Rape,Rage and the Ripper: Forum

[Howard Brown]

After a period of time for most of those who are involved in the field of Ripperology ( not all of course ), if we aren't trying to figure out the correct number of victims the Ripper murdered,then we can be found trying to select whom the killer was from the expanding list of suspects.

Of course,this latter step is somewhat like deciding which leper to shake hands with....the one with 3 fingers or the one with 2 fingers. Either way,its a case of the "lesser of two evils" in what most people select.

Another practice is that of determining the basis for the murders....whether the crimes were that of a sexual nature or non-sexual nature.

Even some suspects have had books with different motives ascribed to them. Stephenson,of course,immediately comes to my mind.

Maybe its a good time to re-examine what some folks feel at this time ( and if they have changed their opinions,lets hear it...) as to what they feel these crimes were motivated by.....

......ritualistic killing.....sexual serial killer...power and control...insanity....whatever.
**********************

The reason I mention this is that I was thinking back about 3 years ago when I met a former female Ripperologist who discussed the nature of rape on a sort of a date to the movies.

She discussed her views on rape and the basis of that act as being non-sexual in origin.

I paid attention to what she was discussing naturally,but felt that her spiel was more revisionist than real. I had a hard time imagining that no sexual basis was behind the act of rape.

My counter argument... was that if I was angry enough to strike out at a woman,I wouldn't go to the length a rapist would. I would just smack the woman or punch her...or do worse. I wouldn't go into the mechanics of raping someone,as that does not seem to me to be a reactionary act,rather a premeditated one. But one never knows these days,since scientific methodology has replaced most of the Freudian dogma and new data may show different results or findings.

The woman insisted that rape was a violent act,but without it being of a sexual nature. Being that I usually and wisely avoid arguing with women,I left it at that.

What is intriguing about her argument is what this thread is intended to explore and as always...I hope the Forums women actively participate since they I believe they know men better than men know themselves.

The Ripper,as far as we know and in all likelihood....did not participate nor intend to have sexual contact with the outdoor victims ( including Tabram here,and of course,the four generally ascribed outdoor victims,up to Kelly ).

Nevertheless, the general consensus from Fido to the rank and file,is that the Ripper killed as a sexual serial killer does. Of course,not all think this way....but its probably safe to say most do.

How could the discussion I had with that lady 3 years ago apply here? Could the same absence of a sexual motivation be at play back in 1888 as she theorizes rape being a non-sexual crime today?

In short, have people mistakingly assumed a sexual nature to the Ripper crimes since the sexual regions usually considered "sexual areas" or erogenous zones were attacked .... despite and unlike rape.... that no penetration was mentioned in the crimes ?

In a rape,we have penetration. In the Ripper murders,we have none....save the knife...an erzatz penetration.

If rape is considered non sexual and often rapes are followed by murder.....then could the Ripper crimes be likewise considered non sexual since only an erzatz penetration occurred and as with the hypothetical rape, murder did follow the initial penetration ?

The lady theorized that a rape is more or less an act of violence,with a power and control basis....despite it involving contact with sexual regions.

Not to be indelicate,but I mentioned that in order for a rape to occur,the male would have to achieve an erection,which is somewhat hard to do if sexual stimuli ain't stimulated in the first place.....

It also makes me wonder if sexual based crimes aren't subordinate to the larger,more encompassing motive of power and control.

Certainly sadists get enjoyment and often achieve enjoyment through sex....and only sex.

However,others can achieve the same sort of pleasure and possible erection through non-sexual contact ( verbal,physical,emotional abuse of those around them ).

Comments?

For non-English speakers, erzatz means "substitute".

[TimeRover]

How
Thanks for starting this thread. I, too, have long had difficulty with the concept of rape being strictly a power play. Yes, there is power involved, the subjugation of another human being in the most humiliating way possible, but that's not all of the equation. In some ways, I think the 'power' argument is also used to remove further 'stigma' from the victim (as if there should be any attached in the first place). I still hold to the notion that there is a sexual component to the crime. Though often the attackers are unable to effect penetration, the intent is there.

I recently read a book on this subject (I'll have to dig it out of the pile as the name escapes me) which discussed the different types of rapists. Some progress from robbery or physical assault to sexual assault when the opportunity presents itself. Others specifically plan ahead for the sexual aspect of the crime. I'll find that book and post the name and relevant passages as soon as possible. It held a number of revelations for me.

As to Jack -- I have always been troubled that the coroners never detected any evidence of rape or, at best, consensual intercourse. (If I've missed something, please correct me.) If they didn't find evidence of recent sexual congress, how were these women earning their bit of gin money? Not all of the punters were going to be pleased with just a quick trick between the thighs. Given the extensive mutilations, how did the authorities know that Jack didn't finish his work by 'annointing' the corpses by self gratification (how's that for being delicate?) Having seen the inside of human bodies, including abdominal cavities, it would be impossible to detect a small amount of semen amongst the fluids present.

Power or sexual desire? I suspect they go hand in hand.

TimeRover

[Howard Brown]

Thanks, Birthday Lady...Much appreciated...:thumbsupbud:

One thing I was thinking about at work today was this:

If a young male is raped by an older person ( orally or by the backside )( hows that for delicate?)....and grows up....and becomes a serial killer ( most serial killers have been violated by an adult )....there's a bit of confusion to my mind here.

Why wouldn't the rape of the youth who becomes a serial killer be classified as a sexually based crime,if the results of this rape in their manifestation always are classified as being of a sexually oriented one?

Do you see this convolution of definitions here,Jana?

Comments please...

Happy 29th.:rolleyes:

[Dan Norder]

The whole concept that rape is not about sex came about as a basically political move by feminists to try to get judges and the public to treat the crime more seriously. The mindset they were fighting was that it was "just" sex and that women should stop complaining. So they came up with this idea that it wasn't sex at all.

And this rather peculiar mindset spread to other areas too. These same people say, for example, that pornography isn't about sex, it's about subjugation and objectification and power and violence and yada yada yada. Some people have gone so far as to claim that masturbation isn't about sexual drive either.

The problem with all this is that it completely ignores one of the most powerul and basic biological drives of humans as a species in favor of advancing some bizarre socio-political cause and it ends up causing more problems than it solves. Trying to find the best way to prevent rapes and rehabilitate rapists, for example, is going to be impossible with any strategy that denies that it's ultimately based in sexual drive.

We also know as a fact that many serial killers are motivated by sexual feelings, and the more directly physical the attacks are the more likely they are to be sex-based. Some people get caught up with the idea of wanting there to have been actual penetration by sex organs, or even direct masturbation at the scene of the crime, but that comes from a very limited view of human sexual activity.

Various people get turned on by all sorts of fetishes and practices that don't involve actual penetration. Voyeurism doesn't involve sexual penetration but is obviously still sexual. Watching an erotic or pornographic movie and waiting to follow through physically on those feelings is obviously sex-based. So why do many people not get that someone who goes home to masturbate after a killing or who fantasizes about what they did while partticipating in more standard sexual activity later is still engaging in sexual activity?

The Jack the Ripper killings, with undeniable actual penetration (but with a foreign object) and a targeting of the sexual organs and faces, are just about the most perfect example of sex-based serial killing that someone could ever hope for. The only way I can see to think that it might not be sex-based is that if some other motive just somehow completely accidentally managed to mimic the features of a lust killer. That's possible, I suppose, but just not at all that likely.

I also agree with Jana that it would seem unlikely that the police and doctors examining the Ripper victims could completely rule out the idea that sexual activity had taken place there. Certainly that's what most of these women were thought to have been doing with other people on the nights of their deaths. I could see how the ones committed outdoors might not have provided much opportunity to stick around and directly fulfill sexual drives then and there. But then, as with all behavior, motivations are what you hope or would like to have happen ideally, which isn't necessarily immediately evident in what you can actually accomplish given the circumstances. Jack could very well have wanted to do any number of things -- direct physical penetration, torture, what-have-you -- that didn't happen solely because of lack of a good opportunity to attempt them.

[Robert Linford]

Hi Dan

Bit puzzled that you're so sure the JTR murders were sexual. Look at what he took away. What's sexual about two wombs, part of a bladder, a kidney and a heart?

Robert

[Dan Norder]

What's sexual about leather, soiled adult diapers, sweaty shoes, rubber clothes, furry animal suits, and so forth? Fetishes are sexual attraction to objects that other people don't find attractive. That's kind of the whole point.

Other killers have taken necklaces, locks of hair, pieces of clothing and etc. that by themselves are not sexual but remind the killer of the act of killing.

Mutilation killers like taking parts to have them around for later. Not only do they serve as standard trophies like jewelry and so forth but they also are the direct result of their sexual impulses toward destruction of their victim's bodies. To you or me a kidney or heart from a dead person is disgusting, but to a mutilation killer or necrophiliac they are the ultimate expression of their fetish.

We know Dahmer and Gein and Bundy and Chikatilo and so forth all kept body parts from some of their victims for the fulfillment of sexual fantasies, some of which can be directly sexualized for more standard sexual desires (heads, nipples) and some which had no standard sexual component in and of themselves (skulls, assorted flesh). This isn't even a question of theorizing, as we know they did this and why. So I don't understand how people have trouble applying these same factors to the Jack the Ripper case.

[Robert Linford]

Dan, I suppose I was homing in on your statement : "The Jack the Ripper killings, with undeniable actual penetration (but with a foreign object) and a targeting of the sexual organs and faces, are just about the most perfect example of sex-based serial killing that someone could ever hope for."

Well, if he'd taken the breasts - or even attacked them - I'd feel happier about the sexual angle. I know that Kelly's breasts were removed - but then everything else was.

I think there was something sexual in the murders - else he'd have also attacked small children, old men, cripples etc - but I don't think it's by any means just about sex.

Robert

[Howard Brown]

Dan:

Thanks for the comments...much appreciated...

One thing that may be indicative of another basis for the Ripper murders is the similarity between those crimes and criminals you've provided....with ritual killings. I am certain that had someone been around in 1888 with expertise in ritual killings available to the Police as now in 2006, its likely that 3 of the murders might be considered ritual in nature. Not definite....but likely. Of course,more ritual killings ( usually non-European in origin ) occur today but are far less in number to those deemed of sexually based origin. No one can argue your point there.

I'm not arguing or debating that your points are not accurate...but ritual killings,as well as sexually based murders might fit under the mutually shared and larger umbrella of power and control, as well as other murders committed under other pretenses and other assumed reasons. A crime otherwise assumed as a sexually based one,may be no different in the long run than a ritual killing,if they both share a common "root" cause.

I'm of the opinion that every premeditated murder with a non-financial basis is sexually stimulating somehow in some way...regardless of how it appears to be different to the naked eye. Pardon me if I sound Freudian,because I certainly am not leaning that way, as I do not see any sexual symbolism in smoking a cigar or preparing a hot dog with onions on a bun.

