Jack the Ripper - A Smorgasbord of Suspects E-Book

Dylan Frost

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 194

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. There were five 'canonical' murders of an unusually brutal nature. What makes the grisly saga of Jack the Ripper so enduringly famous and fascinating is that the case was never solved. To this day people are still coming up with new suspects and trying to solve this most famous of cases. The Ripper was not only lethal but remarkably clever or lucky at remaining undetected. This killer was definitely not someone you would wish to meet on a dark and misty Whitechapel night. In the book that follows we'll take a look at Ripper suspects and attempt to gauge who is credible and who isn't to see if we can make any sense of this most puzzling (not to mention harrowing) unsolved true crime case.

Leseprobe

Jack the Ripper - A Smorgasbord of Suspects

Dylan Frost© Copyright 2023 Dylan Frost

ContentsPrefaceIntroductionJoseph BarnettHenry Wentworth BellsmithWilliam Henry BuryLewis CarrollGeorge Chapman (aka Seweryn Antonowicz Klosowski)David CohenThomas Neill Cream Thomas Hayne CutbushFrederick Bailey DeemingMontague John DruittAmelia DyerBowen Endacott Carl FeigenbaumJoseph FlemingFogelmaWilliam Grant GraingerWilliam Withey GullLizzie HallidayJames HardimanH.H. HolmesGeorge HutchinsonHyam HyamsJacob IsenschmidJames KellyMichael KidneyAaron KosminskiCharles Allen Lechmere Charles Le GrandJacob Levy Robert MannJames MaybrickJohn McCarthyMichael OstrogMary PearceyJohn PizerJohn RichardsonWalter SickertJames Kenneth StephenRobert D'Onston StephensonThe Thames Torso KillerFrancis ThompsonFrancis TumbletyPrince Albert VictorSir John WilliamsPREFACEIn 1888, Jack the Ripper murdered and dismembered five women in the Whitechapel district of London in brutal fashion. However, he was never caught and we still don't know who he really was. The Ripper targeted prostitutes and left some hideously gruesome crime scenes. He hacked out internal organs and disfigured the faces of his unfortunate victims. During the Jack the Ripper murders, Queen Victoria received thousands of letters from women demanding that the police do more to catch the killer. Alas though, the killer was never found. The canonical victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. It is often presumed though that other murders around this time might possibly have been the work of the Ripper too. Some of the suspects we will examine in this book are rather ludicrous but many are alarmingly plausible too. There are many suspicious characters circa 1888 who feasibly could have been Jack the Ripper. Deciding which one of them was most likely to have been the killer though is no easy task. Some believe it is even possible that the Ripper was some unknown person who has never been mentioned as a suspect. Oddly, there are still too Ripper suspects who shrouded in a fair degree of mystery. Take, for example, Montague John Druitt - who remains one of the most prominent and recurring Ripper suspects. There is little to recommend Montague John Druitt as a likely Jack the Ripper candidate but the presumption is that the police, who took an interest in Druitt, MUST have known something about him that we don't. In the book that follows we'll take a look at the main Ripper suspects and attempt to guage who is credible and who isn't. So, prepare to take a spooky trawl through the fog and dim lamp light to see if we can make any sense of this most puzzling (not to mention harrowing) unsolved case. INTRODUCTIONThere are of course a lot of serial killers who were never caught. In cases where serial killers were never caught, the most obvious suspects naturally become people who died or were incarcerated around the time the murders stopped. The Long Island Killer was the name given to a serial killer who is believed to have been active in the Long Island area for twenty years. His last victim was found in 2013. Because this killer was able (so far at least) to evade capture or identification, the police believe he might possibly have worked in law enforcement himself (something which is far from unheard of when it comes to serial killers). The Long Island Killer is clearly very savvy and clever when it comes to not leaving any incriminating evidence in his (or her?) wake. The Axeman of New Orleans was an American serial killer active in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1918 and 1919. There were six people killed and six injured during his bloody spree of violence. The killer was never identified and seemed to target the local Italian community. The killer used an axe or razor to kill the victims. The victims were mostly female but he killed a few men who were unfortunate enough to be in the houses he had broken into. Sexual sadism was the most likely motive as the killer never seemed to rob the victims. Because the victims were Italian-Americans some sort of Mafia link was suspected but this was never proven. The identity of the killer remains a mystery. Zodiac was the name given to a killer who operated in California in