Jack the Ripper Part 2. Like Seriously. Who Was This guy?

Ep.151

Pt.2

Ripper suspects

 

This week in part 2…. Suspects in the jack the ripper case… there's a ton…like pretty much everyone alive at the time of the murders…and maybe some that weren't…who knows. So here we frigging go! 

 

Montague John Druitt:

 

Although there may not be any concrete, scientific evidence against him, the Jack, The Ripper murders in London's East End ended after Druitt's suicide convinced one London detective (Melville Leslie Macnaghten) that Druitt was, in fact, Jack The Ripper himself. 

 

Montague John Druitt, son of prominent local surgeon William Druitt, was a Dorset-born barrister. He also worked as an assistant schoolmaster in Blackheath, London, to supplement his income. Outside of work, his primary interest was cricket.

 

He played alongside the likes of Francis Lacey, the first man knighted for services to cricket. His numerous accolades in the game include dismissing John Shuter for a duck. The England batsman was playing for Bexley Cricket Club at the time.

 

On the recommendation of Charles Seymour and noted fielder Vernon Royle, Druitt was elected to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) on May 26th, 1884. One of the minor matches for MCC was with England bowler William Attewell against Harrow School on June 10th, 1886. The MCC won by 57 runs.

 

Montague John Druitt's decomposed body was found floating in the Thames near Chiswick on December 31st, 1888. He had a return train ticket to Hammersmith dated December 1st, a silver watch, a cheque for £50 and £16 in gold (equivalent to £5,600 and £1,800 today).

 

He is believed to have committed suicide, a line of thought substantiated by the fact there were stones in his pockets. Possibly to keep his body submerged in the river.

 

The cause of his suicide is said to be his dismissal from his post at the Blackheath boys' school. The reason for his release is unclear. However, one newspaper, quoting his brother William's inquest testimony, reported being dismissed because he "had got into serious trouble." Although, it did not specify any further.

 

Several authors have suggested that Druitt may have been dismissed because he was a homosexual or a pederast. Another speculation is that the money found on his body would be used for payment to a blackmailer, or it could have simply been a final payment from the school.

 

Another possibility involving his dismissal and eventual death is an underlying hereditary psychiatric illness. His mother had already attempted suicide once by taking an overdose of laudanum. She died in an asylum in Chiswick in 1890. In addition, both his Grandmother and eldest sister committed suicide, while his aunt also attempted suicide.

 

A note written by Druitt and addressed to his brother William was found in Druitt's room in Blackheath. It read,

 

             "Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die."

 

The last of the canonical five murders had taken place shortly before Druitt's suicide. Following his death, there were no more ripper murders.

 

In 1891, a member of parliament from West Dorchester, England, began saying that the Ripper was "the son of a surgeon" who had committed suicide on the night of the last murder.

 

Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaghten named Druitt as a suspect in the case.

 

He did so in a private hand-written memorandum on February 23rd, 1894. Macnaghten highlighted the coincidence between Druitt's disappearance and death shortly after the last of the five murders.

 

He also claimed to have unspecified "private information." One that left "little doubt" that Druitt's own family believed him to have been the murderer.

 

The memorandum read:

 

 "I have always held strong opinions regarding him, and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become. The truth, however, will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames, if my conjections be correct!"

 

Macnaghten was convinced that Montague John Druitt was the serial killer they had long been looking for. However, he incorrectly described the 31-year old barrister as a 41-year-old doctor and cited allegations that he "was sexually insane" without specifying the source or details of the allegations.

 

Macnaghten did not join the force until 1889, after the murder of Kelly and the death of Druitt. He was also not involved in the investigation directly and is likely to have been misinformed.

 

There is also the case of Druitt playing Cricket games far away from London during many of the murders.

 

On September 1st, the day after the murder of Nichols, Druitt was in Dorset playing cricket. On the day of Chapman's murder, he played cricket in Blackheath. The day after the murders of Stride and Eddowes, he was in the West Country defending a client in a court case.

 

Some writers such as Andrew Spallek and Tom Cullen have argued that Druitt had the time and opportunity to travel by train between London and his cricket and legal engagements. He could have even used his city chambers as a base from which to commit the murders. However, several others have dismissed the claim as "improbable."