In other words,even if the organs were removed for some ritual, I would think that a sexual element to some degree would still be present...just as those apprehended for ritual murders inevitably show in their work and by their words.

This segregation of "sexual serial killings" from "ritual killings" and other categorized motives probably is a trait that appears to be unique to those of us in the Western Civilization,as fact finding,statistics, and delineation are hallmarks of the West.

We also have to factor in the level of sanity of the individual in a crime/crimes such as these as well.

In other words,a very disturbed individual but still functional enough to perform the actions of these types of murders,may not operate under the same guidelines or have the same purpose as a killer who performs nearly identical murders, who, although by outward appearances, might appear more sane or might be more lucid in the explanation of their actions and indicate a sexual basis at the core of their crimes.

Fetishism is also a cornerstone of ritualism as well and as much as it is for sexually based crimes where items are taken as Dan has kindly provided. This feature seldom gets mentioned.

If a locket of hair or organ are taken in the commission of a crime...and two separate analysts with experience in their respective and individual fields of ritualism AND sexual serial killing examine the crime site....and no sexual contact was found present...to me its the "chicken and the egg" scenario with one small difference:

Which came first,if no one came?:rolleyes:

[Dustin Gould]

Dan...

Fetishes aren't necessairly sexual. They can be, or be used to enhance sex. But they aren't always full-on about sex. Although they work in the same way sex does. (i.e. They arouse or stimulate one's brain). Occasionally, it's their deviation of the social norm which a person finds more appealing than anything.

As for the idology that rape is strictly about power? I'm sorry. I just don't buy that arguement as a whole. Were it strictly about violence and power, as Howard pointed out previously, a "punch or smack" would suffice. Acts far, more easy, that trying to arouse an organ in an emotional envoirnment not condusive to such (i.e. anger and hate).

[Dan Norder]

Fetishes as in sexual fetishes are by definition sexual. If instead you mean a fetish as used anthropologically, well, no, that's not usually sexual. The kind I was talking about in this thread to use as a comparison to sexually motivated murders are undeniably sex-based.

Incidentally, I'm also not a supporter of the idea that rape is all about power and not sex. Sex is obviously involved. I think the only reason that was ever disputed is that some academics decided that if it was considered a sex act instead of a violent act (with the odd belief that it couldn't be both) that society would never take it seriously as a crime. That seems to be a pretty poor choice to make, as by denying that there's any sexual element they've both limited efforts to try to stop it (for example in the counseling used on people who have done it or otherwise at risk) and also in getting some victims to report it (when a rape doesn't seem violent at all).

[A.P. Wolf]

Dan, you certainly got some steam in your boiler today, all right.
Firstly to your comments that the examining doctors of the time may have missed, or been unaware of evidence pointing to some kind of sexual connection between victim and attacker.
As I've recently shown, a local surgeon of Batty Street was called in to investigate the bloodstains on the bed in the Lipski case of 1887, specifically to find traces of sexual connection. Using his microscope he was able to report back to the criminal trial that there was no evidence of sexual connection.
So as you see in this 1887 case the police, and the medics assisting them were both well-equipped to deal with the activities of what you call a 'sexual serial killer'.
Another problem we deal with here is that the only sworn testimony we have from the Whitechapel Murders is inquest testimony; and as you can see from the Lipski criminal trial much more scientific evidence becomes available from such a trial, where conviction rather than explanation is required.

You really are an old Wilsonian aren't you?
What a shame, as I quite like you.
My suggested remedy is to slit your throat, stab yourself about 39 times in the vital organs; and then see if you get a little stiffy from the experience.
Don't worry I got a Ouija board to ask you about it.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho

Glad to see the old SSK argument rumbling on as always.

And the only reason it does is because:

1. Its trendy.

2. It allows people to indulge their beliefs that they are actually pursuing some kind of academic pursuit with their interest in rape and violent sex inflicted on unwilling victims in the same manner that intelligent-designers think that using scientific terminology will convince people they are following some kind of science or respectable field of enquiry.

3. terming any killing as a sexual serial killing serves as a laxative to facilitate the production of the usual torrent of fetid profiling sh!te.

Then again......just 'cos there were no swimmers at the scene does not, as I have long contended, mean that JtR didnt get his rocks off at the scene. Nor do I think that such swimmers would have been found with a candle powered microscope had they been deposited some hours previously in the decidedly un-swimmerfriendly environment of the stomach or on the floor of Kellys room or shot out in a hand assisted discharge in the corner of Mitre Square or even on the way home from any of the sites.

But I do not see any penetration indicative of a sexual leaning at all.

To read sexual into facial stabs or even the stabs inflicted southward of there means that if I got stabbed in the head in the morning it would be indicative of a sexual crime......rubbish me thinks.

A knife as a substitute penis is a feminist/crap psychology piece of rubbish. People are stabbed because a knife is a handy weapon whose efficacy has ensured its persistence through the years as opposed to its being phallic or whatever.

How maintains that any non-financial killing may be sexually stimulating. Indeed it may....but so is any vibrating household appliance. That does not make a man using a dryer a sexual deviant nor does it mean he sought out to use the dryer to satisfy some urge.

let me remind people that to be a sexual serial killer JtR must have had sex as a motive.

If he killed those women for tuppence and happened to get a stiffy in the process........that does not make him a sexual serial killer.

And lets not forget that if a man wants to do significant damage to a body for whatever reason (rage, sheer bloody mindedness, desire to shock, a non-sexual liking for the sight of guts, a desire to keep his hands warm...) the ONLY part of the body amenable to extensive hacking is the lower midriff.

That sexual organs could get caught up in the mess may be solely due to their location in the vicinity of the one area of the body that consists of a large mass of easily cut up soft tissue with no awkward ribcages, bony structures, etc. In fact his virtually having ignored the sexual organs in most of the cases leans towards his not being interested at all.

And before someone starts....no, I do not think that taking kidneys etc was necessarily sexual either.

Nothing to do with the guy being sexually motivated at all.

p

[Robert Linford]

If we take Kelly : people differ as to how long Jack would have been engaged in her room. Some say only half an hour. Some put it at a couple of hours or longer. So that already makes it difficult.

Anyway, I wonder if the sexual scenario supporters could give their speculations as to what might have been going on here, e.g. did Jack climax after the first incision (say, the disembowelment) and then sit on the bed waiting to stiffen up again before having a go at the other organs, or was he at work mutilating all the time, desperately trying to climax, or did the throat-cutting make him climax and the subsequent mutilations were inflicted from a feeling of disgust....?

[A.P. Wolf]

Personally, Robert, I don't think anything remotely 'sexual' transpired at any point in any of the Whitechapel Murders.
When we look at some of the more modern cases where onlookers have described as 'sexual' the activities of killers like Sutcliffe, Chase and Pitchfork, they are in fact falling into the same trap that the killers did in the first place... finding something to explain the unexplainable.
In all of the three cases I mention, the killers felt almost duty-bound to make some kind of desperate and futile sexual gesture to satisfy their audience, and because the media and police demanded it from them having already labelled them as 'sexual serial killers'. Which they were not.
But the explanation keeps everybody happy, the killer, the media, the courts, the police; and the authors who come along later to write about the activities of their hero. Only the victims are negleted.
As we know the crimes of the Whitechapel Murderer were not, at the time, sensationalised as 'sexual' but rather a more everyday explanation was offered, like the killer was wreaking revenge after catching the clap, he was a religious maniac who was cleaning the streets, he was a doctor whose son had died of the clap etc. etc. etc.
It is only later that a few harum scarums have invested his actions with a modern sexual bent, only out of time by over 100 years.
They should really know better, but Wilson is a disease.

[Mr. Poster]

Heres an interesting gobbet:

From: Rajs J, Lundström M, Broberg M, Lidberg L, Lindquist O., Criminal multilation of the human body in Sweden--a thirty-year medico-legal and forensic psychiatric study. J Forensic Sci. 1998 May;43(3):563-80.

Basically an analysis of over 20 deaths involving mutilation in Sweden (not a sample, that was all of 'em over 3 decades. Who said the Swedes werent boring?).

Defensive mutilation (trying to get rid of the evidence) was the cause of 10 of the chop jobs.

Aggressive mutilation (overkill) was involved in 4

Aggressive mutilation (lust murder) was involved in 7

Necromanic post mortem mutilation in 1. (but the corpse had died naturally so it wasnt murder).

All the people doing the mutilating were men. Over a quarter of the jobs involved an accomplice in mutilation.

More than half of the cases involved anatomical knowledge (butchers, hunters, doctors, vets, assisstants).

The defensive and aggressive mutilations (which as I see it is 21 out of 22) were alchoholics/drug users with previous criminal histories or psychitaric problems.

The 7 "lust murders" (I assume they are the sexual natured ones?) had criminal histories, drugs, mental problems in that order to a "diminishing degree".

Looking at that bunch....it seems to me that assuming only the lust murders were sexual (as in SSK's) only 33% of the mutilation killings were sexual driven? The majority would therefore be just general deptavity, drunkenness, drugs or lunacy=?

Further reading of the literaure of course indicates that.....and this point should really be drilled into peoples skulls by now....so Im making it in big bloody letters.........

DEFENSIVE MUTILATION OF BODIES HAS RECENTLY STARTED TO FEATURE AS KILLERS TRY TO REMOVE BIOLOGICAL TRACES

....so statistics from today or the last twenty years are of course a bit irrelevant to the ripper as he wouldnt have bothered about such things. This is of course relevant as we try and apply "profiling" based on modern criminals to people like our man. An interesting discussion here:

B. Karger · S. P. Rand · B. Brinkmann, Criminal anticipation of DNA investigations resulting in mutilation of a corpse, Int J Legal Med (2000) 113 :247–248.

The above includes a fairly gross picture of the unfortunate victim so be warned.

The following provides a nice overview of the matter of psychopathy and sexual crimes:

Porter, S., Woodworth, M.,Earle, J., Drugge, J., and Boer, D. Characteristics of Sexual Homicides Committed by Psychopathic and Nonpsychopathic Offenders, Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 27, No. 5 (Oct., 2003), pp. 459-470

using the definition of a sexual homicide (which is presumably what we are asking: were JtR's sexual homicides?) as "A sexual homicide is one that includes sexual activity before, during, or after the commission of the crime."

Not of course defining "sexual activity".

The authors use various systems for deciding as to psychpathy, including post mortem mutilation and gratuitous damage to the victim (as evidenced by I assume JtR).

"The main criteria for gratuitous violence were evidence of torture/beating, mutilation or “overkill,” and use of multiple weapons from the crime scene."

