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the Unexplained => Vanishings & Unsolved Murders => Topic started by: Keira Kensington on April 05, 2015, 03:38:05 pm
Title: Jack The Ripper In America. Did Jack The Ripper Visit The United States?
Post by: Keira Kensington on April 05, 2015, 03:38:05 pm
Jack The Ripper In America. Did Jack The Ripper Visit The United States?
By Thomas Byers
(http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2094270_f260.jpg)
Where did Jack The Ripper Go When He Stopped Killing In London? Did he come to America And Continue His Crimes In New York City
Jack The Ripper In America
The Ripper In America
Once Jack The Ripper stopped killing in London what happened to him? Where did he go and why did the murders in London stop?The answer to those questions may be very simple indeed. Jack the Ripper may have come to New York City where he continued his horrific murders. And the then New York police may have known but covered up the fact to prevent mass panic.
Did Jack The Ripper Come To New York And Commit Brutal Murders There In 1891
On the morning of April 24th 1891 a woman's body was discovered in a cheap hotel in New York City. The then Chief Inspector of the New York City Thomas Byrnes had said many times in the newspapers that if Jack the Ripper ever showed up in New York he would be caught in just a few days. The woman's body that was found on that April morning had been murdered in a most vicious manner. Her stomach had been cut open and her intestines were thrown around over the bed. And most shocking of all was the fact that some of her female organs were gone. Scrawled on the wall was a message in blood written to Chief Inspector Byrnes. It said " Okay catch me Boss " New York City went into a panic and the newspapers reported that Jack the Ripper had arrived in America.The murdered woman had been a prostitute and she had been seen going to her motel room with a male client at about 10.30 the night before she was found murdered the next morning. People remembered the prostitute was drunk and giggling and the man with her as silent and grim. It was reported the man carried a case much like doctors of the time carried.
Almost at once the New York newspapers had a great time at the expense of Inspector Byrnes pointing out that Byrnes had said he could catch the Ripper in a day or two if he ever made the mistake of showing up in New York City. And though the details of the murdered woman on that April morning were never disclosed to anyone other than that note written in blood on the wall it leaked out quickly that their were many similarities between the woman's murder in New York City and the London White-chapel murders known to have been committed by Jack the Ripper.
Inspectors From Scotland Yard Came To New York City
It is a historical fact that members of London's Scotland Yard came to New York City at least twice in 1891 to examine evidence and a letter the New York Police had to see if they could connect the murders in New York City to the Jack The Ripper murders in London. So they must have thought it was quite possible that Jack The Ripper had traveled to New York City and committed murders in New York City.
Three More Murders In Eleven Days
Over the course of the next eleven days three more brutal murders took place in New York City all with in a few miles of the first murder that took place on April 24th 1891. In all three cases prostitutes were attacked and ripped apart in a brutal fashion. And in all three cases female body parts were cut out of the bodies and taken away. But then the murders stopped. Why? There have been rumors for many years that New York's Chief Police Inspector received a package with a bloody body part in it and a taunting letter saying that Jack the Ripper was moving on to another city because he now knew that Inspector Byrnes was incapable of catching him. Inspector Byrnes denied this ever happened but some police and newspaper sources at the time said that yes it had happened and that it haunted Byrnes the rest of his days and that Brynes was never quite the same again.
Title: Re: Jack The Ripper In America. Did Jack The Ripper Visit The United States?
In October of 1893 a New York newspaper received a letter supposedly from Jack the Ripper and in it were details of the murder of Carrie Brown the prostitute who was murdered on April 24th 1891 in New York City. It is said the letter contained details that only the person who committed the crimes would have known. In the letter it stated that Inspector Byrnes wasn't able to catch anyone much less Jack The Ripper. If this letter was truly from Jack The Ripper it is the last known correspondence from him. That letter is still in the possession of the New York Police. A Police Inspector from London's Scotland Yard came to New York City and examined that letter and said to him the letter appeared to be in the same hand writing as the letters received by London's Scotland Yard Police.
So what do you think about the New York Murders. Do you believe it was the work of Jack The Ripper. Do you believe that Jack the Ripper came to New York where he committed at least four brutal murders in the spring of 1891. And what happened to Jack the Ripper if he did commit those four murders in 1891. Why did he stop. Where did he go. Its quite possible he simply moved on to another city where he continued to kill. But if so he took no credit for his crimes.
http://crazyhorsesghost.hubpages.com/hub/Jack-The-Ripper-In-America
Was Carrie Brown Killed In New York City A Victim Of Jack The Ripper
Jack The Ripper Revealed At Last
One Hundred Twenty Five Years after the Ripper Murders we may now know the true identity of Jack the Ripper. And not only do we know his name which is James Kelly but we may also now know that he came to America and killed Carrie Brown in 1891 on Manhattans lower east side. And as he traveled around America he may have killed women not only in New York City but also Georgia and Texas.
Medical Examiners who have examined the crime scene photos from the White Chapel Murders in London and the crime scene photos from the American killings say that the same person committed all the murders. James Kelly escaped from a London Insane Asylum with a homemade metal key and when he returned to that same Insane Asylum 40 years later he wrote a detailed confession telling of his travels in America. James Kelly has long been a suspect in the White Chapel Murders and now it is believed he also killed many women almost all prostitutes while he was in America.
And so we now know who Jack the Ripper was and what a horrific serial killer he really was. James Kelly in fact killed the wife in the photo above with him and he was in the insane asylum for killing her when he made the homemade key and escaped. And he killed his wife who we know he killed in much the same way as Jack The Ripper killed. He cut out her insides and threw them around the room. The horrible way he killed his wife is what sent him to the insane asylum.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Jkelly.jpg)
James Kelly (20 April 1860 – 17 September 1929) was first identified as a suspect in Terence Sharkey's "Jack the Ripper. 100 Years of Investigation" (Ward Lock 1987) and documented in Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper, by Jim Tully, in 1997.[95]
James Kelly murdered his wife in 1883 by stabbing her in the neck. Deemed insane, he was committed to the Broadmoor Asylum, from which he later escaped in early 1888, using a key he fashioned himself. After the last of the five canonical Ripper murders in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been his residence prior his wife's murder, but they were not able to locate him. In 1927, almost forty years after his escape, he unexpectedly turned himself in to officials at the Broadmoor Asylum. He died two years later, presumably of natural causes.
Retired NYPD cold-case detective Ed Norris examined the Jack the Ripper case for a Discovery Channel program called "Jack the Ripper in America". In it, Norris claims that James Kelly was Jack the Ripper, and that he was also responsible for multiple murders in cities around the United States. Norris highlights a few features of the Kelly story to support his contention. He worked as a furniture upholsterer, a job that requires strong handiness with a large knife. His escape from Broadmoor before the first of the five canonical murders and eventual escape to America after the last meant Kelly was in or around London at the right time. He also claimed to have resided in the United States and left behind a journal that spoke of his strong disapproval of the immorality of prostitutes and of his having been on the "warpath" during his time as a fugitive. Norris further argues Kelly was in New York at the time of a Ripper-like murder of a prostitute named Carrie Brown as well as in a number of cities while each experienced, according to Norris, one or two brutal murders of prostitutes while Kelly was there. Norris reported Kelly's Broadmoor Asylum file from before his escape and his eventual return has never been opened since 1927 until Norris was given special permission for access to it, and that the file is the perfect profile match for Jack the Ripper.
How Did James Kelly Kill His Wife
In 1991 I purchased the documents where I got the story of James Kelly killing his wife in a brutal matter as described instead of just cutting her throat as is widely reported as being the story. Supposedly the documents I purchased at a London Street Market were the property of a police officer during the time of Jack the Ripper. It was told to me that the journal I purchased was the policeman's private notes about the Ripper murders.
It is a well known fact that at the time of the murder of his wife that murders were often cleaned up as far as to details to keep the more brutal details out of the London Press. It is said that this was done on orders of the Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold. It is a historical fact that the message written on a alley wall was quickly washed away on Arnold's orders and we will never truly know what that message said. Why was it washed away so quickly? What did it reveal? What did Arnold cover up by having the message quickly washed away?
The picture above of James Kelly and wife was in the papers but I do not know if the woman in the photo was the wife he killed. In the papers I purchased written on the back of that photo it said , " James Kelly and Wife ".
Jack the Ripper in America?
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RHk5fP6iA9w/S_LaAl-rYDI/AAAAAAAAAbY/ODAhQAETVbs/s320/Ripper.png)
"Jack the Ripper in America"
Discovery Channel documentaries are a mixed bag. Their quality science programs, like the "Life" series currently running, are informative and entertaining, but Discovery also presents the supernatural, in shows like "Ghost Lab," with no distinction between fact and fantasy. So it was with hope and trepidation that I sat down to watch "Jack the Ripper in America." It was not their finest hour.
Amid the obligatory swirling fog and Victorian trappings, the show is hosted by Ed Norris, a former cold case detective (the truth, but not the whole truth.) He is here to bring modern forensic methods to investigate an 1891, New York murder that was rumored to be the work of London's Jack the Ripper. Norris pulls the police file on the case of Carrie Brown, a 58 year old prostitute, nicknamed "Old Shakespeare," who was murdered and mutilated on April 24, 1891. The murder bore at least a superficial resemblance to the London cases; all of the Ripper's victims were prostitutes, and as in this case, the bodies were severely mutilated after death. The detective tells us that a serial killer's modus operandi is as distinctive as a signature and goes to London to see if he can find the New York killer's hand in the Ripper's work.
"Jack the Ripper" was the name given to the unknown perpetrator of a series of heinous murders in the Whitechapel area of London's East End in the period between August 31 and November 9 in 1888. The killer was never found and over the years more than a hundred suspects have emerged including such notables as Oscar Wilde, Louis Carol, and Queen Victoria's grandson Prince Albert Victor. Several of the more likely suspects were known to have been to the United States. Norris considers three: George Chapman, aka Severin Antoniovich Klosowski — a prime suspect among Ripperoligists (yes, that's what they call themselves)— moved to Jersey City, New Jersey in 1891; Francis Tumblety, arrested in 1888 on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders, took a steamer to New York City while out on bail; and James Kelly who escaped from Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum just before the murders and was known to be in America after them. (Also listed but not mentioned was Dr. Neil Cream, who poisoned a man in America and several women in England.)
Though James Kelly has never been considered a major suspect by most Ripperologists, Norris singles him out as the one who best fits the 1888 profile complied by police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond. He is also impressed that Kelly worked as an upholsterer, giving him access to large sharp knives. And, most importantly, he reads a copy of Kelly's 1927 confession letter in which Kelly describes his problems dealing with society, primarily due to "all kinds of skank." Kelly says, "I have been on the warpath since I left Broadmoor" but does not confess to any specific crimes. The letter also lists the itinerary of American cities that Kelly visited.
The documentary claims that Norris is the first detective to read the confession letter, stored in the National Archives. This is highly unlikely, since there have always been detectives, both public and private, among the Ripperologists, and they are remarkably thorough. In fact, others have read the confession (presumably detectives among them) and given it little credence. Here is a link to a timeline of Kelly's life, including information from the confession: James Kelly.
The confession says that Kelly took a steamer named the Zaandam from Rotterdam to New York. Norris is able to verify that the Zaandam arrived in New York on October 7, 1890, six months before the Carrie Brown killing. Unfortunately there is no passenger list. Norris then traces his path through the cities of America and searching newspaper files, finds a Ripper-like murder in each one. He finds twelve murders in five states. To Norris, Jack the Ripper is an American killer who got his early training in England.
Forensic Evidence
Norris now attempts to analyze what he can of the 120 year old forensic evidence of the Whitechapel murders. He has graphologist Sheila Kurtz analyze the "From Hell" letter – a letter universally believed to have been written by Jack the Ripper. It was received by the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on October 16, 1888, in a box that also contained half a human kidney. Kurtz examines the slant and shape of the letters and decides the writer is a disturbed individual. Not so dramatic a conclusion you read the sentence she analyzed,
"I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise."
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-78IwT8ZxLZQ/UcTUQFYzr1I/AAAAAAAABuQ/MSSNHGYciek/s1600/51PZGGSPA2L__SL160_.jpg)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3uqeQUsF41Y/UcTVSBwEWlI/AAAAAAAABus/ej8xSq66gwQ/s320/FromHellLetter.jpg)
Forensic artist Steve Mancusi takes a 1927 photograph of James Kelly at age 67 and "de-ages" it on a computer to see how Kelly would have looked in 1888. They compare this image to a drawing made from 1888 witness descriptions of Jack the Ripper (presumably drawn by a different forensic artist). Since the descriptions include a big mustache and a floppy hat, Mancusi adds a big mustache and a floppy hat to his de-aged picture and proves that any two imaginary portraits will look similar if you add a big mustache and a floppy hat.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--i5y_h_WodI/UcTVX-mIVDI/AAAAAAAABu0/ISZOAsK00FM/s1600/picture-1.png)
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For his climax, Ed Norris looks again at the photographs of Carrie Brown's corpse. He points out that two large slashes on the body form an "X" (or a cross or a "t" or two random slashes, depending on your perspective.) The "X" he says is the Roman numeral ten, because this is the Ripper's tenth victim. Where does he get ten victims? They are the five accepted victims— known by Ripperologsts as the canonical victims; Kelly's wife Sarah; three of the alleged, or non-canonical victims murdered before August 31, 1888; and "Old Shakespeare."
There are a number of problems with this theory. First, there are actually twelve non-canonical victims besides Carrie Brown, four of which were killed before August 31. Why arbitrarily choose three? If even one of the remaining non-canonicals was killed by the Ripper, or if one of the chosen three were not, then the theory fails. Carrie Brown is the only victim marked by a number and, though Norris has has told us that a serial killer's MO is like his signature, he concludes that this singularity proves, without a doubt that James Kelly was Jack the Ripper.
Murder by Gaslight's Verdict
Ed Norris is ecstatic. He has not only solved world's greatest cold case, but the murder of Carrie Brown, and a dozen more American murders. Murder by Gaslight is skeptical, though. There is a bit of the ugly American in Ed Norris and his cockiness is not justified by the quality of his work. The forensic evidence is laughable and can be completely dismissed. The circumstantial evidence is not much better. Norris latches on to facts and suppositions he likes while ignoring those that lead most Ripperologists to regard James Kelly as a dark horse. These logical lapses and leaps of faith may be recognizable as standard police procedure, but they are hardly good forensic science. For true crime on the Discovery Channel, stick to Aphrodite Jones.
So, was Jack the Ripper in America? Possibly. Did James Kelly murder nine women in London and thirteen more in the USA? Not bloody likely.
For a more objective look at the murder of Carrie Brown click here: Carrie Brown: Jack the Ripper in America Part 2.
For a concise summary of the Whitechapel murders with a well-reasoned solution read the "Jack the Ripper" section of The Cases That Haunt Us by FBI profiler, John Douglas.
For detailed Ripperology on the internet go to Casebook: Jack the Ripper
http://www.murderbygaslight.com/2010/04/jack-ripper-in-america.html
Jack the Ripper 'may have killed abroad'
Murderer possibly a sailor rather than a surgeon, says new book
Mark Honigsbaum
Monday 2 May 2005 19.02 EDT Last modified on Monday 8 September 2014 06.02 EDT
For all the blood spilt by Jack the Ripper, and all the ink expended since by authors claiming to know his identity, ripperologists generally agree that with the killing of the prostitute Mary Kelly in Whitechapel on November 8 1888, his frenzied murder spree came to an abrupt end.
After that "Jack" - if that was indeed his name - disappeared into the London fog, never to be seen again.
But what if the murders continued in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua? And what if, after a break of eight months, there was a further Whitechapel killing which, as in the Kelly case, ended with a prostitute's throat being cut and her body mutilated, followed, three months later, by a further killing in Germany?
That is the intriguing theory raised in a new book on the Whitechapel murders by Trevor Marriott, a former Bedfordshire police detective. Using modern police procedural techniques, Marriott has spent two years poring over the Ripper killings, re-examining the evidence given by police doctors and pathologists at the time.
His conclusions, published this week in Jack the Ripper: the 21st Century Investigation, challenge the conventional wisdom that the murderer was a skilled surgeon. Moreover, Marriott says the location and timing of the killings - not far from London docks with gaps of several weeks in between - suggest the killer may have been a merchant seaman.
Marriott thinks he may have identified the ship he arrived on - the Sylph, a 600-tonne cargo vessel which arrived in Britain from Barbados in July 1888, before the killing of the Ripper's first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, and which returned to the Caribbean on November 22, two weeks after the Kelly slaying, from where the same killer could have committed the Nicaraguan murder spree.
"The detectives at the time took a very blinkered approach,' says Marriott. "They were convinced the killer was someone who lived or worked in the Whitechapel area. They completely overlooked the fact that there was a pattern emerging which pointed to the possibility the killer may have been a sailor who only occasionally visited Whitechapel, hence the gaps between the murders."
Marriott is not the first person to claim to have uncovered sensational evidence about Whitechapel's most notorious unsolved murders. Hardly a month goes by without some revelation - the latest being the Swansea author Tony Williams's claim that the Ripper was his great-great uncle, Sir John Williams, Queen Victoria's obstetrician and a celebrated book collector who founded the National Library of Wales.
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Other recent suspects include James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton broker who supposedly confessed to the killings in diaries which surfaced in the early 90s, and Francis Tumblety, an American doctor who before coming to England kept a collection of female body parts at his home in New York. Then there was American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell's claim two years ago that she had discovered DNA evidence tying the Victorian artist Walter Sickert to the Ripper letters. Like all similar claims to have "solved" the murders, Cornwell's thesis subsequently wilted under scrutiny.
In his book, Marriott makes no such claims. Instead, he revisits the crime scenes and the testimony of contemporary witnesses. One of this most startling conclusions is that the Ripper need not have been a skilled surgeon - a long-held assumption based on the fact that in the case of the Ripper's second victim, Annie Chapman, both her **** and part of her bladder were removed, and that in the case of Kelly her kidney was missing.
But Marriott points out that those were the only two cases in which vital organs were expertly cut out and that they could have been removed at the mortuary before the police surgeon arrived to perform the postmortem, possibly by traders in body parts. He also says there has never been an adequate explanation for why the killings suddenly stopped. Most experts assume the murderer was jailed for other crimes or died. But if Marriott's theory is right, and Jack the Ripper was a crewman on the Sylph, then he may have been responsible for killings in Managua in January 1889 described in a report in the Times as "six of the most atrocious murders ever committed within the limits of this city".
According to the Times report, two of the victims were "butchered out of all recognition" with their faces "horribly slashed". Both the mutilation of prostitutes' bodies and face slashing were a hallmark of the Whitechapel murders and a feature which led detectives to believe the Ripper was a serial sex attacker. Marriott also argues that the Ripper may have been responsible for a later murder of a Whitechapel prostitute not included in the usual five canonical Ripper slayings.
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Alice McKenzie was found mutilated in Castle Alley, north of Whitechapel Road, on July 17 1889. Like the other Ripper victims there were signs that she had been throttled before having her throat slit and her body mutilated. One of the police pathologists who conducted the postmortem on McKenzie concluded she should be counted as the sixth Ripper victim - a verdict with which the divisional surgeon disagreed at the time.
If Marriott is right and the Ripper was a merchant seaman it might also explain that the Washington Star, bearing the dateline, Hamburg, 18 October 1889, reported the discovery of "the mutilated body" of a woman in Flensburg, a seaport with frequent sailings to London.
The report was headlined, Jack the Ripper: has he left England to continue his crimes in Germany?
The unusual suspects
About 140 people have been fingered for the Ripper's crimes over the years, including:
· George Chapman A Polish immigrant arrested in 1902 for poisoning several women, including his wife. Chapman's arrival in England coincided with the start of the Whitechapel murders and the killings ceased when he went to America.
· Prince Albert Victor According to one theory, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's grandson, committed the murders after being driven mad by syphilis. According to another, the murders were committed with the aid of Victoria's physician, Sir William Gull, as part of a cover-up to protect the royal family from Albert's affair with a Catholic commoner whose nanny was Mary Kelly.
· Walter Sickert German-born painter who supposedly trawled the East End for prostitutes to model for him. One of his paintings, The Camden Town Murder, is said to bear a striking resemblance to the Mary Kelly murder scene.
· James Maybrick Liverpool cotton merchant who frequented brothels and was addicted to arsenic and strychnine. In the early 1990s Michael Barrett, a former Liverpool scrap merchant, "discovered" a diary in which Maybrick confessed to the Whitechapel murders. Barrett later confessed to forging the diaries.
· Francis Tumblety An American quack doctor who was in London at the time of the murders. Named as a suspect in 1913 by former special branch chief JG Littlechild, Tumblety was a sadist and homosexual who kept female body parts in a cabinet in his home.