the 60s and 70s. The killer, who was never found, claimed to have killed thirty people. The police still periodically re-open the case if fresh information comes to light. The Zodiac Killer targeted couples who were parked up in cars. He would shoot both the man and woman. This suggested that he was an outcast in society and was embittered and angered by seeing couples in love. Interestingly, Zodiac seemed to be something of a weekend killer so probably had a job. The killer began contacting newspapers in 1969 and identified himself as Zodiac. He was clearly eager to enjoy his moment in the spotlight. The killer wrote a number of letters which he said contained codes and ciphers which - if cracked - would reveal his identity. Although some of these codes have been cracked though so far they haven't actually revealed the true identity of the killer.The Monster of Florence was a killer who murdered around sixteen people in Italy from 1968 to 1985. The killer had an MO very similar to the Zodiac Killer in America. The Monster of Florence would shoot couples who were sitting together in a car. The killer sometimes removed the sex organs of his female victims. The 1999 novel Hannibal was inspired by the Florence case. The killer was never caught by the Italian police although theories continue to abound. One such theory is that a satanic cult was behind the murders. Hammersmith in London was the scene of a number of murders in 1964 and 1965. The killer became known as Jack the Stripper because the murder victims were prostitutes. However, despite a huge police operation, the killer was never found and the murders remain a mystery. One of the more outlandish and bizarre theories (which, believe it or not, has even been the basis of a book) is that the killer was the world champion boxer turned actor Freddie Mills. The victims were nearly all in their twenties and are believed to have been killed in private before their bodies were dumped in a public place. Chief Superintendent John Du Rose was in charge of the investigation for Scotland Yard and had six-hundred police officers involved in the search for Jack the Stripper. They set up observation posts in a 24 square mile area of London and questioned thousands of potential suspects and yet - remarkably - they never found the killer. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders featured an unknown killer who seemed to have stepped straight out of a real life horror film. 'Texarkana, a small town that straddles the state line between Texas and Arkansas, is also known as The Town That Dreaded Sundown, thanks to the 1976 horror flick of the same name,' wrote the Line-Up. 'Set in Texarkana and based loosely on a string of local slayings, the proto-slasher film came out just two years after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas, and two years before Halloween. Yet the true story behind the Texarkana Moonlight Murders is as chilling as anything seen on the silver screen—and made all the more unsettling because the case remains unsolved nearly 70 years later. The mysterious Moonlight Murders rocked the sleepy southern town of Texarkana in 1946. Police on either side of the state line struggled to work as one while the killings themselves possessed the iconic quality of urban legend. Young couples parked at the end of a lonely country road, savaged after the sun went down.'In fact, some claim that the infamous campfire tale of lovers who catch a report of a hook-handed killer on the car radio only to discover a bloody hook hanging from their back door can be traced to the Texarkana Moonlight Murders. The killer, described by witnesses as wearing a white mask or sack with holes cut for eyes, was dubbed the Phantom Killer or Phantom Slayer—a name that, like so much about the case, seemed ready-made for drive-in theaters. While the Phantom was on the loose, Texarkana was like a city under siege. Residents armed themselves and curfews were set for local businesses. In spite of the involvement of the Texas Rangers, no conclusive arrest was ever made in connection with the Moonlight Murders.'Theories spread wildly about the Phantom Killer's identity. The killer's targeting of couples and lack of other identifiable motives, such as burglary or revenge, led many in the area to believe that the killer was some sort of "sex maniac". Nearly 400 people were arrested in connection with the killings. Suspects included a University of Arkansas freshman who committed suicide in 1948, an escaped German prisoner of war, and an L.A. resident who believed that he may have committed the crimes while in a coma. Many people believe that local man named Youell Swinney—arrested in 1947 for auto theft—was the Phantom. His wife confessed to as much at the time, but by law she could not testify against her husband. She later repudiated her confession. Swinney remained in prison as a habitual offender until 1973, and died in 1994, without ever implicating himself in the murders.'The Atlanta Ripper was a killer who is believed to have killed around fifteen (and probably) more women in Atlanta in 1911 and 1912. However, this