Aussie may unmask Jack the Ripper

[Celebration]

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17127646%255E401,00.html

with various snips...........

Scientist Ian Findlay was to use the new test on saliva the notorious serial killer could have left behind if he licked the stamps on the envelopes of letters he sent to London police.

Prof Findlay's method, called Cell Track-ID, is able to extract and compile a DNA fingerprint from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old.

Prof Findlay, based at Queensland's Griffith University, said if DNA was found intact on the stamps, it could be compared to DNA from the descendants of suspects.

"There were 600 letters sent to police claiming 'I am Jack the Ripper' and while most of these are hoaxes, some are thought to be genuine," Prof Findlay said.

[Oreo]

1. I thought they pretty much settled with it being somebody of royalty

I was lucky enough to go on a tour where all the murders happened... very eerie to be there.

[Coyote_Bandit]

2. Patricia Cornwell

wrote a very compelling book about Jack the Ripper. Morbidly fascinating. And sick, sick, sick.

[Mabus]

7. I saw her on TV the other day talking about that

It appeared that her contention that Walter Sickert was the Ripper was premised on the paper that both Sickert and the Ripper had access to and used. It was a short segment late at night but what I remember was that it was the watermark. She said that there was a limited run of the paper with a particular watermark.

I just did a quick search and found this website which rebuts Cornwell's assertion. They mention mtDNA found on a Ripper's envelope that was tested and while not ruling out Sickert as a suspect it doesn't prove that it was him either. Patricia Cornwell and Walter Sickert: A Primer

Either way, it is a topic that has interested me since I was a child.

[eallen]

3. I hope they catch him.

:evilgrin:

[NNadir]

12. This is the only case where I favor the death penalty.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Important Note:

"Some are THOUGHT to be genuine."

My emphasis.

No one knows which letters are actually from the killer, if any.

As to the "he was royal" deal, I think that's pure Hollywood.

I've read a couple of books on Jack the Ripper, and I'm fairly convinced he was a fellow who had been a science teacher, was fired for his drinking, took up with hookers in Whitechapel, and then committed suicide. The fellow's name escapes me, but the main compelling, if circumstancial, argument for him is this: The Ripper murders began after he was fired. They ended when he committed suicide by filling his pockets with rocks and jumping into the Thames.

On edit: The dude's name was Montague Druitt.

[MrBenchley]

9. Druitt's my chief suspect as well...

During the time of the Whitechapel murders he had a nearby office in which he could hole up to change clothes and evade the police.

[freethought]

5. I remember something not too long ago

About a diary or journal of some London business man that referred to the murders. I also believe that the diary was exposed as a fake.
Then another theroy popped up regarding a series of murders in the U.S. not long after the murders in Whitechapel stopped. In the U.S. I beleive the suspect was tried, convicted, and hanged. I don't think there was any connection made re: the murders in London.

Does anyone have similar recollections?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Possibly the 'diary' of the Liverpool business man James Maybrick

which is generally regarded as a hoax. http://www.casebook.org/suspects/james_maybrick/may.html

Myabrick himself was the victim in a murder case - possibly the most famous (that came to court) in the 1890s. His wife's lover was a relative of mine.

That website has deatils on just about every theory on Jakc the Ripper.

[Mabus]

8. LOL

I was just looking for info on the Cornwell theory (Sickert) and found the same site. I should've checked here before searching on my own. Thanks for the head's up.

[freethought]

10. Yes! That's the guy!

The possibility that 'Jack the Ripper' was revealed made it into newspapers. I never heard what exactly was done to the diary that made it regarded as a hoax.

I believe that writers or investigators who claim they know who 'Jack the Ripper' is are spinning their wheels. They may have good basis and certain facts to back up their theories but unless you could send a crack investigative team back through time to late 19th century London to investigate the crime scenes as they happened, it is likely we'll never know who he was.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. I think the handwriting in the diary didn't match his will

and the sudden appearance of the diary, claimed, I think, to have been found by a builder behind a wall when he was working, who died after passing it on to someone else, just sounds too suspicious. Maybrick hadn't had any suspicion cast on him at the time, and although the people claiming the diary as true say the times it gives of his claimed visits to London work OK with the known times he was in Liverpool (from pharmacy records, I believe), it all sounded rather like a bad novel plot - "no-one discovered he was Jack the Ripper, but he got his comeupance when he was killed by his wife for mistreating her".

I agree that no-one really 'knows' the answer. This DNA idea sounds more likely to prove it than anything, but my guess is that if they get to test all the letters, and get relatives of the major suspects, it will still come out as 'inconclusive'.