· Sir John Williams Queen Victoria's former obstetrician and founder of the National Library of Wales, Williams is the latest Ripper suspect. According to his great-great nephew, Swansea author Tony Williams, he was obsessed with female anatomy and infertility because of his wife's failure to conceive. He also worked at the Whitechapel workhouse infirmary, where he treated Mary Ann Nichols and three other Ripper victims.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/03/books.ukcrime
As opposed to most of the well intentioned opinions posted, I've been a detective half my life and actually worked over 300 serial sex cases in the cold case unit. I started to watch this show with skepticism.... "yeah right, JTR came here"... but once into it I recognized immediately how Kelly fit the offender typology. Norris was a bit sensational for TV, (I didn't like the composite recreation... they are notoriously inaccurate) and he left me with a few unanswered questions, but he was dead on with everything else. I was amazed that so many records still existed. Our department cant keep stuff in a box for ten years, much less 125!
I was so entranced, (Im late to the Ripper party) I went out and bought Tully's book. I've now looked at the other suspects, and they don't even come close to James Kelly as a viable suspect.
There is so much to the Ripper story that is facinating. Looking at the public reaction, the political forces that kicked into play, the police reaction both good and bad, the pitiful lives that the victim's had etc. Nothing has changed in human behavior.
Even if he were not the Ripper, the story of Kelly is gripping in itself.
I think Murder by Gaslamp was a bit harsh in their evaluation. As for Norris' "attitude"? He cracked me up... Puhlese, its TV!
I agree with all of you in some way. Yes we all thought Norris was a bit to over the top, cocky, yada yada... I had never thought of Kelly as top suspect but after the show i had to reconsider. Why. Forget the USA connection, or the number of victims, and of course the stupid de-aging pic. Kelly fits in numerous ways.
-The expert use of a blade. (yes anyone can cut, but to have strength combined with the precision to cut fast and accurate.)
-A stesser. His disease combined with the marital problems. For someone with a known past of being "...obviously not right in the head." according to his boss, these stressers resulted in the used of a knife on his wife instead of a piece of furniture. Possibly feeling a sense of relief, his need to fulfill that feeling could consume his already warped brain.
-Mix of alcohol, his state-of-mind and need to lash out at those who "wronged him". Being called a schizophrenic in the late 1800's England doesn't mean he would fit that criteria now. What ever his mental state was, without any medication that we use today he was knowledgeable enough to make the key to escape and survive without being caught.
-The kidney - Anyone who enjoyed that for dinner would have spent time at a butchers watching them work. Without medical knowledge it wouldn't take much to know what the kidney looks like and where in the human body it is found.
-The fact that he left. Whether or not you believe the stories of his possible killings in the USA. He did leave England. What other reasons would there be for a raging lunatic who has killed at will, stop cold turkey? Death (maybe), Being caught (obviously not) or simply leaving town. Why leave, only he knows.
-His memoirs. Correct me if i'm wrong. Aren't many serial criminals wanting to be known for there work. They don't want to be caught necessarily but they crave having the acknowledgment of there work. He didn't come out and admit to it, but he definitely hints towards something evil. Even if he, or any other inmate did admit to it the "experts" would have problems believing someone who is insane, its just not hard evidence. So take his writings as you may.
I don't know much about some of the other suspects but it seems to me that many of them, whether criminals or not, don't have as many similar traits. Someone who strangles or beats a person to death will most likely not start cutting and disemboweling a human. As well, someone who does that with such ferocity is not going to stop on there own, and many of the suspects lived long lives, free of any other incident. It might not be Kelly, but I think he fits this serial killers profile much more than most of the others do.
Carrie Brown (murder victim)
Carrie Brown (died April 24, 1891) was a New York prostitute who was murdered and mutilated in a lodging house. She is occasionally mentioned as an alleged victim of Jack the Ripper. Although known to use numerous aliases, a common practice in her occupation, she supposedly won her nickname of Shakespeare for her habit of quoting William Shakespeare during drinking games. She has often been erroneously referred to as Old Shakespeare in later news articles and books.
The badly mutilated body of Carrie Brown, a longtime Bowery prostitute, was found in a room in a squalid lodging house known as the East River Hotel on April 24, 1891. Newspapers were quick to report the murder as proof of the alleged arrival in America of Jack the Ripper, whose murders of prostitutes in London's Whitechapel district were well known during the time. News of the possibility that Jack the Ripper had arrived in New York posed a challenge to NYPD Chief Inspector Thomas Byrnes who had criticized Scotland Yard for its inability to capture Jack the Ripper.
As the murder of the middle-aged prostitute was soon becoming one of the most publicized in the city's history, pressure was on Byrnes to solve the murder as quickly as possible and soon after, an Algerian named Ameer Ben Ali (who also went by "Frenchy" or "Frenchy No. 1") was arrested for the murder. However, evidence against Ben Ali was largely circumstantial and based primarily on the claim that unidentified bloodstains had been found leading from the room where Brown was killed into the room he was staying in. Reporters who had been at the scene of the crime said that no such bloodstains were actually there. Due to testimony from doctors who made claims that could not be supported by medical tests at the time, Ben Ali was tried and convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, despite his claims of innocence.
However, a group of reformers pointed out instances of police misconduct in the investigation and evidence to support Ben Ali's innocence. The group was able to prove the NYPD had made no attempt to find the missing key to the locked room or the unidentified man who witnesses claimed she had last been seen with the night before.
Years later it was claimed that a man in a New Jersey farm had found the missing key to Room 31 and a bloody shirt in a bureau drawer of a room he had rented out to a man who had disappeared shortly after the murder. Faced with this testimony, coupled with the longstanding belief of many for years that Ben Ali had been set up and the fact that Byrnes had been removed from office for corruption, Ben Ali was released after serving 11 years and left for his native Algeria shortly afterwards.
Although no conclusive evidence proved that Jack the Ripper was responsible, the case remained unsolved nonetheless. If the murder really was committed by Jack the Ripper, the culprit could be George Chapman, a Ripper suspect who definitely did move from London to the US at roughly this time, [1] although recent research suggests that he only moved to the US after this murder. [2]
Broadmoor files could unmask Jack the Ripper
For more than a century, the identity of Jack the Ripper has eluded detectives and historians.
By Wendy Moore and Ben Leach
8:18PM GMT 08 Nov 2008
Now, new files released from Broadmoor high security hospital will provide tantalising new evidence that could finally help to solve Britain's most notorious unsolved murder case.
Among the patients whose files are to be disclosed, as the psychiatric hospital opens its archives to public view for the first time, is Thomas Hayne Cutbush, who was identified at the time as a leading suspect in the killing and mutilation of at least 11 women in the East End of London between 1888 and 1891.
Cutbush, who is described by one author writing a book about the Ripper murders as the "number one suspect", was sent to Lambeth Infirmary in 1891 suffering delusions thought to have been caused by syphilis. But he immediately escaped and stabbed one woman then attempted to stab a second.
He was pronounced insane and committed to Broadmoor in 1891 where he remained until his death in 1903. From the day he was detained, the Ripper murders ceased.
The Broadmoor file on Cutbush is understood to contain about 20 documents which provide fresh clues which could link him further to the killings.
They include admission details, medical notes on his behaviour, documents relating to his death and a letter from the hospital medical superintendent to Cutbush's mother.
They are also understood to include detailed descriptions of Cutbush which match eyewitness accounts of Jack the Ripper. In one document, he is described as having "brilliant blue eyes" and a limp, fitting a description provided by a witness who had seen the murderer.
The file is also understood to include letters written by Broadmoor staff detailing Cutbush's rants while at the hospital. He was said to have repeatedly threatened to "rip" them open with a knife.
Cutbush first came under suspicion in 1894 when a newspaper claimed to know the identity of the Ripper. Although it did not name the suspect, the details plainly pointed to Cutbush, a nephew of a Scotland Yard superintendent who killed himself two years later.
The newspaper article claimed that Cutbush's defence team had thought that he was Jack the Ripper, and had evidence of this. But it was never shown to the court because Cutbush was sectioned.
David Bullock, who is writing a book about the Ripper killings called The Man Who Would Be Jack, said the files would shed "invaluable light" on Cutbush's role in the killings.
"Cutbush really is the number one suspect. He was a known psychopath and his family actually suspected him of having something to do with the killings because of his strange behaviour.
"He was nocturnal, would spend the day studying medical books and would often spend the night walking the streets of London and would come home covered in mud and blood. There is all sorts of evidence that point to him as the killer but I have never seen any evidence that rules him out.
"There is even a conspiracy theory for why he was never put forward as a suspect by the police. Imagine the uproar if the public had found out that he was a suspect, and that his uncle was a senior member of the Met."
Experts researching the Ripper case have previously approached the Broadmoor authorities seeking permission to view the Cutbush files, but have been turned away.
One of them, Richard Jones, author of Jack the Ripper: The Casebook, said Cutbush was "hugely important" to the way the police investigation unfolded.
Cutbush was interviewed by detectives about the Ripper murders after his arrest for the stabbing incidents but ruled out of the frame, because police were not able to place him in the Whitechapel area at the time the crimes occurred, said Jones.
But it was in publicly dismissing claims that Cutbush was the killer that Scotland Yard named three other key suspects and identified five of the murders as being definitely by the same hand, he explained.
Broadmoor's unique collection of historical records, which dates back to the hospital's opening in 1863, will provide a rich hunting ground for historians, family history enthusiasts and criminologists alike when it opens to the public on November 18.
Access to the records, including around 1,500 individual patient files and many photographs, has previously only been granted to a handful of researchers, largely due to the logistical problems inherent in visiting the high security hospital in Berkshire.
The vast majority of the archives, which take up an estimated 10.5 cubic metres, have therefore never been viewed by the outside world.
The decision to open them to the public follows requests from the public under Freedom of Information legislation, which took effect in 2005. Only records more than 100 years old will be available to view at their new permanent home at Berkshire Record Office, in Reading. Information on living patients, who include Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, remains confidential.
Also among the newly-released files will be records of other patients who would have committed violent crimes around the time of the Ripper murders.
Records on another Ripper suspect, James Kelly, who was committed to Broadmoor after murdering his wife in 1883 but escaped in 1888, could become available by request. Kelly remained at large until 1927 when he returned voluntarily to Broadmoor, where he died two years later.
The Broadmoor archives were originally transferred to Berkshire Record Office in 2006 but have taken two years to sort and catalogue with funding from the Wellcome Trust. As well as containing remarkable new information on infamous Victorian killers, they provide fascinating insights into the medical care, welfare and social activities – often surprisingly rich and liberal - of numerous forgotten individuals incarcerated in Britain's first criminal asylum.
They can be viewed by appointment with the record office. An exhibition, 'The Secret World of Victorian Broadmoor', featuring stories from the archives, opened yesterday [November 8] at Reading Museum.
www.berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk
(https://the44diaries.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/broadmooroldgate.jpg?w=200&h=112)
Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum
44-D's True Crime: Discovery Channel's Jack the Ripper in America
TrueCrime-490X136
Reviewed by Audiegrl
The greatest serial killer in history has never been named. But what if we are looking in the wrong place?
In 1888, a deranged killer stalked his prey on the streets of east London at night. After 121 years since the murder and mutilation of at least five prostitutes, the case remains unsolved and the true identity of Jack the Ripper has never been known. The world's greatest criminal investigators have focused on searching for answers in London. However, in the 1890s a series of horrific murders took place across the United States in New York, San Francisco, Galveston and Atlanta, that mirrored the attacks in attacks in the UK. In this one hour special, Discovery Channel's viewers will witness the new evidence, science and analytical techniques being used to reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper.
NYPD Cold Case Detective Ed Norris
The Discovery Channel's documentary, Jack the Ripper in America focuses on Detective Ed Norris, former head of the NYPD Cold Case Unit, who investigates and uncovers new evidence not seen since the time of the murders. In trying to solve the 118 year old murder of New York prostitute Carrie Brown, he begins to note the similarities between her murder and the famous Whitechapel murders in London. Brown's murderer had a three-stage MO (strangled, penetrating wound, pulled apart) Because of the unusual and gruesome nature of the crime, the press of the day, immediately began asking the question, "Is Jack the Ripper in New York". Norris sees the same unusual 'signature' in both the London and New York killers. They both kill prostitutes by strangling, cutting the throat, and eviscerating the body. For Norris this indicates that he might be looking at the same killer.
Carrie Brown aka Old Shakespeare
The key in all cold cases is finding the clues missed by the original investigators. Although, Brown was murdered on April 23, 1891, Norris decides to let a new set of eyes look at the evidence. Enter Dr. Jonathan Hayes, the Manhattan Senior Medical Examiner. Dr. Hayes combs through the autopsy report of Carry Brown. He reaches some interesting conclusions, including a special marking on the body, which I won't reveal here, you'll have to watch the show. On August 7th, 1891, another unidentified prostitute is murdered with the same MO as Brown, and pulled from the East river. Visiting the New York Municipal Archives, Norris finds that the old newspapers of that time, reveal another shocking detail. The killer actually wrote to the NYPD, before the murder of Carry Brown. His letter is recreated below:
Capt. Ryan,
You think that "Jack the Ripper" is in England, but he is not, I am right here and I expect to kill somebody by Thursday next, and so get ready for me with your pistols, but I have a knife that has done more than your pistols. Next thing you will hear of some woman dead.
Detective Norris wants to get into Jack's head, and walk in his foot steps. He feels that he was an organized killer that took advantage of the conditions of the time: no ambient street lighting, a black curtain of smoke over the city caused by burning low quality coal, and counting on his victims to naturally take him to the dark, secluded places used in the prostitution trade. Norris takes viewers through a summary of the Ripper murders by using re-enactments and walking through the crime scenes. Next, Norris consults London historian Richard Jones, owner of Ripper Walking Tours and author of Uncovering Jack the Ripper's London. Jones has spent more than two decades investigating the Whitechapel murders. He asks Jones if any of the serious Ripper suspects had ever traveled to the United States after the death of Mary Kelly. Jones provided him with three names: Severin Klosowski, Francis Tumblety, and James Kelly.
Known as the From Hell or Lusk Letter
Norris then consults with Sheila Kurtz, a Forensic Hand Writing Analyst, Master Graphologist and President of Graphology Consulting Group. Kurtz had successfully worked on the Son of Sam case among many others. After reviewing samples of the Ripper's hand writing, Kurtz identified the writer as a very disturbed individual, who she said, "I wouldn't want to be in his company". For additional details on her analysis please visit her blog. The graphic to the left shows the letter was purportedly written in 1888 by Jack the Ripper.
Dr Thomas Bond
Dr. Thomas Bond
Norris then paid a visit to Britain's National Archives. The archives hold thousands of original documents in the Ripper case. There, Norris discovers a document not previously used in the investigation. A profile of the killer. Sir Robert Anderson, the head of the police Criminal Investigation Departments, asked Dr Thomas Bond, Britain's top police surgeon in 1888 to examine material connected with the Whitechapel murder investigation. Bond wrote a 19th-century version of a modern day unsub profile, based on personally examining the body of Mary Kelly and reading the autopsy reports on the first four victims. In the report, he describes in detail the type of person they should be investigating. Dr. Bond was sure that all five women had been killed by the same hand, because the throats of all victims had been cut in a similar way and the victims were presumably lying down when murdered. (for additional details on Dr. Bond's profile, click here to read the report) Norris ultimately uses this 121 year old profile to narrow the three suspects down to one name. James Kelly. In the world of police parlance, Norris says that "Kelly looks good".
Jack the Ripper victims: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catharine Eddowes, Mary Kelly
In 1883, James Kelly only one month married, argues with his wife and accuses her of being unfaithful. In a psychotic rage, he uses the methods of strangulation and throat slashing to kill her. Kelly is caught, convicted and sentenced to die by hanging. Then his employer comes forward and explains that he believes Kelly is mentally disturbed. Kelly was then examined by a alienist and committed to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Kelly's psychiatric report has been sealed for over 125 years, until Norris examines it.
Broadmoor Old Gate
In 1863, Broadmoor was the first custom-built asylum to house criminal lunatics. In Broadmoor, Kelly is a outwardly a model prisoner, but at the same time he is secretly planning his escape. Working in the asylum's carpentry shop, he cunningly uses a piece of medal he carved into a key to aid his escape. In January of 1888, Kelly escaped and just disappeared. At that time a series of stabbings and slashing attacks of women start in London. Three victims: Annie Millwood, (February 25, 1888, stabbed repeatedly, but survived), Ada Wilson, (March 28, 1888, slashed in the throat, but survived), and Martha Tabram, (August 7, 1888, stabbed 23 times, did not survive). Norris feels these are the early attempts of Jack the Ripper, who like many serial killers, escalates and only gets more brutal over time. After these three attacks, the first London Ripper murder occurs. Surprisingly, Kelly was once considered a suspect by London police, but after only minimal checking at his old residence, they simply gave up, and were never able to find him. With the huge amount of pressure they were under, the case against Kelly went cold…
Astonishingly, in 1927…forty years later, a much older Kelly voluntarily returns to the insane asylum and began to chronicle his travels. A typed copy of Kelly's confession letter survives in the National Archives, and Norris is the first detective to read it. In the letter, Kelly describes having "problems dealing with society", and being "overtaken with feelings of envy, jealousy, and malice". Kelly states, "the thing has been hard because of all kinds of 'skank'" (a term he uses to refers to women of low moral character) and "I've been on the warpath since I left Broadmoor Asylum." Also in his letter, he admits to traveling to London after his escape, and more interestingly he tells of traveling to the United States and arriving in New York conveniently before the Carrie Brown murder. He was by profession, a trained upholsterer, and would have known quiet a bit about knives and how to use them effectively for the purpose of murder. Kelly also mentioned traveling to many cities in the US before returning to England and admitted that he came to the US many times over a period of 40 years.
USS Zaandam
First Norris wanted to check to make sure that Kelly's confession matched up with actual travel records of the day. In Britain's National Maritime Museum, they kept track of every ship that came to the United States. Kelly said he traveled to America aboard an Anglo-German steamer named the Zaandam that sailed from Rotterdam to New York. At the museum, Norris not only confirmed the ship existed, but that it sailed from Rotterdam to New York on October 7, 1890—two years after the last Ripper murder in London (11/88) and months before the April 23, 1891 murder of Carrie Brown in New York. You might be thinking, "How does a 'wanted man' get into the United States without detection?" Professor Dan Citrum is an expert in 19th-century immigration and explains how easily it could have been done. Remember this was before Ellis Island was established, so getting in and out of the country was very easy. No drivers licenses, no passports, and no photo id whatsoever. Many people back then, came to this country to start over, and remake themselves and get lost in the huge crowds of New York city. In his confession, Kelly admits to changing his name once his ship arrives to 'John Miller', one of the most common names both then and now. Kelly used his new name like a disguise to blend in and escape police scrutiny.
Knowing from experience that many serial killers travel extensively, to avoid detection, Detective Norris plots the cities Kelly claims to have visited against the murders written about in the newspapers. He begins to see similarities in Ripper-like murders committed in other cities: New York NY, Trenton, NJ, Galveston, TX, New Orleans, LA, Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore, MD, Jackson, CA, San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO. Each of these murders occurred during the time that Kelly, thorough his confession letter, said he was in that city. Even the city newspapers asked the same question "Is this the work of Jack the Ripper" and "Is this the fiend of Whitechapel?" and "Has Jack the Ripper Invaded Texas at Last". Detective Norris identified twelve murders across five states in just four years…and remember, Kelly was gone for forty years…you can do the math. To read an amazing collection of news reports, please visit Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Using a asylum photo of Kelly provided by the National Archives, he was able to see what Kelly looked like at age 67. Norris then contacted Steve Mancusi, a NYPD senior forensic artist who has helped solve the most difficult cases for the last 30 years. He wanted Mancusi to use forensic imaging technology normally used for age-progression in missing child cases, but with this case, he wanted him to reverse the effects of aging, to show what Kelly would have looked like in his 30's. The striking illustration below on the right is based on their findings.
Both illustrations of Jack the Ripper
The left composite, was drawn based on 118 year old eye-witness accounts of Jack the Ripper in London. They examined different witness statements and used modern day forensics to come up with a portrait of the killer, even indicating what type of hat he wore.
The drawing on the right, is the result of Mancusi shaving 40 years off of James Kelly's photo at age 67. As you can see, once they added the type of hat mentioned by eye witnesses, the drawings are a very close match.
In the end, there is no doubt in Norris' mind that he has found Jack the Ripper. We may never know. John Kelly died of natural causes in 1929 inside Broadmoor Asylum and took his secrets to his grave. In my opinion, Jack the Ripper in America was very well done and is a must-see for all forensic buffs and amateur Ripperologists. I'm interested in seeing further research, analysis and discussion of Norris' theory. Regarding any factual errors in this post, I apologize in advance, and encourage everyone to let me know what needs to be corrected.
