Jack The Ripper (Compendium Thread)

[Anonymous]

Yep, that's a good way of putting it, FraterLibre!

The problem, as I understand it, was that Ressler and Douglas weren't really given the whole story anyway. Neither of them profess to have studied the case in any detail. They only assessed the suspects they were given. What grates me is that Douglas will state something as 'fact' where Ressler will be more open, with a sort of 'could be' or 'possibility'.

I think (of course, it's only my opinion ) that a 19th century killer shouldn't really be judged by 20th century standards of killer. I believe that the working class back then had more to worry about day to day living than killing (other than the usual drunken brawls, robbery and family murders). Serial killers back then tended to be the ones with time on their hands, more middle class than anything. Shipman would have fitted right in.

I believe the murders were linked. I do believe the killer was after Marie Kelly. The similiarity of victims names is just too much for me to write off as coincidence. Obviously, some strange coincidences do exist in some serial killer victims, but it seems too strong in this case. I don't pretend to know why Jack was after Mary Kelly, just that it seems likely he was. And I do tend to believe the witness descriptions, at least the majority of them, where they do seem to be describing the same man.

I wasn't trying to suggest earlier that any opinion is as good as another. Obviously I don't believe that, else I wouldn't poke so much fun at Cornwell! Sorry if it came across like that. Actually, I don't think I've ever been accused of political correctness before, and I'm sure I feel insulted

 

[FraterLibre]

An Apolitical Apology

Helen - Sorry about the pc thing, slipped out. It's rampant stateside, where Creationists insist their faith-based droolery be given "equal status" with what they ignorantly call The Theory of Evolution -- Evolution's an observable fact, it's Natural Selection, Punctuated Equillibrium, and so on that are the theories involving how it may work.

In any case, my hair trigger was touched, is all.

While you make a good point that merey surviving took most if not all one's time, you must also remember that even working class blokes had their free time, else the pubs and streetwalkers would not have been so dense on the ground, eh? And while others drank and caroused, a precious few pulled a Gollum and slashed whores, hm?

The James Kelly theory explains why someone was after Mary, and is the only one to do so in a fairly sensible manner, I think.

And yes, Cornwell's notions are laughable and have made her rather a fool, and an out-of-pocket fool at that. Well, it was her money to waste, eh?

 

[Anonymous]

She could have given it to me! I could have wasted it and have far more to show for it!

What bothers me about the James Kelly theory is - why did he stop? He is described as dark with a large moustache, which at face value doesn't seem to match witness statements. And there doesn't seem any evidence that he was in London at the time of the murders. At least, from memory. I could be wrong about that.....it's late, what can I say?

Kelly didn't hand himself in until 1927 (?). If, as is postulated, he was after Kelly because his affair with her caused the fatal argument with his wife, why didn't he just hand himself in straight after? And anyway, how can we prove that?

I'd agree that in some respects, he can fit. But I feel there are too many (very) large holes in the theory.

BTW - 'pulled a Gollum' - I like that expression!

 

[FraterLibre]

Kelly

Uh, the James Kelly I read about in a book called Prisoner 1167 by J.C.H. Tully said he'd died at Broadmoor, old and ill, the same time the police abruptly stood the Ripper Squad down. He was after Mary Kelly, and finally got her, and his whereabouts at the times of the murders do indeed coincide.

Perhaps we're speaking about two different people?

 

[Anonymous]

Nope, that's the same Kelly. Same book, in fact.

The Ripper case was officially closed in 1892 as far as I recall. The year Eddy died:eek!!!!: Also the year Stephen died. And couple of other suspects, I think.

 

[Anonymous]

Daily Express, 21 Aug

"Is the Public Records Office feeling a financial squeeze from the Treasury? Hickey asks after a Jack the Ripper special folder containing 16 facsimilies of the key Ripper documents, with an introduction exlaining the gory events of yesteryear, has gone on sale.

The documents, which include police and coroner's reports, cost £14.99 and sales after three weeks are reported as 'quite good'.

A PRO spokeman gives a simpler reason: 'We have so many requests from people wanting to view Jack the Ripper documents that this really is just a way of helping people locate the document that they want when they come to the office'."

