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Jack the Curious-But-Yellow?
Excerpted from Murder Most Foul:
"For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself"
- William Heirens(?)
¡§A man who has been behind bars more than 50 years in a sensational Chicago murder case asked a clemency board to free him Thursday, claiming he was railroaded. Heirens was a 17-year-old student at University of Chicago when he was arrested in the slayings of a 6-year-old girl, whose remains were found scattered in the Chicago sewers, and two women. The message "For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself" was found scrawled in lipstick on the mirror in one of the women's home.¡¨
- Associated Press, April 05, 2002
If the Ripper were committing these murders in hope to be caught by the police, then he certainly had an odd way of facilitating it, seeing as how absolutely no known clues or messages of any kind were left at any of the murder scenes. Surprisingly, there are people who do believe that the Ripper was doing exactly that ¡V ¡¥crying for help¡¦ ¡V and have stated so publicly on the Message Boards of Stephen Ryder¡¦s Casebook10:
¡§This could well be a cry for help, as in: 'I'm widely acknowledged as a great axe man, I wear a top hat on occasion, and wherever I go, Jack is always with me. Can't you see the clues I'm giving you dudes? I'm Jack! It's me!¡¨
- Graham Sheehan10
But there are also people who believe that the Ripper killed his victims in a ¡¥humane¡¦ manner, and have also stated so on these same Message Boards:
¡§Basically I don't think he was an evil man, he was a man tormented and pushed to extreme thoughts and his mind couldn't cope with the right and wrongs of it. His method of killing could show he wanted to be humane about it. Some may say he cut their throats in a savage fashion, but it may be he wanted to be sure they died instantly, [that they didn't suffer death slowly]. He was humane, he killed with such violence because he wanted to be sure their deaths were instant, - he didn't want them to linger and suffer unnecessarily, even if he had no feeling for them. Sometimes, if not every time, he cut the throat twice to be sure.¡¨
- Warwick Parminter10
One wonders about how these same people might receive premise #16, although their probable political affiliation should not be a mystery to anyone. Yet, there may be some merit to the premise that the Ripper was indeed ¡¥crying out¡¦ for help via commission of these murders. It may just be that he really wasn¡¦t very good at it, or maybe he did leave obscure clues, ones that went unrecognized and/or unnoticed by the investigating authorities. Readers of the purported Maybrick diary will recollect the various ¡¥clues¡¦ mentioned in that narrative, such as the cotton in the tin match box. Did subtle clues of this nature lie among the crime scenes and evidence that was collected at the time, clues that have now been lost to us forever?
Surprisingly, a criminologist no less august than John Douglas, author of The Cases That Haunt Us, has shown support for the concept of the Ripper ¡§crying for help¡¨, by comparing the tagline of the Lusk letter, ¡§Catch Me When You Can¡¨, to the message allegedly left by William Heirens. He does qualify his support, however, by stating that it is equally probable that the Lusk letter tagline was intended as a taunt toward Lusk and the authorities.
Conclusion ¡V if the Ripper were actively trying to be caught, then he went about it in a most peculiar fashion. Given the utter lack of clues at any of the murder scenes, and so few overall, one must suspect the veracity of an alleged motive such as this. However, he would not have hesitated to kill, mutilate, and then abandon his victims in public, just to prove to the authorities that he was ¡¥serious¡¦. His other motives for mutilation and leaving of the victims in public could have been as follows:
Mutilation
„h Jack the Bogeyman
„h Jack the Wanker
„h Jack the Jill-Hater
„h Jack the Human-being Stalker
„h Jack the Anarchist
Public Display
„h Jack the Bogeyman
„h Jack the Anarchist
„h Jack the Godfather
SOURCES:
1. Badal, James In the Wake of the Butcher
2. Bloch, Robert Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
3. Crime SuspenStories, The Giggling Killer
EC Publications
4. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan The Complete Sherlock Holmes
5. Futrelle, Jacques The Thinking Machine
6. Jesse, F. Tennyson Murder and its Motives
7. King, C. Daly The Curious Mr. Tarrant
8. Maples, William Dead Men Do Tell Tales
9. Rumbelow, Donald The Complete Jack the Ripper
10. Ryder, Stephen www.casebook.org
11. Scott, George A History of Torture
12. Sledge, Eugene With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
13. Smithsonian Magazine, The Shadow of a Gunman from World War II
September 1993
14. Spitz. Werner, Medicolegal Investigation of Death, Second
and Fisher, Russell Edition
15. Styron William The Confessions of Nat Turner
16. Sugden, Philip The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
17. Ubelaker, Douglas Bones: A Forensic Detective¡¦s Casebook
18. von Krafft-Ebing, Richard Psychopathia Sexualis
19. http://www.crimelibrary.com
20. http://drugs.uta.edu/drugs.html
21. http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v3n1/ridgway.html
22. http://65.107.211.206/
23. http://www.wcb.vcu.edu/wcb/students/...s/poecrit.html
24. http://www.daveschultz.com/scum/clinton/bodycount.html
25. http://www.sociology.org/vol003.002/...icle.1998.html
26. http://www.psycharts.com/impofthe.htm
27. http://www.stormloader.com/thescorpion/17evil.html
28. http://www.ihr.org/books/ztn.html
29. http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v281...jbk0609-1.html
30. http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf065/sf065p14.htm
"For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself"
- William Heirens(?)