The authors, analysing 125 incarcerated people convicted of relevant crimes in Canadian prisons, found statistically significant evidence that psychopaths (based on some psychiatric scale of classification), analyse who is most likely to commit gratutious violence, sexual natures of crimes related to psychopathy etc etc. Its a rather thorough study but as I only got hold of it a week ago I have had no time to be really chewing over the content.

At any rate, one of the easier conclusions to figure out was that the authors reckon that sexual homicide may consitute a higher proportion of total homicides than previously thought (up to 30% as opposed to 1-4 %) but whether or not that is relevant to our man is debatable.

I will forward the paper by email to anyone interested assuming I am not breaking any copyright laws. PM me.

Its a shame we cannot get these kind of people to write something on jtR as opposed to the media whores whose guff tends to feature most often in discussing such things. Their insight is a damn sight more academic and reasoned than the heaving breast sound bites usually offered up by people who write paperbacks.

p

[Robert Linford]

AP, remember the term "homicidal maniac"? I mean, if Jack was only into homicide, then why the mutilations?

I do tend to agree with you, the Ripper murders weren't sexual. I can't speak about the others, because the Ripper murders are the only ones I'm really interested in.

Lars, I'm interested in the doctors on that list. Do you know which category they fall into? It was theorised that a doctor would have had no need to mutilate women, as his normal professional activities would have given him ample scope for any such impulses.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho Robert

It doesnt really go into classifications of what kind of doctors.....?

I imagine though that the case of two doctors (Allgen was one I think) who in the mid 1980's had chopped up a bunch of prostitutes? But then surely the 22 would include the 6 or 7 they did which would mean that the other occuptations had done a lot less?

I am ignorant of the case but no doubt Glenn A. would have much more info?

p

[Robert Linford]

Hi Lars

Well, Glenn's a member here so hopefully he'll turn up.

[Glenn L Andersson]

Hi Guys,

I noticed that Lars mentioned 'Allgen' so I assume this is what's been asked out:
The two doctors Thomas Allgén and Teet Härm did not chop up 'a lot of prostitutes' - they were accused of dismembering only one and were no serial killers. (Maybe Lars is confusing it with another case...?)
Allgén and Härm were the two doctors (to answer your general question: one of them was a pathologist and the other one a general doctor) who were accused and stood trial for the murder and cutting-up of the prostitute Catrine Da Costa, one of Sweden's most famous dismemberment cases. Da Costa was found in several pieces in different plastic bags around Stockholm. One of the doctors was also supposed to have been a client of Da Costa.

The case against the doctors was a difficult one (it was even suggested that one of them also might have been guilty of his wife's mysterious death) and some of the witnesses were discredited and much built on hearsay.

However, since some vital organs were missing from Da Costa, it was impossible to medically establish how she died. Therefore, the court couldn't say if she had been murdered or simply had died from other causes. So the pathologist and the general doctor were aquitted from the murder case, but found guilty of dismemberment of the corpse - the crime of dismemberment had at that time, however, exceeded its time period of limitiation, so as a result they were acquitted altogether.

Later DNA tests (a lot has happened since the 1980s on that subject) have shown, that a hair from another person found on da Costa's body as well as the finger prints on the plastic bags, did not match any of the two doctors'.
So although there has been a court ruling in the case, it is still considered unsolved and one of the major Swedish murder mysteries.


Below:
Catrine Da Costa (Source: Aftonbladet)

[Glenn L Andersson]

Personally, I hesitate to indulge myself in the debate regarding the drving forces of Jack the Ripper, :boxing: since it is quite impossible for us to get into the head of an unidentified murderer 120 years ago. The crimes alone, I fear, do not give us enough sufficient information in order to speculate along such lines.

I would only want to say, that it is an error to TOTALLY rule out any sexual gratification, since we know of other mutilation killers who have perpetrated their crimes for sexual gratification. Sex can be a lot of different things to different people, and such gratification crimes do not necessarily need to involve seemen or signs of sexual intercourse. I think its fairly established that sexual serial killers do exist (along with other types), although we can't absolutely be sure of whether the Ripper was one.

I mean, hey, if people can attempt to get sexual gratification from stuffing themselves into a large vaccum cleaner bag and suffocate themselves in order to receive an orgasm, that is certainly not sex to me. But it is to them. To most of us, such arrangements would be considered highly bizarre and certainly not of any sexual value, but to them it is a form of sexual fetichism.
In the Ripper case, I can't rule out 100% that the mutilations couldn't have been of made for the reason of sexual gratification (certainly the focus and removal of the womb in two of the victims may indicate such a connection).

On the other hand, there can of course be other explanations. Mutilations have certainly been performed for other reasons, such as rage, hate, curiosity, mental instablity etc.
Just look at the case of Richard Trenton Chase, whose reason for cutting up his victims were to eat their organs and drink their blood, since his schizofrenic mind had told him that his own blood was turning to dust.

I remember one domestic case here in Sweden, where the perpetrator - the victim's spouse - killed and totally mutilated and disembowelled the body of his girlfriend for the following reasons:
They had recently had a row and he therefore snapped and killed her in a fit of rage. During this psychotic episode he disembowelled her and opened her up because he
a) felt the need to completely destroy and dominate her
and
b) because he in his twisted psychological state became curious of 'how she looked inside'.

So mutilations can be a result of several different driving forces, acting alone or together in combination. But since it's difficult to generalize about what's going on in a killer's head I wouldn't want to exclude anything, and that includes the motive of sexual gratification.

[Dan Norder]

So as you see in this 1887 case the police, and the medics assisting them were both well-equipped to deal with the activities of what you call a 'sexual serial killer'.

What someone at the time said they could have found on a bed doesn't necessarily prove what they could have found in an alley... but the point is completely irrelevant, as one doesn't have to have penetration and ejaculation at the crime scene in order for it to be sex-based.

You really are an old Wilsonian aren't you?

You say that like it's a bad thing. Colin Wilson's comments on the type of person the Ripper probably was were very well informed. The fact that some people on a message board wish to ignore what all the evidence of the last century and a half has to say about the motivations of these kinds of killers doesn't change that.

[Dan Norder]

2. It allows people to indulge their beliefs that they are actually pursuing some kind of academic pursuit with their interest in rape and violent sex inflicted on unwilling victims in the same manner that intelligent-designers think that using scientific terminology will convince people they are following some kind of science or respectable field of enquiry.

I'm sorry, Mr. P, but you and AP are the equivalent of the intelligent designers on this thread. Intelligent design is based upon blind faith replacing science and actual studies in order to reject what the people who have researched the topic have concluded over the evidence of thousands of cases, just as you and AP simply blindly ignore what you don't want to hear. Every time you talk about the subject you do so out of blind conviction in your own supposed superiority while ignoring what the experts in the fields of criminology and psychology have documented time and time again.

You might as well be saying that the world is flat for as completely separated from reality as you are.

[Robert Linford]

Thanks for your comments, Glenn.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho GLA

I am no expert in Swedish killings but even a cursory glance at any website devoted to these two seems to be talking about up to six possible victims? Mostly prostitutes?


Hi ho DanNOrder

I'm sorry, Mr. P, but you and AP are the equivalent of the intelligent designers on this thread. Intelligent design is based upon blind faith replacing science and actual studies in order to reject what the people who have researched the topic have concluded over the evidence of thousands of cases, just as you and AP simply blindly ignore what you don't want to hear. Every time you talk about the subject you do so out of blind conviction in your own supposed superiority while ignoring what the experts in the fields of criminology and psychology have documented time and time again.

Lets see....experts on such matters reckon sexual homicides may be 1-4% of all homicides and perhaps as much as 30%. Odds are therefore probably against JtR being a sexual homicide.

That is a bit simplistic however. But add to it no evidence of emission, no evidence of obsession with sexual organs, evidence of a marked obsession with other organs of a non-sexual nature, no evidence of penetration of the vagina with the knife etc etc and we have no evidence of a sexual nature at all.

So...all thats going for a sexual nature (in the catholic sense) is the blatherings of "profilers" who, no more that feminists, need such guff to sell their books.

Of course one can bleat about that the catholic definition being too narrow but in tht case all crimes are sexual because there are always some people who get off on anything you care to mention.

So....what we have....is not me and AP being intelligent designers but rather you.

Because......in the face of all the evidence....all you can say is that "experts say its so".

Of course we know that these "experts" are roundly disregarded by the more august community of experts who point out that the "experts" methods are so flawed as to be worthless (and I can post evidence of that fact until the cows come home) ....so all that is left is your insisting that it must be so because yuo want it to be so.

You might as well be saying that the world is flat for as completely separated from reality as you are.

If the reality of which you twitter is the one based round the constructs of a bunch of media addicts who sell tiitillatory pornography tarted up as science....then I am quite happy to be separated from it.

As to flat earths....I think you are the one occupying that particular geometry which is as to be expected given that your vista of the world seems to be defined by airport easily digested shite and the confines of your parents basement which is where I presume you dwell.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

Hi ho GLA

I am no expert in Swedish killings but even a cursory glance at any website devoted to these two seems to be talking about up to six possible victims? Mostly prostitutes?

Hi ho Lars,

Well, I would warn against relying on what any of those websites say.
The idea that the two doctors - or at least one of them - might have murdered other women is total speculation. As I recall, the women that has been suggested were called Lena Gräns, Cats Falk, Lena Bofors, Lena Månsson and Lotta Svensson, and not all of those were prostitutes. I believe one of them was a journalist.
But those are speculations made by private individuals and websites, not any real serious suspicions apparent in the court material.
The most valid element was that there were serious suspicions about one of the doctors having killed his own wife (she was found dead by hanging and in a way that conveniently enough had been subject to forensic study and research by her husband) but medical examiners or the police haven't reached a general agreement on the subject.

The da Costa case has been littered with misinformation, speculation and confusing elements. Some of it may be true and some not. We will never know. It has been said that violent pornography was found in the home of one of the doctors, that one of them was a regular client of da Costa and knew other prostitutes.

I am not saying that there isn't a possibility that they might have killed a lot of women, I am just saying that there are no factual evidence of that they are serial killers. Nor have they ever been tried in court for any such suspicions. There are loads of books written about the case and I haven't read anyone of them yet so I am no expert on the case, but naturally these books are all written from different subjective perspectives and not particlarly objective whch of course leads to even more disinformation being spread around. It is an extremely complex case with many loose ends.

fact remains, that the two doctors were acquitted of the Da Costa murder, that they were found guilty of the dismemberment but that the time period of limitation for the latter had expired, which meant they were acquitted and therefore couldn't appeal for the dismemberment verdict. Besides that, none of them have never been tried or convicted for any other killing and although there are many strange circumstances surrounding their activities they are certainly not labelled as any serial killers. It shall also be noted that other people have been suggested as suspects for the Da Costa murder as well as the others, but were never properly investiagted or interviewed.