 

[FraterLibre]

Profiting

No reason they shouldn't profit from the continued interest. Heck, might even eventually inspire another scan for more documents or evidence.

 

[Anonymous]

I think the investigation by the two pcs in recent years proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Tumblety was the killer.A pity that this case was overtaken by alleged Masonic and Royal involvement.Of course the fact that so much has been unearthed in a methodical,clear fashion by ordinary policemen and not by the higher up oh so competent"authorities"has rendered the obvious to a 1 day wonder item of interest and instead of the type of of publicity the case should have received it makes one wonder about the real agenda of those who dont like facts being revealed.

 

[Anonymous]

Mainman, you mean the Evans and Gainey book?

For my part, I remain interested in Tumblety as a candidate, but on the whole he isn't so popular round here.

People point to his height and age being significantly at odds with accounts from people who may have seen the killer.

Also, modern techniques of psychological profiling point us towards a man in his twenties, which is apparently when most serial killers "explode".

Having said that, he probably was the Batty Street lodger(i.e. in the vicinity at the time), and he was a violent misogynist.
_____

Fraterlibre, I agree, I think what the records office have done is very astute.

 

[FraterLibre]

Latest I've Read

With me, I tend, at least for awhile, to favor what ever candidate is promoted by the last book I read about the Ripper murders. After reading a good many, I've continued to keep an open mind with regard to Tumblety and Maybrick and even Kelly, but also like Kaminsky and Cohen for it. Who can say for sure? No one, until further evidence of some kind surfaces. I'm actually fairly optimistic that there is much more out there to be discovered. Whether or not anyone actually will find it, who can say?

I do find the masonic and royal theories to be far-fetched and rather useless, except to spice up lurid melodrama of course.

 

[Anonymous]

Fair enough.But remember the unreliability of alleged eye-witnesses.The variations in what they saw(despite being in the same locality)is staggering.The present controversy over the convicted killer of Jill dando is proof enough of that.(See other posts).
With regard to Tumblety the fact that he was a "violent mysogonist"does it for me.There are,thankfully,only a tiny percentage of people capable of such grotesque savagery.He fits the bill in every way and I have studied the case as far as practicable.

 

[GeorgiePin]

I tend to go with Douglas. I think he is implying that Kosminski did it. He says that Cohen was term used in a similar way to John Doe if the authorities didn't know who a Jewish immigrant was and implies that the two may be the same person.

It's a great book btw.

 

[FraterLibre]

Cohen & Tumblety

I'd agree it's a coincidence beyond belief that so many apparent loonies were loose back then at the right time and place, roughly, to be considered decent suspects, but that might just be naiveté on our parts. Perhaps there are more such predators than we'd like to admit to ourselves.

As to the savage misogynist, yes, Tumblety does fit the bill well on that score, and to think that another such vicious monster -- this goes well beyond being a mere sociopathic predator, after all -- was there then is another stretch of credulity.

I suspect David Cohen and Aaron Kosminsky were separate people, but it's easy to believe they were confused. As Douglas has it, if I recall, they might well have put out the word to "keep an eye on the Jew" and this order may have been misunderstood among the patrolmen. Which one? Or did they simply watch the one they were more familiar with? We can't know just yet, unless further interesting papers arise.

As to the unreliability of eye-witnesses, quite so. They're contradictory, willful, and often bizarre. Every law class has at least one period devoted to this, by having a crime staged and then gathering descriptions and accounts to show the diversity.

This is one reason I so enjoy CSI, the TV show. In it, they focus only on the evidence and don't even deal with what people are saying.

 

[Anonymous]

i really wish these polls would let us pic two. i firmly believe he had medical knowledge and was a Freemason.

 

[FraterLibre]

Medical Knowldge

On what, synth, do you base this conviction? I find no evidence that he would have needed any special medical knowledge, nor that he had any ability in surgery. Further, what evidence beyond conjecture is there that he was, of all the silly things, a Freemason?

