Jack the Ripper

[Eltonjohnssyrup]

Not really an AIBU, just posted here for traffic.

What do you think about the investigation searching for Jack the Ripper? Do you think they could have identified him by now using DNA if they wanted to? I do.

I think it would make a huge statement about the importance of women and how much it had increased between the late 1800s and now if we managed to finally identify the killer.

Yes I think it unlikely Jack would have stopped of his own accord.

The Jewish thing is a factor too, then as now if the killer had been revealed to be Jewish that would have been awful ammo to hand to anti-Semites

Hefski yes Kozminsky is the one that police generally believed was the killer. He was declared insane and incarcarated.
Springheel Jack was a weird one - didn't he jump to heights of 10 ft while terrorising people?

Yes, Queen- I seem to think that he also had several incarnations as a sensation, too far apart for it to be the same bloke. But I might have made that up

Didn't Fred West admit that he had killed dozens of other women and buried them in field gateways around Much Marcle in Herefordshire? He would still be at it today had a teacher not really stuck her nose in wanting to know where their daughter Heather had gone. He worked totally under the radar for decades is the inference.

Elton hasn't been back....I was still wondering what she meant re use of DNA.

This thread is riveting.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Tumblety Have a read of this.

There is strong evidence of him being Jack the Ripper.Plus would tie in wiht Canada.

yvonne, they’re pretty sure he killed Mary Bastholm in the 60s.

It wasn’t actually a teacher. West raped one of his younger daughters several times and she confided in a friend who told her father who went to the police.

During the subsequent investigation several of the children mentioned a family joke that Heather was ‘under the patio’ which most of the police involved didn’t pay much attention to because it was quite a typical and current joke at the time due to the long running Jordache story in Brookside.

It was actually a policewoman Hazel Savage who insisted it was taken seriously and the garden dug up. Their crimes wouldn’t even necessarily have been totally discovered then either if it wasn’t for luck.

Fred admitted to Heather’s murder and led them to her grave in the hope the would stop the search when she was found. As chance would have it, movement of the soil because of the high water table meant Heather’s bones had moved and mixed with those of another victim buried close and they found 3 thigh bones so they realised their was more than one victim. I think the quote was ‘Either we’ve found a three legged woman or there’s another one down here’.

Awful case. Particularly the damage inflicted on their surviving children.

*there was

I shudder at all these kinds of stories but I became interested in this after reading Kate Williams "The Pleasures of Men" and also watching Whitechapel.

In terms of "use of a bogeyman" to keep women in their place, and whether or not killers do have hallmarks, both very interesting. The book isn't great but it's more the background ideas that are interesting.

I have no idea whether the Whitechapel thing of the killer licking the eyeballs is true....eek. Those poor women.

Riverside, in fairness, I’d had a few glasses of wine when I wrote the original post so I was blathering a bit.

I’ve been reading and enjoying but not really contributing as I know far, far less than other people on this thread so don’t have much worthwhile to contribute! But thanks to everybody who has. So interesting. This is one of the great things about Mumsnet, if you come across something really interesting that you don’t know much about, you can always ask on here and there will be really well informed people.

hi Elton

in terms of showing some respect to the women, I think the Jack the Ripper museum in London, the way it was snuck in and originally advertised, was the ultimate disrespect.

on the subject of identification, I was just wondering what you meant re DNA and how it would be gathered.

Unless Jack the Ripper turns out to have been a woman.

There was a female suspect called Mary Pearcey. Phoebee Hogg was hanged for the murder for her lovers wife and child in 1890.

Sorry that should say Mary Pearcey was hanged for Phoebee Hoggs murder

I was referring to the shawl, but other people have linked to things which call this into question.

Interesting point re respect for the victims. I initially looked on Facebook but found the groups on there a bit intimidating as there appeared to be quite a few men whose interest is somewhat...prurient.

Asking on here meant I could hear from people who know what they’re talking about without having to wade through creeps.

Yes I think it highly likely there were far more victims of the wests than have been discovered. Fred might have talked but I don't think Rose ever will, I also think she was the driving force.

