Is this the face of Jack the Ripper?

[xchrom]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14207581



On this day 123 years ago, Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim. But who was this serial killer? This new e-fit finally puts a face to Carl Feigenbaum, a key suspect from Germany.

Jack the Ripper is the world's most famous cold case - the identity of the man who brutally murdered five women in London's East End in autumn 1888 remains a mystery.

More than 200 suspects have been named. But to Ripper expert Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective, German merchant Carl Feigenbaum is the top suspect.

Convicted of murdering his landlady in Manhattan, Feigenbaum died in the electric chair in New York's Sing Sing prison in 1894. His lawyer suspected him of the Ripper murders too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Apparently I am very behind on this. I thought it was the queen's doctor or son or something.

[Prophet 451]

6. No, neither of them

Both Sir William Gull (the Queen's doctor) and Prince Albert Victor have been accused. It wasn't either of them. Prince Albert V was in Scotland for much of the time and Sir William had been debilitated by a stroke which left him extremely weak and with partial paralysis. He could bar3ely get through a morning of light teaching. Today, of course, stroke victims can and do go on to have normal lives but in the Nineteenth century, a stroke made you a virtual invalid.

[Jmaxfie1]

2. The FBI believes it to have been a madman

Most of the profilers believe it was a maniac. (i.e. someone that was criminally insane and not liable to prosecution)

[Prophet 451]

9. Possibly

That's the accepted theory but there are still problems with it. For example, the Ripper would likely have been soaked in blood so how would a madman make his way through what was then the busiest city in the world AND evade what was the world's most sophisticated police force while soaked in blood? How would someone who was that psychotic convince prostitutes to go with him at a time when the city was paralysed with fear?

Understand, I'm not saying that the Ripper wasn't insane (he very likely was, medically, if not legally) but I am saying that there are questions which writing the Ripper off as a maniac doesn't answer.

[Jmaxfie1]

11. No, I agree with you.

I think what you have brought up, as many others have, rules out any high society type. It would have had to be someone that could fit in with their surroundings. I remember the FBI profilers did a make up on the killer for a TV show and thought he was probably working class or unemployed and also insane. Like you said insane is a tricky definition its more of a legal term. What the profiler said was that he was a lust killer (hard to argue) and probably insane (maybe, as he said this many years hard to say). He actually picked a dude out of the major subjects and said that the crimes must fit him, but ofcourse he could not be sure. Damn can't remember the name.

[Jmaxfie1]

14. It was John Douglas

The article sees he doesn't know, but in his book he does say of the 4 prime suspects which one he thinks. Can't remember the name but I know it was the dude that was committed and all of a sudden the crimes stopped.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378432/Jack-Ripper-FBI-dossier-reveals-chilling-profile-released-100-years-late.html

Do some google research and you can probably find the name.

[Prophet 451]

17. I have the book upstairs :)

Yes, he picks Kosminski but, as I said, it's more likely that Macnaughten's description is referring to the unknown man called David Cohen.

[Prophet 451]

16. I'd agree with that

There's a distinct tendancy among Ripperologists to pick someone famous. I suspect it's left over from the "Champagne Charlie" images of upper-class decadance that have been part of the British class struggle for centuries.

Working class is almost certain. Unemployed is more difficult since being unemployed in Victorian London meant you starved. He was almost certainly mentally ill in some fashion although it's difficult to say whether he was legally insane without a suspect. Sadly, that gives us too many suspects. Bedlam and Colney Hatch would have been full of people who matched that description although there is one man that I suspect that show may have been talking about. The McNaughten memo lists him as Aaron Kosminski but Kosminski was never violent. It seems that Macnaughten got the name confused and was actually referring to a different Polish Jew, also incarcerated at Colney Hatch who was extremely violent and is listed as "David Cohen" (common police name for Jews at the time, roughly equivelent to "John Doe").

[Jmaxfie1]

19. Here's John Douglas's take on it (from Wiki)

David Cohen (1865–1889) was a Polish Jew whose incarceration at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum roughly coincided with the end of the murders. Described as violently antisocial, the poor East End local was suggested as a suspect by author and Ripperologist Martin Fido in his book The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper (1987). Fido claimed that the name "David Cohen" was used at the time to refer to a Jewish immigrant who either could not be positively identified or whose name was too difficult for police to spell, in the same fashion that "John Doe" is used in the United States today.<76> Fido identified Cohen with "Leather Apron" (see John Pizer above), and speculated that Cohen's true identity was Nathan Kaminsky, a bootmaker living in Whitechapel who had been treated at one time for syphilis and who could not be traced after mid-1888—the same time that Cohen appeared.<77> Fido believed that police officials confused the name Kaminsky with Kosminski, resulting in the wrong man coming under suspicion (see Aaron Kosminski above). Cohen exhibited violent, destructive tendencies while at the asylum, and had to be restrained. He died at the asylum in October 1889.<78> In his book The Cases That Haunt Us, former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas has asserted that behavioural clues gathered from the murders all point to a person "known to the police as David Cohen ... or someone very much like him".<79>

[Prophet 451]

21. I'd agree with that

I have the book (I'm actually studying Criminal Psychology right now) and I think he's likely right. We're looking either for Cohen or someone very similar.