 

[Anonymous]

I agree FraterLibre.I am afraid that despite all the red herrings and alleged undertones associated with this butcher he remains a savage psychopath who,in common with others like him down throught the years,could maintain a facade of normality in public and who was as cute as anyone else in covering his tracks,making good his escape and in particular the fact, that I believe he was normally based outside Britain, all helped in spawning the more fanciful theories.

 

[Anonymous]

Just to elaborate on the Discovery Channel show fingering Kosminski: The show was basically one of those efforts retreading the events of each of the five, and taking the 'let's see what modern law enforcement makes of the evidence' tack. Kosminski was fingered for four reasons,

3) I wasn't paying full attention, but they also mentioned a guy called Schwartz, who had some kind of evidence against Kosminski (I don't know what) but refused to testify in court, therefore the case against Kosminski went nowhere.

Yes, it's me again dredging up Kosminski. I saw a re-run of the above show which made a couple of points worth re-iterating (and I'm not asking any previous contributors to go round the houses again)

This programme made the rather bombastic statement that "Schwartz would not testify against Kosminski because he knew his testimony would send him (Kosminski) to the gallows."
In other words, he refused to testify against a fellow Jew.

And (2) Why was the investigation called off a mere six weeks after the final murder, a time which the programme alleges coincided with the committal of Kosminski to an asylum (one of the "experts" on the show stated "this says to me that the police knew they had got their man.")

 

[minordrag]

Not that I have an opinion on the JtR case (I don't), but it's just so cool that Dark Detective just quoted himself. Man, we live in self-reflexive times.

 

[FraterLibre]

Some Agreements

Originally posted by Themainman -- I agree FraterLibre.I am afraid that despite all the red herrings and alleged undertones associated with this butcher he remains a savage psychopath who,in common with others like him down throught the years,could maintain a facade of normality in public and who was as cute as anyone else in covering his tracks,making good his escape and in particular the fact, that I believe he was normally based outside Britain, all helped in spawning the more fanciful theories.

He was a savage psychopath.

I doubt he was able to seem "normal" except in the abnormal context of the street grotesques inhabiting Whitechapel at the time.

I think he continued to decay in his behavior until it was blatantly obvioius how mad he was at all times.

I doubt he put much if any thought in to covering his tracks, and was probably benefitting from the fear, the fog, and the night as much as anything else when he ran off.

Not sure if he was based outside UK or not, but it's doubtful. More likely he was a deranged, unorganized killer undergoing personality decay during the arc of the murders, and who was killing on him home turf, in his comfort zone, and that he ended up either dead or committed.

If you believe he was based outside Blighty, do you favor Tumblety perhaps?
I ask because Maybrick lived in Liverpool and was apparently only in London now and then, so he'd have been an outsider to locals, too. As would Kelly, for that matter, with all his ramblings.

 

[FraterLibre]

Sickert Absolved

Regarding Walter Sickert and Patricia Cornwell's conviction that he was Jack the Ripper, consider that his blunt style was a reaction against the idealized, fetishistic art directly preceding his in Victorian society, as made clear by these excerpts from this review of a show of Victorian nudes now on tour. This places his work in context and explains in artistic terms what she finds so suspicious in ihs depiction of women.

NEW YORK TIMES 6 September 2002
ART REVIEW

Invasion of the Nude Victorians (In the Name of Art, of Course)
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

...Erotic these snippets are not, but then, perhaps it's just that the excitement caused by seeing a naked or almost naked body tends to peter out when you see so many of them at a time. One Carthaginian concubine begins to look like another Nubian slave. Or rather, one Lawrence Alma-Tadema of Victorian-looking young women with apple-flushed cheeks incongruously soaking in an ancient Roman plunge bath seems like another William Blake Richmond of Victorian-looking men and women together in an antique gymnasium, except, perhaps, for the homoeroticism of the latter, a leitmotif elsewhere, too. The depilated ideal of all these improbable figures, male and female, is epitomized by a work like Frederic Leighton's "Psyche," a kind of highfalutin striptease in which smooth paint approximates polished marble. Fetishistic is the operative word for the painterly touch, I think.