On a lighter note, anybody remember the movie "Time After Time" starring Malcolm McDowell, John Warner and Mary Steenburgen? McDowell played H.G. Wells, who uses his time machine to chase his friend, Warner (aka Jack the Ripper) through the streets of modern day (1979) San Francisco. After watching Norris' documentary, maybe Hollywood's silly (but entertaining) version of the Ripper story had a sliver of truth to it after all. ;-)
The Secret of Prisoner 1167: Was This Man Jack the Ripper? by James Tully
Hat tip and special thanks to Roy Corduroy for his suggestion to add this book to this post. Casebook: Jack the Ripper gives this book a three-starred review:
A triumphant achievement on the part of Jim Tully, well-researched and written. James Kelly is his suspect, a lunatic upholsterer and wife-murderer who is actually in the Guinness book of world records for his escape from Broadmoor asylum. Tully weaves a fascinating story, regardless of your feelings on Kelly as a suspect. Recommended."
Related Articles and Sites
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
Maps of Whitechapel, 1888-1894
Ripperological Preservation Society
Jack the Ripper Tours
Serial Killer Database – Jack the Ripper
The Whitechapel Society
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Tagged as 1167, Ada, after, america, annie, asylum, Britain, Broadmoor, brown, by, Carrie, case, Channel, chapel, cold, criminal, detective, discovery, dr., ed, from, hayes, hell, investigates, investigation, Jack, jack ripper, jack the ripper, jack the ripper casebook, jack the ripper in America, jack the ripper letters, jack the ripper photos, Jack the Ripper: The Casebook, jonathan, jones, Kelly, killers, kurtz, letter, letters, london, lunatics, lusk, lusk letter, mancusi, Martha, Mary, Millwood, murders, norris, NYPD, old, photographs, photos, pictures, pictures of jack the ripper's victims, prisoner, prostitutes, Richard, Richard Jones, ripper, ripperologist, ripperology, secret, serial, Shakespeare, Sheila, society, steve, suspect, Tabram, the, this, time, uk, underworld, unit, victim, victims, victorian, was, white, wilson, women, world
55 responses to "44-D's True Crime: Discovery Channel's Jack the Ripper in America"
JPGARC
Nice job, very well done!
About a week earlier MysteryQuest did a show on Jack the Ripper where they examined three possible suspects; none of which was James Kelly. In that examination, "they" concluded that the Ripper was in fact Francis Tumblety.
What a great debate that would make to get them both together to discuss all their facts and findings in one show.
audiegrl
Thank you JP, my husband thought I was crazy. ;-) I kept pausing the show, and running to my computer to make notes. LOL
It was very interesting, and hopefully will foster more investigation and debate. There are so many theories out there, I hope one day someone will finally solve it.
My only problem with the show was that it was too short. They could have used the second hour dedicated to examining the travels of Kelly and trying to find more American cases that could be tied to him. That would have been a great addition. They only got to cover 12 deaths, in 5 states during 4 years. I kept thinking (if my math is correct), if he kept that pace up, it would be over a thousand deaths during his 40 years of trolling. That's pretty scary.
https://the44diaries.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/44-ds-true-crime-discovery-channels-jack-the-ripper-in-america/
JTR is something of a cottage industry in London, so I was thrilled to watch a re-run of "JTR in America" tonight. I didn't catch any mis-steps in his investigation, and his reasoning was sound and logical as he followed the leads, much more so than the theories that JTR was a member of the British royal family.
I too dismissed "Time After Time" as Hollywood's fantasy, but recently read somewhere that JTR was believed to be responsible for the same type of murders in Texas in the right timeframe, so why not San Francisco?
Ed Norris's investigation verified James Kelly was in both places, as well as every other American city where prostitutes were murdered in a simlar fashion. Far as I'm concerned, no doubt in my mind now that James Kelly was "Jack the Ripper".
(https://the44diaries.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/detective-ed-norris.png?w=200&h=108)
Visiting the New York Municipal Archives, Norris finds that the old newspapers of that time, reveal another shocking detail. The killer actually wrote to the NYPD, before the murder of Carry Brown. His letter is recreated below:
http://casebook.org/press_reports/
Mr James Kelly.. A Serious Jack the Ripper Candidate?
(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/yp4ecfb076.jpg)
Hello ATS,
The case of Jack the Ripper, which I'm sure we all know was a series of incredibly violent, brutal and gruesome murders primarily centered around Whitechapel in London during the late 1800's, has become to be known as the most famous unsolved murder case ever, yet at the same time It has also become by far the most researched murder case of all time. Solving it has been hailed the "holy grail" of detective work in fact...
Well, before I continue with this thread firstly let me state that I'm not looking to discuss and look at the many different suspects of the case, many sources out there cite in excess of 200 of them after all, instead in this thread I want to throw out a rather interesting theory, this is ATS after all, the theory being that the murderer of those 5 prostitutes, the official count reaching 5 but It's very possible there were many more victims at the hands of Jack the Ripper, was actually a relatively well known figure at the time.
The person who I'm throwing out there as Jack the Ripper for further debate and discussion was someone even the police hunted for as the original Ripper, as well as for a previous murder he committed in his life, this man going by the name of Mr James Kelly.
He was a well known figure, someone who was classified as "legally insane", and a proven violent man. Proven as in the months leading up to the Ripper murders he escaped from Broadmoor asylum, where he spent his time after being classified insane, or more specifically as a Paranoid Schizophrenia, which was where he was being held for the very brutal murder of his first wife Sarah Brider.
Kelly, who I believe is a prime suspect for the Ripper murders, can seemingly be placed in London around the time of the murders, as well as other murders in America much later on, and all with a, In my opinion, solid motive for committing such crimes in the first place. James Kelly is someone who seems to perfectly fit the profile of not just a killer.. but the Whitechapel murderer, commonly referred to as Jack the Ripper or the "leather apron."
It's certainly quite possible, maybe even probable that he was indeed the true culprit of these incredibly vicious and almost un-human murders and in this thread I'd like to take the time to show why exactly. I will discuss this theory in the best and most informative way that I feel I can a little bit later on in this thread. For now though I really do feel the need to explain, particularly for those who may not be familiar with this case, what it's all about exactly, why solving it is seen as "the holy grail of detective work" and quite simply put - why it has the gruesome reputation it has today, around 119 years later.
Before I even go onto doing this though, here is a fantastic past thread looking and giving a comprehensive overview (something my thread is not - instead a single theory) of the case of Jack the Ripper and his gruesome murders, this thread coming from one of my all time favourite members of ATS, TheMythLives, this being a thread he wrote in mid 2009: Jack The Ripper: The Case Reviewed.
A great thread there, unfortunately however It seems as though Kelly was not mentioned among the main suspects, this actually being one of the reasons why I felt the need to share this theory with starting a brand new thread in fact. One looking at just Kelly. And upon reading the thread from Myth... I can't help but notice how Kelly would have fit the perfect profile of the killer he went onto discuss and describe, there's even a perfect motive for the way in which he "ripped" up his victims which, I feel, connects Kelly to the case.
Once again though, I'm certainly looking to discuss all this a little bit later on in this thread as I look to discuss this theory of who the most famous killer perhaps in history may really have been in full, but for now here is my brief overview of the case, who it's victims were, when it all occurred and so on..
(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/ii4ed8d1bb.jpg)
Meeting his wife, Marriage and Eventual Murder...
It was late of this year that he was to meet Sarah Brider for the very first time, this being the woman who would later become his wife. Unfortunately though it was also around this time that Kelly's mental instability was worsening, even losing jobs because of it as his employers, such as John Hiron for example, described him as "he was obviously not right in the head" not forgetting Isaac H. Jones citing him as acting irrationality and experiencing mood swings as previously highlighted.
(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/ci4eda4d3b.jpg)
(I believe this is an image of a young James Kelly, our potential Jack the Ripper)
Anyway, even despite his personal problems at the time he still grew closer to Sarah, meeting her parents on occasions and even moving in with them:
December 1881 - A few weeks before Christmas he meets Sarah Brider and quickly becomes enamoured of her. Sarah takes him home to meet her family and the pair become an item. Sarah's parents think him a serious and religious young man with good prospects.
March 1882 - Kelly moves into the Brider's house at 21 Cottage Lane, just off the City Road between Shoreditch and Islington, as a lodger. He has to share a room with another man. He cuts down on his drinking and other activities and spends many evenings in the house with Sarah and her parents.
Christmas 1882 - Kelly and Sarah have become increasingly intimate over the year and, after much persistence on his part, she surrenders her virginity to him. The event is a disaster. Despite being sexually experienced, Kelly has only slept with low-class prostitutes and neither one has had any kind of sex education. He is not prepared for how different sex with a virgin will be and finds himself unable to penetrate. He is convinced that Sarah has some kind of deformity and she babbles a story of being interfered with by an uncle by way of explanation. Kelly's former erratic behaviour returns after this and he experiences stronger and stronger depressions and mood swings in the following months. He also returns to his former habits in the East End rather than pressing Sarah further.
February 1883 - Fearful that he will lose Sarah who is growing more distant, he proposes marriage to her. She delays but eventually accepts. However in the meantime Kelly finds he has a venereal disease and, fearful of doctors, resolves to treat it himself.
Due to his disease Kelly sought out treatment in secret, desperately avoiding to inform Sarah or her parents who eventually found out by finding syringes he was using for medication which he had stored away in secret. With being confronted by the whole family shortly afterwards he's said to have just erupted in a complete fit of rage, even going as far as accusing Sarah of being a prostitute, a serious insult in the mind of Kelly, and infecting him with the disease he was now suffering from.
This being potentially where James grew his severe hatred for prostitutes. Paranoid, he also accuses her and her family, who was pressuring him into setting a date for a wedding with Sarah, of being after nothing but his inheritance money.
The day after it was Sarah's birthday and so Kelly made attempts to make up for his actions the day before, however he is stood up by her after waiting to take her out after he returned from work that day, she once again ignores him later on after they meet at home around 9 o clock that evening. James once again falls into a state of rage at her and in doing so runs into the room where Sarah was and drags her out of it and into the kitchen. He then grabs a nearby kitchen knife and threatens to stab her if she refuses to tell him exactly where she had been, Kelly obviously paranoid once again:
Monday June 18th 1883 - Sarah's birthday. Filled with remorse at his outburst of the night before Kelly resolves to take her out on their return from work. Kelly waits for her but she does not return until 9 o'clock, over an hour later than usual. Ignoring Kelly she goes into the parlour and tells her mother she is unwell. Kelly runs into the parlour and drags Sarah into the kitchen screaming abuse at her. Then he pulls a carving knife from a kitchen drawer and threatens to stab her unless she tells him where she has been. She claims to have gone to get some quinine to help him with his problems. Kelly calms down instantly and collapses in a chair crying.
Thursday June 21st 1883 - Sarah returns home from work at around 8pm and says she is going back out to meet Kelly. An hour later he appears without her. Mrs Brider asks where she is and he tells her that he saw her on the other side of the road and did not cross to her. Then he snaps at her that no woman will ever master him and he goes out again.
Kelly was becoming much worse as of late, falling into fits of rage much more often and far too easily. Upon an incident where Sarah breaks away from Kelly seemingly after an argument she runs to her room and locks herself inside to escape him, this resulting in him once again falling into a fit of rage and pure anger eventually breaking down the door to get to her. She says she no longer wants to live him and she no longer wants to see him again which then causes Kelly to once again break down in tears and beg her for forgiveness.
After she refuses to forgive him however his anger returns, this time though he grabs her, throws her to the floor and pulls out a pocket knife he had in his possession and he begins to stab her in the neck. It's said It was like he was trying to burrow into her with his knife and even his own hands, almost like an animal.
He throws Sarah's mother across the room, as she obviously saw what happened and attempted to stop him attacking her daughter, and instead of trying to make an escape, he runs to his room and locks himself in, presumably bursting into a state of tears like before.
The police, as well as a doctor, arrived shortly afterwards and Kelly was immediately arrested for what he had done. Sarah however was taken to a nearby hospital but she went onto die from her injuries around 3 days later, Kelly at the time still begging for forgiveness through letters. He was originally charged with attempted murder but with Sarah's death this changed to murder and Kelly now faced the death penalty in August of that year. At the same time he still didn't seem to quite understand what he had done wrong..
-- His Imprisonment and Eventual Escape From Broadmoor Asylum...
Kelly's behavior exhibited such insanity that it is not hard to believe him as the Ripper himself. On the morning of June 22, 1883, Kelly was charged with attempted murder. The charge was later changed to murder when Sarah died at half past ten on June 24. Kelly did not believe he would be sentenced to death because he believed that God had a mission for him (Casebook). This mission could possibly be to rid London of the women he thought so little of throughout his whole life. He was set to be executed on August 20, 1883 but on the 17th he was reprieved and was sent to Broadmoor Asylum (Eddleston 217). He started out on Block four of the asylum with the suicidal and quite mad. Kelly did not respond to treatment and felt that he had done nothing wrong, further showing his insanity and lack of remorse for his actions. He kept to himself and was considered a quiet young man with signs of religious mania (Tully 52). His lack of contact with woman was the likely reason for his somewhat good behaviour in the asylum because women were the spark that ignited his insanity.
Kelly was charged with murder on the 25th of June, 1883, and was sentenced to Broadmoor prison, as was highlighted above, the disease he believed he had received from the work of prostitution ending up causing him to argue insanely with Sarah which then resulted in her death and his own imprisonment - It's possible this was the reasoning behind Kelly's murderous spree and war against Prostitutes later on in life, assuming Kelly really is Jack the ripper of course.
As the above source also highlighted, it appears that while serving time in Broadmoor, Kelly was a model prisoner, particularly with the lack of women around him. He was sentenced to hang on the 20 of August, something that didn't seem to concern him as he believed he was on a "mission from god" and would be saved from death - which of course did occur as on the 7th of August, 13 days before he is set to hang, Dr W. Orange, superintendent of Broadmoor, conducts an examination and concludes that Kelly is legally insane, or to be specific a "Paranoid Schizophrenic."
His life was spared. He was then moved to Broadmoor asylum, while he was here he once again was not bothered by any women and thus became something of a role model prisoner. Even being handed a violin and making his way to play in the prisons Asylum band.
If, for example, Kelly believed the mission from god was one to rid the world of prostitutes for example, which isn't out of the question given the circumstances which led him to be where he was, then the fact he was certainly saved would only confirm for himself that he was indeed on a mission and quite literally had to carry it out. There was one problem though... he was in prison. Thus, he worked up a plan to escape along with the help of prison inmate George Stratton.
On the 23rd of January, 1888, months before the ripper murders first began, Kelly and Stratton head off together seemingly for band practice as both were involved with the asylum band at the time, and both had their instruments with them, however in the months leading up to the escape they both fashioned themselves a set of keys which they would use for the daring escape, I believe spending months on it.. as the story goes anyway.
Stratton locks up after him and keeps the keys to make his own escape at a later date. Kelly then climbs the six foot wall of the prison garden to freedom. His escape is not noticed until the inmates are called for bed at 7.30. An anonymous note in Kelly's Broadmoor file indicates that John Merritt was also seen in the neighbourhood of Broadmoor on the day of the escape which may suggest that he helped him escape somehow.
edit on 5-12-2011 by Rising Against because: (no reason given)
Rising Against
posted on Dec, 5 2011 @ 08:09 AM
-- The Return of Kelly and the "End of Life Confession"...
Little is actually known about the exact whereabouts of Kelly in the aftermath of his rather dramatic escape from Broadmoor asylum in 1888. This makes is that little bit more difficult to determine, conclusively that is, whether he could've even been in London at the time of the killings which if he was gives this theory much more creditably, In my opinion. It does seem however that he did at least travel there at some point after his escape though, as well as staying for a while.
At the very least we know for a fact that shortly after the murders first began in Whitechapel Sarah's parents, Sarah the murdered wife of Kelly remember, had their home raided by police and they were subsequently questioned about the possible whereabouts of Kelly and I believe their residence was also searched for clues.
So we know for an absolute fact that the idea of James Kelly being behind the murders thus was also the infamous Jack the Ripper was at the very least seriously considered by those in the police force who were desperately looking for him at the time.
How can we determine where Kelly may have been however? Well, after making a disappearance in 1888, little is known about what he did, where he went and so on. Despite there being a relatively well known and large man hunt for him, which is where he originally "gained his fame", but all to no avail of course. That is until 1927 where he quite literally turned up on the doorsteps of Broadmoor asylum and all apparently of his own free will.
An old, frail, dying man.. but a man alive still. And still capable of giving something of a confession to explain his whereabouts all those years.
In this "confession", nothing is ever 'admitted' It would seem, but even so I personally believe, as do some other researchers from what I've read, that Kelly was dropping some pretty serious hints which may tie him to the Ripper case. For example In the "End of life confession", Kelly himself claims that, and in his own words remember, "I have been on the warpath since I left Broadmoor." Of course this once again is going from what I've read and from what I've seen in various documentaries - So It's unclear exactly what context this is used in unfortunately.
[removed at member request]
He also supposedly says in his letter that he had problems with society such as "all kinds of skank", not forgetting he claimed in 1888 that he would be saved from death with the help of God, this after being handed a death sentence for murdering his first wife, and that he was given a "mission" - of course I'm making nothing but assumptions here but It's possible he believe his mission was to literally rid the world of this, as he called it, "Skank."
This I believe potentially backed up by his actions in America which I've explained in the next section of this thread... he was literally going from place to place, perhaps "cleansing" them in his own deranged eyes.
Well I theorize that due to his mental instability, his own claim of being on a warpath, and his obvious dislike of prostitutes, It's becoming clearer that he should at the very least be seen as a major suspect for the original Jack the Ripper, someone who has yet to be revealed even well over 100 years after the murders first occurred. At the very least Kelly, as a suspect, should be considered much more than he already is.
Anyway, the murders around Whitechapel seemingly came to a stop after the death of Mary Kelly, for whatever reason. However, this may have been the end of the killing spree in London, yes, but even so the killings may have continued..
- Return of the Ripper -
The Rippers Possible Infiltration of America
Whether James Kelly really is Jack the Ripper, I don't know, there is after all well over 200 different suspects in this case, some others fitting the profile almost perfectly. Fortunately though this thread is not a discussion of those but instead a discussion solely on Kelly.
In regards to the Ripper, well, nobody knows for sure who the name of this murderous character really is, all we can do unfortunately is speculate. Either way, it would seem that his murderous rampage around Whitechapel would come to a stop late on in 1888.. but as was mentioned, this doesn't seem to be where the killings from this man stopped still.
They may have continued in America of all places, more famously to a woman by the name of Carrie Brown in New York...
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread782875/pg1#pid12947418
Continuing the trend of looking at Kelly however, it must be asked if he can be tied into the murders which then went onto sweep across America, literally state by state and the answer is very much so, yes. You see according to Kelly's own "confession" where he highlighted a great deal of his movements, particularly movements after the Whitechapel murders came to an end, he claimed to have travelled to America on a German steamer, the Zaandam, to New York via Rotterdam in January of 1892...
The Murder of Carrie brown, in what was a particularly gruesome murder, occurred in April of the same year.. Kelly arriving just in time for the murder to take place it would seem.
Why is she linked to the Jack the Ripper murders some may ask though? Well, we know for a fact that Carrie Brown was working as a prostitute at the time of her death, this on the night of the 23rd of April, 1892, this being something well known. She was also found to be very badly mutilated, almost gutted by her murderer, and in a way very similar to the ripper murders previously in London a few months before. Much like what was seen to Mary Kelly in fact, the most gruesome Whitechapel case.. as well as more anomalies, such as a mysterious letter to a new york paper sent just before the murder supposedly signed Jack the Ripper.
Known fondly by her acquaintances as "Old Shakespeare" due to her tendency to recite her favorite poet's sonnets after a few drinks, Carrie Brown checked into the East River Hotel, on the southeast corner of Catherine Slip and Water Streets, with a man between 10:30 and 11:00 on the night of April 23rd. Her lifeless body was discovered lying on the bed the next morning, naked from the armpits down, according to the night clerk who found her. Her body was mutilated, and she had been strangled, but there are few details known about her injuries. The details of the autopsy were played down a great deal by the press, and all that we can know for sure is that there were 'cuts and stab wounds all over it.' The doctor who performed the autopsy, named Jenkins, is said to have thought that the killer had attempted to completely gut his victim. Other than that, the exactness of her injuries remain a mystery.
http://www.casebook.org/victims/carrie.html
This tied in with the fact that James Kelly, a ripper suspect, was in the same city at the same time.. I think it's quite plausible indeed that he was responsible and at the very least should be considered. Like he himself seemingly said years later.. he was on a "warpath."
The New York newspaper is seemingly the key to all of this. The killing had all the trademarks of a ripper slaying, yes, and Kelly even traveled to America and was in the same city just in time for the killings but It's still not enough really. The fact he's said to have wrote to a local newspaper warning them about his presence, and then the victim is found, which if true, gives this story and this theory by far more credibility.
