[OT} Jack the ripper case... solved?

[Krug]

Alan Moore took the solution from another source I believe. However, it sounds too far-fetched to me.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Potential Spoiler for Alan Moore's "From Hell"...

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Alan Moore even says in one of his commentaries that the idea of Dr. Gull being the Ripper has been shot down by experts. He just went with it because it provided the best story.

There are a number of reasons why it couldn't have been Gull, not the least of which is his health at the time.

 

[Felon]

I've never understood the long-standing fascination with ol's Spring-Heeled Jack. Pretty overrated stuff. All the guy did was kill and mutilate, what, five prostitutes? Tragic, but still pretty small fry stuff as far as the history of serial killers goes. How about those two nuts in Australia who tortured and murdered a dozen people, stuffed them in barrels, and kept them locked up in an old bank vault?

 

[Gizzard]

Did anyone notice that the most likely Zodiac suspect was just cleared by DNA evidence? He'd been dead since '74 I think and the popular opinion was that the case had been "solved".

I think that this is definitely a warning about thinking that anyone can "solve" a case thats been as publicly hashed and re-hashed as any of these (in)famous serial killings. Its a lot easier to spin a convincing scenario than it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a given scenario is the one true one.

 

[teitan]

There are annotated comments on one of the lead investigators memoirs. The annotations were made by one of the other investigators, though I do not recall the title of the book, someone borrowed my copy of it and the video from TLC that came out when From Hell came out. Anyway, at just about every point the main author comments to the effect of "we never discovered the Ripper's identity" the commentor writes, "we knew it all along, it was Kosminski". Some RIpper researches actually had the FBI forensics office do a profile on the RIpper and then compared the profile to the top 4 suspects and the only person the profile fit was a man named Kosminski.

They had a witness as well, but this witness wouldn't testify because he was Jewish and the man he saw murder one of the girls was a well known eccentric that happened to be Jewish. The witness said "I will not have the blood of another Jew on my hands". This made it impossible for the police to nab Kosminski because in that day they had to have a witness to get a charge to stick. There wasn't much of a forensic science to speak of at the time.

The police followed Kosminski for weeks and the murders stopped completely. EVentually Kosminski was placed into a mental home by his family. The man was violently hostile to women and suffered from psychotic episodes. Classic serial killer personality in retrospect. Before I forget, Kosminski's full name was Aaron Kosminski. The ripper is something of a favorite of mine.

 

[kenjib]

I've never understood the long-standing fascination with ol's Spring-Heeled Jack. Pretty overrated stuff. All the guy did was kill and mutilate, what, five prostitutes? Tragic, but still pretty small fry stuff as far as the history of serial killers goes. How about those two nuts in Australia who tortured and murdered a dozen people, stuffed them in barrels, and kept them locked up in an old bank vault?

http://www.escapee.fsnet.co.uk/frighteners/killers.htm

Here's the one that has always stuck foremost in my mind:

#3 HERMAN MUDGETT (AKA H. H. HOLMES)- 200+ murders
Place: Chicago Date: 1890s Victims: Boarding house guests
'Dr Holmes' started out stealing corpses from the University of Michigan and moved onto Chicago, where he made o fortune with a chain of drug stores. He used his wealth to build a 100 room house full of gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits and secret doors. During the 1893 World Fair he rented rooms and killed most of their occupants, moving on to attracting women to his home, forcing them to sign over their savings and then throwing them down an elevator shaft before gassing them. When plice rumbled him, he burned his torture castle down. The remains of over 200 victims were found in the ruins. Mudgett became the first celebrity psycho in the US after a sensational trial. He was hanged on 7 May 1896.

I'm not sure why Jack the Ripper has always been so compelling. Perhaps it has to do with the vivid, romantic, imagery invoked by the time and place coupled with the fact that the case was never solved.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

It had a named scrolled in the margin next to this statement. When the person that the name belonged to was investigated it was found that they had opportunity, motive, knowledge of the area, and were put into an assylum right after the last murder.

I *think* you're talking about the Macnaghten Memoranda? Memory's kinda fuzzy on all these documents and such. Anyway, I think the theory here was Dr. Francis Tumblety. Tumblety was an American "quack" doctor (from Rochester NY actually), who seemed to have had a noticable hatred of women in general and prostitutes in particular (one anecdote relates how he had a cabinet full of preserved...umm..."livelihoods", to cop a phrase from the movie From Hell). He was constantly on the run from malpractice and failed abortion suits, and finally made it to England, where he was charged with "indecencies" (speculation holds he was bisexual, a strict no-no in Victorian times). He was imprisoned for most of October (which could account for the drop-off in Jack's activity then). Although watch this not even be the guy you were thinking...

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

They had a witness as well, but this witness wouldn't testify because he was Jewish and the man he saw murder one of the girls was a well known eccentric that happened to be Jewish. The witness said "I will not have the blood of another Jew on my hands".

I couldn't be 100%, but I believe the woman in question was Elizabeth Stride, victim #3. I do recall that an elderly Jew, Israel Schwartz, passed by during the murder, apparently startling Jack into not finishing his "work". I wasn't aware of this accusation, however. The only thing is, I always thought the Aaron Kosminski/George Chapman/Leather Apron theories were due more to extreme anti-Semitism...

And Felon, don't confuse Springheel and The Ripper! Springheel was 50 years before.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Did anyone notice that the most likely Zodiac suspect was just cleared by DNA evidence? He'd been dead since '74 I think and the popular opinion was that the case had been "solved".

I think that this is definitely a warning about thinking that anyone can "solve" a case thats been as publicly hashed and re-hashed as any of these (in)famous serial killings. Its a lot easier to spin a convincing scenario than it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a given scenario is the one true one.

I would be very wary of accepting that DNA evidence can clear someone 25+ years after a crime, or even 10 years. There is a reason verdicts are brought at the time of a trial, and not 10 years later. So much evidence gets lost, distorted, misreported, and mishandled in that time period that going back to a case is just a recipe for disaster.

 

[Erik Mona]

Forgive me, but this is one of my hobby subjects of interest.

>>>
Anyway most who study the case believe that the murder has been found out about 10 years ago. The first ever JTR book, which was written by one of the lead detectives, states - we knew who the murderer was at the time but lacked the evidence to convict. About 10 years ago a copy of this book that belonged to the other lead investigator was found. It had a named scrolled in the margin next to this statement. When the person that the name belonged to was investigated it was found that they had opportunity, motive, knowledge of the area, and were put into an assylum right after the last murder.
>>>

The first sentence of the quoted section about is pretty false. I've read the main book about this suspect (James Tully's "Prisoner 1167"), and while it brings some interesting questions and gives a good overview of James Kelly (the suspect to whom you refer) it can't handle the fact that Kelly's main crime was killing his wife. He was otherwise a thief and a con artist, which for several reasons make him a less credible suspect than many others who have been suggested over the last 100+ years.

The Sickert hypothesis is terrible, representing a woman in search of damning her suspect after spending something like five million dollars on her "investigation." The number one rule in "Ripperology" is let the facts point you to your suspect, not the other way around.

Check out www.casebook.org's message boards for some pretty damning comments on her theory.

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I've never understood the long-standing fascination with ol's Spring-Heeled Jack.
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Spring-Heeled Jack was a different character altogether, a killer who allegedly had all sorts of super powers and who appeared in "Penny Dreadful" stories of the day (actually a little bit earlier). Some people believe that Jack the Ripper (almost certainly a name that was never used by the killer himself but invented by the press) got his name from "Spring-Heeled Jack," but they're different people altogether.

--Erik