¡§A man who has been behind bars more than 50 years in a sensational Chicago murder case asked a clemency board to free him Thursday, claiming he was railroaded. Heirens was a 17-year-old student at University of Chicago when he was arrested in the slayings of a 6-year-old girl, whose remains were found scattered in the Chicago sewers, and two women. The message "For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself" was found scrawled in lipstick on the mirror in one of the women's home.¡¨
- Associated Press, April 05, 2002
If the Ripper were committing these murders in hope to be caught by the police, then he certainly had an odd way of facilitating it, seeing as how absolutely no known clues or messages of any kind were left at any of the murder scenes. Surprisingly, there are people who do believe that the Ripper was doing exactly that ¡V ¡¥crying for help¡¦ ¡V and have stated so publicly on the Message Boards of Stephen Ryder¡¦s Casebook10:
¡§This could well be a cry for help, as in: 'I'm widely acknowledged as a great axe man, I wear a top hat on occasion, and wherever I go, Jack is always with me. Can't you see the clues I'm giving you dudes? I'm Jack! It's me!¡¨
- Graham Sheehan10
But there are also people who believe that the Ripper killed his victims in a ¡¥humane¡¦ manner, and have also stated so on these same Message Boards:
¡§Basically I don't think he was an evil man, he was a man tormented and pushed to extreme thoughts and his mind couldn't cope with the right and wrongs of it. His method of killing could show he wanted to be humane about it. Some may say he cut their throats in a savage fashion, but it may be he wanted to be sure they died instantly, [that they didn't suffer death slowly]. He was humane, he killed with such violence because he wanted to be sure their deaths were instant, - he didn't want them to linger and suffer unnecessarily, even if he had no feeling for them. Sometimes, if not every time, he cut the throat twice to be sure.¡¨
- Warwick Parminter10
One wonders about how these same people might receive premise #16, although their probable political affiliation should not be a mystery to anyone. Yet, there may be some merit to the premise that the Ripper was indeed ¡¥crying out¡¦ for help via commission of these murders. It may just be that he really wasn¡¦t very good at it, or maybe he did leave obscure clues, ones that went unrecognized and/or unnoticed by the investigating authorities. Readers of the purported Maybrick diary will recollect the various ¡¥clues¡¦ mentioned in that narrative, such as the cotton in the tin match box. Did subtle clues of this nature lie among the crime scenes and evidence that was collected at the time, clues that have now been lost to us forever?
Surprisingly, a criminologist no less august than John Douglas, author of The Cases That Haunt Us, has shown support for the concept of the Ripper ¡§crying for help¡¨, by comparing the tagline of the Lusk letter, ¡§Catch Me When You Can¡¨, to the message allegedly left by William Heirens. He does qualify his support, however, by stating that it is equally probable that the Lusk letter tagline was intended as a taunt toward Lusk and the authorities.
Conclusion ¡V if the Ripper were actively trying to be caught, then he went about it in a most peculiar fashion. Given the utter lack of clues at any of the murder scenes, and so few overall, one must suspect the veracity of an alleged motive such as this. However, he would not have hesitated to kill, mutilate, and then abandon his victims in public, just to prove to the authorities that he was ¡¥serious¡¦. His other motives for mutilation and leaving of the victims in public could have been as follows:
Mutilation
„h Jack the Bogeyman
„h Jack the Wanker
„h Jack the Jill-Hater
„h Jack the Human-being Stalker
„h Jack the Anarchist
Public Display
„h Jack the Bogeyman
„h Jack the Anarchist
„h Jack the Godfather
SOURCES:
1. Badal, James In the Wake of the Butcher
2. Bloch, Robert Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
3. Crime SuspenStories, The Giggling Killer
EC Publications
4. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan The Complete Sherlock Holmes
5. Futrelle, Jacques The Thinking Machine
6. Jesse, F. Tennyson Murder and its Motives
7. King, C. Daly The Curious Mr. Tarrant
8. Maples, William Dead Men Do Tell Tales
9. Rumbelow, Donald The Complete Jack the Ripper
10. Ryder, Stephen www.casebook.org
11. Scott, George A History of Torture
12. Sledge, Eugene With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
13. Smithsonian Magazine, The Shadow of a Gunman from World War II
September 1993
14. Spitz. Werner, Medicolegal Investigation of Death, Second
and Fisher, Russell Edition
15. Styron William The Confessions of Nat Turner
16. Sugden, Philip The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
17. Ubelaker, Douglas Bones: A Forensic Detective¡¦s Casebook
18. von Krafft-Ebing, Richard Psychopathia Sexualis
19. http://www.crimelibrary.com
20. http://drugs.uta.edu/drugs.html
21. http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v3n1/ridgway.html
22. http://65.107.211.206/
23. http://www.wcb.vcu.edu/wcb/students/...s/poecrit.html
24. http://www.daveschultz.com/scum/clinton/bodycount.html
25. http://www.sociology.org/vol003.002/...icle.1998.html
26. http://www.psycharts.com/impofthe.htm
27. http://www.stormloader.com/thescorpion/17evil.html
28. http://www.ihr.org/books/ztn.html
29. http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v281...jbk0609-1.html
30. http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf065/sf065p14.htm
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