villon. He would also have had to perfect the art of killing and eviscerating quickly. The management would probably want to process as much meat in a day as it could. Thus he also meets the smash and grab criteria of Dr. Ind. It would explain why he was so good at killing quickly, before his victim could scream. If the premises were not well lit, then Jack would have gotten very good at finding organs by feel alone. It explains the speed and efficiency with which he performed the mutilations. The psychology is right too. If I'm some kind of sicko who fantasizes about killing and mutilating all the time (and Douglas says there is a long period of fantasizing first -- months or years) then I would probably be drawn to a slaughterhouse as a desirable place of employment. Moreover, even if I have had sick fantasies of killing and mutilating women for years, without any background at all (ie. animals) when I finally confront Polly with my trusty knife I think I just might freeze. (I am mindful of what Dr. Villon has just told us about his unskilled helpers turning pale and vomiting)
Jack could leave the scene with blood all over him and have the perfect excuse if stopped. After all anyone who knew him would testify that he worked in a slaughterhouse. It would also explain why he carried a knife. As to people in slaughterhouses not working with uteri, if you read Nichols autopsy, the nature of the cuts on her lower abdomen leads me to believe that he was trying, but not succeeding (due to partial ignorance). He took what he learned from doing Nichols and did better (if you can use that term) with Chapman. It was a learning process.
HOWS THAT FOR A THEORY! |
Author: Jon
Monday, 17 January 2000 - 07:45 pm | | A slaughterer?
There's several steps missing between the slashing of Nichols & the surgical removal of organs from Chapman.
It might be that Jack was just interrupted with his attack on Nichols.
You also suggest...."It would explain why he was so good at killing quickly, before his victim could scream."
Do you mean he got his technique from strangling cows?
:-)
Regards, Jon |
Author: Diana
Monday, 17 January 2000 - 10:24 pm | | | Jon, you are the ex butcher so I feel a little nervous talking back, but wouldn't he have slit the cow's throat? |
Author: Caz
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 05:14 am | | The 'Dear Boss' letter and 'saucy Jacky postcard writer(s) had animals on the brain too.
'I gave the lady no time to squeal'.
'....number one squealed a bit....'
Love,
Caz |
Author: Thomas Ind
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 10:43 am | | Diana
Hope you are better from your flu.
Possible, even probable if you put weight on the FBI profile. However, I still don't feel a lay person can be excluded. I came up with a good analogue as to locating the organ while in theatre this morning. It's a bit like placing your hand in saw dust for a lucky dip. Eventually you feel something and within an abdomen, you can cut it out. |
Author: Bob_C
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 01:34 pm | | Hi Thomas,
May I ask in which hospital you operate?
Seriously, one may wonder if Jack did have some special knowledge or was just 'lucky'. I have basic knowledge of where the main organs are in a person, such as kidneys, heart, stomach, spleen etc. but no knowledge of have to chop them out of someone with a knife in a few seconds, or even minutes.
Jack must at least have had some expirience, but in those days, and to my young day, fowl and small animals were regularly skinned/plucked and gutted at home. This may well have served to give Jack the necessary knowledge to do what he did.
Best regards
Bob |
Author: Villon
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 01:57 pm | | Tom:
I agree, 'eventually' the most cackhanded lay man would find a uterus just by rummaging through the abdomen.
But Jack had only minutes in which to kill the woman, cut her open, remove the relevant organs and get away.
He did not have time for rummaging. He had to have had a good idea of where to go and what he wanted to get.
I'm back for one day before going off to Aberdeen. I have not had time to read back over all the posts, so this is patchy.
I totally concur wioth almost all of Tom's other medical points.
I am likewise of very limited experience in orthopaedics, however I have seen a couple of bodies hacked up with hatchets - one of the great educational experiences of working in Rwanda - and to my knowledge a thigh bone attacked with a hatchet splinters and fragments, even in the young and softboned. The thigh bone on the photo looks too tidy and smooth. But I don't ask to be taken as an authority on this.
I had a skeleton until about five years ago, when I sold it to a woman who collected medical memorabilia, or so she said, she may have been a pervert of some kind, but I needed the money.
In respect of Tom's skeleton, I am not sure that there would be much benefit in attacking its femurs with a hatchet. The neighbours might get strange ideas, and wouldn't old bone prove much more brittle than new?
Ethically, I cannot see a problem in trying. As students we used to use them as convenient coat hooks, and my father stands one in his conservatory, dressed in fleece and old hat to frighten the unwary. Her name is Violet Elizabeth, and I have known her for many years. But he also kept jars of gallstones and kidney stones and used to get us children to tell them apart as a Christmas game. So he is not a very admirable example.
Perhaps it is a little ghoulish. But if we believe in an afterlife, then these souls have gone way beyond a place where a few bones matter, and if we don't, then there is no on left to care.
PROFILING:
I have a brother who has made a study of the inadequacies of profiling as an aid to solving serious crime. If I can dig out some of his stuff i will post it when I have time, if he is agreeable. He thinks profiling a huge waste of time, as do many other forensic professionals I gather.
I don't think it makes sense to use profiling as the determining factor in accepting or rejecting evidence.
Ans if our Senior Registrar is to be called Tom, then I must be Mike. I have always felt a fraud whenever anyone has called me 'doctor'.
