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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 **
Cyclical Correlation of Letters and Murders
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Letters: General Discussion:
Cyclical Correlation of Letters and Murders
Author: Yazoo
Saturday, 12 December 1998 - 10:20 am |        | Standard warnings: The "ripper" correspondence is considered by many, if not most, researchers to be products of one or more hoaxes -- a press hoax in the case of the CNA correspondence, and a medical student hoax in the case of the Lusk letter. No proof seems to exist to make the claims that these were letters/etc were not a hoax, but there is also no evidence that they were a hoax. What follows is intended to allow researchers so inclined to make a better case for the correpsondences' genuineness so that any fair and reasonable inferences can be made concerning JtR using these letters.
I'd like you, for the purposes of this posting, to forget any previously-held correlation between the dates of the correspondences and the murders of the traditional five victims. What I mean by this is, again, my standard warning that no predictive ability or special knowledge in the letters is assumed by me in ANY arguments I make about these letters. In fact, I see nothing of these two qualities in the correspondence.
The following dates of the murders, I believe, show a cyclical nature. That is, a two-fold pattern immediately emerges: A) All the murders were committed at the beginning or end of the month, and B) Once a murder had been committed, it was followed by another murder roughly a week later. The exceptions -- and they are significant and controversial -- are the "double event" of 9-30-88 (Stride and Eddowes) and Kelly's murder where no further "JtR" style murder ever occurred thereafter.
The dates when murders occurred are:
1) Nichols, 8-31-88
2) Chapman, 9-8-88
3) Stride, 9-30-88 (also possible to say the evening of 9-29-88)
4) Eddowes, 9-30-88 (also possible to say the evening of 9-29-88)
5) Kelly, 11-9-88
I would argue that the "double event" follows the cyclical pattern (two murders, closely connected in time), and that its deviation (hours vs. a week) is due to the interruption of Stride's murder/mutilation. Why Kelly's murder was the "last" is unknown and perhaps unknowable -- choose your favorite suspect/theory/etc. for an explanation. See previous discussions under this topic for theories of why nothing occurred in the last week of 10-88...and also why the murders stopped after Kelly.
The letters and cards of the "Dear Boss" writer and the Lusk letter have the following periodicity:
1) First letter, dated 9-25-88, postmarked 9-27-88
2) Second letter (actually a postcard), undated, postmarked 10-1-88
3) Third letter, dated 10-5-88
4) Fourth letter, dated 10-6-88
5) Lusk letter, received 10-16-88
The pattern I want to emphasize is not a spurious one-to-one correspondence between the number of traditional victims and the number of letters we, under this topic, group together.
I'd like to point out the cycles: first one letter is sent and then, close in time, another letter is sent; first one murder is committed, then -- again close in time -- another murder is committed. The pattern seems superficial and shallow enough, doesn't it? But it is a pattern -- a similarity between the timing of two separate types of action associated with the "Ripper" murders.
As argued previously, the four "Dear Boss" letters show their own cyclical pattern of submission dates.
The third letter in this series mentions the stoppage of "power" of some religious sort. The Lusk letter subliminally hints at stoppage by hinting that his next "gift" to Lusk may be his knife (murder weapon). Another pattern. We have three letters in October but no known "Ripper" murders. In the murder pattern, in roughly three weeks after the Lusk letter, Kelly will become the last traditional victim of JtR. Ignore the recurrence of three...it is superficial and spurious.
In the previous sentences, I am providing a reinforcement through a brief synopsis of previous discussion of the idea of patterns in both the timing of the killings and the sending of letters/card/package.
We are all creatures of habit, are we not? Even murderers!
As usual, feel free to comment, ignore, or dispute.
Yaz |
Author: Bob_c
Saturday, 12 December 1998 - 12:19 pm | | Hi Yaz,
I have often mused over the ripper letter problematic. I don't damn them out-of-hand as hoaxes, indeed I have a (probably crack-pot) theory in the brewing that could suggest a real connection to Jack. (More later)
What I do notice is, however, is that no letter was sent until shortly before the 'double event' and none after Kelly or indeed almost a month before Kelly's murder. Indeed, the letters were sent over a time span from only just over three weeks, as against the five murders over a span from ca. ten weeks. That means that the first letter was written relatively long after Nichols and Chapman were killed and before Jack would really have been labelled as serial killer. Two murders, even with Jack's trademark, don't immediately and definitely show a serial killer.
The first letter does, however, show that the writer at least expects further killings, that means he already suspects, or KNOWS, that Jack is going to kill again i.e. serial killer. The postcard is evidently written by the same person and mentions the double event. This information could have been available to a hoax writer at the time but must have been written within ca. 36 hours of the Eddowes/Stride murders. If you take account of the time delay until the news was available and assume that the writer didn't wait until just before the post was collected, then even less. It didn't, however, mention the taking of the kidney. This is first mentioned over two weeks later in the Lusk letter, when everyone who cared knew about it.