 

For instance, Druitt took 3 wickets in the match against the Christopherson brothers at Blackheath on September 8th, the day of the Chapman murder. He was on the field at 11.30 AM for the game and performed out of his skin. An event unlikely if he were walking the streets of London committing a murder at 5:30 AM.

 

Most experts now believe that the killer was local to Whitechapel. On the other hand, Druitt lived miles away on the other side of the Thames in Kent. Even Inspector Frederick Abberline appeared to dismiss Druitt as a serious suspect because the only evidence against him was the coincidental timing of his suicide shortly after the last canonical murder.

Aaron Kosminski:

 

Aaron Kosminski was not a stable man. In 1891, he was sent to Colney Hatch Asylum. Psychiatric reports made during Kosminski's time there state that Kosminski heard auditory hallucinations that directed him to do things. Although some claim that Kosminski wasn't violent, there is a record of him threatening his own sister with a knife. 

 

The "canonical five" murders which wrapped up the sum of the Ripper's official kills, stopped soon after Kosminski was put into an asylum. Present-day doctors think Kosminski might have been a paranoid schizophrenic, but it sure is suspicious that his institutionalization fits the timeline of Jack the Ripper. 

 

Kosminski threatened his sister with a knife. Jack the Ripper is infamous for the violent way he murdered his female victims. This serial killer did things like slashing throats, removing organs, and severely disfiguring faces. The crimes he committed were grisly and suggested a severe hatred of women. 

 

Kosminski definitely fits the description of hating women. He was terrible at socializing with women, and according to Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten, he was known for his profound resentment of women. 

 

Macnaghten wrote, "This man became insane due to indulgence in solitary vices for many years. He had a great hatred of women, especially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies." 

 

Hating prostitutes and suspected as being capable of murder? Kosminski is looking better and better as the chief Jack the Ripper suspect. 

 

On the night of one of the murders, a woman named Elizabeth Long said she heard the man's voice who led Jack the Ripper victim, Annie Chapman, to her death. Long said she listened to the man ask Annie, "Will you?" as they were discussing their sex work arrangement. Long described the man's voice as having an accent. 

 

Kosminski, as a Polish Jew, had an accent. A clue left on a Goulston Street wall in London suggested that Jack the Ripper had a native language other than English as well. The person who wrote the message spelled the word "Juwes" instead of "Jews." The entire statement read, "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing." It was never understood what was actually meant by it. 

 

What's more, Macnaghten wrote this about a suspect spotted fleeing on the night of Catherine Eddowes' murder: "This man in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City P.C. near Mitre Square." 

 

Care to guess who "the individual seen by the City P.C." Macnaughten referred to was? That's right. He was talking about Aaron Kosminski! Although reports of Jack the Ripper's appearance, in general, were inconsistent, Kosminski fit the appearance of someone spotted at one of the crime scenes. Macnaghten's report has been discredited, though, so take this information as you will. 

 

In 2007, a man named Russel Edwards wanted to confirm the identity of Jack the Ripper so severely that he acquired the shawl of Jack the Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes. He had the shawl's DNA tested and confirmed that the genetic material on the shawl traced back to one of Kosminski's living relatives. 

 

Edwards had written a book entitled, Naming Jack the Ripper, thus having something to gain, so people didn't believe this analysis. That is until the DNA was studied by an unrelated peer-reviewed science journal. In 2019, The Journal of Forensic Sciences confirmed that the DNA did indeed match Aaron Kosminski. The results were apparently sketchy and not tested again until 2019 by Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Leeds. The DNA presented matched the descendants of Kosminski and Eddowes. Although, the shawl was never documented in police custody.

 

Francis Craig: 

 

Born in 1837 in Acton, west London, Francis Spurzheim Craig was the son of a well-known Victorian social reformer.

 

His father, ET Craig, was a writer and advocate of phrenology – interpreting personality types by feeling the shape of the head – a so-called "science" that was already falling out of fashion by the Ripper murders.

 

However, the family moved into influential west London circles, counting William Morris, the socialist and founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, among their friends.

 

Craig, like his father, was a journalist but not a successful one. Friends described him as sensitive yet stubborn.

