Posted on 09/25/2013 5:18:27 PM PDT by rickmichaels
After 125 years, "Jack the Ripper" has apparently been debunked.
Former murder investigator Trevor Marriott spent 11 years pouring over Scotland Yard files and said he learned that the legend of Jack the Ripper as we know it is wrong, Britain's Daily Express reports.
He also said he's figured out who the real Whitechapel killer might be.
Marriott concluded that Central News Agency journalist Thomas Bulling reportedly coined Jack the Ripper and sent police a letter from him 1888.
In Victorian-era London, five prostitutes' murders were supposedly committed by Jack the Ripper, a rich, educated man -- possibly a doctor -- who legend has it removed organs from the bodies of his victims.
The story has been told in many books and movies over the years, including 2001s From Hell, which starred Johnny Depp as Jack.
Marriott, who has written several books on the subject and is currently on a U.K. speaking tour, said these works are to partially to blame for popularizing an inaccurate conception of who Jack was.
You have to ask yourself if Jack is an urban myth. Around 80% of the books about him have a picture of a chap on the front stalking the streets of London in a long black cape and a top hat, Marriott told the Express.
They were the clothes of an upper class, wealthy man. But back in 1888 if someone dressed like that had actually walked around Whitechapel in the dead of night they wouldnt have lasted five minutes."
So who is the real killer?
Marriott said some of the murders were likely committed by Carl Feigenbaum, a German merchant seaman who was docked at Whitechapel during the killings and executed at age 54 for a Ripper-style murder in New York in 1896
I always thought “Jack” might be a composite of several criminals plus artistic license.
But there are three exceptions
Thanks for the reassurance! And by the way, I like your home page - great selection of quotations and images.
It is certainly interesting that “Jack” proved so profitable for the newspapers of the time.
Very true
You need to ‘pour’ over it some more.
A thousand writers with a thousand ‘theories.’ Take your pick; no one knows for certain.
Depp played a Scotland Yard detective in the movie. The writer dropped the ball on that.
“Jack the Ripper” was coined by a newspaperman in a phony letter. However, there was another letter sent to the police with one of the kidneys from a victim.
The analysis of the victims showed common threads such as surgical skill in removing organs and that they were removed by a left-handed individual.
The White Chapel killer did exist. However, the identity has never been confirmed. I suspect it was either a butcher, a veteranarian or a medical school trainee/doctor, or some other person of training and experience with scalpal like instruments.
Depp wasn’t Jack in From Hell, Ian Holm was Jack.
Marriott said some of the murders were likely committed by Carl Feigenbaum, a German merchant seaman who was docked at Whitechapel during the killings and executed at age 54 for a Ripper-style murder in New York in 1896...
“Portrait Of A Killer Jack The Ripper — Case Closed” by Patricia Cornwell
“Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the worlds finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert...
Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britains greatest painters but also a serial killer ...
She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims ...
a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA testson samples drawn by Cornwells forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evidence ...”
Tag!
Fascinating...
Thanks exodus.
That book has been trashed by so many knowledgeable critics and Ripperologists that I’ve never been able to bring myself to buy it.
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