Unfortunately information about it is frustratingly hard to come by. But!, I did come across an interesting documentary called 'Jack the Ripper - In America' which discusses the possibility of the Ripper making his way over to the U.S., presumably in order to escape the media coverage of the killings here in the UK, coverage which was absolutely huge at the time, and moving to America to continue the crusade against Prostitutes certainly would've made his "job" by far easier to do.
This documentary also seriously considers that James Kelly, the man I'm highlighting in this thread, was the original Jack the Ripper, and they also go into some detail on this New York newspaper, their story about the ripper prior to the murder as well as much more on Kelly.
Here it is and It's certainly worth a watch:
From the above documentary It's claimed that in James's end of life confession he also claimed to visit states such as Baltimore, Texas, LA, New Jersey and many more locations. In the above documentary It's also claimed Ripper-type murders can also be found and tied to Kelly in these states he visited at the time he is said to be there.
edit on Mon Dec 5 2011 by DontTreadOnMe because: (no reason given)
- James Kelly in a Final, Brief Summary -
At one point in time I believe the FBI even went to the trouble of creating something of a murder profile for Jack the Ripper, It's as follows:
White male, aged 28 to 36, living or working in the Whitechapel area.
In childhood, there was an absent or passive father figure.
The killer probably had a profession in which he could legally experience his destructive tendencies.
Jack the Ripper probably ceased his killing because he was either arrested for some other crime, or felt himself close to being discovered as the killer.
The killer probably had some sort of physical defect which was the source of a great deal of frustration or anger.
Here is another FBi report found on the official FBI website looking at everything relating to the Ripper, from what he may have looked like to what his motives would be.
Anyway, when looking at the above killer profile, looking at just this alone, it seems James Kelly can fit almost perfectly. At the time of the killings for example he was around 28 years of age as the profile suggests - the profile made from witness statements etc. We also know for certain that he was living around Whitechapel at some point, even buying the time of local prostitutes for example.
We also know he was an upholsterer and would've had easy access to very sharp knives, and ones he undoubtedly would've used and "honed his skills" with every single day. In regards to him being caught however, I don't believe It's very likely. But as was mentioned previously in this thread from looking at his end of life confession he does explain to us that he boarded a ship to America and went onto live under the name John Miller while there.. He also went into hiding in the immediate aftermath of his Broadmoor escape so we know he's capable of simply disappearing like this. Someone escaping a crime by moving to America and then changing their name was also something that certainly wasn't uncommon at the time.
Could this theory really be correct though, could Kelly really be the infamous Jack the Ripper as we know today? Well, It's possible in my opinion, possible at the very least. We know for a fact that this man was capable of murder, even murder of those he loved and who was closest to him all the while in a stage of intense rage at very minor things. We know for a fact he was mentally unstable, this instability leading him to murder in the first place, we know he was certainly not a dumb man, his escape from prison showing signs of him being someone who plans smart and extensively. He also evaded capture right up until he chose for authorities to get hands on him by giving himself up in 1927.
James also seemed to have quite a keen sense of hatred for women, and particularly prostitutes. This perhaps due to his experiences with his first wife Sarah and the fact that he was given a venereal disease by prostitutes, something which went onto ruin his short marriage and lead to him committing murder and eventually jail, effectively ruining his life thus a motive.
As I come to this thread however I can't help but stress that there is many other suspects for Jack the Ripper, well over 200 of them in fact, albeit it much fewer plausible suspects. In this thread however I chose, on purpose, to focus solely on just one of them,.. James Kelly. I did so as I felt he was a very plausible Ripper candidate, someone who fits the profile perfectly, can be placed in the, or near the locations of the murders, at the time they took place, not forgetting a plausible motive.
Our thanks to Alan Sharp for compiling this timeline
April 20th 1860 - James Kelly born in Preston, Lancashire, the illegitimate son of 15 year old Sarah Kelly. After the birth Sarah returns to Liverpool leaving James in the care of her mother Teresa. James never meets his mother.
1870 - Sarah Kelly marries Master Mariner John Allen.
1873 - James Kelly leaves school and begins an apprenticeship as an upholsterer.
May 16th 1874 - John Allen dies in Peru leaving Sarah Kelly a house and a share in a cargo ship. Sarah falls to pieces and her health begins to deteriorate.
July 29th 1874 - Sarah Kelly dies. In her will she leaves James a small fortune of over £25,000 to be held in trust for him until his 25th birthday.
1875 - Teresa Kelly tells James about his history and his inheritance. It is the first time he learns that the woman he thought was his mother is really his grandmother. He is withdrawn from his apprenticeship and sent to Dr Robert Hurworth's Commercial Academy in New Brighton to learn bookkeeping and clerical skills.
1876 - Teresa Kelly dies.
1877 - James finishes his education and takes a job in Liverpool with Isaac H. Jones, a pawnbroker. He begins to act irrationally and experience mood swings.
Late 1878 - James decides to quit his job and return to his previous trade as an upholsterer. He also decides to move to London, and applies to the administrators of his trust fund who agree to fund the move. On arrival in London he applies to the East London Upholsterer's Trade Society in Shoreditch for work. They agree to help him find a position, but suggest he takes casual work in the meantime.
Early 1879 - Kelly takes lodgings at 37 Collingwood Street, Bethnal Green with the family of fellow upholsterer Walter Lamb. In the company of Lamb and another friend John Merritt, a 35 year old married cab driver, the formerly devout Catholic Kelly learns the delights of hard drinking and paid sex on the back streets of the East End. He works at a variety of casual jobs in sweatshops all over the district. Eventually he decides to try his luck elsewhere.
1879-1881 - For two years there are only scant details of Kelly's movements. For at least some time he is living in Brighton, and he spends a period serving aboard an American Man-o-war.
Mid 1881 - He returns to London and renews his acquaintance with Lamb and Merritt. He works at a variety of casual jobs and sometimes serves on Continental cargo ships. His drinking becomes heavier than ever and most evenings are spent around Whitechapel and Spitalfields.
March 1882 - Kelly moves into the Brider's house at 21 Cottage Lane, just off the City Road between Shoreditch and Islington, as a lodger. He has to share a room with another man. He cuts down n his drinking and other activities and spends many evenings in the house with Sarah and her parents.
Christmas 1882 - Kelly and Sarah have become increasingly intimate over the year and, after much persistence on his part, she surrenders her virginity to him. The event is a disaster. Despite being sexually experienced, Kelly has only slept with low-class prostitutes, and neither one has had any kind of sex education. He is not prepared for how different sex with a virgin will be and finds himself unable to penetrate. He is convinced that Sarah has some kind of deformity and she babbles a story of being interfered with by an uncle by way of explanation. Kelly's former erratic behaviour returns after this and he experiences stronger and stronger depressions and mood swings in the following months. He also returns to his former habits in the East End rather than pressing Sarah further.
April 1st 1883 - Kelly finally lands a permanent job in the upholstery trade, working for John Hiron of 4 Orchard Buildings, Acton Street, Haggerston. Sarah's family pressure him to set a date for the wedding, although he is reluctant due to his disease. They finally agree a date of June 4th. Kelly's erratic behaviour continues and he begins experiencing serious headaches and discharges from his ears.
Friday June 1st 1883 - Kelly is dismissed from his job. As a reason Hiron states that "he was obviously not right in the head." Kelly has some money from his trust fund and it is decided that the wedding will go ahead.
Monday June 4th 1883 - Kelly and Sarah are married at St Luke's Parish Church, Old Street, EC1. On the same day he obtains a new upholstery job with Cornelius Vincent Smith at Marshall's Yard, 4 Henry Street, close to Regents Park and 2 miles walk from Cottage Lane. The couple remain at Sarah's parents house and because of shortness of space Kelly continues to share a room with the lodger. It is believed that the marriage is never consummated.
Saturday June 9th 1883 - Kelly demands Sarah see a doctor about her 'deformity'. Sarah turns to her parents and her father, John Brider, confronts Kelly who pours out to him the whole tale of their sexual problems and the supposed abuse by an uncle. Stunned by this, Mr Brider agrees that Sarah should see a doctor, but Kelly broods on the incident the whole weekend.
Monday June 11th 1883 - Kelly travels to Liverpool and asks the fund trustees for money so that he and Sarah can set up house together. He is successful and returns the same day.
Sunday June 17th 1883 - When cleaning the room Kelly shares, Mrs Brider finds a syringe and the drugs Kelly is using to treat himself. She and Sarah tackle him and after initially denying that they are his, he flies into a rage and accuses Sarah of being a prostitute and infecting him, and accuses them both of tricking him into marriage to get their hands on his inheritance.
Twenty minutes later they return together and on entering Sarah pulls away from him and locks herself in her room. Kelly flies into a rage and breaks the door down. When Mrs Brider arrives Kelly is yelling at Sarah that she is a ****. Sarah replies that she no longer wants to live with him or ever see him again. Once again Kelly calms down instantly and begs forgiveness, but Sarah will not relent this time. Kelly flies into a rage once more and this time he throws her to the floor, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket and plunges it into her neck. He then begins digging away with the knife as if trying to burrow deeper and deeper. Mrs Brider tries to drag him off by the hair, and he turns on her, picks her up and throws her across the room. Then he runs off and shuts himself in his bedroom.
Mrs Brider runs into the street screaming for help. Within minutes the police and a doctor arrive. Sarah is taken to St Bartholomew's Hospital and Kelly is arrested and taken to Old Street Police Station.
Friday June 22nd 1883 - Kelly is charged with attempted murder at Clerkenwell Police Court. He is remanded in custody for a week.
Saturday June 23rd 1883 - Kelly is taken to the hospital by Inspector Maynard where Sarah's statement is taken in his presence.
Sunday June 24th 1883 - Kelly writes a letter to Sarah begging her forgiveness. At 10.30 that evening Sarah dies from her injuries.
Monday June 25th 1883 - Kelly is charged with murder.
Thursday June 28th 1883 - First hearing at Clerkenwell Police Court. Kelly is formally charged and pleads insanity. He is remanded again for a week to allow the inquest on Sarah to take place. The inquest returns a verdict of wilful murder against him and a trial date is set.
Wednesday August 1st 1883 - The trial is held at the Old Bailey. Kelly pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. Sarah's statement is read to the court. A coachman named Frederick Hammond testifies to seeing Kelly threaten Sarah in the street shortly after 9 that evening. Dr Oliver Treadwell of Clerkenwell Prison testifies to having examined Kelly and found him to be sane. The jury return a guilty verdict and Kelly is sentenced to be hanged.
Thursday August 2nd 1883 - Kelly's lawyers lodge a petition of clemency. Among the signatories are Mr and Mrs Brider.
Friday August 3rd 1883 - The Home Secretary refuses clemency and the execution is set for August 20th. Kelly refuses to believe that he will be hanged, saying that God still has a mission in mind for him.
Tuesday August 7th 1883 - Kelly is examined by Dr W. Orange, superintendent of Broadmoor, who reports that in his opinion Kelly is of defective mental capacity.
Friday August 17th 1883 - Kelly is certified insane and his sentence is commuted. He is sentenced to be held in a maximum security mental institution during Her Majesties pleasure.
Friday August 24th 1883 - Kelly arrives at Broadmoor to begin his sentence.
1884 - Kelly obtains a violin and begins playing in the asylum band. He is put to work in the asylum garden.
1886 - Kelly befriends fellow inmate George Shatton. The two begin to plan an escape. They fashion keys from metal found in the asylum garden, by observing the keys hanging from the warder's belts.
January 23rd 1888 - At 6.30pm Kelly takes his violin and he and Shatton head off apparently to band practice. In reality Kelly uses the keys to let himself into the asylum garden. Shatton locks up after him and keeps the keys to make his own escape at a later date. Kelly then climbs the six foot wall of the garden to freedom. His escape is not noticed until the inmates are called for bed at 7.30. An anonymous note in Kelly's Broadmoor file indicates that John Merritt was seen in the neighbourhood of Broadmoor on the day of the escape. He may have been delivering £5 which Kelly had arranged to be given him from the trust fund, with which to bribe a warder.
Note: Aside from where official agencies are involved, Kelly's movements from this point are based on his own confession of 1927 and are uncorroborated.
Kelly heads for London by a roundabout route to escape detection. The journey takes 4 days and ends at a lodging-house in the docks where he lies up for a week or more.
February 1888 - James Monro, head of the Metropolitan Police CID, takes a particular interest in the case.
February - June 1888 - Having obtained money from friends Kelly heads to Liverpool. He walks the whole way to avoid being spotted on public transport. He is harboured by relatives for a while. After obtaining more money from friends he resolves to escape to the Continent. He sets off walking again to Harwich, where he arranges to work his passage on a ship. He is spotted on the deck by a sharp-eyed policeman and narrowly escapes. He heads back to London, arriving sometime before the end of June.
July - December 1888 - Kelly provides no details as to his movements until late that year, in November or December, he walks to Dover and obtains passage on a cross-channel steamer to Dieppe. He remains in France for three years, at first hugging the northern coast and later heading to Paris.
10th November 1888 - The day after the Mary Kelly murder, detectives raid 21Cottage Lane and question Mrs Brider as to Kelly's whereabouts.
12th November 1888 - Someone with the initials CET enters a note in Kelly's Metropolitan Police file suggesting that the detectives investigating the Whitechapel Murders should look into what steps have been taken to recapture Kelly.
January 1892 - He returns to England and obtains £3 10s from friends with which he buys passage on a German steamer, the Zaandam, to New York via Rotterdam.
January 27th 1896 - Kelly walks into the British Consulate in New Orleans and gives himself up.
March 18th 1896 - Kelly sets off back to England aboard the SS Capella. The Foreign Office arrange for him to be met by the authorities when the ship docks in Liverpool.
March 26th 1896 - The Capella arrives in Liverpool a day early. The authorities have not thought to check. Kelly waits around for some time to be arrested, then finally gets tired of waiting and heads off into Liverpool. When the escort party arrive the next day there is no sign of him. Kelly remains in England for a further two or three years working as a coach trimmer in Guildford, then takes a steamer, the SS Beechdale, to Vancouver.
1901 Kelly again resolves to give himself up. He tells his story to the British Consul in Vancouver but when the information is communicated back to London nobody appears interested. After waiting 3 months Kelly heads back to England under his own steam but on arrival changes his mind and does not give himself up. It is not known how long he stays this time. He works for some time as a coach trimmer in Godalming, and is spotted at one point working as an upholsterer in North London. At some point he returns to America, and crosses the Atlantic several more times in the years up until 1927.
April 22nd 1907 - Broadmoor officially discharge Kelly on account of the failure of the authorities to recapture him.
February 11th 1927 - Kelly arrives at the main gate of Broadmoor and asks to be let in. He is profoundly deaf and in poor physical condition. He is readmitted and remains there the rest of his life.
September 17th 1929 - Kelly dies.
Reasons for suspecting Kelly: He was a diagnosed Paranoid Schizophrenic. He had shown himself capable of murder with a knife. His reasons for murdering his wife were his belief that she was a prostitute and had infected him with VD. Having been disavowed of this idea in Broadmoor he would almost certainly have realised that the real source of his infection was the prostitutes of Whitechapel and Spitalfields with whom he had consorted. He may well have resolved to take his revenge on them for destroying his life. The raid on 21 Cottage Lane on 10th November 1888 shows that at least someone in the Metropolitan Police must have suspected him.
Reasons against suspecting Kelly: His movements after his escape from Broadmoor cannot be verified. There is no proof he was in London in late 1888. There are also no other murders which can be tied in with his movements between then and 1927.
http://www.casebook.org/suspects/jameskelly.html
Final Paper: James the Ripper
James the Ripper
Above all other suspects considered in the Ripper murders, James Kelly stands out as the most likely killer. Due to his mental instability and capacity to murder another human being, Kelly appears to possess the qualities of a killer. Kelly proved he had the ability to get away with wrongdoings when he escaped from the Broadmoor Asylum in 1886. He is connected with the Ripper murders by his quest for revenge on Sara Brider through her sister Mary Brider (aka Mary Kelly). James Kelly is the most plausible suspect due to his insanity and hatred for women.
Through a series of traumatic events, James Kelly began his hatred for women at a young age. He was 15 when he found out that the woman he thought was his mother was actually his grandmother. Teresa, Kelly's grandmother, was left to raise him once his mother left to find her own way and eventually became a prostitute. This revelation of the truth caused Kelly to become angry and confused thus starting him on his road to insanity. Shortly after Kelly found out the truth about his mother, she died of a liver disease. She left him money in a will that was used in order for Kelly to attend Dr. Robert Hurworth's Commerical Academy. Not long after Kelly got acclimated to his school, the trustees of his mom's will moved to work with a pawn broker. The constant uprooting of Kelly's life possibly caused him to feel like he did not belong anywhere. Soon after becoming a pawn broker, his grandmother died causing Kelly to be left alone. His work began to be unreliable, and any small incident would send him into fits of rage. His mental instability was becoming very apparent through his incapacity to handle life rationally (Tully 2-6). This sequence of distressing events caused Kelly to not only worsen in his mental state but to move completely away from Liverpool.
https://jtrslondon.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/final-paper-james-the-ripper/
Moving away from Liverpool did not help Kelly's mental state, and in fact, may have made it worse. He searched all over the East end of London looking for work, and kept to himself. Then Kelly met a man named John Merritt who introduced Kelly to drinking and prostitutes. It was during this time that Kelly lost his virginity to a prostitute. Because he was forbidden by his faith to have sex before marriage, Kelly's attitude toward the prostitutes was contemptuous. He could have sex with the prostitutes to relieve his sexual frustration and then have nothing to do with the women he had such hatred for throughout his life. The satisfaction that Kelly was looking for could not be found in prostitutes and he realized that he was on a path of self-destruction. It was at this time he left London and returned two years later in 1881, resuming his self destructive ways (Tully 10-14). It seemed that no matter where Kelly went his mental instability followed him and further debilitated his rational stance on life.
While in London, fate stepped in for Kelly and brought Sarah Brider into his life in 1881, which one would think could stabilize Kelly's emotions. The two seemed fairly happy and by the beginning of 1882, the two were living with Sarah and her family at 21 Cottage Lane (Eddleston 217). Kelly began to cut down his drinking and began to spend more time with Sarah and her family (Casebook). It seemed that Sarah had made Kelly a better man but it was only a matter of time until Kelly's need for sexual fulfillment brought back old demons. On June 4 1883, the two got married and problems began to arise in their marriage (Eddleston 217). Sarah could not fulfill Kelly's sexual needs and he claimed she had a malformation (Tully 20). It is not certain whether Kelly caught a venereal disease before or after his marriage with Sarah but his disease was the cause of a big fight that broke out between the two (Casebook). After Sarah's mom found syringes and ointment that Kelly was using to treat his venereal disease, she asked Sarah if she knew of Kelly's disease. It was at this time that Kelly flew into a rage and accused Sarah of giving him the venereal disease (Tully 29). On June 18, 1883 Kelly tried to make up for his behavior by taking Sarah out once she returned from work. When she did not show until 9:00, over an hour late, Kelly got very angry. He dragged her into the parlor and threatened to stab her with a carving knife unless she disclosed where she has been all night. When she told Kelly that she was out getting medicine for his disease he let her go and began to sob (Casebook). Not only does this instance show Kelly's negative view on women but his immediate violent reaction proves that he is more than capable of murder. On Thursday June 21, 1883, Sarah returned home from work at her usual time and she and Kelly began to argue for an unknown reason. Kelly threatened Sarah and called her a **** then he dragged her head down to the floor and stabbed her with a pocket knife in the throat and continued to dig at her with the knife causing further damage. When Sarah's mother tried to help, Kelly threw her over the bed and knocked her unconscious and then ran into his room (Tully 33). This demonstrates that Kelly was certainly capable of committing a crime with viciousness and insanity. It seemed that Kelly's hate for women had been taken out on his undeserving wife, proving that nothing could stabilize his erratic behavior.
Kelly's behavior exhibited such insanity that it is not hard to believe him as the Ripper himself. On the morning of June 22, 1883, Kelly was charged with attempted murder. The charge was later changed to murder when Sarah died at half past ten on June 24. Kelly did not believe he would be sentenced to death because he believed that God had a mission for him (Casebook). This mission could possibly be to rid London of the women he thought so little of throughout his whole life. He was set to be executed on August 20, 1883 but on the 17th he was reprieved and was sent to Broadmoor Asylum (Eddleston 217). He started out on Block four of the asylum with the suicidal and quite mad. Kelly did not respond to treatment and felt that he had done nothing wrong, further showing his insanity and lack of remorse for his actions. He kept to himself and was considered a quiet young man with signs of religious mania (Tully 52). His lack of contact with woman was the likely reason for his somewhat good behavior in the asylum because women were the spark that ignited his insanity. Without being surrounded by women, Kelly was able to maintain a calm exterior and move his way forward in the institution with good behavior. He was given a violin and a private room and he joined the asylum band. With Kelly's good behavior he was rewarded more freedom within the walls of the asylum. A normal man would use this for good, but the insane Kelly would find a way to use this to his benefit in the worst of ways. A quite insane man was about to be on the run.