 

After a period in the United States from 1864 to 1866, Craig spent time in local newspapers but in the 1871 Census listed himself as a person of "No occupation."

 

By 1875 he had been appointed editor of the Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News.

 

Here, Craig's journalism career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was caught cribbing reports from The Daily Telegraph and was brutally exposed as a plagiarist by a rival publication.

 

It is not known how he met Elizabeth Weston Davies – it may have been at William Morris' social gatherings – but they married on Christmas Eve 1884 in Hammersmith.

 

Just a few months later – on May 19th, 1885 – she was seen entering a private hotel near their marital home in Argyll Square, King's Cross, with a "young man … at 10 o'clock at night".

 

The book says it was a crushing blow for Craig, who had been unaware of his wife's involvement in prostitution.

 

She left and went into hiding in the East End under the pseudonym Mary Jane Kelly.

 

In The Real Mary Kelly, author Wynne Weston-Davies suggests Craig suffered from a mental illness, namely schizo-typal personality disorder.

 

Craig followed her to Whitechapel, taking lodgings at 306 Mile End Road.

 

He tried to locate the only woman he had ever loved, and as time passed, his love for her turned to hatred.

 

Then, he plotted to murder her, disguising his involvement by killing a series of prostitutes beforehand, the book suggests.

 

A few months after the murder of Elizabeth/Mary Jane, Craig left the East End and returned to west London as editor of the Indicator and West London News, a job he held until 1896.

 

In 1903, while living in lodgings at Carthew Road, Hammersmith, Craig cut his throat with a razor, leaving his landlady a note which read: "I have suffered a deal of pain and agony."

 

He did not die until four days later, Sunday, March 8th, 1903, and in an inquest, the coroner recorded a verdict of "Suicide whilst of unsound mind and when irresponsible for his actions."

 

Dr. Weston-Davies plans to exhume Elizabeth/Mary Jane's body to carry out DNA analysis, which he believes will show the true identity of the Ripper's final victim and, therefore, prove Craig's motive for the murders.

 

Carl Feigenbaum:

 

Carl Feigenbaum was most certainly a convicted murderer.

 

Indeed, he was convicted of and executed for the murder of Mrs. Juliana Hoffman, a 56-year-old widow who lived in two rooms above a shop at 544 East Sixth Street, New York, with her 16-year-old son, Michael.

 

Feigenbaum told the Hoffman's that he had lost his job as a gardener and therefore had no money. However, he assured them that he had been promised a job as a florist and that, once he was paid, on Saturday, September 1st, 1894, he would be able to pay them the rent that he owed. The Hoffmans took him at his word, a trust that would prove fatal for Mrs. Hoffman.

 

As a consequence of their having a lodger, who was given the rear of the two rooms, mother and son shared the front room, Juliana sleeping in the bed, and Michael occupying a couch at the foot of her bed.

 

Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of September 1st, 1894, Michael was woken by a scream, and, looking across to his mother's bed, he saw their lodger leaning over her, brandishing a knife. Michael lunged at Feigenbaum, who turned around and came at him with the knife.

 

Realizing he would be no match against an armed man, Michael escaped out of a window and began screaming for help.

 

Looking through the window, Michael watched in horror as Feigenbaum stabbed his mother in the neck and then cut her throat, severing the jugular. Juliana made one final attempt to defend herself and advanced toward her attacker, but she collapsed and fell to the floor.

 

Feigenbaum then returned to his room. H escaped out of the window, climbed down into the yard, and washed his hands at the pump. He then made his way out into an alleyway that led to the street.

 

So, how did his name become linked to the Whitechapel murders of 1888?

 

In a nutshell, he reputedly confessed to having been Jack the Ripper shortly before his execution.

 

It is noticeable that the British press didn't pay much attention to the trial of Carl Feigenbaum - until, following his execution, one of his lawyers made an eleventh-hour confession public.

 

Suddenly, articles about his confession began appearing in British newspapers, one of which was the following report, which appeared in Reynolds's Newspaper on Sunday, 3rd, May 1896:-

 

             "An impression, based on an eleventh-hour confession and other evidence, prevails that Carl Feigenbaum, who was executed at Sing Sing on Monday, the real murderer of the New York outcast, nick-named Shakespeare, is possibly Jack the Ripper, of Whitechapel notoriety.