killer was never captured or identified. All the victims were young black women and the killer had a grisly habit of slashing the throats of his targets. The killer had a rather strange habit too of removing the clothes of the victim and then stacking them in a neat bundle next to the body. Emma Lou Sharp, who survived an encounter with the killer, described him as a tall dark skinned man who wore a black hat. The killer was very brutal. One victim was nearly decapitated and another had part of her skull crushed. A coupling pin from a train was used to bludgeon one victim. It is said that the Ripper cut the heart out of another victim and left it by the body.The Belize Ripper was an unidentified Belizean serial killer responsible for the abduction, rape and murder of five girls in Belize between 1998 and 2000. No one was ever convicted of these murders. The Belize Ripper suspects included an American serial killer named Lonnie David Franklin Jr who had connections to the country. The Butcher of Mons was the name given to a Belgian serial killer who commited five murders in 1996 and 1997. The victims (all female) were expertly dismembered and left in plastic bags by an embankment. The identity of The Butcher of Mons was never established. In the seventies and eighties the remains of several boys were found in sewers in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main area of Germany. The victims were bound and many of them were rent boys or drug users (they were the usual type of vulnerable victims that serial killers target). Although they had some suspects the German police were never able to convict anyone of the sewer murders.The Doodler was the name given to a serial killer who killed at least five men in San Francisco in 1974 and 1975. The victims, who were all gay, were usually picked up in bars. The killer got his name because he would 'doodle' a sketch of the victim as they chatted in a bar. The victims found this quite charming and it obviously lulled them into what can only be described as a false sense of security (to say the least). The killer was described as an urbane young black man but he was never arrested and to this day his true identity remains unknown. It is believed that the police actually questioned a man they suspected of being The Doodler in 1976. This man was never named in public and it seems the police simply didn't have enough evidence to charge him with anything. As a consequence, the identity of The Doodler remained an elusive mystery.The Frankford Slasher was a serial killer who operated in and around the neighborhood of Frankford in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1985 to 1990. Around nine women were raped and stabbed to death. A man was convicted for one of these murders but he could not be connected to the others - which left them to remain a mystery. The Sleepy Hollow Killer is the name of an unidentified South African rapist and serial killer responsible for the rapes and murders of at least 13 women around Pietermaritzburg and the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. The Sleepy Hollow Killer was never caught. The Connecticut River Valley Killer gruesomely stabbed to death at least seven women in and around Claremont, New Hampshire and the Connecticut River Valley in the 1980s. The Connecticut River Valley Killer was also never captured. The Alphabet Murders are an unsolved series of child murders which occurred between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York. 'The Alphabet Killer is considered to be one of the greatest unsolved mysteries as far as crime is concerned in the United States,' wrote the Greatest Unsolved Mysteries website. 'The individual that committed what is referred to as the Alphabet Murders have perplexed law enforcement officials in the area of Rochester, New York since the year of 1971. Three very young females were taken by the killer, violently raped, and then murdered immediately thereafter. What makes this case particularly interesting when it comes to the investigation is that all the three children had names in which their first name and their last name had the exact same initial. 'Each girl’s first and last name started with the same letter. Each child was ten years old. Each child was discovered in a city that started with the same letter as their name. Each child was from a Catholic family. Each child lived in a poverty stricken home. Each child suffered from either disciplinary and/or academic challenges at school. Due to the fact that each of the victims of the alphabet murders had these things in common, it was believed that the killer likely worked with a social service group. Many even thought that they could have known the families, or that they worked at the school where the children attended. While several suspects were interviewed the case remains “cold”. The alphabet killer may still reside among us.'The Eastbound Strangler is an unidentified serial killer responsible for the murders of four women near Atlantic City, New Jersey in 2006. Despite a police investigation and reward fund appealing for