[A.P. Wolf]

Just like Mr P I have always felt that there is economic advantage on the behalf of writers to place a common murder into the realms of pornography by labelling it as 'sexual'.
Colin Wilson made an art, and fortune at it; and many others continue to do so; and it is usually people who are directly involved in the commercial world of publishing, or media.
What has bothered me for years, is that the poor fools who propagate these myths still do not realise that they are actually influencing and encouraging young men to go out and commit murder, simply because they say it is 'sex'.
This is so ****ing dangerous that I have made it my life work to go for these bastards, and turn things around to a simple formula.
Sex is sex, and murder is murder.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho GLA

I think I'll defer to your rather reasonable assessment. All the same....sounds like a mighty interesting case indeed.

Who knows......perhaps while the Swedish forsvaret are evesdropping on everyones communications.....they might get some fresh leads.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

Hi ho GLA

I think I'll defer to your rather reasonable assessment. All the same....sounds like a mighty interesting case indeed.

Indeed it is, Lars. One of the Swedish classics.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho AP

I have to admit.....I remmeber very well the first time I came across a true crime and it was one of Wilsons and it was ll about various lunatics (Mammoth Book of something or other) and I very well recall having a tent in my 18 year old pants reading about various Roman neer do wells and graphic tales of violent sex.

And that book got passed around a lot and was very popular in the dark valleys of western Norway where sex rarely raised its head and cartainly not in the manner Wilson depicted it.

Of course now that such titbits are out of fashion, we sit around po faced reading profiling garbage getting the exact same thrill but feeling slightly better about it as we can pretend its an august pursuit and not slightly pervy knuckle shuffling.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

Just like Mr P I have always felt that there is economic advantage on the behalf of writers to place a common murder into the realms of pornography by labelling it as 'sexual'.

I would hardly call serial killing and mutilation 'common murder'.
Clearly these types of extreme crimes are a result of driving forces that none of us really can understand, regardless of what your agenda and crusade aganist crime authors tell you. And in spite of the fact that some mutilating serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer themselves have admitted that their motive was at least partly sexual (not to mention the fact that he ejaculated over the some of the dismembered parts and had necrofilic sex acts with the bodies).

As has been said here, evidence of seemen or other sexual traces are not necessary in murders that might be sexually related since sex means different things to different people. The truth is, not one of us really understands the motives for these murders, and to totally exonerate the sexual angle - even though we know that people do the most bizarre stuff for the gain of sexual pleasure during other circumstances ( I've seen the weirdest examples of sexual fetischism in connection with accidental deaths on crime scene photos) - is hardly a valid statement.

[Mr. Poster]

hi ho GLA

I dont think anyone is trying to exonerate all killings from being sexual.

Obviously if a semen drenched body is found it was very likely sexual.

But for crimes where there is no evidence of sex it is equally wrong to conclude, as some authors seem to tend towards, it was sexual and that we just do not recgnise whatever fetish it was.

Plus I will go as far as to say that it is highly possible that the range of fetishes then was less than it is now.

There could not have been plushies then as those things didnt exist then so one couldnt have a fetish about it.

The same goes for electric shocks to the testes, power tools, latex, a wide range of synthetic fibres, anything to do with plastic, probably high heels, fishnets maybe, and so on.

But I do not think that any fetish or deviance existing then could not exist now.

So by virtue of the fact that the range of deviances refelcts the materials available and the environment, one can only conclude that the range of icky things that got the victorians off must have been less than it is today.

Therefore, that limits even farther the chances that a non emission crime was sexual but based on a deviance or a fetish or qwhatever.

Rats only display deviant sexuality when caged up and in a non natural environment.

I doubt very much if ruffians like JtR may have been had time for the self affected complexities and vanities that lead to specialised sexual proclivities.

p

p

[Robert Linford]

Glenn, do you know if the doctors carried on practising?

[Glenn L Andersson]

Hi ho, Lars,

To tell you the truth, I belong to those who am practically convinced of that people's most primitive driving forces really don't change just because it is another time period.
In Victorian England there was an explosion of pornography (both still and moving pictures) and illegal brothels and the fact that the authorities attempted to supress it probably made it even more appealing. The fact that the streets were so full of vice and so many prostitutes indicate that sexual driving forces and urges were just as strong as they are today.
And of course among those people there will always be those who have a twisted view on sexuality and not a very healthy one.
Just read some of the 600 "Ripper letters" from the general public and it becomes painfully clear what was hiding in people's minds at that time - some of them are very obscene and twisted in their imagination and thought process.

Of course, the methods and the aids would be different than those used today, but personally I believe that throughout history people's primitive driving forces - inherited by nature - stays the same, although it just manifests itself differently. There were most certainly people around at that time who had strange sexual fantasies just like there are today and who would do the most bizarre stuff.

However, just my opinion and I once again want to underline that I with this don't attempt to argue that the Ripper was a sexual predator (because I siply wouldn't know one way or the other), only against the idea that mutilation in the 1880s couldn't be a result of sexual or psychological gratification.

[Glenn L Andersson]

Glenn, do you know if the doctors carried on practising?

Hi Robert,

No, since they according to the court were believed to have performed the dismemberment (but couldn't be convicted for it since the time period of limitation had expired for that particular offense), their certifications were permanemtly suspended and in spite of several appeals they haven't been able to get back to work.
Besides, one of them (the pathologist, I think) is now on a disability pension after a suicide attempt.

[A.P. Wolf]

I know I hammer at a theme, but I have to say that when I read, and reread the murders that Colin Pitchfork carried out on very young women, I was staggered by how unsexual these crimes were.
For here was a man happy enough to expose himself sexually to thousands of young women without any form of violence being involved; and no form of sex either, between partners I mean, the sex act was in a vacuum, removed from any other party... but then two of the girls he exposed himself to made the dreadful error of approaching him, indirectly, but it was still an approach, as in all the other cases they ran directly away from him, but the two girls he brutally murdered stopped in their tracks and then moved back towards him.
The sex stopped then and he killed them.
So he then sort of included them in what he was doing, not sexually, but because they annoyed him because they didn't play his little sexual game.
And after he had killed them what did he do?
Masturbated and then using a twig forced his useless juice into them.
But that was only because they annoyed him and didn't play his little game, for if they had played his game they would still be alive today, and would have just walked past a bloke who was exposing himself to them... but hey, he was invisible don't you know.
That is the magic which we ignore with our tacky little lables.
Jack the Ripper thought he was invisible as well.
And do you know what?
He was.
Because most of us are blind.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho

Wandering back to the theme at hand:

According to Groth (1979) even rape, which as a crime must be that which denotes a sexuaal offender, is not necessarily a sexually motivated crime, is not always sexually motivated and sexual expression is only one aspect of a trinity of drives that cause rape.

Heritage (1992) supports that but differs in the assignations given to the two non-sexual drives.

And there ar eother works that all point to the fact that even the most superficially blatant sexual crimes are not always committed as part of expression of sexualoity, motivated by sexul urges or provide sexual satisfaction.

Indeed it could be argued that the ENTIRE notion of sexual serial killers and sexual homicide being more prevalent than either logic or statistics dictate is solely due to the musings of folk like Ressler, Douglas and the rest of this bunch who make a tidy if sordid living out of the desire of people to read and watch violent sex and death tales.

Grubin conducted an interesting study (Grubin 1994) in which 21 "sexual killers" were compared with 121 rapists to try and find similarities. A surprising result was that only three of the sexual killers experienced sexual feelings related to the killing which means that 18 of this sexual killing bunch were by definition, not sexual killers at all.

Supported fully by Knight (1998) arguing that sexual homicide as it has come to be understood (thanks a bunch media whore paperback writers) is countered by many : "studies [that] tentatively imply that sexual homicide may be interpreted as a predominantly expressive act of aggression committed out of a hostile desire to harm"


Instead of arguing about whether JtR was sexual killer or not, its probably more correct to argue do sexual killers exist at all outside of hollywood crap-fests and if they do, are they any way common enough that there is a chance JtR was one?

When are we going to move away from the nonsense we seem to adopted as fact based on nothing more than our empty headed google eyed faith in the silver screen and its glossy portrayals of sexual violence against women?

p


Groth, N. A. (1979). Men who rape: The psychology of the offender . New York: Plenum

Heritage, R. (1992). Facets of sexual assault: first steps in investigative classification. M.Phil. disser tation, University of Surrey UK

Grubin, D., 1994, Sexul Murder, British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 624 -629.

Knight, R. A., Warr en, J. I., Reboussin, R., & Soley, B. J. (1998). Predicting rapist type from cr ime-scene variables. Criminal Justice and Behavior , 25 46-80

[Howard Brown]

Thanks to Glenn,Lars,Dan,A.P and all...this is turning into a great thread:kiss:

By the way, for those who aren't aware...Glenn Andersson was interviewed in Ripperologist Magazine ( Feb. 2008 # 88 ) and Glenners discusses the development and release of his Ripper novel, Jack Uppskararen; Kriminalfall ach legend.

Contact the gents at the Rip and that issue may still be available...

Back to the thread...:high5:

[Glenn L Andersson]

Well, we do know that sexual killers exists, due to the fact that some of them are known to us and that the sexual motive is confirmed. I mentioned Dahmer as a well known example, but there are others. So arguing that they may not exist at all - even in cases where it is obvious that the intent was sexual - is illogical and non-productive.
It is a fair point, however, that it is more problematic in cases where there are no obvious signs of sexual evidence. But still we can't say what is and what isn't.

My point with bringing up the weird fetichism elements in some cases of accidental deaths, was to make clear that what may not make sense as sexual to us may do it to others. That was the whole point.
Just look at all those people who use suffocation during the sex act in order to gain higher gratification during the orgasm. This is a well known phenomenon and part of sexual fetichism. In those cases the intent obviously is sexual, in spite of the fact that you can't see it and that there is no evidence of sex. Most of us can't understand the connection, what suffocation has to do with sex, but apparently some individuals think it has.
See what I mean?
So, how can we say that this and this is not sexual in connection with mutilation murders? Just because we don't share the killer's view about what is sexually arousing?

And what about the cases where serial killers take organs or items from their victims? Why do they do that, if not for getting the opportunity to relive their crimes and to save the memory of the incident. That is itself gratification. Sure, we can't say that that gratification is of sexual nature but then again, we can't say that it isn't!

To be frank, it's getting real tiresome to listen to this fanatical drivel about commercial pornography and the idea of sexual crimes as being stressed due to make some profilers and authors rich.
It is of course complete rubbish. Firstly, not all of the scientists and criminal psychiatrists who stress the idea of sexual killers make a commercial living out of it or write numerous books about it. To state such a thing is ridiculous.