Not only was Kelly mentally unstable but he also possessed quite mischievous qualities. Around 1887, Kelly meets George Stratton in the asylum and the two devise a plan for escape. Kelly and Stratton designed keys from metal they found in the garden by observing the keys that hung from the warder's belt (Casebook). The keys were hidden in Kelly's violin case to make a calculated escape. The two men waited until darkness fell and then Kelly put on his suit giving the appearance that he was going to attend band practice, and made his escape between 6:30-7:30pm on January 23, 1888. He climbed over a six foot tall wall and made his way over a perimeter wall and then was on the run (Tully 61-62). Although this was very calculated, unlike the Ripper murders, this proved that Kelly had endurance needed when he was determined to get his way. At 7:30pm, the guards noticed Kelly was missing but they did not begin a search. Sometime later, Scotland Yard was notified to start a search for James Kelly but he had more than a half hour start on his pursuers. By the time that authorities were notified, Kelly was long gone. The police never really made a serious effort to catch Kelly until February 3 of that year. They published a notice in the Police Gazette that contained so many inaccuracies that it showed the haste in which it had been written (Tully 72). The authorities played down the escape by saying that Kelly had been acting rational, previous to the escape, which proved that Kelly could act normal enough to deceive the public as a means of fitting in without being noticed after his escape. Kelly's mischievous ways helped to escape from prison only to hit the streets with a vengeance.
In order to understand the reason James Kelly could be thought of as the Ripper, it is necessary to first understand the motive that he might have had. It is my belief that James Kelly killed Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes all in search of Mary Brider (aka Mary Kelly). This was the reason that after Mary Kelly was killed, the murders stopped. Sarah Brider (Kelly's wife) may have had a sister, Mary Brider, who lived in the East end, making her way as a prostitute. It was believed that Mary Brider took her sister's surname to work the streets. Therefore Mary Brider would have been Mary Kelly (Tully 325). If this is true, then it is very plausible that James Kelly went in search of Mary Brider to get revenge on her for the imagined grievances of Sarah and her mother. It is possible that James Kelly searched the East end for Mary and when he found out she was a prostitute, those women became a focus of search for Mary. It is very likely that each of the women could have reminded him in some way of the hatred he had for women with loose morals. If James Kelly were on a mission, much like escaping from the asylum, then he would have been unstoppable and would have crushed anyone in his path. He had so many imagined wrongs that had been done to him that it only added to the rage he had inside of him, thus explaining the ferociousness in which he attacked his victims. The prostitutes he killed may have just been causalities in Kelly's quest for vengeance. Mary Ann Nichols would have been the first woman he approached in his search for Mary Brider. She had more bruising, which could have been because of Kelly's inexperience and initial frustration in his search for his final victim. Annie Chapman would have been the next woman he approached, and she was left with severe mutilation and her intestines showing which literally could have meant that these women made him sick to his stomach; this was his way of proving it. Elizabeth Stride's murder was less severe, with only her throat slit, but it must be kept in mind that these women were most likely just in his path and not direct targets, so Kelly probably did not go into the murders with any intentions. Catherine Eddowes was also mutilated, which shows that Kelly may have been getting more frustrated with his unsuccessful attempts to find Mary Brider. The last victim, Mary Kelly (aka Mary Brider), had the worst mutilations because this would have been Kelly's ultimate goal; to make Mary pay for what her family had done to him. This would account for why the other murders were located in the streets; they were less personal, while Mary's was in her bedroom, because it was very personal. This would also account for the reason the murders stopped; Kelly had reached his final objective and had finished out what he thought was his destiny.
Although his motive makes perfect sense, it is still essential to look at the profile of the Ripper and see what connects James Kelly to being the killer. Some of the main reasons that Kelly fits the profile of the killer are because he hated women, particularly prostitutes. He also fits the profile of a serial lust killer, he had excellent knowledge of the geography of the East end, and he had sharp knives and ripping chisels as the tools for his trade. He also fit the age, being 27 or 28 (Tully 339). He fits the profile of the killer because he was a white man, between the ages of 25-35, he had a disturbed childhood with a mother who had questionable morals, he felt inferior due to an unstable childhood and stunted emotional growth, he had low self-esteem, he had a strong sexual urge, he appeared quite ordinary and inoffensive, he had been in a marriage that did not work out, he had been sexually frustrated, and lived or worked in the area of which the first murder was committed (Tully 311-312). He was a loner, and did not get along with women well except for his wife, but even that didn't last long showing that Kelly could not keep a stable and rational relationship with a woman. It seems that Kelly was being an egotistical male to overcompensate for his lack of control in his life in general. It could be assumed, do to his lack of female relationships, that most women found Kelly's strange social behavior unattractive; this is the reason for his unleashing of anger upon them in the Ripper murders. It could also be that with each prostitute he had relations with, his self esteem was lowered knowing that the prostitutes were the only form of female attention that he was receiving. His intense self-loathing would also account for the way he took out his anger on the prostitutes. Perhaps if he had love and affection as a youth, things would have turned out differently for him. The strict religious beliefs of his grandmother and the subsequent discovery of his grandmother's lies, concerning his biological mother, resulted in his lack of faith in the female race. The shuttling of young James from family to family and place to place further contributed to his self-loathing. One has to wonder if some of the blame for his despicable actions lies with both his mother and grandmother. These two women were central figures in the formation of James' beliefs and personality at a young age. His lack of a male figure to look up to may have also contributed to the psychological problems that James had in his adult life. His lack of ability to form lasting and healthy relationships was greatly impaired by the mistakes the adults in his life made. The only way he knew how to resolve the issues he had with women was to be violent, thus resulting in the deaths of Sarah Brider, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Brider (Kelly). The profile of James Kelly seems to hold many qualities that the Ripper must have had in order to act out these atrocious crimes.
James Kelly stands out as the most likely suspect to be the Ripper because of his apparent insanity and obvious capacity to kill another human being with no lasting remorse. Kelly appears to possess most of the qualities the Ripper would possess, including the availability of the murder weapon itself. His escape from the asylum showed that he did not believe he did anything wrong to his wife and he was on a true mission to get revenge of those he believed deserved the wrath of his anger. His main tie to the murders is in his pursuit of revenge on Mary Brider, who he believed should share the supposed pain that was inflicted upon him by Sarah and her mother. James Kelly is the most plausible Ripper suspect due to his apparent mental instability and severe dislike for women.
Eddleston, John J. Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, 2001.
"James Kelly." Casebook: Jack The Ripper. 1996-2009. 15 Apr. 2009
<http://www.casebook.org/suspects/jameskelly.html>.
Tully, James. Prisoner 1167 The Madman Who was Jack the Ripper. New York: Carroll & Graf,
3 Responses to "Final Paper: James the Ripper"
The Identity of Jack the Ripper Revealed? | Second Starters Says:
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audobon Says:
I have a question…don't know if this has ever been posed before, but it seems rather rudimentary. I don't recall it ever having been answered. If James Kelly is the most likely suspect, why hasn't the handwriting from his original journals ever been compared to the "From Hell" letter? Why are we only shown transcripts?
Also, an actual photo of Kelly in his youth is in the public domain Why do we need to take an old photo of him and do a reverse aging to see what he looked like? Finally, a drawing of the Jack the Ripper suspect appeared in the London newspapers that virtually no one ever refers to…and it looks exactly like Kelly in the only photo we have of him as a young man.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/JacktheRipper1888.jpg)
One of a series of images from the Illustrated London News for October 13, 1888 carrying the overall caption, "With the Vigilance Committee in the East End". This specific image is entitled "A Suspicious Character".
Thomas Neill Cream was a doctor secretly specialising in abortions. He was born in Glasgow, educated in London and Canada, and entered practice in Canada and later in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881 he was found guilty of the fatal poisoning of his mistress's husband. He was imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, from November 1881 until his release on good behaviour on 31 July 1891. He moved to London, where he resumed killing and was soon arrested. He was hanged on 15 November 1892 at Newgate Prison. According to some sources, his last words were reported as being "I am Jack the...", interpreted to mean Jack the Ripper. However, police officials who attended the execution made no mention of this alleged interrupted confession.
(http://www.casebook.org/images/cream.jpg)
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850-1892)
Born in Scotland in May of 1850, Cream was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters. The family moved to Canada four years later. On November 12, 1872, Cream registered at McGill College in Montreal as a medical student. He would graduate with honors on March 31, 1876.
Soon after, he was to meet a Flora Elizabeth Brooks, whose father own a prosperous hotel in Waterloo. She soon became the victim of an unwanted pregnancy, and Cream took it upon himself to perform his own abortion, nearly killing Brooks. Her father was understandably enraged, and insisted they marry, which Cream did on September 11, 1876. The next day he left for England, where he registered as a graduate student at St. Thomas's Hostpital in London. He also obtained a qualification from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons at Edinburgh.
Cream returned to Canada a few years later, and, undaunted by his previous mishap, began a career as an abortionist. His reputation was quite promising until the body of a young chambermaid named Kate Gardener was discovered at Cream's office, a bottle of chloroform lying beside her. Luckily for Cream, he was not charged with murder, despite the harrowing evidence against him.
Perhaps finally rustled by his near-escape, he took his business into Chicago, but his murderous tendancies again began to show. In August of 1880, Julia Faulkner died under mysterious circumstances, and Cream was arrested on charges of murder -- he escaped conviction again.
When Cream wasn't murdering women and aborting babies, he took it upon himself to market his own person elixir to combat epilepsy, and soon acquired quite a following by a number of patients who swore by the treatment. One of them, a railway agent named Daniel Stott, made the mistake of sending his wife to Cream's office for regular doses of the drug. Julia Stott received much more from the good Doctor than just medicine on each of her visits, and when her husband finally became suspicious of the affair, Cream decided to add a bit of strychnine to the medicine. Mr. Stott died on June 14, 1881, and had it not been for a move of grand stupidity by his killer, Cream would have gotten away "Stott" free.
Originally, Stott's death was attributed to epilepsy, but for some reason Cream wrote to the coronor stating that the pharmacist was responsible for his death, and requested an exhumation. The coronor dismissed the letter, but the D.A. went on a limb and ordered the body to be exhumed -- strychnine was found in his stomach and Dr. Cream's luck finally ran out. He was imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet.
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream
Although it was a life sentence, Cream was released on good behavior on July 31, 1891. He took a quick trip to Canada to collect an inheritance of $16,000 and left for England, eventually to end up in the South London slums.
Only two days after his arrival, he met a prositute named Matilda Clover, who was later to die from nux vomica poisoning. The same fate befell an Ellen Donworth. But as in his first two murders, Cream was uncharged.
After a short break from his murders (and an even shorter attempt at love with a woman named Laura Sabbatini), Cream was to poison two women: Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell. He would again have escaped detection, had it not been for another unexplicable action: he took it upon himself to accuse his neighbor of the two murders, even going so far as to try his hand at extortion. He said that he had incriminating evidence again a Joseph Harper, and that for no less than 1,500 pounds he would not share his knowledge with the police. Harper refused, and Cream soon lost interest in the attempt.
Yet he refused to forget about the murders -- he soon bragged to others about his vast knowledge on the two murders, even going so far as to take a John Haynes on a tour of the murder scenes! He then did the same to a Mr. McIntyre, who turned out to be a police sergeant, and began surveilance on the doctor. Furthermore, a P.C. Cumley (who had seen Cream with the two girls on the night of their deaths) happened to come upon this "tall gentleman with cross-eyes and bushy whiskers" and also began to watch him. His attempts to blackmail Harper were soon revealed to police, and Cream was finally arrested.
He was charged and found guilty of the death of Matilda Clover, and was sentenced to hang on November 15, 1892. It was there that he would perform his last (and perhaps most inexplicable) action -- he is said to have uttered "I am Jack..." as the noose fell taut and squeezed the life out of his body. As the Ripper murder scare was still in full force, the immediate assumption was that Cream had confessed to being Jack the Ripper.
http://www.casebook.org/suspects/cream.html
(http://www.casebook.org/images/execute.jpg)
The execution of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream
Here, and only here, is his connection to the case.
According to Donald Rumbelow, in The Complete Jack the Ripper, the fact that Cream uttered these words (an event which was sworn to by the hangman) should be suspicious, since the new Commissioner of the City of London Police, Sir Henry Smith, had attended the hanging. He was later to have boasted that he knew more than anyone else about the Ripper case in his autobiography, and yet no mention is made of this occurrence.
Even more damning is the fact, often quoted, that Cream was serving a prison sentence from 1881 to 1891 in Joliet, Illinois. Most claim, therefore, that he could not possibly have been the murderer, as all murders were committed in 1888.
Yet a good Ripper theory dies hard, and new theorists proposed that Cream actually had a double. The two would help each other by the one being in prison while the other was free committing crimes, using his double's prison sentence as an alibi. Those who support this theory believe this is evident early on in Cream's criminal career, when brought into court on charges of bigamy. He was advised to plead guilty, but refused to do so, claiming he was serving a prison sentence in Sydney at the time. Sure enough, the prison was asked if someone fitting his description was indeed there and they replied in the affirmative. In his biography, Marshall Hall (who defended Cream) is said to have believed that Neill Cream had a double in the underworld and they went by the same name and used each other's terms of imprisonment as alibis for each other.
Therefore, while Cream was in Joilet prison, his double would have been able to commit the Whitechapel crimes -- on the day of his execution, Cream knew he had no chance for survival and decided to free his double by confessing to his crimes.
It is also theorized that the corruption which ran rampant in the prisons of Chicago resulted in Cream's being released as a result of a bribe, allowing himself to commit the murders in Whitechapel while the crooked officials swore he was still in prison. Proponents also claim his handwriting (seen at right) matches the handwriting of two of the Ripper letters.
Also neither of these theories can be truly disproved, most refute the theory on grounds that Cream, like Chapman, was a poisoner, not a mutilator. It would make little sense for him to poison his victims before 1888, suddenly go on a murderous and vicious mutilating spree in that year, and then revert back to poisoning his women. His prison sentence adds only more fire to the arguments of the skeptics.
(http://www.casebook.org/images/chandw2.jpg)
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream's handwriting.
(http://www.casebook.org/images/lusk_big.jpg)
(http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.241691.1314313018!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/amd-jart26g-jpg.jpg)
Like Jack the Ripper, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream preyed on streetwalkers.
Doctor death
BY Mara Bovsun
special To The News
Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 6:25 PM
As homicidal Victorian ghouls go, Jack the Ripper had nothing on Dr. Thomas Neill Cream.
In fact, to this day there are those who will swear that the mysterious sex-slayer and the Canadian-trained physician were one and the same. Perhaps it had something to do with the principal target - London's streetwalkers.
Or perhaps it had something to do with Cream's last words, which, legend has it, were uttered as the gallows trapdoor opened and sent him plunging into the hereafter.
"I am Jack ...."
The noose choked off the end of the sentence and sparked more than a century of speculation.
Born in Scotland in 1850, Cream was a young boy when his family moved to Canada.
After studying medicine at McGill University, he married, and then set up a practice in London, Ontario. The marriage did not last long. Within a year, his young wife succumbed to a mysterious illness.
Cream ended up in Chicago, where he established an unsavory specialty - ending unwanted pregnancies for prostitutes. In 1880 he had his first serious brush with the law when one of his patients died.
Fingered but freed
Cream was tried for murder, and the principal witness against him was a black midwife who sometimes assisted him. The jury gave little weight to the midwife, and Cream went free.
A year later he was in trouble again. This time the victim was an elderly epileptic, Daniel Stott, who had become a regular patient after medicine Cream prescribed eased his fits.
Sometimes Stott's beautiful wife, Julia, would come to pick up the medicine. Romance soon erupted between Julia, who was three decades younger than her husband, and the doctor.
In June 1881, Julia came to Cream's office, as usual, for her husband's medicines. Cream wrote two prescriptions. One was for calomel, a mercury-based compound, used in the mid-19th century as a laxative. The other was for capsules filled with herbs and a smidge of strychnine, which was often used in those days as a stimulant.
Cream insisted that Julia go out of her way to Buck & Rayners, clear across town. Then, instead of heading home to her invalid husband, she returned to Cream's office, where he enhanced the formulas.
A few days later, Daniel Stott took his medicine and was dead within a half hour.
Stott was buried, and the matter forgotten, until a telegram arrived at the coroner's office.
"I want you to have a postmortem examination made of the body of Dan Stott .... Have stomach examined. Suspect foul play."
A day later, another telegram arrived. After a third, the coroner contacted the writer. It was Dr. Cream.
The doctor said a fortune-teller had told him that Stott had been poisoned, and that the druggist was at fault. He suggested giving some of Stott's leftover medicine to a dog.
When the dog died, Stott's body was exhumed. His stomach contained enough strychnine to kill six grown men.
Cream tried to pin Stott's death on the pharmacy, but was soon on trial for murder and was convicted and given life.
After a decade in jail, Cream's father died and left him a sizable inheritance - enough to convince a prison official the convict had been redeemed.
In the summer of 1891 Cream was declared worthy of clemency. He visited his family in Canada, and then vanished.
Déjà Slew
In October, a Dr. Thomas Neill popped up in a London that was reeling from the horrific unsolved Jack the Ripper slayings of three years earlier. Weeks after the newcomer's arrival, prostitutes started to die again.
On Oct. 13, Ellen Donworth fell in a fit of violent convulsions on Waterloo Road. She told a police officer that she had received a note instructing her to meet a prospective client on the street. When she arrived, she met a tall, cross-eyed man with gold spectacles and a mustache. He offered her a drink from a bottle of white liquid.
Donworth died on the way to the hospital, poisoned by strychnine.
A week later, another prostitute, Matilda Clover, was found writhing in her bed, raving that one of her clients, a tall man with a mustache, had given her pills.
Police had not connected these deaths to the odd stranger who had moved into a flat on Lambeth Place Road.
Meanwhile, odd letters started showing up around town. One was a blackmail note to Frederick Smith, son of a wealthy businessman. The letter threatened to expose Smith as Donworth's killer. To avoid exposure, Smith was to paste a sign on his office window, saying: "Mr. Fred Smith wishes to see Mr. Bayne, the barrister, at once."
Smith turned the letter over to the police, who filed it along with some other odd communications, mostly blackmail threats to wealthy men.
The murders stopped when Cream took a trip home to visit his brother in Canada in January. He arrived back in London the following spring.
On April 11, a roominghouse landlady was awakened by shrieks in the middle of the night. She found one of her tenants, Alice Marsh, in agony on the floor in the hallway. In a room upstairs, another boarder, Emma Shrivell, was in the same condition. Marsh lived long enough to tell police that she and Shrivell had gone out with a tall, cross-eyed man who had given them each three "long pills."
Mystery letter
Days later, a doctor, Joseph Harper, received a letter. The author said that he had "indisputable evidence" that Harper's son had killed Marsh and Shrivell. "I am willing to give you said evidence [so you can suppress it] for the sum of 1,500 pounds sterling."
Harper handed the letter over to Scotland Yard. More tips poured in, but Neill did not become a suspect until he attended a party where he met Sgt. Patrick McIntyre, and launched into an attack on the police. McIntyre, impressed by the man's detailed knowledge of the case, as well as the striking resemblance he bore to the descriptions given by the victims, checked into Neill's background and discovered the name Thomas Neill Cream.
The doctor was soon under police scrutiny, then under arrest, charged with the murders of four women.
His trial, only for the murder of Clover, opened on Oct. 17, 1892. Most damning were the doctor's own words. Police did not think Clover had been poisoned until Cream, in his chats with McIntyre, linked her name to the girls known to have been poisoned. Only after Clover's body had been exhumed did police realize that it was not liquor, but strychnine, that had killed her.
The jury took 10 minutes to find him guilty.
Cream's hanging was a private affair, and no one knows whether he actually used his last breath to utter his odd confession.
It seems unlikely that Cream committed the Ripper slayings, since he was in jail in another country at the time. Some maintain, however, that there is evidence that Cream paid a double to serve his sentence in Chicago, and that he actually made it to London in the mid-1880s.
Wild as this notion seems, Cream still appears on lists of suspects, along with Lewis Carroll and Prince Albert Victor, and 30 or so others thought to have been Jack the Ripper.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/doctor-death-article-1.241690
(http://www.casebook.org/images/tumblety.jpg)
Francis Tumblety
Francis Tumblety (1833-1903)
a.k.a. J.H. Blackburn, Frank Townsend
Very little information has been ascertained about Tumblety's beginnings, his birthplace being the first of many mysteries surrounding this new suspect. According to Evans and Gainey's 1995 edition of Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer (pg. 188) he was born in Canada, while the most recent edition (1996) of The Jack the Ripper A-Z (pg. 453) lists his birthplace as Ireland. Even the exact year of his birth is still in question. In any event, he was born to James and Margaret Tumblety sometime around 1833, the youngest of eleven children: Patrick, Lawrence, Jane and Bridget (twins), Alice, Margaret, Ann, Julia, Elizabeth, and Mary.