What I find hugely disappointing and sad and worrying about that case is that many of the victims were runaways/estranged from their families and there were promises made at the time (by police and govt) that missing teens and young adults would be taken more seriously and it hasn't been so they are still an extremely vulnerable group.

YY Graphista. I know one of the Rotherham victims and she used to go missing all the time and the police used to basically shrug and stick an alert up on their fb and the local paper them just wait for her to turn up. She was 13.

She’s addicted to drugs and was last known to be a hooker in West Yorks. Nobody hears from her and she’s burned her bridges with her family. Anything could happen to her/have happened to her and nobody would know.

Whoever JTR was (if he was indeed one person), Im convinced that it had to be someone in the medical profession or a butcher. From my experience with dissection and anatomy, it's not as easy as slice, slice, grab this and that bit.

Unless of course he was the typical serial killer and had already practiced cutting up animals first, or had previous victims that he learned the ropes on.

Elton it's so sad. No 13 year old ends up that way unless they've been seriously repeatedly let down. Makes me angry! Someone (not a friend) once made a comment to me that runaways were selfish and no money or time should be wasted on them.

I must admit I let rip asking them if they thought kids ran away for no reason? How bad must their lives at home be that they'd rather live on the streets cold, hungry, prime targets for assault and murder - he shut up fairly quickly! Knob!

I know it's modern day, but is the series Whitechapel any good? It's on Netflix atm

Elton, I was wondering how they'd get a match on anything

how awful that you found all that prurience - tbh that it why I have stayed away from probably all the drama about it until I came across Whitechapel which seemed to be sensitively and intelligently done.

There was an exhibition at the Wellcome about forensics. I thought it would be mostly about generalities but my sister went first, and she explained that there were photos, even really incredibly old ones, with faces covered and so on - and I just thought, no. Even if I'd been killed 100 years ago, the thought of the photos being used in the exhibition just bugs me. So I didn't go.

The police at the time were barely convinced by Kosminski as a suspect never mind convinced he was the murderer. That's mostly just myth and revolves around the review some years later of notes of the time by a police officer not involved in the investigations at the time.

We will never ever know who he really was but personally I feel that Charles Allen Lechmere is the most probable.

Whitechapel tv show is good but not really about jtr

The only real "evidence" around Lechmere is that he was found at the scene of Nichols' murder by Robert Paul. There really isn't much more than that. You can just as easily argue that John Davis was the Ripper because he found Chapman's body.

LOL

oh shatner you just made me laugh. there isnt' any 'real' evidence for anyone. That's the whole point.

Actually he was found standing over the body, and had blood on his clothes (this was not questioned because he worked on a meat cart so it could be nowt to do with the body but equally could be a convenient cover). He then lied about his name to the police. Also, the locations of the murders all neatly fitted the route he walked from home to work at roughly times in which he walked the route, except for one which happened on his day off and was on the route from his mother's house to his home.

BUT like I said, it's alllllllll circumstantial and none of it is REAL evidence against anyone hence why they couldn't arrest anyone at the time. The case against Kosminski is literally that he was put in an insane assylum, that's it. As I said it's just my personal favourite in the case.

Lechmere wasn't always my favourite suspect, but I helped a writer friend who was doing some very detailed research and through that decided that almost everyone else I had considered at one time or other was actually just a random accusation by people long after the incident with spurious 'facts' linking them to the area. Going by people actually mentioned in the original case notes for me Lechmere is the most convincing suspect (despite not being considered a suspect at the time). That doesn't mean I AM convinced. but it's the best of a bad bunch.

There is basically nothing which policemen would consider to be reliable evidence in the case at all, police practices were not as slick and the lack of cooperation between the city police and the Met police didn't help matters either. the media hype around the incident led to the police being inundated by false admissions, false witness statements and all sort of other crap because people wanted to 'get in on it'. It was impossible for them to solve it then and it still is now.

As a PP said IF the same crimes in the same way were committed now, that's a different matter. but also as a PP said the perpetrator now would more than likely be far more careful as they too would be aware of modern policing methods.