Secondly, I honestly can't see that it is the sexual aspect in itself that sells books. News flash - it is the violence and serial killer concept on the whole that arouses interest from the general public. Some people are just morbid and likes to look at crime scene photos, some enjoys to follow the police investigation, some enjoys to solve the mystery, some are interested in the general psychological aspect. In short - people are fascinated by the dark side as such, not just because it's sexual.

A book about murders don't sell more copies just because the killer is labelled a 'sexual killer'.

[Glenn L Andersson]

Thanks to Glenn,Lars,Dan,A.P and all...this is turning into a great thread:kiss:

By the way, for those who aren't aware...Glenn Andersson was interviewed in Ripperologist Magazine ( Feb. 2008 # 88 ) and Glenners discusses the development and release of his Ripper novel, Jack Uppskararen; Kriminalfall ach legend.

Contact the gents at the Rip and that issue may still be available...

Back to the thread...:high5:

Thanks How!

But before AP or Lars accuses me being a media whore with an intent to profit commercially on murder, I need to point that no one outside Sweden will ever be able to read my book anyway. The editon is 3000 copies, and I get a tiny percentage of each sold copy - so far 1000 copies are sold or ordered.
So do I get rich from this? Not at all; when I get my single annual payment next spring for the copies sold up until then I probably won't get more than most people earn from two months salary in ordinary jobs - if I did I would give up my minimum wage day job anytime.

I wrote the book simply because I thought Sweden desperately needed a reference factual account of the crimes, written in Swedish directly for the Swedish public. And from being frustrated and tired of hearing: "Oooh... Jack the Ripper... that's the one where the Prince was involved, right?" Such comments are Chinese water torture to any historian and researcher and in Sweden the knowledge about the case is extremely bad, except from a few hard core enthusiasts. I never expected to make money out of it. I probably will have to release four or five more books before such expectations can be realistic. And even then, I probably wouldn't be able to make a living out of it full time. The only benefit I get is that it might be easier for me to a manuscript acceptd next time, and that my name might be a bit more familiar to the public than it was earlier. But money? Ha!

Of course, I've appeared in both national radio and televison on the subject of Jack the Ripper. But did I get paid for it? Not a single cent.

Personally, I don't understand the reasoning of those who thinks that non-fiction is a lucrative busines. Those who've made money on it, are the ones who are already famous and already makes money from other things, like university teaching or consulting. In all honesty, if you want to make big bucks, then writing non-fiction is probably the most stupid decision anyone can make. Fiction and novels bring in a lot more money.

But thanks for the kindness, Howie. :kiss:

[Howard Brown]

The crime books on the Zodiac Killer...H.H.Holmes..Lindbergh Kidnapping...Cleveland Torso Killer....and even to some extent,the books written about the little Colorado girl, J.B.Ramsey, sell more so based on the crime(s) themselves,rather than any sexual aspect...and these are a just a few off the top of my head.

Another good article which appeared in Ripperologist was the one written by recent Forums returnee, Amanda Howard entitled "Sex or No Sex" (September 2007, # 83)...and a rebuttal to her article by Rajah ( R.J. to you) Palmer in the December 2007 issue.

You're more than welcome,Glenn. I hope it has sold out and from the kroner you made on the sales,you can put another one out..this time in English.

[Glenn L Andersson]

The crime books on the Zodiac Killer...H.H.Holmes..Lindbergh Kidnapping...Cleveland Torso Killer....and even to some extent,the books written about the little Colorado girl, J.B.Ramsey, sell more so based on the crime(s) themselves,rather than any sexual aspect.

Exactly, How!

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho GLA

Well, we do know that sexual killers exists, due to the fact that some of them are known to us and that the sexual motive is confirmed.

No offence but you do this a lot. Can you find where I said they do not exist? I, like many more august experts than I, question th eterm, its widespread application and the reasons it is applied so frequently and apparently, as research shows, so incorrcetly.

I mentioned Dahmer as a well known example, but there are others.

I never said there wasnt. You are arguing a point that doesnt exist.

So arguing that they may not exist at all -

I said one could not that I do.

even in cases where it is obvious that the intent was sexual - is illogical and non-productive.

I disagree. If it served to wean us off the generally accepted and in some circles rigidly enforced by self appointed gaurdians, tenets established by no one but "TV profilers" then it would be all round beneficial.

It is a fair point, however, that it is more problematic in cases where there are no obvious signs of sexual evidence. But still we can't say what is and what isn't.

Even in cases where there IS apparent sexual evidence and even in rape, the FACTS show that sex is rarely the motivation, rarely involved, doesnt feature as an objective and no sexual gratification is obtained.

My point with bringing up the weird fetichism elements in some cases of accidental deaths, was to make clear that what may not make sense as sexual to us may do it to others. That was the whole point.

No p-roblem there. I do have a problem with saying that even where there is no evidence that the crime must be sexually motivated and its just that we do not recognise the sexual inclination that would be satisifed by such a crime. Thats a mistake. Facts prove that as does research.

Just look at all those people who use suffocation during the sex act in order to gain higher gratification during the orgasm.
See what I mean?

Of course. Your mistake however is to assume that therefore all crimes involving suffocuation were sexually motivated as some people get off on it. Some people like high heels. That doesnt mean every crime involving a high heel was sexually motivated. I for one am very fond of dusty women in bandages. But if I killed someone and she happened to have a bandaged ankle......it doesnt mean I killed her because of sexual motivation. It just means she had a bandage.

So, how can we say that this and this is not sexual in connection with mutilation murders? Just because we don't share the killer's view about what is sexually arousing?

because research shows that in many , or most in some studies, classified "sexual homicides" no sexual gratification was achieved and sexual motivatio0n did not feature.

And what about the cases where serial killers take organs or items from their victims? Why do they do that, if not for getting the opportunity to relive their crimes and to save the memory of the incident.

Memory is not exclusivelys exual. Otherwise every pebble I take from a beach means I have a fetish for rocks and want to releive the moment? NOt a chance. The desire to relive an intense experience is not exclusively sexual. Thats a fairly odd assertion. The souviner industry is driven by what....sex?

That is itself gratification. Sure, we can't say that that gratification is of sexual nature but then again, we can't say that it isn't!

Its much more logical to say it probably wasnt sexual.

To be frank, it's getting real tiresome to listen to this fanatical drivel about commercial pornography and the idea of sexual crimes as being stressed due to make some profilers and authors rich.

better eat your carbs then 'cos you are going to need the stamina.

It is of course complete rubbish.

No its not. Sex sells and violent sex sells even more. Thats why the red tops make a fortune out of it. Thats why the covers of these books always feature tits, ass and a big knife Thats why True Detective always had some bird in trouble on the cover and not some guy. Thats why serial crime films tend to feature the most extreme murders possible. Thats why the same films gratuitously show the crimes. YOu think crime buffs who are only there to enjoy the academic aspects really need to see the blood and guts to appreciate the criminology?

Firstly, not all of the scientists and criminal psychiatrists who stress the idea of sexual killers make a commercial living out of it or write numerous books about it. To state such a thing is ridiculous.

take a walk through the academic literature. very few agreeing with our media whores there. I strongly suggest you take a read of Craig Dowden & Craig Bennell & Sarah Bloomfield, Advances in Offender Profiling: A Systematic Review of the Profiling Literature Published Over the PastThree Decades, J Police Crim Psych (2007) 22:44–56 which is a very recent and excellent review indeed.

YOu will then see that such nonsense barely exists in the more staid literature and largely confines itself to the section of the airport bookstore labelled C for Crap.

Secondly, I honestly can't see that it is the sexual aspect in itself that sells books. News flash - it is the violence and serial killer concept on the whole that arouses interest from the general public.

No it snot. Witness the latest outrage to attract the public - The Austrian Sex Cellars. You thibnk its the psychological aspects of isolation that interests the vast majority? Or the chance to read about sex slaves and the like and hope that more gory details will come out?

Some people are just morbid and likes to look at crime scene photos, some enjoys to follow the police investigation, some enjoys to solve the mystery, some are interested in the general psychological aspect. In short - people are fascinated by the dark side as such, not just because it's sexual.

Some perhaps. But the idiots whos book buying habits fuel such crazes as profiling are in it for the sex as much as anything else.

Its hardly the prosaic prose, insightful analysis, rigorous research and cutting edge elucidation of facts present in these large font, short word, easily read books that attracts the average punter....now is it?

A book about murders don't sell more copies just because the killer is labelled a 'sexual killer'.

It certainly does. Thats why the blurb usually implies "sex" and when it doesnt the picture on the cover certainly does.

Or do you want to assert that the average true crime book features equations on the dust jacket or something?

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

No offence but you do this a lot. Can you find where I said they do not exist?
[...]
I never said there wasnt. You are arguing a point that doesnt exist.

Well, I thought statements like:

"Indeed it could be argued that the ENTIRE notion of sexual serial killers and sexual homicide being more prevalent than either logic or statistics dictate is solely due to the musings of folk like Ressler, Douglas and the rest of this bunch who make a tidy if sordid living out of the desire of people to read and watch violent sex and death tales.
[...]
... its probably more correct to argue do sexual killers exist at all outside of hollywood crap-fests and if they do, are they any way common enough that there is a chance JtR was one?
When are we going to move away from the nonsense we seem to adopted as fact based on nothing more than our empty headed google eyed faith in the silver screen and its glossy portrayals of sexual violence against women?"

were rather clear on what you implied.

Your mistake however is to assume that therefore all crimes involving suffocuation were sexually motivated as some people get off on it..
And now you make the same thing you accused me of. I never said such a thing. I only wanted to illustrate suffocation on SOME occasions and in certain situation has had sexual intent. I never said that all suffocation acts - like every strangulation crime - are of sexual nature.

Even in cases where there IS apparent sexual evidence and even in rape, the FACTS show that sex is rarely the motivation, rarely involved, doesnt feature as an objective and no sexual gratification is obtained.

No, that's not true at all. Many killers leave traces of semen from masturbation on the corpse. Why would they masturbate during such circumstances if they didn't get sexually aroused by the situation?

No p-roblem there. I do have a problem with saying that even where there is no evidence that the crime must be sexually motivated and its just that we do not recognise the sexual inclination that would be satisifed by such a crime. Thats a mistake. Facts prove that as does research.

Then you obviously totally missed my point about the sexual fetischism after all. We know that sexual arousment or gratification is the reason for why people stuff themselves in large vaccum cleaner bags, hang themselves chained upside down dressed in leather and with a suffocation arrangement or lovers try to suffocate themselves in bed to the brink of unconsciusness in order to create a bigger orgasm.
That is why people do those bizarre things.
So the point was, that if people can take to such extreme and bizarre measures - that in apparence seems to have little to do with sex to 'normal' people - then why should we rule out that serial killing can't contain sexual gratification?

because research shows that in many , or most in some studies, classified "sexual homicides" no sexual gratification was achieved and sexual motivatio0n did not feature.