The obsession with smooth, youthful, unspoiled flesh has its inevitable offshoot in pictures of children...

...So much for Kenneth Clark's dismissal of the era as "the great frost of Victorian prudery." Perfume and underwear advertisers today have nothing on the feisty Victorians. The show ends with works by Walter Sickert and Gwen John, artists at the turn of the last century who dispensed with the kinky fantasies of antigravitational breasts and painted what they saw: a naked woman in a dingy bedroom awkwardly bending over to wash her hair, her head cut off from our view; a scrawny, round-shouldered woman whose breasts and arms hang limp as she poses before a dull gray wall for a painter who clearly did not like her.

"It is a pretty little face but she is dreadful," John wrote about her model, Fanella Lovell, which is exactly the feeling we get.

A gulf, not in time but in temperament, separates artists like John and Sickert from Victorians like Leighton and Alma-Tadema. It is a reminder of just how radical modernism was. From Alma-Tadema to Ms. Beecroft and cold cream commercials. From John and Sickert to Lucian Freud, who could never be confused with Herbert Schmalz.

 

[FraterLibre]

spit it out

Drop it! Drop it at once. Good dog.

Ghost-dog -- What is your theory? Tell us, or we can surely do nothing whatsoever.

Spit it out, man. Enough hemming and preface.

 

[Anonymous]

According to the movie, From Hell, starring Johnny Depp, Jack the Ripper was actually Bilbo Baggins. Especially if you've just seen Lord of the Rings beforehand

 

[Anonymous]

Ghost Dog, what are you trying to achieve here?

Are you looking to string along those of us who read the thread by convincing us that you are party to so extraordinary a secret that you couldn't possibly share it with us, unless perhaps we beg you?

If so, I don't think you're doing a very good job of it....your confused and confusing posts leave me far from convinced that you've anything of genuine interest to offer, and the longer you play this game, the less convinced I, and I'm sure many others, will become.

If you have something to contribute, do please share it. Otherwise leave it be.

 

[FraterLibre]

Ghost Dog

Please feel free to PM me, or email me for that matter.

I'd be happy to discuss things in a rational manner.

 

[Anonymous]

It's a very interesting theory Ghost Dog, thanks for posting it.

I'm sory I got radgy before, it just seemed as though you were saying we couldn't be trusted with hearing the theory.

 

[FraterLibre]

Sticking Point

The only sticking point I've got with this theory is the unnecessary savagery of the murders, which escalated precisely in the way a disorganized compulsive killer does as his personality disintegrates. None of which was known back then, as Ripper was something relatively new.

Now, psychopaths and sociopaths are routinely used by organized crime, including the governmental type, so it's not entirely unheard of for savage brutality to accompany assigned murders. However, that's a differnt kettle of fish, not compulsive, not disorganized, and not disintegrating in the personality department.

Other than that, I'd certainly agree that the Vatican Assassini might well have been deployed for the purpose of destroying the Masons. However, it sure didn't work at all, and from what I've heard the Assassini are more like James Bond than Jack the Ripper.

I suppose what I'm saying is, your theory works, but only if one discards the obvious psychopathy of the killer. And yes, these things might well be staged -- but back then no one knew how, as the patterns that the killings so well adhere to had yet to be established.

Definitely write a book, but if you do be prepared for Assassini attacks and, worse, accusations of bigotry against the Papists.

 

[FraterLibre]

French?

Ghost Dog - Well, I'm still not convinced about the French, ahem, but be that as it may: I'm only wondering a couple things. If the fellow we know as Jack the Ripper was already so deranged, who in their right mind would "hire" him? He might be encouraged to kill, perhaps, by manipulators, but it'd still be more efficient just to do it yourself.

And as his derangement worsens, he becomes that much less reliable, a big problem for any conspiracy. Not that anyone would believe him were he to talk, I admit.

If the killer was Kosminsky or Cohen, then he'd likely have been Catholic, no question. Needn't have been tapped by the Vatican for the purposes of inflicting extreme unction upon unsuspecting prostitutes, either.