 

The proofs, however, are far from positive."

 

A week later, on Sunday, May 10th, 1896, Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper published a more detailed account of the confession, which had been made to his lawyer, William Stamford Lawton:-

 

"THE AMERICAN JACK THE RIPPER

Carl Feigenbaum, who was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing last week, is reported to have left a remarkable confession with his lawyer.

 

The account of the lawyer reads:-

 

"I have a statement to make, which may throw some light on the murder for which the man I represented was executed. Now that Feigenbaum is dead and nothing more can be done for him in this world, I want to say as his counsel that I am absolutely sure of his guilt in this case, and I feel morally certain that he is the man who committed many, if not all, of the Whitechapel murders.

 

Here are my reasons, and on this statement, I pledge my honour.

 

When Feigenbaum was in the Tombs awaiting trial, I saw him several times.

 

The evidence in his case seemed so clear that I cast about for a theory of insanity. Certain actions denoted a decided mental weakness somewhere.

 

When I asked him point blank, "Did you kill Mrs. Hoffman?", he made this reply:- "I have for years suffered from a singular-disease, which induces an all absorbing passion; this passion manifests itself in a desire to kill and mutilate the woman who falls in my way.

 

At such times I am unable to control myself."

 

On my next visit to the Tombs I asked him whether he had not been in London at various times during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders?

 

"Yes, I was," he answered.

 

I asked him whether he could not explain some of these cases: on the theory which he had suggested to me, and he simply looked at me in reply."

 

The statement, which is a long one, proves conclusively that Feigenbaum was more or less insane, but the evidence of his identity with the notorious Whitechapel criminal is not satisfactory."

 

Hmmm... Of course, many disagree with this and do not believe the confession.

 

In truth, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that Lawton may have been lying about what his client had told him, and it might just have been that Feigenbaum may have thought that, in confessing to the Whitechapel murders, he would buy him a little extra time.

 

Walter Sickert: The English Painter

 

The name of Walter Sickert has been linked to the Jack the Ripper murders by several authors. However, his role in the killings has been said to have varied enormously over the years.

 

According to some authors, he was an accomplice in the Whitechapel Murders, while others depicted him as knowing who was responsible for the crimes and duly informing them.

 

But, according to the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in her 2002 book "Portrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case Closed," Sickert was, in fact, the man who carried out the crimes that became known as the Jack the Ripper Murders.

 

According to Cornwell's theory, Walter Sickert had been made impotent by a series of painful childhood operations for a fistula of the penis.

 

This impotence had scarred him emotionally and had left him with a pathological hatred of women, which, in time, led him to carry out the series of murders in the East End of London.

 

Doubts were raised about her theory when it was pointed out that St Mark's Hospital, where the operations on the young Sickert were supposedly performed, specialized in rectal and not genital fistulas.

 

Butts, not nuts.

 

So what evidence is there to suggest that Sickert possessed a pathological hatred of women?

 

Again, not shit, really. In "Portrait of a killer," Cornwell cites a series of Sickert's paintings inspired by the murder in 1908 of a Camden Town prostitute by Emily Dimmock. According to Patricia Cornwall's hypothesis, this series of pictures bears a striking resemblance to the post-mortem photographs of the victims of Jack the Ripper.

 

Now there is little doubt that Sickert was fascinated by murder and finding different ways to depict the menace of the crime and the criminal.

 

But, to cite this as evidence that he was actually a murderer - and, specifically, the murderer who carried out the Jack the Ripper killings - is hardly definitive proof.

 

As you passengers more than likely know, when looking at a particular Jack the Ripper suspect or any murder suspect, you need to be able to link your suspect with the crime.

 

You need to, for example, be able to place them at the scene of the crime, duh.

 

Here again, the case against Sickert unravels slightly since evidence suggests that he may not even have been in England when the murders were committed.

 

Many letters from several family members refer to him vacationing in France for a period corresponding to most of the Ripper murders.

 

Although it's been suggested that he might have traveled to London to commit the murders and then returned to France, no evidence has been produced to indicate that he did so.

 

Cornwall also contends that Sickert was responsible for writing most of the Jack the Ripper correspondence and frequently uses statements made in those letters to strengthen her case against him.