So just because this - according to your sources - MAY be true about the majority of cases, we should rule it out also in other cases? So what about the minority?

Memory is not exclusivelys exual. Otherwise every pebble I take from a beach means I have a fetish for rocks and want to releive the moment? NOt a chance. The desire to relive an intense experience is not exclusively sexual. Thats a fairly odd assertion. The souviner industry is driven by what....sex?

There you do again. I never said it was exclusively sexual. It could just as well represent another form of psychological gratification. But we can't rule it out either, for the simple reasons that nor you or I can get into such a person's head and grasp what makes him tick.

Besides, you can't compare the taking of a womb or an ear from a victim you've just killed, with buying small replicas of Parthenon at a tourist stall. It is just silly.

No its not. Sex sells and violent sex sells even more. Thats why the red tops make a fortune out of it. Thats why the covers of these books always feature tits, ass and a big knife.

That's absolute nonsense. I don't know what time age you're living in, but I haven't seen many modern true crime books with such covers today. Are you still stuck in the 60s and 70s?
You are talking about pulp fiction literature - not modern true crime books. I admit you puzzle me here.

Thats why serial crime films tend to feature the most extreme murders possible. Thats why the same films gratuitously show the crimes. YOu think crime buffs who are only there to enjoy the academic aspects really need to see the blood and guts to appreciate the criminology?
Well, that only argues an interest in violence isn't it - as I mentioned? How does the above apply to your argument about sex?

...take a walk through the academic literature. very few agreeing with our media whores there. I strongly suggest you take a read of Craig Dowden & Craig Bennell & Sarah Bloomfield, Advances in Offender Profiling: A Systematic Review of the Profiling Literature Published Over the PastThree Decades, J Police Crim Psych (2007) 22:44–56 which is a very recent and excellent review indeed.

So tell me again, why those should be right while others should be wrong? And what about the commercial aspect? Isn't a book a book? Or do you mean that the more books an expert has written, the less credible he or she automatically becomes? Or do you know for a fact that Craig Dowden & Craig Bennell & Sarah Bloomfield don't sell any copies of their book or don't have any commercial ambitions?
Isn't it really all about that you're being selective and that what you consider is a good review is in fact those books that argue your point?
But thanks for the tip anyway.

.No it's not. Witness the latest outrage to attract the public - The Austrian Sex Cellars. You think its the psychological aspects of isolation that interests the vast majority?

Yes, I most certainly do. I have myself been deeply interested in this case, and been involved in many Internet debates about it, and my general view is that people seem more fascinated about the terror of Elisabeth being locked in for 24 years and the tragic of her whole youth being lost down the drain rather than any sexual aspect. You simply have no idea what you are talking about.
To be honest, I think your comment speaks volumes about yourself and your own sexual associations rather than others. You are the one who seems to be reading sex into everything and seems obsessed by projecting it onto others.

.Or do you want to assert that the average true crime book features equations on the dust jacket or something?

No, but they don't contain any 'tits and asses' either.
Unless you go to different book stores than I do.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Glenn,Many organized killers leave traces of semen and masturbation on the corpse. Why would they masturbate during such circumstances if they didn't get sexually aroused by the situation?I find it eases stress. That probably explains why I've not been too successful at promotion-boards...

[Glenn L Andersson]

Hi Glenn,I find it eases stress.

Fair enough, Sam.
However, it still relies on that you can get sexually aroused in the first place in order to make it ... hmmm... work. I don't think anyone could create the erection necessary without being sexually aroused first.

Those who can, may call me immediately.

[Mr. Poster]

Howdy folks

"Indeed it could be argued that the ENTIRE notion of sexual serial killers and sexual homicide being more prevalent than either logic or statistics dictate is solely due to the musings of folk like Ressler, Douglas and the rest of this bunch who make a tidy if sordid living out of the desire of people to read and watch violent sex and death tales.
[...]
... its probably more correct to argue do sexual killers exist at all outside of hollywood crap-fests and if they do, are they any way common enough that there is a chance JtR was one?
When are we going to move away from the nonsense we seem to adopted as fact based on nothing more than our empty headed google eyed faith in the silver screen and its glossy portrayals of sexual violence against women?"

were rather clear on what you implied.

I implied nothing. I clearly stated that the concept could be argued. My assertations as to whether something can be argued or not does not in any way reflect on what I think at all. How you arrrived at that particular station is a puzzler.

No, that's not true at all. Many killers leave traces of semen from masturbation on the corpse. Why would they masturbate during such circumstances if they didn't get sexually aroused by the situation?

This is a fair point as it goes to one aspect of the situation that is tricky. Is a sex crime defined as such by the motivation/intention or the act?

As I have argued, with material of an academic nature to back up my side, rape is quite often, if not in the majority of cases, not a sexual crime on the basis of motivation/intent. That someone uses a sexual organ to inflict damage or hurt....that could be a sex crime indeed if one defines it as such.

However within the context of this discussion....JtR left no semen nor was there one iota of evidence suggestion a sexual act as we must use it within the framework established here by you (semen deposit). Therefore discussion of JtR as a sexual criminal must rely on motivation/intent and yet we know, from reliable peer reviewed sources, that sexu8al motivation/intent quite often if not in the majority of cases, does not feature in homicides that are traditionally called sexual homicides.

So where does that leave us?

Besides, you can't compare the taking of a womb or an ear from a victim you've just killed, with buying small replicas of Parthenon at a tourist stall. It is just silly.

I can and will. Both involve obtaining small items to remind/help relive an experience. Neither are necessarily sexually orientated. But your statement implied that his taking of such items had sexual connotations.

I maintain that that is not strictly true. A cannibal taking a kidney is taking lunch. Not necessarily some post-crime masturbatory aid or whatever. And so on.

You think its the psychological aspects of isolation that interests the vast majority?
Yes, I most certainly do. I have myself been deeply interested in this case, and been involved in many Internet debates about it, and my general view is that people seem more fascinated about the terror of Elisabeth being locked in for 24 years and the tragic of her whole youth being lost down the drain rather than any sexual aspect. You simply have no idea what you are talking about.

Then I think you are either:

1. very arrogant to assume that your interest reflects anything approaching the general publics interest.

2. very ignorant if you think that the general public are sitting around wondering what its like to be locked up for years as opposed to letting their minds wander, guiltily perhaps, to lust what went on down there between the pervy father and the chained to the wall daughter. That would explain why the main question asked after the first Austrian cellar victim popped up was what was the relationship between those two exactly and why that is the question that persists to this day.

I doubt any reasonable man would deny that the frisson of sex in those cases maintained quite a level of interest.

It certainly sold a lot of newspapers.

You maintain that the Internet debates you participate in serve as a barometer of what the public think. Well if you think that the people who buy crappy tits and ass serial killer pulp and sex exploiting redtops to soak up the rubbish of talking heads about "His mother didnt love him and he would wank a lot" participate in the rarefied atmosphere of the message boards you hang out on.......well I am afraid you are seriously mistaken and really should stop hanging out in them and go sit in the pub with the fairly moronic book buying public who are paying the mortgages of the peddlers of pseudo psychological torture porn that pass themselves of as profilers.

No, but they don't contain any 'tits and asses' either.
Unless you go to different book stores than I do.



Just been to amazon.co.uk. Typed in "killer" in books and without pasting the pictures (laziness) , here are some of the blurbs and taglines:

The Missing Girls (St. Martin's True Crime Library) - a shocking true story of abduction and murder

Suffer the Little Children (True Crime)

Perfect Victim (The True Story of the Girl in the Box)

Cellar of Horror ("Four young women held captive - some for months - half-naked and chained like animals.")

Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer ("paedophile, sadist and cannibal killer - and discover that bloodlust knows no time or place")

The World's Greatest Serial Killers

Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer ("take you there to envisage the most gruesome and sadistic acts of violence ever heard of")

Serial Killers: Up Close and Personal: Inside the World of Torturers, Psychopaths, and Mass Murderers

Serial Killers and Sadistic Murderers - Up Close and Personal

Vulture: Profiling Sadistic Serial Killers ("Gruesome and horrifying cases are analyzed.")

The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Serial Killers ("I'm a huge fan of true crime and forensic science....However, I found this book seriously disappointing.....there wasn't much about sexual predators until the final chapters.")

Crossing to Kill: The True Story of the Serial-killer Playground ("Is there any way to protect women from this playground for serial killers?")

Bound to Die: The Shocking True Story of Bobby Joe Long: America's Most Savage Serial Killer ("he killed them, some in intricate fashion, then beaten and raped with savagery that shocked even the jaded homicide detectives.")

Rites of Burial: The Horrific Account of a Sadistic Serial Sex Killer ("subjected his victim, .... to four days of sexual torture")

Now I could go on and on....or change tack and look at the "customer" comments. Lets take one at random for the above book. This is what our enlightened criminologist orientated reader (as you would have use beleive) has to write (my emphasis):

Having never heard of Robert (Bob) Berdella, or any of the crimes he committed, I was intrigued not only by the cover of this book, but also by the claims that the acts of torture and mutilation he inflicted on 6 of his victims (who later died) were more brutal than the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer. What a pity it is then the book does not live up to any of these claims.

Starting with Chapter 1, the book explodes with the torture and ultimate escape of Chris Bryson, and you avidly turn page after page without any realisation of what to expect next. Then the book falls flat of its face - big time. From page 18 onwards it is monotonous reporting of the police ivestigation, which soon becomes very tedious reading due to the lack of variety held within the pages.

This book should have had the capacity to shock the reader right from the start with the crimes and torture carried out on 6 innocent men, and ultimately continued right through till the end. Unfortunately it did not, and finally my willpower and false enthusiasm for this book deserted me and I conceded to give in at page 256, just as Bob was starting to make his confessions to the police. Even Bob confessing couldn't keep my attention or interest for longer than five minutes, as yet again the writing was tedious to the point of reaching boredom.

Luckily for me of course, the reasonably sensible but a little paranoid "Better to Reign in Hell: Serial Killers, Media Panics and the FBI" by Stephen Milligen
is also in there.

having been quite depressed at finding most of my concerns confimed, especially by customer comments which seem to spend an unhealthy amount of time asking for more blood, guts and tales of graphic rape....I decided to cheer myself up and paste some delightfully illustrative covers from those bibles of "criminology" Crime and Detective magazines and their variants!

And I havent even included those classics "Saucy Detective" and "Sexy Detective". Now......Im not sure how you will manage it but I suppose you could argue that people who but this tat and who continue to buy the usual profiling tat that promises nothing more than graphic depictions of violence against women are in it because they are really interested in the criminal mind.