information, the killer has yet to be captured. The I-70 killer is an unidentified American serial killer who is known to have killed six store clerks in the Midwest in the spring of 1992. The victims were shot and had their stores robbed. Although the police were able to use eyewitnesses to get a sense of what the killer looked like no one was ever convicted of the murders. The Saw-Killer of Hanover was responsible for four murders in Germany in the 1970s. The victims usually had their bodies sawn in half or their limbs cut off. However, none of the victims could be identified and this made capturing the killer even more difficult. Although similar grisly murders have occasionally happened in Germany in later decades no one has ever been connected to the 1970s killings or convicted for the crimes.The Skid Row Stabber is an unidentified American serial killer responsible for the murders of 11 people in the Los Angeles neighborhood known as Skid Row in the 1970s. The victims were (as the name implies) stabbed to death. Bobby Joe Maxwell was originally convicted of the crimes but later evidence cast doubt on this. As a consequence, The Skid Row Stabber might still be at large. The Denver Strangler was an unidentified serial killer operating in Denver, Colorado from 1894 to 1903. The Strangler killed three prostitutes but no one was ever convicted of the crimes. The Redhead Murders was a case where around ten women were killed between 1978 and 1992 in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The common link was that the victims all had red hair. The killer responsible for the Redhead Murders has yet to be caught. The Cleveland Torso Murderer is one of the grisliest serial killers never captured. 'What’s more terrifying than a serial killer?' wrote Film Daily. 'One that was never, ever caught. In the history of serial killers in the US, it’s amazing that the Cleveland Torso Murderer is not often talked about. From 1935-38, this unknown killer terrorized the city of Cleveland, targeting those in vulnerable circumstances, and left between 12-20 people dead. Even outsmarted famed lawman Eliot Ness, leaving a black mark on his distinguished record. The Murderer was very deliberate in picking his victims. They were either working poor, drifters, or homeless. The Murderer did not show gender preference toward his victims. He killed both men and women. The bodies always ended up the same way: beheaded, dismembered, and disposed of. A lot of the male victims were castrated as well. In addition, some of the victims showed signs of a chemical treatment being applied to the bodies. This was still a time when forensic science was in a relative infancy, so not a lot could be gleaned from that. Even worse, the Murderer disposed of the bodies well. Many of his victims weren’t found until some time after their deaths had passed. 'Like Jack the Ripper, the Cleveland Torso Murderer had canonical victims and non-canonical but likely victims. There are 12 canonical murders associated with the Murderer, most of them have never been identified. In addition to the canonical murders, police believe that the killer likely had 20 victims in total. There are two arrests in the case of the Cleveland Torso Murderer. One of the suspects arrested is believed to be more likely than the other. Or, at least, Ness believed that this suspect, Dr. Francis Sweeney, was the Murderer. Sweeney was a medical soldier in WWI, where he performed field amputations. The second arrest goes to Frank Dolezal, who had a connection to the eighth victim Florence Polillo. Police were desperate for arrest. So they arrest Dolezal, beat a confession out of him (which he retracted), and, then, Dolezal mysteriously died while in custody. He was officially cleared decades later. The final theory associated with the case is that, like Jack the Ripper, the Cleveland Torso Murderer is actually multiple killers, who heard about the deaths and copied each other in order to make it look like a serial killer.'The Freeway Phantom was serial killer who was active in Washington, D.C. from April 1971 through to September 1972. The Phantom strangled, raped, and killed six women but he was never caught. The Flat-Tire murders were five connected, unsolved murders in Dade County, Florida in 1975. The killer in the Flat-Tire murders is believed to have let air out of his victims cars and then offered them assistance on the road before killing them. These were brutal murders (some of the victims were injured so badly they couldn't be identified) and the killer was clearly very cunning. Ted Bundy is sometimes cited as a possible suspect in the Flat-Tire murders although he denied this accusation. Bible John is an unidentified serial killer who is believed to have murdered three young women between 1968 and 1969 in Glasgow. Bible John is believed to have met the victims at the Barrowland Ballroom. Some criminologists believe that the convicted murderer Peter Tobin might have been Bible John. There are many more mysterious serial killers who were never captured. The most famous of all of these is of course Jack the Ripper.One of