The apparent periodicity of the letters to the killings, except Kelly's, could show that Jack, being insane, wrote and killed in phases. From work I did as a student in a hospital for the criminal insane (No, I was a helper's helper. Just helping out.) I know that many such patients reached, more or less cyclic, active and then inactive phases. To be honest, remembering one special patient, a shiver runs down my back even now when I think of the intelligence of this man. Brrr!
I know this will bring a groan from many lips, but does anyone know what the moon phases in London were then?
Bob |
Author: Yazoo
Saturday, 12 December 1998 - 03:05 pm | | Hey, Bob,
Thanks to others on the Casebook, there is a theory floating under this topic that the murderer wrote his letters around the time that publicity about the crimes grew high enough. If you hold the idea of the possibility of a partnership being "JtR" in the back of your mind -- as I think you and I both do -- the rest of the series, beginning with Stride through Kelly, show signs of a growing fury and disintegrating personality (psychobabble interpretation). The "Dear Boss" writer could be seen as trying to capitalize on the fame; the Lusk letter writer showing grim determination to dissassociate himself from his partner's (very dangerous) ambitions.
What is your theory?
And having worked five years in a hospital, in every area from the ER to the top-floor Psych Ward, I am familiar with hospital folklore about full moons and weekends. As in almost all folklore, damn if there wasn't some apparent truth in it -- just as I'd be laughing at the notion, I'd get an emergency call to the ER on a full-mooned Saturday evening to wrestle some maniac into restraints! Of course, wrestling maniacs wasn't restricted to weekends or full-moons or the whole staff would have called in sick those days!
Yaz |
Author: Christopher T. George
Sunday, 13 December 1998 - 08:11 am | | Hello, Yaz and Bob:
Yaz, I saw your posting on the Suspect's Profiles board on "Bianchi and Buono (The Hillside Strangler -- note the singular was/is still used)" so I see some of the background of why you believe JtR may have been two men acting together. Interesting.
I do not have much to add on the periodicity of the letters. (**Except there has been a LOVELY full moon out on the last few nights, ha ha.**) I did want to observe that the Lusk letter was received on October 16 right in the middle between the Stride/Eddowes and Kelly killings. Could the killer(s) have wanted to send this letter at that time because he/they could not get out to do more murders because of the general hue and cry and the use of bloodhounds, i.e., to "keep the pot boiling" as it were?
Chris George |
Author: Bob_c
Sunday, 13 December 1998 - 08:56 am | | Hi Yaz,
Yes, you're right. I do think in those lines, I haven't and won't post my notions yet because I have gone through them time and time again and can always find something that could/must be wrong/untrue, dubious/crazy etc.
I promise to post as soon as I have satisfied myself that I have done my best.
Hi CG,
I don't know if Jack realised how useless bloodhounds are in a street teeming full of people, horses, etc. It COULD be the reason why he killed Kelly indoors, although that would not have changed anything. The hue and cry after Jack could have had some influence.
As to the moon... HOOOOWL!!!!
Bob |
Author: Yazoo
Sunday, 13 December 1998 - 11:27 am | | Hey, Chris and Bob
As Avala once said, he relied on his instincts. So do I. I did in this case of the theory of two men revealed in the letter sets. The info on Bianchi/Buono and Lucas/Toole et al. came from Egger's book which I had just been reading now...so the theory of multiple killers came before I knew the phenomenon existed.
Now you know just how fragile my "theorizing" very, very often is!!!! But, shhhhh, don't tell anyone.
Bob, don't take any vacations in or around Romania, avoid the paths of gypsies, and run from anyone with the last name of Talbot!!!
Yaz |
Author: Bob_c
Sunday, 13 December 1998 - 12:40 pm | | Hi Yaz!
No joke, as a young man I had long, black curly hair (getting sent home from school more than once because I refused to cut it), light blue eyes (which is all that I still have) and sun-browned skin.
My nick-name? The Gipsy.
Bob |
Author: Yazoo
Sunday, 13 December 1998 - 02:21 pm | | Someone kindly pass the wolfbane over this way, please.
Yaz |
Author: tomsunland
Friday, 29 January 1999 - 04:09 pm | | Anyone out there got any info on the hoax letters and audio tape sent to West Yorkshire Police, England, during the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry March 1978 - June 1979. I'd like to hear from you.
Wearside Jack |
Author: Jon Smyth
Saturday, 30 January 1999 - 11:23 am | | Have nothing on the hoax letters but did tape the 'Ripper message' from the phone at the time it was being circulated. Kept it for years as a novelty, not being authentic, in fact only being the product of a 'semi-humorous' 'Geordie' all I remember are the first words recorded on the tape "I'm Jack....."
Lost the thing in one of many house moves over the years, had no importance though as it was not by the actuall killer, just a novelty. |
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