Or one could accept that the vast majority fuel a growing and ever more tasteless violent porn industry based around marketing true crime as a worthy intelligent pursuit and all the while peddling it as barely hidden violent textual and graphical pornography.

p

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/TC4.jpg

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/TC3.jpg

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/TC1.jpg

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/TC2.jpg

[A.P. Wolf]

Probably the best post I have seen on this board or any other; well done Mr Poster, you managed to mirror my thoughts exactly.

[Glenn L Andersson]

Lars,

No, it's actually one of the worst posts I've seen because it purely repeats the same nonsense.

Firstly, when you referred to crime book covers displaying sexual connotations, I - partly as a joke - made references to pulp fiction.
And lo and behond - what are you showing here? Pulp fiction magazines from the 1970s and 80s!
Yea, we do know that such existed (and maybe still do).
But we are talking about serious true crime books here! So what was the point in displaying those?
I just got my confirmation on that we definitely DON'T go the same book stores. But hey - what's new?

Once again - and without taking a firm stand on the matter myself (since I find the subject really non-productive): you have no factual back-up for the idea that mutilation murders are not sexually oriented. You're just plain selective in your choice of sources. As I mentioned before: why do you quote those particular experts and use them to back up your claim, when you on the other hand accuses other experts of only 'being in it for the money'? What differs your experts from others? Fact remains that numerous experts dealing with serial killing argues that a number of such murders are triggered by sexual morives - your problem is, that you accuses them of being commecrial, while you obviously distinguish "your" experts from that.

Again, experts within the same field will always argue against each other - that is a natural part of scientific research. And therefore it is wrong to be subjective and choose one in favour of the other. Academic theorizing is one thing, but personally I wouldn't automatically dismiss the thoughts and research delivered by people who've actually spoken to and personally met serial killers just because they happen to sell a lot of books and make a a living as consultants (hey we all have to make our living out of something and why not something we are experienced in?).
Your whole approach is twisted, because it is not based on a factual objective search for the truth, but a weird hate crusade against certain authors and everyone who seels one copy of a book. (I also hope AP Wolf recognizes himself in this.)
Just like in the case of Patricia Cornwell, obsession is not a healthy research approach.

As also Howie pointed out, it is an error with total certainty to assume that the interest in crime and serial killers is based on erotic fascination, since it appears as it is the violence and psychological behaviour of such individuals in itself who appears to be the main key. We have several examples of serial murder where there is no sexual overtones, and people are STILL intrigued by those case. According to your reasoning, people wouldn't give a damn about those but of course they do.

As for the Austrian case, you are really out on deep water.
That people are interested in it for the sexual aspect is nothing but your own expectations based on your rather cynical view on people in general. I have to say that it is your very certain assumptions about people being interested in it for the sexual overtones that are arrogant, especially since they are totally without foundation and only based on your personal beliefs in this particular case.
Yes, ACTUALLY - what seems to intrigue people as far as this case is concerned is the terror of being locked up for 24 years, but also the identities of the people. The major things that seems to have been what Elisabeth looks like after 24 years (which is why tabloid papers have been willing to pay millions for a papparazzi photo).
Nor do I actually think that the papers have given that much focus on the sex. Of course you can't help mentioning that Fritzl was the father of her children etc. or that he raped her, because that is what happened one of the facts and motives behind the case. But to go from that and then speculate that people like to roll themselves in erotic stuff is of course plain nonsense.
I know very well that my perception of people's reactions to this case are based on personal experiences and not academic facts, but that goes for you as well. I have discussed this case with people on the street, on my work place, on internet forums, and I followed it very closely in international and national papers etc. and I have not seen one single sign of that people are intrigued that much by the sexual aspect of it.

Personally, I don't have any naive expectations on people and the general public myself, but I think your view here is incredibly cynical and - most importantly - totally one-sided; this whole sex things seems to be a sick obsession on your part, and I believe it clearly clouds your judgement.
I have seen people reading the news about the cellar children and starting to cry. For once I have actually noticed a genuine empathy among the general public and frankly the sex thing in this case seems to have rather put people off.
What has concerned people - including myself - appears to be the general interest in what Elisabeth and the cellar children looks like after 24 years, what the conditions were down there, etc. In short, what intrigues people is the fantastic story as a whole. Of course it sells papers - why shouldn't it? It's an amazing story. And of course the tabloid headline at times will focus on the sexual implications - but that they don't ONLY do that. Again, you are being too pragmatic.

You are accusing the general public and a number of authors of being obsessed with sex, when in fact
YOUR obsession with this and your focus on sex actually says more about YOU. Don't project this on other people.

I also should have known better, because my experience should have told me that debating with you is a total waste of time and the ultimate freak experience. I thereby withdraw from this very disturbing thread.

And what does this really have to do with the Ripper? Absolutely nothing.
I withold my view, that sexual motives can't be completely exonerated from the Ripper's need of cutting his victim up, but I wouldn't stress the point either since it is quite possible there could have been other reasons. The point is, we will never know. You can speculate about why the Ripper mutilated his victims, but you will never come to terms with it, nor will any of us. We haven't even began to scrape the surface yet. And that is the reality of it. And frankly: does it matter?

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho Glenn

Firstly, when you referred to crime book covers displaying sexual connotations, I - partly as a joke - made references to pulp fiction.
And lo and behond - what are you showing here? Pulp fiction magazines from the 1970s and 80s!

You are wrong again....those pictures are true detective magazines. Pulp fiction is indeed "Saucy detective" and "sexy detective". Lucky I didnt use those!

So I am afraid you are once again mistaken.

But it is of course interesting to view the decades from the view of true crime publications.-

The tat I showed (And I am sure folk like SamF all remeber the even odder British one's) represents True Crime muck of the 1970's and 1980's. Byu then of course PC nonsense and the femmies had their knickers in a knot and semi-naked blondes with knives at their breast to lure in th epunters didnt cut it. So towards the end of the 1980's and into the 90's we saw the advent of the same shit tarted up as something respectable....an intelligent pursuit which could not draw the wrath of the liberals and the women and yet could still portray rabid depictions of the worst sort of excess.

And even better! The constructs used to justify this crap allowed everything to be a "sexual" crime!

As for the Austrian case, you are really out on deep water.
What exactly do YOU know about the nature of people's interest in it? Absolutely nothing!

getting a bit gassy there Glenn! This is what I know about the great unwashed's interest in it - have some headlines (from a milder tabloid):

Sex slave dungeon: http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-562989/Sex-slave-dungeon-Incest-father-concealed-cellar-entrance-labyrinth-basement-rooms.html

Inside the cellar where father locked daughter for 24 years and repeatedly raped her http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-562377/Pictured-Inside-cellar-father-locked-daughter-24-years-repeatedly-raped-her.html

DEPRAVED cellar monster Josef Fritzl tortured prostitutes to the very threshold of death for his own sick sexual gratification. http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1105_fritzl.shtml

Good stuff isnt it? Really shows that people want details of psychological deprivation doesnt it?

Dont be such an innocent. Wake up and smell the dirty teenaged knickers. People like reading about sex and violence and the market for it is fed with the cynical crap produced by people who write, in the main, true crime tat primarily about "sexual serial kilelrs" and seeing as there arent that many....they had to make up the conditions so that everyone could be one!

That people are interested in it for the sexual aspect is nothing but your own expectations based on your rather twisted view on people in general.

Must be. Thats why the above headlines do not say "Father in Psychological Torture of Daughter" and do say "Sex Fiend Dad Rapes Daughter!"

I have discussed this case with people on the street, on my work place, on internet forums, and I followed it very closely in international and national papers etc. and I have not seen one single sign of that people are intrigued that much by the sexual aspect of it. And why? Because it contains so many other horrific circumstances ttat speaks to people's imagination.

Give me a break. Explain the above headlines then and how they indicate that people are not intrigued by the sexual aspect?

You are living in cloud cuckoo land.

YOUR obsession with this and your focus on sex actually says more about YOU. This is not the first time you have been displaying pictures of sadistic women-demeaning content on Internet Boards.

Nice try Glenn! Me thinks you protest too much.

The pictures depicted are from the very publications that serve the interest group you profess is rather more academic.

I think you are a little afraid people might actually start to believe that your holier than thou attitude conceals ....what exactly?....just a little hint of a tightening in the pants as you devour yet another tale of rape, torture and death and salve your guilty conscience by saying its what you must endure for your science?

Give it up! Come down here in the gutter with the rest of us! I have no problem at all admitting I find a good depiction of a nubile woman straining at the chains quite stirring.

But at least I do not peddle such stuff by pretending its science.


And what does this really have to do with the Ripper? Absolutely nothing.

Zoinks! A hat trick of being wrong!

It had everything to do with him.

because since this sort of crap wandered out of specialist magazines and seedy Dresden clubs and started being touted as "criminology", everything about th eRipper since 1985 has been dripping in profiling guff, psychosexual musings of idiots and the ravings of people who, for whatever hidden reason, devour profiling/true crime/serial killing crap in the mistaken belief that it is something more than the latest marketing ploy to feed the insatiable public demand for tales of violent sex and death.

Thats what it has to do with the Ripper.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

You are wrong again....those pictures are true detective magazines. Pulp fiction is indeed "Saucy detective" and "sexy detective". Lucky I didnt use those!

So I am afraid you are once again mistaken.

No, I am not, because once again, those are not serious true crime literature. Personally, I haven't seen such covers on books by Begg, Ressler, Douglas or any other. Or on that many any Ripper books for the last decade either. And that is what I thought was being discussed here, not 'detectives magazines' (hey, we all know what they look like anyway, m'kay?)

getting a bit gassy there Glenn! This is what I know about the great unwashed's interest in it - have some headlines (from a milder tabloid):

Sex slave dungeon: http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-562989/Sex-slave-dungeon-Incest-father-concealed-cellar-entrance-labyrinth-basement-rooms.html

Inside the cellar where father locked daughter for 24 years and repeatedly raped her http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-562377/Pictured-Inside-cellar-father-locked-daughter-24-years-repeatedly-raped-her.html

DEPRAVED cellar monster Josef Fritzl tortured prostitutes to the very threshold of death for his own sick sexual gratification. http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1105_fritzl.shtml

Good stuff isnt it? Really shows that people want details of psychological deprivation doesnt it?

I am only going to say this once: stop being so fundamentally selective. We all know that the UK tabloids are some of the worst in the world, and frankly - since I've been following this case from day one - I haven't seen that many tabloids in Sweden and Denmark that's been pursuing it from this angle. And I mean, what should they write? She WAS a sex slave! She WAS repeadetly raped by her father for 24 years in the cellar! And yes - he DID torture prostitutes on his spare time! Unfortunately, those examples do not point at anything that aren't ture. If they were exaggerations - sure - but unfortunately they're not.
Or do you mean that they should manipulate the hard facts for your convenience?

The pictures depicted are from the very publications that serve the interest group you profess is rather more academic.
Haha. Yeah right. Why don't you do tell me one about Santa Claus too.