Sometime within the next decade (this date, too, is undetermined), the Tumblety clan moved to Rochester, New York. The city directories first enumerate the Tumblety name (which has various spellings: Tumblety, Tumuelty, Tumility, Twomblety, et alia) in 1844 with Lawrence Tumuelty, listed as a gardener, living at the corner of Sophia and Clarissa streets. The other brother, Patrick, first is seen in the directory of 1849, listed as a fireman at Rapids in Rochester, and living at 6 Andrews. It was recently discovered that Francis's father (named James, not Frank, as was noted in earlier editions of Evans and Gainey) died on May 7th, 1851.
Our first impressions of the young Francis begin around 1848, when neighbors and acquaintances thought him 'a dirty, awkward, ignorant, uncared-for, good-for-nothing boy... utterly devoid of education.' He was also known to peddle pornographic literature on the canal boats of Rochester. Sometime in adolescence he also began working at a small drug store run by a Dr. Lispenard, said to have 'carried on a medical business of a disreputable kind (Rochester Democrat and Republican, Dec.3, 1888).'
Around 1850 (just before the death of his father), Francis left Rochester, perhaps for Detroit. Here he started his own practice as an Indian herb doctor, which must have prospered since from 1854 onward he always appeared as if of considerable wealth.
He next turns up in Montreal in the fall of 1857, where he again made himself known as a prominent physician. Controversy brewed, however, when he was asked to run in the provincial elections of 1857-8. He declined the offer in what would become typical Tumblety fashion; with a grandiose and overbearing explanation in the local newspaper. But there was more: Tumblety was arrested on September 23, 1857 for attempting to abort the pregnancy of a local prostitute named Philomene Dumas. It was alleged that he sold her a bottle of pills and liquid for the purpose, but after some legal haggling Tumblety was released on October 1. A verdict of 'no true bill' was reached on the 24th and no trial was ever undertaken.
In either early 1858 (A-Z, 453) or July 1860 (Evans and Gainey, 258), Tumblety left Montreal for Saint John. In September of 1860, he again found trouble when a patient of his named James Portmore died while taking medicine prescribed by Tumblety. In his typical brazen fashion, Tumblety showed up at the coroner's inquest and questioned Portmore's widow himself as to the cause of death. The ruse didn't work, however, and Tumblety made a last-ditch attempt at freedom by fleeing the town for Calais Maine.
From there he travelled to Boston, where he began what would be a long-running trademark: he would wear a military outfit and ride a white steed, sometimes leading two greyhounds before him. He didn't remain long in Boston, however, and would soon travel and work in New York, Jersey City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and a variety of other cities. With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Tumblety moved to the capital and put on the airs of a Union army surgeon, claiming to be friends with President Lincoln, General Grant, and a host of other well-known political figures. It was at this time that Tumblety's alleged hatred for women became most pronounced, as seen in the testimony of a Colonel Dunham, who was one night invited to dinner by Tumblety:
"Someone asked why he had not invited some women to his dinner. His face instantly became as black as a thunder-cloud. He had a pack of cards in his hand, but he laid them down and said, almost savagely, 'No, Colonel, I don't know any such cattle, and if I did I would, as your friend, sooner give you a dose of quick poison than take you into such danger.' He then broke into a homily on the sin and folly of dissipation, fiercely denounced all women and especially fallen women.
He then invited us into his office where he illustrated his lecture so to speak. One side of this room was entirely occupied with cases, outwardly resembling wardrobes. When the doors were opened quite a museum was revealed -- tiers of shelves with glass jars and cases, some round and others square, filled with all sorts of anatomical specimens. The 'doctor' placed on a table a dozen or more jars containing, as he said, the matrices (uteri) of every class of women. Nearly a half of one of these cases was occupied exclusively with these specimens.
Not long after this the 'doctor' was in my room when my Lieutenant-Colonel came in and commenced expatiating on the charms of a certain woman. In a moment, almost, the doctor was lecturing him and denouncing women. When he was asked why he hated women, he said that when quite a young man he fell desperately in love with a pretty girl, rather his senior, who promised to reciprocate his affection. After a brief courtship he married her. The honeymoon was not over when he noticed a disposition on the part of his wife to flirt with other men. He remonstrated, she kissed him, called him a dear jealous fool -- and he believed her. Happening one day to pass in a cab through the worst part of the town he saw his wife and a man enter a gloomy-looking house. Then he learned that before her marriage his wife had been an inmate of that and many similar houses. Then he gave up all womankind."
If any of this account is to be taken at face value, it sets the mood for the 'misogynist doctor' so prevalent in Ripper theory and profiling.
Tumblety next moved to St. Louis, again setting up his 'medical' practice, and again promenading himself around the city with arrogant splendor. It was here that another aspect of Tumblety's character emerges -- his paranoia. He was arrested in St. Louis for wearing military garb and medals he did not deserve, but Tumblety himself took it as persecution from his medical competitors. Soon after her traveled to Carondelet, Missouri and was again imprisoned for a time on the same charge.
It was upon his return to St. Louis, however, that Tumblety received his greatest blow. A poor choice in aliases resulted in his being arrested in connecting with the Lincoln assasination, as he was in the habit of using the name J.H. Blackburn. Dr. L.P. Blackburn was at that time under warrant for an alleged plot to infect the North with blankets carrying yellow-fever. Tumblety was eventually exonerated, but another rumor began that he had at one time employed one of the assasination conspirators. This rumor was dispelled as well. Tumblety subsequently wrote and published The Kidnapping of Dr. Tumblety, a short pamphlet he authored in an attempt to clear his name and re-establish his good-faith with the public. In reality, the book is little more than a series of paranoid ramblings and fraudulent testimonials.
After these fiascos Tumblety wisely chose to lave the U.S. for London in the late 1860s, soon after travelling to Berlin, then to Liverpool in 1874. It was there that he was to meet the not-yet famous Sir Henry Hall Caine (then 21), who was bisexual and almost certainly carried on a homosexual affair with the 'doctor.' The two carried on their romance until 1876, when Tumblety returned to New York City. While in New York, Tumblety aroused suspicion through his 'seeming mania for the company of young men and grown-up youths.'
In the years that followed, Tumblety continued to travel across both America and Europe, and raised controversy once again in 1880 when he brought a false suit against a Mrs. Lyons for the sum of $1000, which he claimed she stole from him. Then in October, 1885, his brother Patrick was killed in Rochester when a crumbled chimney landed on him.
Francis Tumblety returned to Liverpool in June of 1888, and once again found himself at odds with the police. He was arrested on November 7th, 1888 on charges of gross indecency and indecent assault with force and arms against four men between July 27th and November 2. These eight charges were euphemisms for homosexual activities. Tumblety was then charged on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders on the 12th (suggested he was free to kill Kelly between the 7th and 12th). Tumblety was bailed on November 16th. A hearing was held on November 20th at the Old Bailey, and the trial postponed until December 10th. Tumblety then fled to France under the alias 'Frank Townsend' on the 24th, and from there took the steamer La Bretagne to New York City.
New York officials new of his impending arrival in the city and had the ports watched for the suspect, but to no avail. Many American newspapers reported that Scotland Yard men had followed him across the Atlantic, and it is known the Inspector Andrews did follow a suspect to New York City around this time, though not named specifically as Tumblety.
New York City's Chief Inspector Byrnes soon discovered Tumblety was lodging at 79 East Tenth Street at the home of Mrs McNamara, and he had him under surveillance for some days following. Byrnes could not arrest Tumblety because, in his own words, 'there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable.'
The situation was tense: all of New York City knew of Tumblety's whereabouts, thanks to the many newspaper articles covering Byrnes's surveillance, but there was no legal means of detaining the man. Fear and suspicion rose until, on the 5th of December, Tumblety disappeared from his lodgings once again, eluding the New York police who were watching him so closely. Interest gradually waned as the years dragged on, and Tumblety next appears in Rochester in 1893, where he lived with his sister. He would die a decade later in 1903 in St. Louis, a man of considerable wealth. Tumblety was buried in Rochester, NY.
Such was the life of Francis Tumblety. Interestingly enough, there was absolutely no press coverage in the UK papers, while American papers (especially New York) carried dozens of full-length articles on his arrest and escape (see, for example, an article of December 3rd, 1888 from the Rochester Democrat and Republican). It has been suggested that Scotland Yard wished to keep Tumblety a secret from the press in order to avoid the embarassment of losing their top suspect.
Whatever the case, the story of Francis Tumblety and his connections to the Ripper crimes emerged only a few years ago in 1993, when Stewart Evans acquired what has now become known as the Littlechild letter. It was a letter penned by Chief Inspector John Littlechild in 1913 in response to some questions asked of him by journalist G.R. Sims. The authenticity of the letter has been established by numerous scientific and historical tests, and is not challenged by any researcher.
The letter mentions the name Tumblety as 'a very likely suspect,' and provided the first insight into a Scotland Yard suspect whose name was lost for 105 years. Evans continued to research the suspect with co-author Paul Gainey for two years before publishing the first edition of his work, The Lodger, which would be titled in subsequent editions Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer.
The news of this new suspect was indeed one of the most celebrated discoveries of the past decade, and many top-named researchers admit that Tumblety's case is one of the most persuasive to have emerged in recent years.
Evans and Gainey outline fifteen reasons why they believe Tumblety should be considered a top suspect in the Whitechapel murders:
Tumblety fits many requirements of what we now know as the 'serial killer profile.' He had a supposed hatred of women and prostitutes (the abortion with the prostitute Dumas, his alleged failed marriage to an ex-prostitute, his collection of uteri, etc.)
Tumblety was in London at the time and may indeed have been the infamous 'Batty Street Lodger' -- he therefore may have had fair knowledge of the East End environs.
Tumblety may have had some anatomical knowledge, as inferred by his collection of wombs, his 'medical' practice, and his short-term work with Dr. Lispenard in Rochester.
He was arrested in the midst of the Autumn of Terror on suspicion of having committed the murders.
There were no more murders after he fleed England on the 24th November, if one counts only the canonical five murders.
Chief Inspector Littlechild, a top name in Scotland Yard, believed him a 'very likely suspect,' and he was not alone in his convictions.
Tumblety was fond of using aliases, disappearing without a trace, and was the subject of police enquiries before his arrest.
Scotland Yard and the American police had been in touch numerous times concerning Tumblety's flight from France to New York.
One of the three detectives inspectors assigned to the case was sent to New York at the same time, perhaps to pursue Tumblety.
Tumblety evaded capture in New York City once again.
Tumblety had the wealth necessary for frequent travel and could afford to change his clothes frequently should they have become bloodstained.
He was an eccentric; but shrewd.
He had a tendency toward violence at times, and his career may have included other offences both at home and abroad.
Several acquaintances of his in America believed it likely that he was the Ripper when interviewed in 1888.
There is a strong case to be made that he was indeed the Batty Street Lodger.
Still, there are many opponents who believe Tumblety's status as 'Scotland Yard's top suspect' is poorly deserved. They make note of the fact that Tumblety's homosexuality would rule him out as a suspect, as homosexual serial killers are concerned singularly with male victims and would be uninterested in female prostitutes.
http://www.casebook.org/suspects/tumblety.html
So far it still looks like James Kelly.
James Maybrick is the most popular suspect among "Ripperologists," but the "Diary of Jack the Ripper that emerged in the 1990s has been confessed to being a hoax by Michael Barrett, an unemployed former Liverpool scrap metal dealer, who probably needed the money at the time. Maybrick would not even be considered a suspect at all if it weren't for the diary, he was too ill from being poisoned from his wife at the time!
Francis Tumblety, second most popular suspect, well I agree that a gay man probably wouldn't be interested in prostitutes, his 'candidacy' probably derives, in part from gay-bashing.
Mystery writer Patricia Corwell taps Walter Sickert as the suspect from DNA evidence on the letters. But how reliable is DNA evidence over 100 years old? No one else has ever used it for a murder suspect, especially from letters! Only the 'From Hell' letter has been conclusively linked to the murders anyway (and it was unsigned), that is the one that had the piece of the kidney.
Which brings us to the 'Royal Conspiracy' theories. Prince Albert Victor was a popular suspect during the 70s and 80s, unfortunately, he was away from London at the time of the killings. How about William Gull, his royal physician..? Gull was tabbed as a suspect for the 1980s miniseries starring Michael Caine and the Johnny Depp movie (based on the Allen Moore comic book From Hell). No one mentions that Gull was over seventy years old at the time, recovering from a stroke.
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream claimed to be the ripper, but he was a poisoner, not a ripper, he was also in prison at the time.
James Kelly was 38 years old at the time and had recently escaped from a mental institution for the killing of his wife. He is the only suspect that can be tabbed in London at the time of all of the murders and also in America where similar killings happened later. He hated prostitutes, whom he believed gave him venerial diseases and women in general. Early on, he was a suspect of the police, but they dropped him when the trail went cold. His image fits that of the man depicted in the London newspaper cartoons.
I believe there were more Ripper murders than given credit for, that they started earlier and ended later in Whitechapel than the five usually presented (there are 11 victims around the time), and that they continued in New York, Texas in Georgia, with Carrie Brown being the first murder victim in America, in New York, died April 24, 1891
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yQt9fMMvf4
Post by: Keira Kensington on April 12, 2015, 12:32:32 am
Who was Jack the Ripper and did he strike America?
November 18, 2009 10:12 AM MST
In 1891, two New York City prostitutes turned up dead and mutilated. Newspapers speculated whether Jack the Ripper arrived in the city. Like the London serial killer, the New York murderer was never captured. Last Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired Jack the Ripper in America and asked whether Jack the Ripper came to America. A veteran cold case investigator, Ed Norris, looked into the 1891 murders and it took him to London. By the time Norris finished, he concluded that Jack the Ripper came to America and went on a killing spree. When all the evidence is examined, and connections made, there is little doubt that Ed Norris identified Jack the Ripper and the infamous London killer plied his trade in America.
In 1883, James Kelly flew into a rage and accused his wife of being unfaithful. Kelly lost control and knifed her to death. Kelly was an upholsterer by trade and knew how to use a knife quickly to get his job done. After his capture, the wife murderer was sentenced to hang, but his employer came forward and told authorities that Kelly was unstable. After talking to Kelly's boss, the authorities sent the wife killer to Broadmore Lunatic Asylum. While at the asylum, Kelly played violin and acted normally most of the time. However, he also tended to fly into fits of rage. In 1888, Kelly fashioned a metal key and escaped to London. The Ripper killings followed shortly thereafter.
From August to November, 1888, five prostitutes were killed and mutilated in the Whitechapel district of London. Prostitutes frequented the area and made easy targets. Jack the Ripper's crimes show rage and a hatred of women. James Kelly was prone to uncontrollable rage and admitted hating "skanks." So, Kelly had the mindset, the motivation, and the knowledge needed to kill quickly and tear apart a body.
London police searched for Kelly, but later gave up the search. If the murders occurred today, the police would search high and low for James Kelly. Unfortunately, in the late nineteenth century, the police were not up to the challenge. Kelly escaped to America. In 1890, he arrived in New York City and changed his name to John Miller. Shortly after Kelly arrived, a newspaper received a letter from someone claiming to be Jack the Ripper.
The Ripper taunted the London police with at least one letter. Serial killers crave attention. After the New York letter, two prostitutes turned up mutilated. New Yorkers wondered whether Jack the Ripper had immigrated to their city. From 1891-1895, Kelly traveled America. Wherever he went, mutilation murders followed. In four years, twelve murders occurred in places Kelly traveled.
Kelly returned to Broadmore in 1927. The elderly man explained to the attendants how he had been "on the warpath" and how he disliked "skanks." Kelly also gave an accounting of his whereabouts. Kelly's testimony proved vital to Ed Norris' investigation. Norris matched mutilation murders to the dates and places Kelly traveled. Additionally, authorities photographed Kelly in 1927 and Norris used age regression technology to get an idea of what Kelly looked like in 1888. The age regressed photo matched a police sketch made by eye witnesses. Kelly was a dead ringer for the Ripper sketch.
The Discover Channel's Jack the Ripper in America provides a great example of cold case detective work. Cold Case investigator Ed Norris investigated a New York murder and leads took him to London's Jack the Ripper. After whittling down a list of suspects, Norris focused on James Kelly. Kelly killed his wife, was mentally ill, and knew how to use a knife through his work as an upholsterer. He escaped the asylum in time for the Ripper murders, goes to America, and is present in cities that experienced Ripper-like murders. Additionally, he hated prostitutes and easily flew into an uncontrollable rage. Lastly, his mug shot matched Jack the Ripper witness sketches from the period. While it is true Norris lacked physical evidence to tie Kelly to the crimes, the circumstantial evidence is so overwhelming, that it can be said with confidence that James Kelly was Jack the Ripper.
http://www.examiner.com/article/who-was-jack-the-ripper-and-did-he-strike-america
Scotland Yard files that have been in the vaults for decades; not lost as many thought; have court documents concerning one James Kelly. An Investigation Discovery documentry; Discovery Sunday: Jack the Ripper in America"; goes into exact detail about James Kelly, even comparing an "age regressed" sketch of Kelly taken from his asylum photo taken in 1927; with the composite of the Ripper suspect taken from eye witnesses reports.
The match is 99.95% accurate.
Kelly died at the Broadmoore Insane Asylum in 1929, after returning there in 1927; he had been on the loose for 40 years. His confession was exact about a dozen "Ripper" style murders in the US. Kelly went so far as to write to the NY Times newspaper BEFORE he killed his first US victim. EVERY newspaper in the US cities where Kelly killed had banner headlines that echoed Kellys murders "Jack the Ripper in America".
Kelly killed; actually butchered as Mary Kelly had been; twelve women in the US in four years.
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=170399
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Jkelly.jpg/60px-Jkelly.jpg)
Posted Image This suspect was first identified in the well-researched Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper, by Jim Tully, in 1997.[60]
A retired NYPD cold-case detective named Ed Norris examined the Jack the Ripper case for a Discovery Channel program called "Jack the Ripper in America." In it, Norris builds a compelling case that James Kelly was not only Jack the Ripper's real identity, he was also responsible for multiple murders in cities around the United States after his reign of terror in London.
James Kelly (no known relation to the Ripper victim Mary Kelly) (20 April 1860 – 17 September 1929) murdered his wife in 1883 by stabbing her in the neck. Deemed insane, he was committed to the Broadmoor Asylum, from which he later escaped in early 1888, using a key he fashioned himself. The timing of his escape would have allowed him to be in London just in time for The Ripper's murders. Kelly was an upholsterer by trade, and an upholsterer's knife would produce the types of wounds found on the majority of the victims. After the last Ripper murder in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been his residence prior his wife's murder, but they were not able to locate him. In 1927, almost forty years after his escape, he unexpectedly turned himself back in to officials at the Broadmoor Asylum. He died two years later, presumably of natural causes.
Before his death, Kelly gave an accounting of where he had been during the years since his escape. The typed declaration was unearthed by the Discovery Channel in research for the program "Jack the Ripper in America." In it, Kelly said he had "been on the warpath" since leaving the asylum. He claimed to have traveled to London, which would have put him in that city right at the time The Ripper began his murderous rampage. He said he later traveled to America aboard an Anglo-German steamer called the Zaandam that sailed from Rotterdam to New York. Research by the Discovery Channel at Britain's National Maritime Museum confirmed the ship not only existed, it sailed from Rotterdam to New York on October 7, 1890—two years after the last Ripper murder in London. That would have put Kelly in America during the time frame in which similar murders occurred on American soil, including the gruesome murder in New York of prostitute Carrie Brown, who was killed in April 1891. Crime scene photos revealed Brown's body had a large 'X' carved in it, which Norris speculated was actually a Roman numeral, as Brown would have been Kelly's tenth victim (counting his murdered wife). Kelly's statement placed him in more cities in the United States in which other murders occurred that bore a resemblance to the horrific killings in London. Local newspapers at the time even speculated that The Ripper may have come to America and been responsible for the brutal slayings. Norris compared photos of Kelly with the physical description of The Ripper given to police in London at the time of the murders and found Kelly was a close match.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CJMpL1qQ3E
Jack the Ripper - James Kelly - Documentary part 1
(http://www.jacktherippermap.info/images/jtr-map800x484.jpg)
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vverp4OcJ9k/UGXgKJirhnI/AAAAAAAAAI8/-6zckFz5ycw/s320/images.jpg)
Lia AzharNovember 13, 2012 at 8:45 PM
He was The Ripper because research shows that their handwriting were same :)
auni aulyaNovember 13, 2012 at 11:09 PM
i agree with Lia! because i already made research and asked Mr. Kama, James Kelly was JTR because their handwriting were same, and the letter from HELL meaning his dorm 7734.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M4-Aff8qqiI/UGXasBZi06I/AAAAAAAAAIs/JiMTkqHqnZM/s1600/ddd.jpg)
http://ahmadasyraf4b.blogspot.com/2012/09/james-kelly-is-not-jack-ripper.html
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3dgHMGV5IMo/UGganDdtsSI/AAAAAAAAAI4/SZpFSiCrAx8/s320/2221932_f520.jpg)
Later Whitechapel murders
Kelly is generally considered to be the Ripper's final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprit's death, imprisonment, institutionalisation, or emigration.[16] The Whitechapel murders file does, however, detail another four murders that happened after the canonical five: those of Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, the Pinchin Street torso and Frances Coles.