 

Authorities on the case and the police at the time, nearly all, share the opinion that none of the letters - not even the Dear Boss missive that gave him his name - was the work of the killer.

 

In addition, there is the problem that the style of the letters varies so significantly in grammatical structure, spelling, and hand-writing that it is almost impossible for a single author to have created all of them.

 

In her quest to prove Sickert's guilt, Cornwall also funded DNA tests on numerous stamps and envelopes, which she believed that Sickert had licked and compared the DNA to that found on the Ripper letters. Interestingly, a possible match was found with the stamp on the Dr. Openshaw letter.

 

Critics, however, have pointed out that the DNA comparisons focused on mitochondrial DNA, which could be shared by anything from between 1% and 10% of the population, so it was hardly unique to Sickert.

 

The last characters are generally considered the top suspects in the car; however that hasn't stopped many others from being implicated. Including known serial killers and even royalty.

 

H.H. Holmes:

 

He is known as "America's First Serial Killer," but some believe America was not his only hunting ground. 

 

Jeff Mudgett, a lawyer and former Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, claims that his great-great-grandfather, H.H. Holmes, was DUN DUN, Jack the Ripper. Mudgett bases his assertions on the writings in two diaries he inherited from Holmes, which detail Holmes's participation in the murder and mutilation of numerous prostitutes in London. Mudgett also claims that the man who died in the public hanging on May 7th, 1896, was not Holmes, but rather a man that Holmes tricked into going to the gallows in his place.

 

Travel documentation and witness accounts also lend themselves to the theory that Jack the Ripper and Holmes are the same.

The biggest issue with Holmes and the Ripper being the same psychopathic man is that one was in Chicago and the other in London when international travel was not as easy as it is now. Back then, traveling between the U.K. and the U.S. was by boat, which could take about a month. However, with the Ripper killings ending in early 1889 and the first Holmes killing at the end of 1889, the timeline is entirely possible.

 

It is recorded that a passenger by the name of H. Holmes traveled from the U.K. to the U.S. at that time. Holmes is a pretty popular last name, and H.H. Holmes' legal name was actually Herman Webster Mudgett, but it is possible.

 

In addition, based on accounts and descriptions of Jack the Ripper, multiple sketch artists were able to come up with a drawing of Jack the Ripper, which looked eerily similar to H.H. Holmes. However, another account describes Jack the Ripper as having "brown eyes and brown hair," which could really be anyone.

 

Experts deny that H.H. Holmes and Jack the Ripper are the same person because they had different motives.

While Jack the Ripper typically went after poor women who were sex workers, H.H. Holmes was naturally after money. He was adept at moving accounts and signing life insurance over to his many aliases. In addition, he'd try to find people disconnected from family or else murder entire families and siblings to take inheritances.

 

Of the deniers to the theory, Jeff Mudgett had this to say:

 

"There are too many coincidences for this to be another bogus theory," 

 

 "I know that the evidence is out there to prove my theory and I'm not going to give up until I find it."

 

Except for those diaries he claims to have. He refuses to show anyone, even going as far as to not print pictures of them in his book. His excuse for this is that it's "technically evidence" and could be confiscated by law enforcement because there is no statute of limitations on murder.

 

Prince Albert Victor: The guy with the dick jewelry name.

 

Everyone loves a conspiracy theory, and there have been few better than the theory of Prince Albert Victor impregnating a "shop girl" named Annie Crook. Obviously, the royal family had Queen Victoria's physician Dr. Gull brutalize her at a mental institution until she forgot everything. She then left the illegitimate child with prostitute Mary Kelly, who blabbed about the relationship to her friends (also prostitutes). With this scandalous knowledge, they were quickly and quietly disposed of – in a series of killings so grisly and high profile that we're still talking about them over a century later. There is also talk of him contracting syphilis from his many days of frolicking in East End brothels, causing him to become "insane" and, naturally, a serial killer. Unfortunately, the story is spoiled by his being out of London during the murders. Oh, and the total lack of evidence for any of this.

 

Lewis Carroll: Ya know, the Alice in Wonderland author.