the first books inspired by Jack the Ripper was The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters. The book suggested that the Ripper was a doctor who became enraged after his son was killed by a dose of syphilis he'd caught from a prostitute. In 1923, William Tufnell LeQuex wrote a book in which he suggested Jack the Ripper was a Russian doctor involved in a Czarist plot to murder women in London and make the British police and establishment seem weak and ineffective. There have been endless Jack the Ripper books proposing all manner of theories (some outlandish and long since debunked and others plausible and interesting) and all manner of suspects. While some of the suspects floated are plainly ridiculous (Dr Barnardo, John Merrick etc) there are many fascinating realistic Ripper suspects who remain worthy of investigation. The thing is though that they can't ALL have been Jack the Ripper. This means that the vast majority of Ripper suspects are actually red herrings. Sifting through them all to find the most likely suspect is far from easy and a task that has kept true crime and detective buffs busy for over a hundred years. During the search for Jack the Ripper, the police investigated a number of medical students because of the theory that the killer had some medical knowledge. The notion that the killer was a crazy medical student was actually quite popular in police circles for a time. However, this angle turned up no credible leads or suspects. A recent FBI profile of Jack the Ripper dismissed the theory that the Ripper had professional medical knowledge. They judged him to be a shabby loner and not someone of high society or any standing. This has been questioned though because many believe the Ripper must have been quite urbane and respectable because how else could he have earned the trust of his victims? Prostitutes in Victorian London were streetwise. If they suspected a client was dangerous or unhinged they wouldn't allow themselves to be alone with them. Many believe that Jack the Ripper was much more likely to have been a butcher than someone with medical knowledge. We simply don't know for sure though. One of the reasons why there were so few eye (and ear!) witnesses to Jack the Ripper's murders is that sewage at that time was left to fester in the street and cellars. People usually closed their windows to block out the stench. The eyewitness accounts of the Ripper never led an identification which unveiled the killer. As for the letters allegedly written by the Ripper, well, opinion varies on whether or not any of them were actually from the killer. Scotland Yard had to deal with an awful lot of hoaxers during the Ripper case. There were even numerous men who confessed to being the Ripper but were then proven to have nothing whatsoever to do with the murders. One of the problems with Jack the Ripper is that there isn't even a clear consensus on what type of serial killer he was. It is often said that serial killers fall into four distinct groups. Visionary, Mission-oriented, Hedonistic and Power/Control. Visionary serial killers are the ones who, when captured, say that voices in their head told them to do it. They believe they had some divine or mystical mission to murder people. Peter Sutcliffe (aka The Yorkshire Ripper) was supposedly an example of this type of killer. Sutcliffe (who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia - though there is some serious doubt about this) said that God told him to kill prostitutes. Another example of a Visionary serial killer would be Herbert Mullin - who killed thirteen people in California from 1972 to 1973. Mullin had paranoid schizophrenia and believed that he had to murder people as part of a blood sacrifice to prevent earthquakes from happening in California. He started to hear voices in his head which told him the only way to prevent earthquakes was human sacrifice. A Mission-oriented serial killer will target one specific type of victim. These killers have a desire to punish and eliminate one specific section of society. An example of this type of killer would be Sergei Ryakhovsky. Ryakhovsky is known as The Balashikha Ripper. He killed at least eighteen people in the Moscow area between 1988 and 1993. Ryakhovsky said his mission was to cleanse society of homosexuals and prostitutes. One might argue that Jack the Ripper had something in common with Ryakhovsky.Another Mission-oriented serial killer would be Steve Wright. Wright became known as The Suffolk Strangler after he murdered five female prostitutes in eastern England in 2006. The source of his descent into madness seems to have been his alcohol and gambling addictions - which left him bankrupt and suicidal. Steve Wright's victims were all prostitutes. The youngest was only sixteen. He killed the five women in only five days - a rate which made him a prolific killer by any standards. Luckily, he was caught quite soon into his killing spree. Wright clearly had a grudge against sex workers and wanted to kill as many as possible. Jack the Ripper, like Wright, was evidently someone on his own warped mission too.