New "Ripper" book: Was Jack a woman?

[Buttercup]

http://news.yahoo.com/jackie-ripper-...211027739.html

I might buy and read this.

However, around 10 years ago Patricia Cornwell came forth with her theory that The Ripper was artist Walter Sickert. I think she gave compelling "forensic evidence" of that (comparison of the crime scenes to his paintings, primarily).

[Gillianren]

We'll never know. It's just that simple. I read the Patricia Cornwell book and found it unconvincing, but I doubt this one would be any more convincing. However, my strong belief is that the average person has never heard of the person who was Jack the Ripper. It was just some guy. (And, yes, it was almost certainly a man for a whole list of reasons.) We like to think it must have been someone important, but realistically, it probably wasn't--except in this one particular. And the quality of evidence-gathering from that era precludes a real solution now.

[Buttercup]

We'll never know. It's just that simple. I read the Patricia Cornwell book and found it unconvincing, but I doubt this one would be any more convincing. However, my strong belief is that the average person has never heard of the person who was Jack the Ripper. It was just some guy. (And, yes, it was almost certainly a man for a whole list of reasons.) We like to think it must have been someone important, but realistically, it probably wasn't--except in this one particular. And the quality of evidence-gathering from that era precludes a real solution now.

I think it's sad they (Cornwell and others) haven't been able to get DNA from the envelopes which The Ripper used in his notes to the police. Of course, like you mention, if it were just an ordinary person (not anyone famous), how to trace back that DNA (lack of known descendants)?

Must admit I'm intrigued by this "whodunit."

[Gillianren]

There's no reason to assume that the DNA hasn't long decayed.

[ravens_cry]

Since the identity is unknown, barring other information, I suppose there is an approximately 50% chance it was a woman.

[profloater]

Who knows if Sickert was a woman anyway? Even the name is Trickse.

[HenrikOlsen]

Since the identity is unknown, barring other information, I suppose there is an approximately 50% chance it was a woman.

Gender of victims, class of victims and the type of violence heaped upon them IS other information though and it gives a very strong indication that it was a man. Way beyond 50%.

[Paul Beardsley]

I'm an occasional viewer of, and not a huge fan of, the TV series Bones.

But the one thing I really, really like about it is that when they find a corpse on a rubbish dump or churned up in a machine or whatever, they often reconstruct that person's life and show what potential that person had before some creep brought their life to an untimely end.

By contrast, when there was a "charismatic" serial killer that they took a whole season to track down, they dismissed him in a single line. He was just some worthless nobody who killed people.

Jack the Ripper was somebody who preyed on the most vulnerable women in the society of that time. We owe it to his victims, and to every vulnerable person who might have been a victim like them, to not care who he was, unless we can use that information to prevent something similar from happening again.

[ravens_cry]

Gender of victims, class of victims and the type of violence heaped upon them IS other information though and it gives a very strong indication that it was a man. Way beyond 50%.

That I agree with.

[Gillianren]

Jack the Ripper was somebody who preyed on the most vulnerable women in the society of that time. We owe it to his victims, and to every vulnerable person who might have been a victim like them, to not care who he was, unless we can use that information to prevent something similar from happening again.

I like to think that someday, there will be a cure for this sort of thing, and it is only by studying people like this that we will be able to develop it. However, the study is easier on living sociopaths than dead ones, and endless speculation will avail us naught.

[Jim]

Gender of victims, class of victims and the type of violence heaped upon them IS other information though and it gives a very strong indication that it was a man. Way beyond 50%.

Unless "Jack" was really "Jacklyne" and wanted people to think she was a he.

[Gillianren]

I don't think the study of serial killers had advanced to the stage where the choice of victims and so forth would still point to a male killer all these years later. Unless "Jacklyne" was awfully lucky.

[profloater]

Gender of victims, class of victims and the type of violence heaped upon them IS other information though and it gives a very strong indication that it was a man. Way beyond 50%.

Interesting use of probabilities here. We are talking about an extreme case, extraordinary, and unsolved. I think we can be sure it was either a man or a woman, that's the 50% and the supposed anatomical expertise suggests a man at that time, but given the surprise attack and the possibility that a woman could get closer to those victims, a woman is not impossible, so the probabilty factor is not relevant to solving the crimes.

[HenrikOlsen]

If you have statistics showing that in 90% (NB! hypothetical number, I don't have the real one but know the correlation is very strong) of all serial murder cases where the identity of the killer is known and the victims are all women, the killer was male; and you have a serial murder case where the victims are all women, then (given no other information) you have a 90% chance of the killer being male, not 50%.

Claiming it's 50% because there are two choices is a really bad application of probability maths.

[profloater]

If you have statistics showing that in 90% (NB! hypothetical number, I don't have the real one but know the correlation is very strong) of all serial murder cases where the identity of the killer is known and the victims are all women, the killer was male; and you have a serial murder case where the victims are all women, then (given no other information) you have a 90% chance of the killer being male, not 50%.

Claiming it's 50% because there are two choices is a really bad application of probability maths.