 

Even though more than 500 people have been accused as Ripper suspects at one time or another, the most outlandish must be Richard Wallace's theory in his 1996 book, "Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend." Wallace took passages from Carroll's children's books and derived garbage anagrams from them, changing and leaving out letters as they suited his bizarre purposes. Watch the documentary "Sons of Sam for more idiocy like this." People always seem to find a way to contort information to fit their agendas. But I digress.

From The Nursery Alice, he took "So she wandered away, through the wood, carrying the ugly little thing with her. And a great job it was to keep hold of it, it wriggled about so. But at last she found out that the proper way was to keep tight hold of its left foot and its right ear" and turned it into "She wriggled about so! But at last Dodgson and Bayne found a way to keep hold of the fat little whore. I got a tight hold of her and slit her throat, left ear to right. It was tough, wet, disgusting, too. So weary of it, they threw up – Jack the Ripper". 

 

If that's proof, I don't know what isn't.

 

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream:

 

This doctor was hanged for an unrelated murder at Newgate Prison. His executioner, James Billington, swears Cream's last words were "I am Jack the …," Which is weird if your name is Thomas. It was taken by many as a confession to being Jack the Ripper, of course, but being cut off by his execution meant no one managed to quiz him on it. He was in prison at the time of the murders, and the notion that he was out killing prostitutes while a "lookalike" served his prison sentence for him is, to say the least, unlikely.

 

Mary' Jill the Ripper' Pearcey:

 

The only female suspect at the time, Mary Pearcey, was convicted of murdering her lover's wife, and some suspect her of being behind the Whitechapel killings as well – though the evidence is pretty much nonexistent. Sherlock creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle speculated that a woman could have carried around blood-stained clothing without suspicion if she had pretended to be a midwife. DNA results found by an Australian scientist in 2006 suggested the Ripper "may have been a woman" – but only because they were inconclusive.

 

Michael Ostrog:

 

Much of Michael Ostrog's life is wreathed in shadow; clearly, this was a man who liked to keep his secrets close to his chest.

 

Ostrog was born in Russia in approximately 1833. However, we know little of his life until he arrived in the U.K. in 1863. Unfortunately, it seems as though Michael Ostrog had already committed to a life of scams, robbery, and petty theft.

 

In 1863, he was arrested and jailed for 10 months for trying to rob the University of Oxford. He was also using the alias of 'Max Grief,' a trend that would continue later on in his life.

 

Michael Ostrog was not considered a Jack the Ripper suspect until his name was mentioned alongside several other notable Ripper suspects in a memorandum in 1894. Sir Melville Macnaghten was the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London between 1903 and 1913, yet he also played a role in the Whitechapel Murders case. In this memorandum, he proposed Michael Ostrog as one of the most likely Jack the Ripper suspects (in his opinion) alongside Montague John Druitt and Aaron Kosminski.

 

However, despite Macnaghten's belief in his guilt, it was never proven that Michael Ostrog committed any murders. Thefts, robberies, scams, and fraud – yes, but murders? The evidence remains inconclusive.

 

Francis Tumblety:

 

Born in 1833, Francis Tumblety's humble start in life is a mystery. Some sources say that he was born in Ireland, while others suggest he was born in Canada. Regardless, we know that he moved to Rochester, New York, with his family within his life's first decade or so.

 

Tumblety moved around a lot during the 1850s and 1860s, staying in various places across the U.S. and Canada but never truly settling or finding a permanent home for himself. He posed as a doctor on his travels, claiming to have secret knowledge of mystical cures and medicines from India, but, likely, this was simply fabricated to drum up more business and interest in his services.

 

He was arrested in Canada twice – once for performing illegal abortions, then again for a patient's sudden, suspicious death. In 1865, Tumblety lived in Missouri under the fake name of 'Dr Blackburn.' However, this backfired spectacularly when he was mistakenly taken for the real Dr. Blackburn, who was actually wanted by police in connection with the murder of Abraham Lincoln! As a result, Francis Tumblety was arrested once again. Dumbass.

 

Sometime in the intervening years, Tumblety moved across the pond - possibly to escape further arrests - and was known to be living in London by the summer of 1888. He again posed as a doctor and peddled his fabricated trade to unsuspecting Londoners.

