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MikeCovell Grey Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Total posts: 14 Location: Kingston upon Hull Age: 34 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 21-09-2011 10:58 Post subject: |
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| Even Ripperologists agree on disagree on the candidacy of Martha Tabram as a victim of Jack the Ripper. Whilst the modus operandi differes, the location and time of the murder seems to fit the other murders. She is certainly very interesting, and it's a shame that the investigation into her death never went any further. |
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| emina Great Old One Joined: 06 Mar 2010 Total posts: 119 Location: Good Question Gender: Male |
| Posted: 21-09-2011 17:15 Post subject: |
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| MistyMisterWisty wrote: | I haven't read this entire thread, because there's rather a lot of it, and the first half seems to have vanished anyway, so I don't know how original my theory is. But since I came up with it some years ago just to win a bet with a friend that I couldn't back up a chance remark made after a few pints with proof at least as plausible as you'll find in the published literature (which, by the way, I won), it's probably fairly off-the-wall.
I propose that Jack the Ripper was Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Nice one 
Actually, I've long harboured a suspicion that Hercule Poirot was in actual fact a serial killer.
Think about it...  |
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| Moooksta Muppet
Joined: 26 May 2006 Total posts: 1745 Location: Muppet Labs Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 22-09-2011 23:41 Post subject: |
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Source LA Times
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The cold, cold case of Jack the Ripper
A retired homicide detective is trying to force Scotland Yard to release uncensored versions of files that might offer fresh leads on the identity of Britain's most notorious serial killer.
Reporting from London—
It's been called the world's most famous cold case, a source of endless fascination and speculation ever since the first mutilated victim was found in a bloody heap 123 years ago on the gas-lighted streets of East London.
So why is Scotland Yard suppressing information that some crime buffs think could offer fresh leads on the identity of Britain's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper?
That's the question baffling Trevor Marriott, a retired homicide detective who's been waging a solitary legal battle to force "the Yard" to release uncensored versions of information recorded in thick Victorian ledgers that are gathering dust in an official archive.
The volumes contain tens of thousands of tidbits on the Yard's dealings with the public and police informants in the years that followed the Ripper's grisly two-month killing rampage in 1888. The shadowy figure is alleged to have slain five women in London's seamy Whitechapel district, slitting their throats and, in some cases, eviscerating them with almost surgical precision.
But the Metropolitan Police Service, as Scotland Yard is formally known, has staunchly refused to publish the documents in unexpurgated form, without names blacked out.
In a surreal tribunal hearing in May, which saw a senior officer give evidence from behind an opaque screen and cite Judas Iscariot to support his point, the agency argued that laying everything bare would violate its confidentiality pledge to informants, even those long dead, and undermine recruitment of collaborators in the present-day fight against terrorism and organized crime.
Naming names might even put the snitches' descendants at risk of revenge by the grudge-bearing heirs of those who were informed on, officials said. The three-person tribunal agreed.
And so the files continue to molder while Ripper enthusiasts like Marriott chafe, wondering what tantalizing clues remain hidden.
"There may be a little gem in there which corroborates something we already know," said Marriott, who has been working to unmask the killer since 2002. He has published a book outlining his own theory of whodunit centering on a lesser-known candidate who wound up convicted and executed for a brutal murder in the United States.
The ledgers, he said, could point out new avenues to dedicated "Ripperologists" and armchair detectives as they chase the solution to one of history's great unsolved mysteries.
Interest in the "Whitechapel murders" has seemingly never flagged since the gruesome crimes were committed toward the end of Queen Victoria's reign. The combination of sleaze (the victims were prostitutes), squalor (the East End was a den of poverty and drink), and blood and gore (buckets of it) has proved irresistible to amateur and expert sleuths alike.
Suspects at the time included an American quack who later fled London and a Polish Jew who lived in Whitechapel.
More recently, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell concluded in a 2002 book that Jack the Ripper was the painter Walter Sickert.