Mylett was found strangled in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar on 20 December 1888. As there was no sign of a struggle, the police believed that she had accidentally hanged herself on her collar while in a drunken stupor, or committed suicide.[40] Nevertheless, the inquest jury returned a verdict of murder.[40]
McKenzie was killed on 17 July 1889 by severance of the left carotid artery. Several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body, discovered in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. One of the examining pathologists, Thomas Bond, believed this to be a Ripper murder, though another pathologist, George Bagster Phillips, who had examined the bodies of three previous victims, disagreed.[41] Later writers are also divided between those who think that her murderer copied the Ripper's modus operandi to deflect suspicion from himself,[42] and those that ascribe it to the Ripper.[43]
"The Pinchin Street torso" was a headless and legless torso of an unidentified woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, on 10 September 1889. It seems probable that the murder was committed elsewhere and that parts of the dismembered body were dispersed for disposal.[44]
Coles was killed on 13 February 1891 under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. Her throat was cut but the body was not mutilated. James Thomas Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police, charged with her murder and was briefly thought to be the Ripper.[45] He was, however, discharged from court for lack of evidence on 3 March 1891.[45]
Other alleged victims
In addition to the eleven Whitechapel murders, commentators have linked other attacks to the Ripper. In one case, that of "Fairy Fay", it is unclear whether the attack was real or fabricated as a part of Ripper lore.[46] "Fairy Fay" was a nickname given to a victim allegedly found on 26 December 1887 "after a stake had been thrust through her abdomen",[47][48] but there were no recorded murders in Whitechapel at or around Christmas 1887.[49] "Fairy Fay" seems to have been created through a confused press report of the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith, who had had a stick or other blunt object shoved into her abdomen.[50] Most authors agree that "Fairy Fay" never existed.[46][51]
Annie Millwood was admitted to Whitechapel workhouse infirmary with stab wounds in the legs and lower torso on 25 February 1888.[52] She was discharged but died from apparently natural causes aged 38 on 31 March 1888.[51] She was later postulated as the Ripper's first victim, but the attack cannot be linked definitely.[53] Another supposed early victim was Ada Wilson,[54] who reportedly survived being stabbed twice in the neck on 28 March 1888.[55] Annie Farmer, who resided at the same lodging house as Martha Tabram,[56] reported an attack on 21 November 1888. She had a superficial cut on her throat, but it was possibly self-inflicted.[57
"The Whitehall Mystery" was a term coined for the discovery of a headless torso of a woman on 2 October 1888 in the basement of the new Metropolitan Police headquarters being built in Whitehall. An arm belonging to the body was previously discovered floating in the river Thames near Pimlico, and one of the legs was subsequently discovered buried near where the torso was found.[58] The other limbs and head were never recovered and the body was never identified. The mutilations were similar to those in the Pinchin Street case, where the legs and head were severed but not the arms. The Whitehall Mystery and the Pinchin Street case may have been part of a series of murders, called the "Thames Mysteries", committed by a single serial killer, dubbed the "Torso killer".[59] Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso killer" were the same person or separate serial killers active in the same area is debatable.[59] As the modus operandi of the Torso killer differed from that of the Ripper, police at the time discounted any connection between the two.[60] Elizabeth Jackson, a prostitute whose various body parts were collected from the river Thames over a three-week period in June 1889, may have been another victim of the "Torso killer".[61]
John Gill, a seven-year-old boy, was found murdered in Manningham, Bradford, on 29 December 1888. His legs had been severed, his abdomen opened, his intestines drawn out, and his heart and one ear removed. The similarities with the murder of Mary Kelly led to press speculation that the Ripper had killed the boy.[62] The boy's employer, milkman William Barrett, was twice arrested for the murder on circumstantial evidence but was released.[62] No-one else was ever prosecuted.[62]
Carrie Brown (nicknamed "Shakespeare", reportedly for quoting Shakespeare's sonnets) was strangled with clothing and then mutilated with a knife on 24 April 1891 in New York City.[63] Her body was found with a large tear through her groin area and superficial cuts on her legs and back. No organs were removed from the scene, though an ovary, either purposely removed or unintentionally dislodged, was found upon the bed.[63] At the time, the murder was compared to those in Whitechapel, though the Metropolitan Police eventually ruled out any connection.[63]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Brown_%28murder_victim%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel_murders
The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Most, if not all, of the victims—Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified woman—were prostitutes. Smith was sexually assaulted and robbed by a gang. Tabram was stabbed 39 times. Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly, McKenzie and Coles had their throats cut. Eddowes and Stride were killed on the same night, minutes and less than a mile apart; their murders were nicknamed the "double event", after a phrase in a postcard sent to the press by someone claiming to be the Ripper. The bodies of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly had abdominal mutilations. Mylett was strangled. The body of the unidentified woman was dismembered, but the exact cause of her death is unclear.
The Metropolitan Police, City of London Police, and private organisations such as the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee were involved in the search for the killer or killers. Despite extensive inquiries and several arrests, the culprit or culprits evaded identification and capture. The murders drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End slums, which were subsequently improved. The enduring mystery of who committed the crimes has captured public imagination to the present day.
After the last of the five canonical Ripper murders in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been his residence prior his wife's murder, but they were not able to locate him.
Last possible Ripper murder (I give him credit for more than the canonical five):
Frances Coles was killed on 13 February 1891 under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. Her throat was cut but the body was not mutilated. James Thomas Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police, charged with her murder and was briefly thought to be the Ripper.[45] He was, however, discharged from court for lack of evidence on 3 March 1891.[45]
Several of the more likely suspects were known to have been to the United States. Norris considers three: George Chapman, aka Severin Antoniovich Klosowski — a prime suspect among Ripperoligists (yes, that's what they call themselves)— moved to Jersey City, New Jersey in 1891; Francis Tumblety, arrested in 1888 on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders, took a steamer to New York City while out on bail; and James Kelly who escaped from Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum just before the murders and was known to be in America after them. (Also listed but not mentioned was Dr. Neil Cream, who poisoned a man in America and several women in England.)
Carrie Brown(nicknamed "Shakespeare", reportedly for quoting Shakespeare's sonnets) was strangled with clothing and then mutilated with a knife on 24 April 1891 in New York City.[63] Her body was found with a large tear through her groin area and superficial cuts on her legs and back. No organs were removed from the scene, though an ovary, either purposely removed or unintentionally dislodged, was found upon the bed.[63] At the time, the murder was compared to those in Whitechapel, though the Metropolitan Police eventually ruled out any connection.[63]
(http://www.casebook.org/images/pris1167.gif)
Prisoner 1167: The Madman Who Was Jack the Ripper
a.k.a. The Real Jack the Ripper: The Secret of Prisoner 1167
Jim Tully
Robinson, May 1997
416 pp. ISBN 1854879219 £16.99 (hardback)
Casebook Review:
A triumphant achivement on the part of Jim Tully, well-researched and written. James Kelly is his suspect, a lunatic upholsterer and wife-murderer who is actually in the Guiness book of world records for his escape from Broadmoor asylum. Tully weaves a fascinating story, regardless of your feelings on Kelly as a suspect. Recommended.
Jack the Ripper suspects
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Druitt2.jpg/60px-Druitt2.jpg)
Montague John Druitt (15 August 1857 – early December 1888) was a Dorset-born barrister who worked to supplement his income as an assistant schoolmaster in Blackheath, London, until his dismissal shortly before his suicide by drowning in 1888.[9] His decomposed body was found floating in the Thames near Chiswick on 31 December 1888. Some modern authors suggest that Druitt may have been dismissed because he was a homosexual and that this could have driven him to suicide.[10] However, both his mother and his grandmother suffered mental health problems,[11] and it is possible that he was dismissed because of an underlying hereditary psychiatric illness.[9] His death shortly after the last canonical murder (which took place on 9 November 1888) led Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaghten to name him as a suspect in a memorandum of 23 February 1894. However, Macnaghten incorrectly described the 31-year-old barrister as a 41-year-old doctor.[12] On 1 September, the day after the first canonical murder, Druitt was in Dorset playing cricket, and most experts now believe that the killer was local to Whitechapel, whereas Druitt lived miles away on the other side of the Thames in Kent.[13] Inspector Frederick Abberline appeared to dismiss Druitt as a serious suspect on the basis that the only evidence against him was the coincidental timing of his suicide shortly after the last canonical murder.[14]
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Klosowski.jpg/60px-Klosowski.jpg)
Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski (alias George Chapman—no relation to victim Annie Chapman) (14 December 1865 – 7 April 1903) was born in Congress Poland, but emigrated to the United Kingdom sometime between 1887 and 1888, shortly before the start of the Whitechapel murders. Between 1893 and 1894 he assumed the name of Chapman. He successively poisoned three of his wives and became known as "the borough poisoner". He was hanged for his crimes in 1903. At the time of the Ripper murders, he lived in Whitechapel, London, where he had been working as a barber under the name Ludwig Schloski.[15] According to H. L. Adam, who wrote a book on the poisonings in 1930, Chapman was Inspector Frederick Abberline's favoured suspect,[16] and the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Abberline suspected Chapman after his conviction.[17] However, others disagree that Chapman is a likely culprit, as he murdered his three wives with poison, and it is uncommon (though not unheard of) for a serial killer to make such a drastic change in their modus operandi.[18]
Aaron Kosminski (born Aron Mordke Kozminski; 11 September 1865 – 24 March 1919) was a Polish Jew who was admitted to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1891.[19] "Kosminski" (without a forename) was named as a suspect by Sir Melville Macnaghten in his 1894 memorandum[20] and by former Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in handwritten comments in the margin of his copy of Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson's memoirs.[21] Anderson wrote that a Polish Jew had been identified as the Ripper but that no prosecution was possible because the witness was also Jewish and refused to testify against a fellow Jew.[22] Some authors are sceptical of this, while others use it in their theories.[23] In his memorandum, Macnaghten stated that no one was ever identified as the Ripper, which directly contradicts Anderson's recollection.[24] In 1987, Ripper author Martin Fido searched asylum records for any inmates called Kosminski, and found only one: Aaron Kosminski. Kosminski lived in Whitechapel;[25] however, he was largely harmless in the asylum. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people, a refusal to wash or bathe, and "self-abuse".[26] In his book, The Cases That Haunt Us, former FBI profiler John Douglas states that a paranoid individual such as Kosminski would likely have openly boasted of the murders while incarcerated had he been the killer, but there is no record that he ever did so.[27] In 2014, DNA analysis attempted to link Kosminski with a shawl said to belong to victim Catherine Eddowes,[28][29] but experts – including Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of genetic fingerprinting - dismissed the claims as unreliable.[30]
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Ostrogg.jpg/60px-Ostrogg.jpg)
Michael Ostrog (c. 1833–in or after 1904) was a Russian-born professional con man and thief.[4] He used numerous aliases and assumed titles.[31] Among his many dubious claims was that he had once been a surgeon in the Russian Navy. He was mentioned as a suspect by Macnaghten, who joined the case in 1889, the year after the "canonical five" victims were killed. Researchers have failed to find evidence that he had committed crimes any more serious than fraud and theft.[32] Author Philip Sugden discovered prison records showing that Ostrog was jailed for petty offences in France during the Ripper murders.[33] Ostrog was last mentioned alive in 1904; the date of his death is unknown.[34]
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/PIZER.jpg/60px-PIZER.jpg)
John Pizer or Piser (c. 1850–1897) was a Polish Jew who worked as a bootmaker in Whitechapel. In the early days of the Whitechapel murders, many locals suspected that "Leather Apron" was the killer, which was picked up by the press, and Pizer was known as "Leather Apron". He had a prior conviction for a stabbing offence, and Police Sergeant William Thicke apparently believed that he had committed a string of minor assaults on prostitutes.[35] After the murders of Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman in late August and early September 1888 respectively, Thicke arrested Pizer on 10 September, even though the investigating inspector reported that "there is no evidence whatsoever against him".[36] He was cleared of suspicion when it turned out that he had alibis for two of the murders. He was staying with relatives at the time of one of the canonical murders, and he was talking with a police officer while watching a spectacular fire on the London Docks at the time of another.[37] Pizer and Thicke had known each other for years,[38] and Pizer implied that his arrest was based on animosity rather than evidence.[35] Pizer successfully obtained monetary compensation from at least one newspaper that had named him as the murderer.[39] (Thicke himself was accused of being the Ripper by H. T. Haslewood of Tottenham in a letter to the Home Office dated 10 September 1889. The presumably malicious accusation was dismissed as without foundation.[40])
James Thomas Sadler
Sadler was a friend of Frances Coles, the last victim added to the Whitechapel murders police file. Coles was killed with a wound to the throat on 13 February 1891. Sadler was arrested, but there was little evidence against him. Though briefly considered by the police as a Ripper suspect, he was at sea at the time of the earlier "canonical" murders, and was released without charge.[41] Sadler was named in Macnaghten's 1894 memorandum in connection with Coles' murder. Though Macnaghten thought Sadler "was a man of ungovernable temper and entirely addicted to drink, and the company of the lowest prostitutes", he thought any connection with the Ripper was unlikely.[42]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_suspects
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Tumblety.jpg/60px-Tumblety.jpg)
Francis Tumblety (c. 1833–1903) earned a small fortune posing as an "Indian Herb" doctor throughout the United States and Canada, and was commonly perceived as a misogynist and a quack.[43] He was connected to the death of one of his patients,[44] but escaped prosecution.[45] In 1865, he was arrested for complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but was released without charge.[46] Tumblety was in England in 1888, and was arrested on 7 November, apparently for engaging in homosexuality, which was illegal at the time.[47] It was reported by some of his friends that he showed off a collection of "matrices" from "every class of woman" at around this time.[48] Awaiting trial, he fled to France and then to the United States.[49] Already notorious in the States for his self-promotion and previous criminal charges, his arrest was reported as connected to the Ripper murders.[50] American reports that Scotland Yard tried to extradite him were not confirmed by the British press or the London police,[51] and the New York City Police said, "there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he is under bond in London is not extraditable".[52] In 1913, Tumblety was mentioned as a Ripper suspect by Chief Inspector John Littlechild of the Metropolitan Police Service in a letter to journalist and author George R. Sims.[4][53]
The Whitechapel murders were featured heavily in the media, and attracted the attention of Victorian society at large. Journalists, letter writers, and amateur detectives all suggested names either in press or to the police. Most were not and could not be taken seriously.[54] For example, at the time of the murders Richard Mansfield, a famous actor, starred in a theatrical version of Robert Louis Stevenson's book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets and Mansfield's convincing portrayal led letter writers to accuse him of being the Ripper.[55]
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/William_Henry_Bury.jpg/60px-William_Henry_Bury.jpg)
William Henry Bury (25 May 1859 – 24 April 1889) had recently moved to Dundee from the East End of London, when he strangled his wife Ellen Elliott, a former prostitute, on 4 February 1889. He inflicted extensive wounds to her abdomen after she was dead and packed the body into a trunk. On 10 February, Bury went to the local police and told them his wife had committed suicide. He was arrested, tried, found guilty of her murder, and hanged in Dundee. A link with the Ripper crimes was investigated by police, but Bury denied any connection, despite making a full confession to his wife's homicide. Nevertheless, the hangman, James Berry, promoted the idea that Bury was the Ripper.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Neil-cream.jpg/60px-Neil-cream.jpg)
Dr Thomas Neill Cream (27 May 1850 – 15 November 1892) was a doctor secretly specialising in abortions. He was born in Glasgow, educated in London and Canada, and entered practice in Canada and later in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881 he was found guilty of the fatal poisoning of his mistress's husband.[57] He was imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, from November 1881 until his release on good behaviour on 31 July 1891. He moved to London, where he resumed killing and was soon arrested. He was hanged on 15 November 1892 at Newgate Prison. According to some sources, his last words were reported as being "I am Jack the...", interpreted to mean Jack the Ripper.[58] However, police officials who attended the execution made no mention of this alleged interrupted confession.[58] As he was still imprisoned at the time of the Ripper murders, most authorities consider it impossible for him to be the culprit. However, Donald Bell suggested that he could have bribed officials and left the prison before his official release,[59] and Sir Edward Marshall-Hall suspected that his prison term may have been served by a look-alike in his place.[60] Such notions are unlikely, and contradict evidence given by the Illinois authorities, newspapers of the time, Cream's solicitors, Cream's family and Cream himself.[61]
Thomas Hayne Cutbush (1865–1903) was a medical student sent to Lambeth Infirmary in 1891 suffering delusions thought to have been caused by syphilis.[62] After stabbing a woman in the backside and attempting to stab a second he was pronounced insane and committed to Broadmoor Hospital in 1891, where he remained until his death in 1903.[63] The Sun newspaper suggested in a series of articles in 1894 that Cutbush was the Ripper. There is no evidence that police took the idea seriously, and Melville Macnaghten's memorandum naming the three police suspects Druitt, Kosminski and Ostrog was written to refute the idea that Cutbush was the Ripper.[64] Cutbush was the suspect advanced in the 1993 book Jack the Myth by A. P. Wolf, who suggested that Macnaghten wrote his memo to protect Cutbush's uncle who was a fellow police officer,[65] and another recent writer, Peter Hodgson, considers that Cutbush is the most likely candidate.[66]
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Deeming.jpg/60px-Deeming.jpg)
Frederick Bailey Deeming (30 July 1842 – 23 May 1892) murdered his first wife and four children in Rainhill near St. Helens, Lancashire, in 1891. His crimes went undiscovered and later that year he emigrated to Australia with his second wife, whom he then also murdered. Her body was found buried under their house, and the subsequent investigation led to the discovery of the other bodies in England. He was arrested, sent to trial, and found guilty. He wrote in a book, and later boasted in jail that he was Jack the Ripper, but he was either imprisoned[67] or in South Africa[68] at the time of the Ripper murders. The police denied any connection between Deeming and the Ripper.[69] He was hanged in Melbourne.[70] According to Robert Napper, a former Scotland Yard detective, the British police did not consider him a suspect because of his two possible alibis but Napper believed Deeming was not in jail at the time, and there is some evidence that he was back in England.[71]
Post by: Keira Kensington on September 04, 2015, 04:07:05 am
THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
Could Jack the Ripper Have Been an American?
In the year 1888, the city of London, England was terrorized by a killer who called himself "Jack the Ripper". The mysterious madman prowled the streets of the Whitechapel District in East London and slaughtered a number of prostitutes, carving his way into the historical record as the first "modern serial killer". As the years have passed, the Ripper has held the morbid curiosity of professional and amateur sleuths, armchair detectives and crime buffs alike. Having eluded capture in the 1880's, his identity has been debated ever since. Not surprisingly, many suspects have been named as the Ripper over the years with the vast majority of them being British. Many readers, who may have only a "bare bones" knowledge of the case, may be surprised to learn that there are those who believe Jack the Ripper may have actually been an American!
One of these infamous suspects lived and died in the city of St. Louis. His name was Dr. Francis J. Tumblety and suspicion about him being the Ripper came about in 1913, a number of years after the murders took place. In a letter dated on September 23, Inspector John Littlechild, head of the Special Branch in England, wrote to George Sims, a journalist about a medical man who may have been the killer. He was apparently replying to Sims about other possible suspects when he wrote:
"I never heard of a Dr. D in connection with the Whitechapel murders, but amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T (which sounds much like a D). He was an American quack named Tumblety and at one time was a frequent visitor to London and on these occasions constantly brought under the notice of police, there being a large dossier concerning him at Scotland Yard. Although a "Sycopathis Sexualis" [sic] subject, he was not known as a sadist (which the murdered unquestionably was) but his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record. Tumblety was arrested at the time of the murders in connection with unnatural offenses and charged at Marlborough Street, remanded on bail, jumped his bail and got away to Boulogne. He shortly left Boulogne and was never heard of afterwards. It is believed that he committed suicide but certain it is that from the time the "Ripper" murders came to an end."
And while not all of Inspector Littlechild's facts were correct, he did make an interesting case toward the American doctor being the fiendish killer. In fact, the idea was so compelling that when the letter resurfaced years later, the theory was later turned into flawed but fascinating book by two British police officers, Stewart P. Evans and Paul Gainey, called Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer.