Mike |
Author: Caz
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 02:21 pm | | Hi Mike, Bob, Diana, Tom and All,
Loved the skeleton story Mike.
My daughter was about seven when the door of her schoolroom opened and 'Fred' the skeleton appeared, all by himself, or so the girls were led to believe. Not a scream to be heard, just shrieks of girlish laughter.
I couldn't agree with you more about bones and the afterlife.
Bob, some serial killers do try-outs on animals first, don't they?
What about pigs?
Do you think many Londoners in 1888 would have kept little piggies at home? Were they small and cheap enough, d'ya think?
Large enough to practise on though. And the sows too for getting to grips with their uteri?! How do porcine organs compare in size, shape and position with humans, I wonder?
Certainly easier than cats and dogs to dispose of after a practice session, just slash, hack, feel around for the relevant organs (even get to practise in the dark?), cook and scoff all the evidence! (Sorry Miss Piggy)
We had a labrador who once polished off half a pig's head, teeth and all, burped, and never stopped wagging her tail.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Villon
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 02:24 pm | | Just a quick additional note in response to Bob C.
This idea that experience of the anatomy of various animals would have helped Jack do his deeds is one that keeps coming up.
I think, with real respect, it is based on a layperson's misapprehension
Such experience might help you with organs like kidney or liver which I believe are broadly similar across different species, but it would be of no help at all in locating a human uterus, because the anatomy of the human pelvis is radically different from any animal a hunter or slaughterer is going to encounter.
It's like saying that seeing a map of Manchester would make it easier to find your way around Birmingham.
It would not.
And let's keep thinking about the speed this man had to employ, because that is the all important factor.
Less than five minutes to find and take out a uterus. It's common sense that only someone who had done this before, quite a few times, would have any chance of doing it in that time under the huge psychological pressure of knowing he would lose his life if he stayed too long.
This man was either a doctor, a med student, just maybe a mortuary attendant, or some crazed layman who was obsessed with human uteri and able to get hands on experience in extracting them.
I don't think many men would fall into the last category, which sounds a bit too melodrtamatic to me.
I still have most of my money on a med student who subsequently went insane or got himself arrested on some other charge.
Mike |
Author: Hypocroteis
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 05:48 pm | | Dr.s please, It may not be necessary to rimind all that it is not a good idea to try out Jack the Ripper's techniques on your innocent and unsuspecting National Health Patients. Save this for Private Practice Patients only. Thanks for your immediate attention to this matter.
Hypocroteis |
Author: Hypocrotease
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 05:54 pm | | | Make that Hypocrotease... |
Author: Jon
Tuesday, 18 January 2000 - 06:57 pm | | Diana:
Dont ever be nervous...I've been known to come out with the silliest things every now and then, like above, (I was joking with you)
Tom:
Dont waste a perfectly good skeleton, it could possibly splinter into a million pieces, old dry bones, etc.
When you chop a large bone like a femur, one thats fresh, it will break in a slightly spiraling section. Curving around the shaft of the bone, it could almost be used as a weapon itself. The edge of the break is usually very clean, uniform and sharp.
Mike:
Be careful about the 'time Jack had' thingy....
We cant be sure about Watkins being there at 1.30am, like he said.
We cant be sure, to the minute, when PC Harvey walked down Church Passage. We cant be sure, to the minute, when Watkins returned to the square at approx 1.44am.
The stated times were all relative, the PC's did not have watches. As PC Harvey pointed out he could only be as accurate as the Post Office clock, which he passed on his beat, he could not be certain what the time was.
PC Watkins usually passed thru the square at 1.30am, and it usually took him about 12-14 mins to walk his beat (his words), but Watkins does not tell us how he knew it was 1.30 exactly, nor 1.44 either.
Jack may have only had a few minutes, between Harvey reaching the end of Church passage, approx 1.41-1.42am and Watkins finding the body at 1.44am. Or Jack may have had 14 mins max.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Bob_C
Wednesday, 19 January 2000 - 05:48 am | | Hi Mike,
I don't claim that he would have learnt how to surgically remove a womb, but I do think it may have helped him to at least get an idea where the main bits are, as I said. I think the most of us know, male as well as female, more or less where the human uterus is.
That doesn't suggest that we know how to chop one out, but Jack's attempts on Eddowes mangled the inner reproductive organs. He may have practised, may not. Or he chopped simply away and took what came. The medical opinion concerning Eddowes's kidney was that it was expertly removed. That can be, or Jack had 'beginner's luck'.
Best regards
Bob |
Author: Bob_C
Wednesday, 19 January 2000 - 08:50 am | | Hi Caz,
Deliberating over the differences between porcine and human physical characteristics, I must admit to having the temptation to make unfair remarks in some cases. I don't know if Jack chopped up piggies as a warm-up for Polly and Co, but I can well imagine that he may well have had contact to them in some way, be it only in the form of sizzling, crispy chops. (Erm.)
Pigs are supposed to have an unsuspected streak of nature friendly to the human race, or maybe they don't see any differences. I grew up on a farm, and had to clean out the buggers every day after the milking, stall-cleaning etc. etc. I don't remember having the time to see if pigs were so friendly, most of my contact to this animal group was through the toe of my boot.
It suffices to say that anyone who has stood next to a pig that thinks it is in danger can appreciate that if Jack did practice on them, he'd have damn well learnt to quieten them swiftly, if nothing else.
Love,
Bob
XXX |
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