And if he's that nuts, what's to say he won't just slash and kill anyone who gets near him, or go off the beam and strike at a respectable woman? Only thing keeping him in harness, seems to me, is his pattern, which, as mentioned, wasn't understood back then. So he'd be a poor one to hire.

As the the prostitutes, a question: Could they have been any five prostitutes, or was it important they be these five, or one or more of the five? Just curious if your ideas include considerations of targeting.

Now, your theory also presupposes publicity, yes? Or were the killings playing only to the Freemasons, so they'd mistakenly think it was one among them, and thus obfuscate and cover the whole thing for pretty much ever?

Why not instead throw one among them to the wolves and be done?

 

[FraterLibre]

God's Banker Reference

For those of us who'd been foggy about the details:

Light to be Thrown on Murky Death of Italian Banker Calvi
Agence France Presse
International News
November 10, 1998

ROME - The body of Roberto Calvi, the powerful Italian banker found hanging under a London bridge in 1982, will be exhumed in December to determine if he was murdered or committed suicide, judicial sources said Tuesday.

Public prosecutors set December 16 as the date for the exhumation of Calvi, whose murky death 16 years ago apparently sent shivers through banking high society, the mafia, the Vatican and Italy's freemasons' lodge, Propaganda Due (P2).

An autopsy will be performed after his remains are exhumed from a cemetery in the northern industrial city of Milan.

Calvi fled Italy after the country's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, went bankrupt under his chairmanship with debts around 700 million dollars.

He was later found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in central London.

A British coroner's report that year showed he had hanged himself, but Calvi's family in 1992 forced an inquiry into his mysterious death after gathering evidence suggesting he was hunted down by the mafia.

Five years later, prosecutors in Rome implicated a top Sicilian mobster, Pippo Calo, in Calvi's death.

Calo, already behind bars for 12 years on other charges, was accused of contracting the killing along with another Italian banker, Flavio Carboni, whose lawyers requested the exhumation of Calvi's body.

The year of Calvi's death, Carboni was arrested in Switzerland and sentenced to 15 years in prison for his part in the Banco Ambrosiano collapse. He has now been freed provisionally.

The bank's close links to the Vatican Bank earned Calvi the epithet "God's Banker."

He was also a friend of the former grand master of P2 lodge, Licio Gelli, who in October was extradited to Italy from France where he had fled after being sentenced to 12 years over the Banco Ambrosiano collapse.

Two other men, Ernesto Diotallevi and mafia financial banker Francesco Di Carlo, are also accused of taking part in Calvi's assassination, but none of the total four defendants have yet gone to trial.

THIS ARTICLE FOUND AT:
http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/calvi.html

ANOTHER ARTICLE:
http://www.americanatheist.org/pope99/calvi.html

 

[FraterLibre]

Write It

Would make a great novel and movie. As to anything more substantial, in the absence of evidence that might serve to prove any of this -- say, a Papal directive or other Vatican link -- I'm seeing too many presumptions and too few concrete facts.

Example: What money? It's never been established there was ever anyone paid to kill anyone in the Ripper murders, yet you ask, "Who would have that kind of money" after speculating about a pay-off. If it's the Vatican, they'd not spend a dime. Instead, they'd use their own.

Ever see the movie STIGMATA? Similar plottings among the Vatican-dwellers. Good movie, too, about the suppression of the St. Thomas testament. Which is real, by the way. And suppressed for the reasons given in the film, too.

In any case, your vision is enflaming you. Try to step back a few paces and think in terms of establishing some facts and links before leaping into the fray of speculation.

And again, write it up as a novel. Why not?

 

[FraterLibre]

Stepping Stones

Ghost Dog - You need factual connections, not symbolic ones. Beginning to see more and more symbolic connections is probably a bad sign. Go instead for the facts, and don't reason from them unless and until you have proven connections.

Example - While it's true that bricks bring to mind masons, Calvi's death wasn't even conclusively proven to be murder, was it? So where is any fact that allows you, as a stepping stone might, to cross the stream into saying he was killed by the Vatican Assassins?

Find the stones, not the reflectons of clouds in the passing water. Symbology means nothing.