Dont be such an innocent. Wake up and smell the dirty teenaged knickers. People like reading about sex and violence and the market for it is fed with the cynical crap produced by people who write, in the main, true crime tat primarily about "sexual serial killers" and seeing as there arent that many....they had to make up the conditions so that everyone could be one!
[...]
Give it up! Come down here in the gutter with the rest of us!

Thanks but no thanks. I leave the gutter and your rather weird obsessions to yourself to dwell on. I prefer discussing facts without people obsessed with fanatical crusades and subjective reasoning. You're completely right - it's certainly not science. End of story.

[Mr. Poster]

Howdy Glenn
No, I am not, because once again, those are not serious true crime literature. Personally, I haven't seen such covers on books by Begg, Ressler, Douglas or any other. Or on that many any Ripper books for the last decade either. And that is what I thought was being discussed here, not 'detectives magazines'


Indeed you won't. The business of advertising has moved as has what is deemed politically correct.

Now....instead of seeing a cover of a woman being held at knife point with her breasts popping out you will have a tagline that reads "get inside the mind of tha man who bestially raped, tortured and butchered 15 young girls and discover the efforts of the worlds leading profilers to catch this monster. be horrified at the depravity of the crimes and get the most up close and personal view to date of what exactly happened in that cellar of depraved debauchery and tight teenage limbs".

Thats how it works.

(hey, we all know what they look like anyway, m'kay?)

Oh wait! I see you were being ironic or something! Given that Mr Garrison is exactly the sort of glove puppet wearing, basement dwelling, maladjusted oddball who would devour such crud and hope people swallowed the spiel about it being to sate his appetite for scientific crime investigation. Good one!

We all know that the UK tabloids are some of the worst in the world, and frankly - since I've been following this case from day one - I haven't seen that many tabloids in Sweden and Denmark that's been pursuing it from this angle.

oooh.......I dont know. I reckon if VG and Dagbladet here can cover the less noble side then the rest of Skandinavia probably did so as well.

Plus.....unless you are extremely maths challenged, Norway, Sweden and Denmark combined constitute a whole lot less than the majority of the tabloid reading world wide population, the existence of whom validates my point and negates yours by sheer weight of numbers.

Or do you mean that they should manipulate the hard facts for your convenience?

Nice sleight of hand but lets reveal your unsubtle attempt by quoting your point:

That people are interested in it for the sexual aspect is nothing but your own expectations based on your rather cynical view on people in general. I have to say that it is your very certain assumptions about people being interested in it for the sexual overtones that are arrogant, especially since they are totally without foundation and only based on your personal beliefs

You contended that they were not just interested in the sex side. Now you try and wiggle and say yes they were but they had to be because it was a sex case! You should be on "So You Think You Can Dance" because a shuffle like that is indicative of being fairly light on your feet!

I leave the gutter and your rather weird obsessions to yourself to dwell on. I prefer discussing facts without people obsessed with fanatical crusades and subjective reasoning. You're completely right - it's certainly not science.

Ooooh you wish you could. But you cannot. YOu are down here in the filth with the rest of us.

You can try and dress it up as anything you want, convince yourself that people at the dinner party wont think you are creepy if you say your interest in violent sex death is purely scientific, that people wont check out your bathroom for chains and whips when they see your book collection and so on.

Or pretend that your your hard earned kroners that built that collection have not in some way contributed to the ongoing global and fairly reprehensible glamorizing and commercialization of extreme sexual violence which is and has been propogated by a rather sordid bunch of neer do wells painting their grotty little tales as something more acceptable than they really are.

I on th eother hand am at least honest enough to admit my place in such a system.

Now I have to be going.....I am sure my local bookstore must have something featuring the words "sex" "rape" "kill" and "profiling" on the front cover that could serve to while away my afternoon in a wholesome and guilt free manner.

p

[Mr. Poster]

Just as a Public Service Announcement:

An excellent little article by Laura James entitled "The Intersection of True Crime and Pornography"

Well worth a read!

http://www.crimerant.com/?p=798

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

You contended that they were not just interested in the sex side. Now you try and wiggle and say yes they were but they had to be because it was a sex case!

Not so at all, buddy.
I have seen many inaccurate, exaggerated headlines connected with the case - some sexually oriented, some definitely not - but these particular ones really didn't say anyting was wasn't true.
The expression 'sex case' has to be your own choice of words. To me it is not a 'sex case' but a case about a father who locked her daughter in a cellar for 24 years while she still was in her teens and who forced her to have children with her.
The obsessive sex stuff is all part of your personal assocations and nothing else.

... that people wont check out your bathroom for chains and whips when they see your book collection and so on.

Can't see that they necessarily would make sexual connections - maybe they would keep an eye on my kitchen drawer where I keep my knives - who knows.
What's your deal here - YOU are the one who says that sex has nothing to do with serial murder or murder in general. So why are you making associations with sex, whips and chains?

I on th eother hand am at least honest enough to admit my place in such a system.

I don't see what obsession about sexual depravity and a fanatical manhunt on some researchers and authors has anything to do with 'honesty'. Speak for yourself. I don't belong to your clique of lunatics.

Now I have to be going.....I am sure my local bookstore must have something featuring the words "sex" "rape" "kill" and "profiling" on the front cover that could serve to while away my afternoon in a wholesome and guilt free manner.

I am sure they do, just like the local bookstore can be sure of that you will be there to buy them.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho Glenn

I have seen many inaccurate, exaggerated headlines connected with the case - some sexually oriented, some definitely not - but these particular ones really didn't say anyting was wasn't true.

True or not (and I have no doubt they were) do you really think they were used out of some kind of journalistic purity or the fact that people will but papers to read about sexual violence quicker than the psychology of detention?

To me it is not a 'sex case' but a case about a father who locked her daughter in a cellar for 24 years while she still was in her teens and who forced her to have children with her.The obsessive sex stuff is all part of your personal assocations and nothing esle.

Not the European media? Not the inevitable films? You think I am the only one who thinks that the cellar case interested people and was marketed to them because they have a morbid but natural interest in what happens in such cases?

On the other hand, if they come across you - considering the choice of words you use and the rather depraved manner in which you tackle the subject - I have no doubt that they look for whips and chains in your bathroom. I certainly would.

Its not the whips and chains one should watch out for. Its the shelves full of books with red and black covers promising tales of sexual death with a profiling angle.

I am sure they do, just like the local bookstore can be sure of that you will be there to buy them.


very good. But I doubt my book buying habits keep such authors in business.

But an interesting book and well worth a read is Phillip Jenkins masterpiece:

Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

I thought you'd gone to the book store.

[Mr. Poster]

I couldnt get in.

It was full of men with one hand down the front of their trousers and proclaiming they were profiling experts.

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

To throw this topic back onto the direction of Jack the Ripper before I leave this thread:

We can not in any way possible know what went on in the killer's head when he performed the mutilations. We know from other cases that mutilations MAY be a way to receive sexual gratification but we also know from OTHER cases that sexual fantasies has nothing to do with it.

As has been said previously in this thread, just because there are no signs of sexual intercourse or semen in connection with the murders, we can't automatically assume or state with certainty that the mutilations didn't have sexual implications, since people IN OTHER SITUATIONS can seek sexual gratification through actions that seems very far off the sexual mark for the rest of us.
If they can do so in these situations and no one desides themselves can connect those with sex as we know it, then how can we be certain of that the same can't be applied to the Ripper's mutilations?

Again, what sources we use in order to back up our claims or thoughts on the matter is a matter of subjective choice and selection. The experts Mr Poster cites and makes refereces to, are no more credible than people like Ressler, Douglas or Vernon J Geberth, Paul Britton, David Canter (to name a few) - they just happen to pursue other angles and display different opinions, and hey - that's science for you. It's perfectly natural.
The problem is: this area of study is not 100% science, which means that it is all a matter of opinion, approach and academic pursuit.
What annoys me is that the words of some experts - many of whom have been in personal daily contact with serial killers first hand - are being rejected on the sole basis of that they sell books and appear in documentaries. Especially since they are not alone in this.

One wonders if this dislike against the idea of the Ripper as a sexual predator really has its foundation in misdirected jealousy against some criminology experts on the subject (regardless if they're profilers, criminologists, psychologists, people in the police force etc) just because they have become commercially popular and manage to make a living out of it. But just because someone is commercially popular, does that automatically mean that he or she must be incorrect or should be discredited?
Should that mean - for example - that the views or findings of every historian who sells more than two copies of his book should be dimissed because he or she is considered 'commercial'?

So to summarize: in the Ripper's case there MIGHT BE some indications (note the emphasis) of that the murders and mutilations were sexually oriented (the taking of the womb in two instances; the focus on the lower abdominal area etc.) but fact remains that we simply can't say one or the other. We simply have too little information in order to speculate along those lines. And personally, I have no firm view on the matter. Nor do I understand how anyone can claim to have one.

[Glenn L Andersson]

I couldnt get in.

It was full of men with one hand down the front of their trousers and proclaiming they were profiling experts.

p

In other words: you felt quite at home, then?

[Mr. Poster]

In other words: you felt quite at home, then?

I did actually I t was just like being on a ripper thread discussing profiling.

p

[Mr. Poster]

Glenn is right.....time to get back on thread.

I of course do have a firm opinion on the matter. Based upon:

1. No evidence of any sexual activity,

2. No evidence that anything other than practicality and presence of soft tissue guided his mutilating blade,

3. No evidence that he had time for anything distinctly sexual at all given his being busy with other matters,

4. No evidence that he had any sexual preference at all with respect to hair colour, age, etc. One might think if his fetish was killing women in a specific way it might have extended to appearances etc. But no.

5. No evidence in the literature that mutilators tend to be sexually driven.

6. No evidence in the literature that even rapists are sexually driven.

7. Evidence in the literature that most "sex" crimes ....arent.

8. No evidence that the police ever considered our man to be sexually driven or focussed.

9. No evidence that our man even attempted to take a sexual organ.

10. No evidence at all that our man inserted his knife anywhere one might think a sex focussed man might be inclined to insert it.

11. No evidence that his selection of victim had to do with anything more than their being weak, sick, drunk and desperate.

I could probably go on....

p

[Glenn L Andersson]

Lars,

You could very well be correct on some points - who knows?
Just as long as you remember one thing: we have no 'evidence' of ANYTHING here.
Meaning: although we have no real evidence of the murders/mutilations being of sexual nature, we have no real evidence of the opposite either.

Let that be the criminology lesson for today.

Thank you and good night.

[Mr. Poster]

Hi Glenn

There is fundamentally no evidence of anything sexual.

There is a reasonable amount for it not being sexual.

It is illogical to assume that it being sexual is more probable.

let that be your lesson in logic for the day.

p