It's a good book, by the way.

[Jmaxfie1]

22. I love Douglas, reread his books many times.

I'm a history maj., but I've always liked Criminal Psychology.

[MarianJack]

3. Interesting.

I did a major paper on Jack the Ripper in college (in the 70s. SHEESH!) and I never heard of this fellow. I remember adding my 2 cents that I thought it was Montague John Druitt (I think). The paper couldn't have been THAT bad. I got an A!

PEACE!

[Prophet 451]

13. He was only discovered fairly recently

He was one of the numerous suspects the police had at the time but whose records didn't make it to us for one reason or another.

Druitt strikes me as unlikely. Firstly, he had no surgical knowledge (the McNaughten memo that lists him as a doctor was in error). Secondly, he doesn't match the one likely description we have and thirdly, he seems to have been included mostly because he was gay and it was thought at the time that gay men simply despised women.

[MarianJack]

25. I don't even remember if it WAS Druitt I suspected.

35 years ago and all that.

I think that when (if?) the actual Ripper is identified, there'll be a boatload of others with 1000+ reasons why it's not really true.

When I think of the Ripper murders I always remember the great line from "Time After Time" when H.G. Welles finds the Ripper in contemporary San Francisco. "In our time I was a monster. Today I'm an amateur".

PEACE!

[Prophet 451]

28. Phillip Sugden put it nicely

"On the day of judgement, when the real Jack The Ripper is asked to step forward, we will all stare and say "Who?"".

[Uben]

4. Hey, that's Dick Cheney's bastard son!

Take away the hair on the top, add a sneer, and remove the heart......voila!....you have a Cheney!

[Prophet 451]

5. Doubtful

We have a fairly decent description of the last person seen with Mary Kelly, who was probably the Ripper, and Feigenbaum doesn't fit. The description we have is of someone with a moustache, a darker complexion and a more square shaped face. I read the article and a lot of it comes across as trying to dismiss the evidence that doesn't fit so it can settle on a pre-decided suspect (in the same way as creationists twist evidence to support an idea they've already fixed on).

[mopinko]

7. patricia cornwell disagrees, fwiw.

i don't read her books anymore, since they have gotten monotonous, but she did a book about it. she is a smart lady, and very thorough as far as i can tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Killer:_Jack_the_Ripper--Case_Closed

[Prophet 451]

10. She's a hack

Actually, that may be unfair. I have no idea what her fiction is like but her book on the Ripper was atrocious. Firstly, she said herself that she'd decided who the Ripper was before she even started investigating. Secondly, she assumed that ALL of the letters were genuine (there are about 300 extent, of which perhaps two are genuine). Thirdly, all she could prove was that Sickert was a morbid Victorian artist who was fascinated by the case and wrote a couple of hoax letters. Well, big deal, so did half of London. Fourthly, she tries to explain all of this by inventing a story, unsupported by any evidence, that Sickert had a disfigured penis.

Cornwell's entire "investigation" can be summed up as "it must be Sickert because I really want it to be and I'll invent or disregard evidence as needed". Real investigators do their research before they decide whodunnit.

[joeybee12]

18. I agree with you...she had a theory and tried to get the evidence to match it..

worked backwards. Her evidence didn't prove true.

[Kceres]

23. I stopped reading Cornwell, too. I discovered she's a wingnut.

One of her BFFs is Orin Hatch. I looooove me some Kathy Reichs now.

[Prophet 451]

24. Didn't know that

I've never got around to reading Reichs though.

[William769]

8. K&R.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

12. interesting. thanks for the link. k&r

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

15. I had a professor absolutely fixated on this to the point she scared people

She was convinced it was American Francis Tumblety and escaped suspicion because the police believed him to be a homosexual and therefore an unlikely slayer of female prostitutes.

She also insisted he killed at least ten women and not the five recognized victims and may have also killed in Latin America.

[Prophet 451]

20. Tumblety is a possibility

At the time, it was thought that homosexuals despised women so being gay would actually have made him a more likely suspect. Tumblety was actually awaiting trial for homosexuality at the time and escaped to France.

He actually was suspected at the time, Littlechild's letter shows that. We just didn't know it for years because an awful lot of the records of teh Ripper case have been lost or destroyed over the years.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

26. According to the Movie 'Amazon Women on the Moon'

Jack the Ripper is the Loch Ness Monster!


http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1222938368/tt0092546

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

27. As long as they've ruled out...

As long as they've ruled out Charles Dodgson as a suspect, I'll be happy. Lewis Carroll as JtR is an idea which just bums me out terribly.