But was the "medical man" the real Whitechapel killer? Let's look into the facts and the fancy behind the intriguing suspect.
Francis J. Tumblety was born in Canada in 1833 and moved with his family to Rochester, New York at a very young age. Although uneducated, he was a clever man and became wealthy and successful as a homeopath and a mixer of patent medicines. There is no record as to whether or not these "snake oil" cures worked or not, but it is certain that Tumblety held no medical degree. He did claim to possess Indian and Oriental secrets of healing and good health and he was described as charming and handsome, so its not surprising that he made quite a bit of money in this questionable field.
When not charming customers, Tumblety was said to have been disliked by many for his self-aggrandizing and his constant boasting. He had a penchant for staying in fine hotels, wearing fine clothes and making false claims. Often these tall tales got him into trouble and he left town on more than one occasion just a step ahead of the law.
In the late 1850's and early 1860's, Tumblety was living in Washington and from this period, the first stories of his deep-seated hatred for women began to surface. During a dinner party one night in 1861, Tumblety was asked by some guests why he did not invite any single women to the gathering. Tumblety replied that women were nothing more than "cattle" and that he would rather give a friend poison than see him with a woman. He then began to speak about the evils of women, especially prostitutes. A man who was in attendance that evening, an attorney named C.A. Dunham, later remarked that it was believed that Tumblety had been tricked into marriage by a woman who was later revealed to be a prostitute. This was thought to have sparked his hatred of woman, but none of the guests had any idea just how far the feelings of animosity went until Tumblety offered to show them his "collection". He led his guests into a back study of the house, where he kept his anatomical "museum". Here, they were shown row after row of jars containing women's uteruses!
In 1863, Tumblety came to St. Louis for the first time and took rooms at the Lindell Hotel. As he recounted in letters, his flamboyant ways did not appeal to those in St. Louis and he claimed to have been arrested in both the city and in Carondelet, an independent city nearby, for "putting on airs" and "being caught in quasi-military" dress. Regardless of his claims, Tumblety most likely caused trouble during these troubled times in the city because of his apparent southern sympathies. In 1865, he was arrested on the serious charge of what amounted to an early case of biological terrorism. Federal officers had him arrested after he was allegedly involved in a plot to infect blankets, which were to be shipped to Union troops, with yellow fever. The whole thing did turn out to be a case of mistaken identity (an alias of Tumblety's was remarkably close to a real doctor involved) but it's likely that he would not have been suspected if not for some actions on his part. Tumblety was taken to Washington and imprisoned until the confusion over the plot could be cleared up and was later released. According to British records, Tumblety was then arrested again after the death of President Abraham Lincoln, this time as a conspirator in the assassination. He was again released but this time, his reputation was destroyed in Washington and he fled to New York. After that, he began traveling frequently to London during the 1870's and 1880's.
Although there has been much debate over the years as to how many victims that Jack the Ripper claimed, and just when the murders began, it is generally believed that the first killing occurred on August 31, 1888. The victim was a prostitute named Mary Ann Nichols. Her death was followed by those of Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride on September 8. On September 30, the Ripper claimed Catherine Eddowes. Organs had been removed from the bodies of both Chapman and Eddowes, including the latter woman's uterus.
Just prior to the start of the murders, Dr. Tumblety had come to London and had taken lodgings in Batty Street, the heart of Whitechapel and within easy distance of the murder scenes. It is plain that he was watched closely by the police, especially after an incident involving a pathological museum. During the Annie Chapman inquest, police investigators heard information that has created the most pervasive and enduring myth of the Whitechapel murders, that of the Ripper as a surgeon. Only one medical examiner, arguing against all other expert testimony, believed that the killer had expert anatomical knowledge. He was basing his theory on a witness that claimed the killer was hunting for women's uteruses to sell to an unknown American. This bizarre bit of testimony came about because Tumblety did indeed visit a pathological museum in London and had inquired about any uteruses that might be for sale. He apparently wanted to add them to his collection.
On November 7, Tumblety was arrested, not for murder, but rather for "unnatural offences", which was usually a reference to homosexuality but could also include procuring young girls. He was later released on bail, although when exactly that was has been a matter of debate for many years. According to some records, he was released on November 16 but according to others, he was actually let go on November 8. The entire theory of whether or not he was Jack the Ripper hinges on the date that he was released from jail!
The reason for this is that on November 9, the Ripper claimed his last victim. Her name was Mary Kelly and she was mutilated in ways that cannot be imagined in her own bed. She was butchered beyond recognition and a number of her organs were removed, including her heart and uterus.
If Tumblety was actually released on November 8, then he could have easily killed Mary Kelly. One account of the days following the murder states that he was arrested on suspicion of her murder on November 12, was released without being charged and then vanished from Whitechapel. On November 24, it is alleged that he took a steamer to France and then sailed from France to New York. Scotland Yard detectives were said to have pursued him to New York and while they kept on eye on him, had no evidence to arrest him and could not have him extradited for the still outstanding indecency charges. They eventually gave up and went home.
(http://www.prairieghosts.com/ripper1.jpg)
Those who do not believe that Tumblety could have been the Ripper give a different accounting of the days after Mary Kelly was killed. According to them, Tumblety was not released on bail until November 16. As Inspector Littlechild writes, he was then believed to jump bail and escape to Boulogne with the police pursuing him. From there, he booked passage to New York, where police staked out his lodgings. He escaped them however and vanished. He was not, as far as recorded, further pursued for his part in the killings. With that said, it would have been impossible for Tumblety to be the Ripper. If he were the killer, then someone would have had to copy and exceed his previous work on Mary Kelly while the doctor was still in jail. Most would agree that this seems highly unlikely.
But our story is not quite over. Regardless of what is written about the last days of Tumblety in London, all will agree that after his escape he did end up in St. Louis. He also traveled for a time, avoiding Washington but frequently visiting Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis. He continued to live in hotels and established no permanent residence in any of the cities. In April 1903 though, Tumblety checked himself into St. John's Hospital and Dispensary at 23rd and Locust Streets in St. Louis. The hospital, which was then located in the old Catlin-Beach-Barney Mansion, provided care for indigents, which is how Tumblety was presenting himself at this time. The hospital is still in operation today as St. John's Mercy Medical Center, located at Interstate 64 and Ballas Road.
According to accounts, Tumblety was suffering from a long and painful illness, although what it may have been has never been specifically identified. Some have suggested that it may have been a debilitating case of syphilis, the contraction of which might have been cause for his hatred of women and especially prostitutes. Whatever it was though, Tumblety remained at St. John's until his death on May 28, 1903. However, he was far from indigent when he died. Court records showed that Tumblety left an estate of more than $135,000 when he died, some of which St. John's managed to recover. The hospital asked for about $450 to cover the room expenses and medical tests for a man who was clearly not poor. The rest of the estate, except for costs to a St. Louis undertaker, went to Tumblety's niece, Mary Fitzsimmons of Rochester, New York.
Aside from the hospital, there was one other claim to Tumblety's estate. While the hospital's costs can be seen as clearly legitimate, the additional claim was quite strange, especially in light of Tumblety's clear prejudices on the subject. The challenge to a will that Tumblety had written on May 16 came from an attorney in Baltimore named Joseph Kemp. He claimed that Tumblety had written an earlier will in October 1901 that left $1,000 from his estate to the Baltimore Home for Fallen Women... in other words, a halfway house for prostitutes! The claim was thrown out of court but it does provide an interesting final note to the life of a man who has been suspected of being the most famous killer of prostitutes in history!
Tumblety was unquestionably odd and quite possibly deranged, but his insanity and deviousness never reached the bounds of another American Jack the Ripper suspect, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. He thought of himself as a master criminal and his ego knew no bounds. He seemed to love to do evil and he was said to have revolutionized the concept of murder in the late 1800's. His motives would later give much in the way of study to crime psychologists and just what he may have done (and when) continues to baffle crime historians to this day. He specialized in the murder of women and perhaps for this reason, and the fact that he was so adept at covering his trail, Cream emerged in John Cashman's 1973 book The Gentleman from Chicago as a Ripper suspect. And while many have disputed these charges, Cream is worthy of mention as an American connection to the most heinous murders of the Victorian era.
Thomas Neill Cream
Cream was born in Scotland in 1850 and immigrated with his parents to Canada four years later. Though little is known about his early life, his parents were hardworking and decent folks and Cream lacked for nothing when it came to education and comfort. Somewhere along the way though, some twist in his makeup caused him to develop an overwhelming hatred of women. Perhaps it developed in childhood or perhaps later, when he attended McGill University in Montreal to study to be a doctor. He qualified as a physician but years later, the college would remove his name from the graduate rolls to avoid being connected to his crimes.
During his senior year of college, Cream met and seduced a young woman named Flora Eliza Brooks. When it was discovered that the girl was pregnant, Cream performed a crude abortion on her and left Flora permanently scarred and weak for the rest of her life. Her parents, when they discovered what had occurred, forced Cream to marry the girl but he vanished soon after the nuptials and sailed for England in 1876.
In London, Cream enrolled in a post-graduate course at St. Thomas' Hospital, which was located in the Waterloo-Lambeth section of the city, an area teeming with diseased prostitutes. It is believed that it is here where Cream first came into contact with the whores of London and where he also contracted syphilis. The effects of the disease on his brain have been blamed for his constant thoughts of murder and his psychopathic rages. It's more likely though that he was simply mad.
Cream returned to Canada a few years later and set up practice in Ontario. He learned that his wife had passed away and while she is listed as having died of consumption, the horrific abortion at Cream's hands undoubtedly contributed to her early demise. His medical practice was anything but savory and he soon earned a reputation for insurance fraud and performing illegal operations on women, especially abortions. He began a prosperous practice among local prostitutes and young women in trouble until the body of a young hotel chambermaid was discovered in his apartment one night with a bottle of chloroform beside her body. Cream had performed a savage abortion on her and it had failed, claiming her life. He was arrested and despite the evidence against him, the girl's death was ruled a suicide and Cream was freed.
This would be the first of a series of miraculous escapes for Cream but it would not be the last. He now took his operation to the teeming red-light districts of Chicago. His career as an abortionist found him plenty of new patients among the dirty and sickly prostitutes of Chicago's Levee districts. He seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on these women but his deviant desires were truly inflamed by the opportunity that sometimes arose to work on proper young ladies who had been compromised. One such woman was Julia Faulkner, who died on Cream's operating table in August 1880. He was charged with murder but the Chicago authorities lacked proof and Cream was released once again. Detectives suspected that Cream had given Miss Faulkner a poison called strychnine in the guise of a painkiller.
In 1881, Cream struck again. After another abortion on a Miss Stack, she also perished after taking medicine that Cream prescribed and which was also laced with strychnine. Cream attempted to blackmail the chemist that he got the medicine from (some medicines contained a small amount of the poison in those days), stating that if he was paid off, he would keep silent about the bad mixture. The chemist, knowing that he was not at fault, turned the blackmail letter over to the police and Cream was arrested. Again he was tried and again he was turned loose for lack of evidence.
Cream then began marketing a special elixir that he had created and which he claimed would cure epilepsy. Amazingly, he acquired a considerable following of patients who swore by the medicine. Then, into his office one day walked Julia Stott, an attractive young woman who was looking for Cream's epilepsy cure. Her husband, Daniel Stott, was a station agent on the Northeastern Railway and suffered from epilepsy. Cream began making advances toward Julia and found the woman receptive. She said that her husband's illness and his advanced age had ruined her sex life.
It's hard to imagine what could have attracted the beautiful woman to Cream. The doctor was a slight and scrawny man with thinning hair and gold-rimmed glasses through which he constantly squinted. He often gave off an appearance of being from the upper crust though with upscale dress and a bushy mustache that he kept waxed and turned up at the ends. Likely though, Julia's attraction to him went beyond just looks as she spoke of the doctor as being "insatiable" and stated later that he "ravished" her several times during their first meeting.
Daniel Stott began to grow suspicious of his wife's frequent trips to Cream's office and suspected that he was giving Julia more than just medicine on these visits. Not surprisingly, Cream repaid the man's suspicions by adding strychnine to his medicine and Stott died on June 14, 1881.
Originally, Stott's death was attributed to epilepsy but for some bizarre reason, Cream wrote to the coroner and stated that a pharmacist was responsible, having given Stott some bad medicine. He suggested that Stott's body be exhumed. The coroner dismissed the letter, not knowing that Cream was trying to collect on Stott's life insurance for he and Julia or that Cream has also sent a letter to the district attorney. The prosecutor decided to check into the letter and had the body exhumed. An exam discovered that there was poison in Stott's stomach, something that would have never been found if not for Cream's letter!
Cream may have realized his blunder once the letters were sent and he soon fled the city with the widow Stott. They were quickly apprehended by the police. Cream insisted at his trial that Stott's death had been the pharmacist's fault but Julia turned state's evidence against him and testified that she had seen Cream "put some white powder" into her husband's medicine bottle. This time, Cream's luck didn't hold and he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Joliet Prison. He was admitted in 1881 and was regarded as a model prisoner who spoke little to the other inmates and always did as he was told by the officers. Over the years, the only complaints ever filed about him came from other prisoners who claimed to be awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of low, hissing laughter coming from his cell. At such times, he could be found sitting on his bunk, speaking to phantom women that appeared in his cell and promising them slow and agonizing deaths. He created detailed plans of revenge and of what sexual savagery he would wreak should be ever be released.
And then fate reared its ugly head in Thomas Neill Cream's life again. In 1887, his father died and left his son a sizable sum of money. His accountant and bookkeeper, Thomas Davidson, wrote to Illinois authorities and requested the complete records of Cream's trial. After studying the case, he became convinced that Cream was innocent of the charges that had sent him to Joliet. He began petitioning for Cream's release and a number of family friends in Canada took up the cause, perhaps never realizing what sort of man their friend's son had become. The petitions and letters arrived in Illinois by the bagful and finally, Governor Joseph W. Fifer relented and he commuted Cream's sentence. He was released from Joliet on July 31, 1891.
Cream immediately went to Quebec and collected his inheritance. It's likely that the accountant finally realized his mistake. He later wrote: "In my first interview with him, I concluded that he was unmistakably insane."
Of course by that time, it was too late for the victims that still lay ahead.
Wealthy and free to do what he wished, Cream returned to England. He arrived in October 1891 and took rooms in a boarding house on Lambeth Palace Road, back in the slums that he had once reveled in. He told his landlady that he was at work on his postgraduate studies at St. Thomas' Hospital but when he failed to see any patients or to keep any sort of office hours, he had to tell her that he had been ill and was no recovering from a strange disease. His eyes bothered him constantly, he explained, forcing him to take large doses of morphine and ****. His landlady replied that she hoped his health would improve.
A short time after his arrival, Cream went to work. He began visiting the local prostitutes and began killing them too. He met one such woman, Matilda Clover, just two days after he arrived and she later died from nux vomica poisoning, a liquid that caused vomiting and which was often prescribed by doctors as a tonic. The same fate also befell a woman named Ellen Donworth but as in the past, Cream was not charged with anything.
After a short break from murder, and an even shorter attempt at a love affair with a woman named Laura Sabbatini, Cream poisoned two other women, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell. He would have escaped detection in these crimes too but, as he did in Chicago, he inexplicably tried to place blame for the crimes on someone else. This time, he accused his neighbor of the murders and tried to blackmail him. He told a Walter J. Harper, a medical student who lived in the same boarding house, that he had incriminating evidence against him but that for a large sum of money, he would not notify the police. He wrote a letter to Harper's father also and told him that his son was a murderer. The elder Harper did not respond, but he held onto the letter. Cream then wrote to the coroner and told him that Harper had committed the murders and that he had proof. He also wrote to John Haynes, a photographer who lived in his building, and told him the same thing. He constantly talked of the two dead women, often shocking his landlady with his vile descriptions of Harper's alleged crimes
It was finally John Haynes (after Cream took him on a guided tour of the murder sites) who went to detectives at Scotland Yard and told them of his suspicions about Cream being the killer. At that point, his attempts to blackmail Harper were also revealed and Cream was finally arrested. He went to trial in October 1892, proclaiming his innocence and capturing newspaper headlines across the nation. A number of people testified against him and only a sobbing Laura Sabbatini testified on his behalf. Cream's tin box that contained vials of poison was placed on display in the courtroom and was later added to Scotland Yard's infamous "Black Museum".
There was a strange incident that jarred the proceedings of the trial. A letter was received and was read aloud in court by coroner Braxton Hicks. It read:
Dear Sir.... The man that you have in your power, Dr. Neill, is as innocent as you are. Knowing him by sight, I disguised myself like him, and made the acquaintance of the girls that have been poisoned. I gave them pills to cure them of all their earthly miseries, and they died.... If I were you, I would release Dr. T. Neill, or you might get into trouble. His innocence will be declared sooner or later, and when he is free he might sue you for damages. Beware all. I warn but once.
Yours Respectfully,
Juan Pollen,
alias Jack the Ripper
The mere utterance of the name attached to the letter caused the entire assemblage to gasp, except for Cream, who smiled widely. The letter later turned out to be the work of a crank, as Cream could not have sent it himself from his cell, but it stayed in Cream's mind until the end of his life.
It only took the jury ten minutes to find Cream guilty and Judge Sir Henry Hawkins lived up to his reputation as the "hanging judge" by ordering Cream to be executed on the gallows on November 15, 1892.
While awaiting execution, Cream talked incessantly to his jailers, mostly insisting to them that he was a great man and that the world had refused to recognize it. He also claimed to have killed many more than he was found guilty of and that he had done them in to end their misery and to aid society, hinting at even darker things than those he had been found guilty of.
On the night before his execution, Cream could be heard moaning in his cell, no longer bragging of his crimes but now protesting his innocence. At dawn on the 15th though, he went calmly to the gallows. He was bound hand and foot and placed on the trap as the black hood was slipped over his head. Cream saved his most dramatic and strange proclamation for last. The lever was pushed to release and the trap, and moments before he plunged to his doom, Cream shouted out: "I am Jack the....."
The rope cut him off before he could finish and in that split second, Cream created an enigma that has inspired many to believe that he was confessing to having been the killer Jack the Ripper. And in death, Cream became as mysterious as he was in life.
Cream's last words have plagued both crime historians and "Ripperologists" for years. There have been a number of theorists who have concocted some convincing (and some not so convincing) cases that Cream may have been the Whitechapel killer. Sir Edward Marshall Hall, who had once defended Cream on a charge of bigamy, later wrote that he believed Cream sometimes employed a "double" who used his name and that both men "used each other's terms of imprisonment as alibis for each other". Cream had earlier told Hall that he refused to plead guilty to charges against him because he was in prison at the time of the offenses. A check with officials did reveal that a man matching Cream's description had been in prison at the same time and Cream was released.
Ripper expert Donald Rumbelow has stated that this has led to the suggestion that even though Cream was serving time in Joliet Prison as the Whitechapel murders were taking place, he may have actually been in England. His double could have been imprisoned, or vice versa. As the double had given Cream an alibi for the bigamy charges, Cream then tried to repay the debt by shouting those last words from the scaffold. Others have suggested that the letter that was read at Cream's trial could have been from Cream's double, the real Jack the Ripper, attempting to save the doctor's life.
Unfortunately for those who feel they have solved the Whitechapel murders by pinning them on Cream, the idea of the "doppelganger" is not very convincing and neither is the other theory as to how the good doctor could have committed the crimes from behind the walls of Joliet prison. In some accounts, Cream was able to bribe his way out of the corrupt prison in the middle 1880's, journey to London, commit the murders and then return to his cell in order to be released in 1891. Author and crime historian Jay Robert Nash personally checked the records at Joliet prison in the late 1970's and found that the ledger from the era was still intact, although Cream's personal files had long ago been destroyed in a fire. The ledger states that Thomas Neill Cream, prisoner no. 4374, was imprisoned at Joliet on November 1, 1881 and not released until July 31, 1891. There are also records attached about the commuting of Cream's sentence by the governor but nothing to indicate that he was ever released. The idea that he bribed his way out of the prison is merely a theory and no real evidence exists to support it.
And perhaps the biggest problem with the idea of Cream being the Ripper is his method of murder. Although he was a brutish and bloody abortionist, his method of dispatching young women was by poison, not the knife. It seems unlikely that he would poison his victims prior to 1888 and then suddenly go on a wild mutilating spree, only to go back to poisoning them again a few years later.
So it seems that we have to look beyond Dr. Cream when seeking the identity of Jack the Ripper. Admittedly the two killers did have some similarities in that both enjoyed killing prostitutes and then writing letters about their deeds to the authorities, but beyond that, the comparisons end -- continuing a mystery that will not be solved anytime soon!
http://www.prairieghosts.com/ripper.html
Post by: Keira Kensington on July 16, 2016, 03:26:41 am
Jack the Ripper - In America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CJMpL1qQ3E