Conspiracy theorists finger a deranged member of the royal family and accuse Scotland Yard of colluding in a cover-up. And a Spanish author has just come out with a claim that the killer was a lead detective in the case.
"Unsolved murder — instantly everyone thinks, 'I can solve it,'" said Angela Down, a tour guide who has helped conduct a "Jack the Ripper Walk" around East London for 10 years. "We all love a mystery. If it were solved, all the interest would fall away."
The circuit is far and away the most popular attraction offered by tour company London Walks; on the nights that the walk is hosted by noted Ripper expert Donald Rumbelow, it can draw hundreds of participants.
As they meander through narrow streets and cross a square whose cobblestones were there when the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, was found dead, listeners are reminded that the name "Jack the Ripper" is almost certainly a hoax. A taunting letter purporting to be from the killer and signed "Jack the Ripper" was received by a news agency on Sept. 27, 1888, not long after the slaying of Annie Chapman, the second victim.
"Dear Boss," the letter began, before describing how the writer was "down on whores" and wouldn't "quit ripping them" until he was caught.
But the letter is now widely believed to have been the work of a tabloid journalist intent on making the story even more sensational than it already was. ("Nothing's changed," a woman murmured during the guided tour one recent evening.)
Marriott's theory, which he has put forth on the BBC and the National Geographic Channel, is that the killer was a German sailor named Carl Feigenbaum who eventually ended up in New York, where he cut the throat of his elderly landlady. Feigenbaum was executed in the electric chair in 1896, but not before telling his lawyer that he had always suffered from an uncontrollable urge to "kill and mutilate" women.
Shipping records show that the merchant seaman's vessel was docked in London at the time of the murders, close to Whitechapel, a red-light district likely to have been popular with sailors.
Marriott's research has uncovered similarly brutal killings in Germany that occurred a few years afterward.
As a police officer in Bedfordshire, north of London, Marriott maintained a cursory interest in the Ripper case but was more preoccupied with the murders he was investigating as a homicide detective.
He retired in the mid-'80s. Eight or nine years ago, in search of a hobby, he figured he would try his hand at the one riddle that ruled them all.
"I decided to look at it as a cold-case file," said Marriott.
"There are a lot of dedicated researchers and people who have followed the Ripper mystery, but nobody with any real professional knowledge or expertise had actually sat down or gone through it in any great detail," he said. "That's where I think my knowledge and expertise has helped look at this in a different light."
His quest has taken him around Europe and to North America. But Marriott is desperate to find fresh nuggets of information in the Scotland Yard ledgers.
After his request for access was denied in 2008, Marriott looked for help from the Information Commissioner's Office, which sided with Scotland Yard. He then took the matter before Britain's Information Rights Tribunal, which adjudicates appeals based on the Freedom of Information Act.
During the tribunal hearing in May, a senior officer identified only as "Detective Inspector D" said from behind a screen that the passage of time was not a good enough reason to reveal the names of informants.
"Look at one of the world's best-known informants, Judas Iscariot. If someone could draw a bloodline from Judas Iscariot to a present-day person, then that person would face a risk, although I know that seems an extreme example," the officer said, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Marriott rejects that argument, saying that it would be "almost 99.99% impossible to trace" the descendants of the informants, who are often identified in the registers by pseudonyms or by surnames only.
In July, the tribunal upheld the Yard's right to keep the files secret. In response to an appeal by Marriott, the panel reaffirmed its decision Aug. 31, which, coincidentally or not, was the 123rd anniversary of the death of the Ripper's first victim, Mary Ann Nichols.
Marriott's only remaining appeal would be to the home secretary or Queen Elizabeth. Chances of success: close to nil.
"I've spent fortunes on this case.... I don't know where we go now. I suspect this will probably be the end game," he said resignedly.
If so, what's in the ledgers "will be lost forever," Marriott said. And the identity of Jack the Ripper will vanish in the mists of time, like the London fog that swallowed up a bloody killer and left an enduring mystery eddying in his wake.