 

The police began to investigate Tumblety in August of that year, possibly because he was a Jack the Ripper suspect and due to the nature of his business. Sadly, the files and notes from the Victorian investigation have been lost over the years. However, many Ripperologists have since weighed in to give their opinions.

 

Interestingly, at the time, there had been rumors that an American doctor had approached the London Pathology Museum, reportedly in an attempt to purchase the uteruses of deceased women. Could this have been Francis Tumblety, or was it just a strange coincidence? An unusual request, for sure. However, a line of inquiry like this would have been taken extremely seriously by detectives at the height of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror.

 

Eventually, Tumblety's luck ran out, and on November 7th, 1888, he was arrested in London. Although the arrest specifics are not known today, we see that he was arrested for "unnatural offences," which could have meant several different things. This could also have referred to homosexual relations or rape, as homosexuality was still illegal.

 

He was released on bail, which crucially means that he was accessible and potentially able to have committed the horrific murder of Mary Jane Kelly on November 9th, 1888. The timeframe fits, and evidently, the police came to this conclusion, too, as Tumblety was subsequently rearrested on November 12th and held on suspicion of murdering Mary Jane Kelly.

 

Released on bail once again on November 16th, Francis Tumblety took the opportunity to flee London. Instead, he headed to France before returning to the U.S. 

Tumblety then did a vanishing act and seemingly disappeared into the ether.

 

The next few years were a mystery, and Tumblety did not surface again until 1893, five years later. He lived out the remainder of his life in his childhood home in Rochester, New York, where he died in 1903 as a wealthy man.

 

The evidence certainly seems to point towards Tumblety's guilt, and indeed, the fact that he was arrested multiple times in connection with the Ripper murders suggests that he was undoubtedly one of the police's top Jack the Ripper suspects.

 

Today, many of the details have been lost over the years. The original Scotland Yard files are missing, meaning that we don't know why Tumblety was charged – or what he was charged with in connection to the Whitechapel Murders. However, we can learn from the arrests that the evidence brought against Tumblety could not have been watertight. Otherwise, he would never have been released on bail. It seems there was still an element of doubt in the minds of the detectives.

 

David Cohen:

 

The theory put together, pinning the chilling Whitechapel murders on one David Cohen, claims that this name was actually the 'John Doe' identity given to him at the time. He was taken in when found stumbling through the streets of East End London in December of 1888, a few short months after the autumn of terror. However, it is claimed that Cohen's real name was Nathan Kaminsky, a Polish Jew that matched the description of the wanted man known as 'Leather Apron,' who would later form the pseudonym of Jack the Ripper.

 

Cohen, born in 1865, was not actually named as a potential suspect in the Jack the Ripper case until Martin Fido's book 'The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper was published in 1987 – almost 100 years later. The book detailed Cohen's alleged erratic and violent behavior, making him a good fit for the killers' profile.

As per an 1895 article by Sir Robert Anderson, who was the Assistant Commissioner CID at Scotland Yard at the time of the murders, it becomes apparent that the killer was identified by a witness. The witness, however, refused to come forward in an official capacity, leading Anderson to write, "the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him."

 

Later, in his 1910 book 'The Lighter Side of My Official Life,' Anderson published a memoir hand-written by ex-Superintendent Donald S. Swanson, in which he named Aaron Kosminski as the suspect who matched the description of a Polish Jew. The passage reads: "The suspect had, at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified."

 

"On suspect's return to his brother's house in Whitechapel he was watched by the police (City CID) by day & night. In time, the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stephney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards - Kosminski was the suspect – DSS."

 

Last one.

 

Lastly, on our list is one I didn't know anything about. As I was going through the research Moody so eloquently and diligently accrued, I stumbled up one more suspect. 

 

There is little information about the suspect, but apparently, he was a traveling charioteer with accessibility to and from the White Chapel district during the murders. Unfortunately, his birthdate is unknown, making his age impossible to gauge. The only thing Scotland Yard has on file is a single word found near 2 of the victims and a noise heard by a handful of citizens who were close to the scene of the crimes.

 

That word was "Candy," and that horrible, unsettling sound was that of a rattling wallet chain... 

 

Honestly, we could go on all day, but everything from here gets pretty convoluted. But, honestly, there's always a link if you stretch it far enough.

 

https://www.jack-the-ripper.org/films.htm