Jack the Ripper: A solved case?

[Kyriakos]

Some time ago i was watching a series of youtube videos about the Whitechapel murders. Various people supported numerous theories as to who Jack the Ripper might have been, agreing only in the claim that possibly we shall never be sure.
The suspects ranged from american charlatans to english painters. However it appears that relatively recently someone came up with a document presented as "the diary of Jack the Ripper".
Initially it was seen as a hoax, and in fact a very crude one. However one documentary about it seems to support the view that there is evidence to the contrary.

You can view the first part of that documentary here:


Link to video.

There are links to the rest in youtube

So, what do you think? Could it be that the infamous Jack the Ripper could have become finally named?

 

[Atticus]

Haven't looked the document yet, but I don't believe there's very good reasons to think it is him. For the sole reason that it would be very widely known if it was.

Ripper keeping diary sounds odd, it should be very incoherent at least, judging by the letters he sent to the police (if he really sent them). Also of course there should be good explanation to why he stopped killings.

My gut feeling says it's the Polish guy who then immigrated in New Jersey and was hanged there, George Chapman if I remember correctly.

 

[Richard Cribb]

Haven't looked the document yet, but I don't believe there's very good reasons to think it is him. For the sole reason that it would be very widely known if it was.

Ripper keeping diary sounds odd, it should be very incoherent at least, judging by the letters he sent to the police (if he really sent them). Also of course there should be good explanation to why he stopped killings.

My gut feeling says it's the Polish guy who then immigrated in New Jersey and was hanged there, George Chapman if I remember correctly.

I assume that I am sort of honour bound to give my opinion about this (Jack the Ripper is actually indirectly a part of the plot in one of the Sergeant Cribb novels)...
From what I know the Maybrick diary is indeed a hoax. Also Maybrick doesn't seem a very plausible candidate. Perhaps I'll watch that documentary later. i don't expect too much of it though.
I doubt the authencity of those letters Jack the Ripper is supposed to have sent to the police as well, and I don't think Chapman (or Klosowski as was his original name) did it either. He was quite rightly hanged, but that was because of having poisoned three women.
As for who Jack the Ripper really was, I think we will never know. Probably somebody whose name is not known for posteriority.

 

[Atticus]

Well I'm not so sure about Chapman either, but of the usual suspects he's the one I'd pick.

The document wasn't very balanced in my opinion. For about half an hour they seem to omit the possibility that the diary is recent fake. They later back up this omission, but until then it's a bit annoying. Then there's a handwriting expert, whom I supposed was expert in identifying handwritings, but who soon goes on to tell that t:s of the writer show that he liked games.

Then there's all this "clues", like Ghoulton street's graffiti's "juwes" could actually be "james". FM written on Mary Kelly's wall is supposed to be intials of Maybrick's wife, although the document doesn't convince that the letters actually were written there. And the worst is letter M carved on Eddowes' face, although in two different parts: /\ under both eyes.

The critics of the diary don't get much air time, and there's also some odd innuendo-type of reasoning. The clock doesn't convince me, why would Maybrick have such carvings on a clock? Or the connection between various suspects at the end, I really didn't understand what that was about.

 

[LightSpectra]

It probably wasn't Chapman. Serial murderers don't change MOs very often.

One of the suspects, can't remember his name, was incarcerated for a short period of time. He masturbated compulsively while in prison, had a hatred of women, and the killings stopped while he was imprisoned. I'd say it was most likely that guy.

 

[Atticus]

MO=Modus operandi?

I don't think think that the killings of Chapman's wives are considered as continuation to the Whitechapel murders. If I remember correctly, Chapman moved to New Jersey when the Ripper murders stopped, and there were similar kinds of murders in NJ after he had arrived. So the idea is that he killed his wives for practical reasons and the prostitutes as serial killer, so the theory goes.

 

[holy king]

i dont know, but whoever it was sure had some anger issues.

Moderator Action: <snip> - this isn't the place for pictures like that...

The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.
The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

holy crap.

 

[Reno]

There have been suggestions made that there were one or more murderers copying the first, I actually find it fairly convicing that there proabably was more than one killer.

As to who Jack the Ripper truly was/were, it's unlikely to ever be solved.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

I used to post on a forum devoted to Jack the Ripper, and I can tell you that the diary is not at all widely accepted as true. Most serious posters on that forum did not believe it.

 

[sabo]

I saw a documentary on the history channel that suggests that "Jack" moved to America after his last murder, There suspiciously was similar murders along the east coast of the USA after that last murder in London. I can't remember the guys name, but he was an escapee from a mental hospital in the UK, then the murders started. He was in a mental hospital because he viciously killed his wife. His occupation was a butcher.

 

[Kyriakos]

There is also this documentary which i found interesting, although it is unlikely that its conclusions are valid:


Link to video.