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2011, 5:16 p.m.
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Is the officer saying there would be a direct line between Jack the Ripper and someone alive today? Someone we all know? |
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| Ravenstone I suffer bad press in Genesis. I may sue...
The Original Sin Joined: 01 Aug 2001 Total posts: 6073 Location: Outside the Garden of Eden, with my flamin' sword Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 22-09-2011 23:52 Post subject: |
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| I think he's saying that some people may react badly to finding out that one of their forefathers was a suspect. Given the high profile nature of the case, I would have to - reluctantly - admit that he's probably got a point. |
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| MikeCovell Grey Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Total posts: 14 Location: Kingston upon Hull Age: 34 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-09-2011 09:44 Post subject: |
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| There is also the issue of having one's forefather has a police informant, and how the police collected information on suspects from informants. |
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| Cochise Great Old One Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Total posts: 989 Location: Gwynedd, Wales Age: 57 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-09-2011 10:45 Post subject: |
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| So how do you weigh that one up in a case where relatives are demanding to know who killed their ancestor? (Not true in this case) Surely they have a right to have such things brought into the open? |
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| MikeCovell Grey Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Total posts: 14 Location: Kingston upon Hull Age: 34 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-09-2011 11:09 Post subject: |
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| Very few relatives survive, and those that do are quiet happy to let bygones be bygones. It's Trevor Marriott that is persuing the opening of the Special Branch ledgers. |
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| Heckler20 The Sockpuppet of
Cthulhu's Prodigal Son Joined: 16 Jul 2004 Total posts: 4681 Location: In the Nostril of The Crawling Chaos Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 23-09-2011 13:48 Post subject: |
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| After the awful Michael Caine mini-series that pointed the finger at Gull, I believe his grave was vandalised, so possibly the idea that people still have strong feelings about this is a valid one. |
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| MikeCovell Grey Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Total posts: 14 Location: Kingston upon Hull Age: 34 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-09-2011 14:11 Post subject: |
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| James Maybrick's grave was also destroyed. |
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| wormwood_star Grey Joined: 20 Jun 2011 Total posts: 4 Gender: Unknown |
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| Spookdaddy Cuckoo Joined: 24 May 2006 Total posts: 3834 Location: Midwich Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-09-2011 08:02 Post subject: |
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A scene lifted from that excellent documentary The London Nobody Knows. The full version of which is also available on YouTube here. |
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| Spudrick68 Great Old One Joined: 08 Jun 2008 Total posts: 1096 Location: sunny Morecambe Age: 45 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-09-2011 22:36 Post subject: |
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| Thank you for that link, I will watch that tomorrow. |
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| Cochise Great Old One Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Total posts: 989 Location: Gwynedd, Wales Age: 57 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-10-2011 10:43 Post subject: |
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| Heckler20 wrote: | | After the awful Michael Caine mini-series that pointed the finger at Gull, I believe his grave was vandalised, so possibly the idea that people still have strong feelings about this is a valid one. |
What strange times we live in. I mean, we have had world wars and concentration camps and atom bombs and such since, and people are moved to do this sort of thing based on an ill-informed TV program about a century old crime? |
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| Stormkhan Disturbingly familiar Joined: 28 May 2003 Total posts: 5330 Location: Robin Hood country. Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 03-10-2011 17:34 Post subject: |
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| That's humans for you. Not entirely rational. |
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| Ascalon Grey Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Total posts: 23 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 28-10-2011 15:08 Post subject: |
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I have seen a fair bit about geographical profiling recently and I know this has been applied more than once to the canonical five and it seems to centre on Flower and Dean Street or Thrawl Street, both the site of many doss houses and cheap lodgings.
But what would be really interesting would be to see the effects on the geo-profiling of adding or removing victims.
What happens when Tabram is included, or Coles, or McKenzie? What happens if Stride is eliminated? Or Kelly?
I think if the search is expanded to more victims that suit the over all psych profile, any victims that then throw the geo-profile way out could be considered less likely.
Worth a shot!
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