Yes I agree with that. My point is that in any unsolved murder you cannot just assume it was a man because in previous cases 90% (hypothetical) were men. Even if previous cases were 100% men there remains the possibility that this one was a woman. Or even a possibility there were two murderers, copycat or conspirators!

[HenrikOlsen]

You can also claim Van Rijn's elf did it, it'll probaly even make a better selling book if you do.

I quite agree that in an investigation of a serial murderer, it is a bad idea to dismiss low-expectation options outright, but it's also an elementary optimization strategy to allocate more resources to the most likely options and to investigate those first.

But this is a case that can't really be investigated more, there is no new information one can look for, so the only thing to do is to say most likely male, most likely a nobody, beyond that is just speculation, i.e. fiction.

[Buttercup]

I'm an occasional viewer of, and not a huge fan of, the TV series Bones.

But the one thing I really, really like about it is that when they find a corpse on a rubbish dump or churned up in a machine or whatever, they often reconstruct that person's life and show what potential that person had before some creep brought their life to an untimely end.

By contrast, when there was a "charismatic" serial killer that they took a whole season to track down, they dismissed him in a single line. He was just some worthless nobody who killed people.

Jack the Ripper was somebody who preyed on the most vulnerable women in the society of that time. We owe it to his victims, and to every vulnerable person who might have been a victim like them, to not care who he was, unless we can use that information to prevent something similar from happening again.

Mea culpa.

I do agree with your sentiments.

However, if The Ripper were Walter Sickert (I think Cornwell is definitely onto something), then he did likely leave forensic evidence (his paintings) behind...which can be studied towards more understanding of psychopaths.

[Paul Beardsley]

Mea culpa.

I do agree with your sentiments.

Thank you for taking my comment well.

However, if The Ripper were Walter Sickert (I think Cornwell is definitely onto something), then he did likely leave forensic evidence (his paintings) behind...which can be studied towards more understanding of psychopaths.

I looked up Walter Sickert on Wikipedia. It prompted me to coin the expression "malignant speculation". An historical character has been "identified" as Jack the Ripper on the basis of lies and very flimsy evidence, with further allegations made about and refuted by Patricia Cornwell. At best it's generating more heat than light; at worst it's stirring up a cess pool

[Doodler]

The sexual mutilations didn't seem related to intercourse, more like caesarean childbirth. If it were a woman, maybe a midwife type or a jealous type that couldn't hatch an egg of her own?

[profloater]

The sexual mutilations didn't seem related to intercourse, more like caesarean childbirth. If it were a woman, maybe a midwife type or a jealous type that couldn't hatch an egg of her own?

Maybe "Jack" is a time traveller trying unsuccessfully to eradicate himself but having run out of his subscription to TIME had to be born as perhaps TS Eliot (1888) and finally gave up, that would be poetic justice... of a sort.

(Or Hitler? born 1889)

[Gillianren]

However, if The Ripper were Walter Sickert (I think Cornwell is definitely onto something), then he did likely leave forensic evidence (his paintings) behind...which can be studied towards more understanding of psychopaths.

No, this is invalid on several levels. The first and most obvious is that paintings simply aren't forensic evidence. That whole aspect of Cornwell's book was almost ludicrously speculative, and that was only one of its serious problems. It provides insight into Sickert's mind, but there's no more reason to assume that his art somehow "proves" he's the Ripper than Alan Moore is.

[Jens]

Gender of victims, class of victims and the type of violence heaped upon them IS other information though and it gives a very strong indication that it was a man. Way beyond 50%.

This is sidetracking a bit, but there's an interesting game you can play with someone. You tell them that scientists have discovered a certain genetic type, and members of this type are nine times more likely to commit murders than people of the other type. You wonder if it is a good idea to publish this, because parents might get abortions if they find out their babies have the bad trait. Of course, you then point out that it is a well-known trait, namely having a Y chromosome, and that in fact parents tend to have abortions on the ones who have the good trait.

[Tuckerfan]

There's no reason to assume that the DNA hasn't long decayed.

Given how poorly evidence was handled back in those days, how could one even be certain that any DNA recovered would even be that of the killer and not of one of the detectives or someone else?

[Gillianren]

Given how poorly evidence was handled back in those days, how could one even be certain that any DNA recovered would even be that of the killer and not of one of the detectives or someone else?

Quite. DNA evidence has its limitations, and the Ripper case would come headlong into just about all of them.

[HenrikOlsen]

This is sidetracking a bit, but there's an interesting game you can play with someone. You tell them that scientists have discovered a certain genetic type, and members of this type are nine times more likely to commit murders than people of the other type.

Just checked the statistics, even without the added information that all victims are women with mutilations, just going by "serial killer" would get it to 88%.

[Gillianren]

Yes, it would. It's certainly not true that Aileen Wuornos was the first female serial killer--I have a book which cites one from nearly a hundred years before--but it is true that women are much less likely than men to be serial killers. It's also true that most female serial killers use poison. Many of them are nurses or some other kind of caregiver, the so-called "angel of mercy" type.