What if....

[richardh]

Not sure if this has been mentioned or discussed here:

"What if I could show you that Jack the Ripper was actually a team of 3 men, commissioned, organized and funded by a fourth? And that eyewitness descriptions always match one of the 3, if not all 3?"

Read more here.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sherlock-holmes-and-the-autumn-of-terror/what-if/1648357922161031

Discuss!

[Kattrup]

Many times it is asked "What if I could show you...."?

Well, if you could, it certainly would be interesting. But you can't.

So. I don't think there's much to discuss.

[Mayerling]

Not sure if this has been mentioned or discussed here:

"What if I could show you that Jack the Ripper was actually a team of 3 men, commissioned, organized and funded by a fourth? And that eyewitness descriptions always match one of the 3, if not all 3?"

Read more here.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sherlock-holmes-and-the-autumn-of-terror/what-if/1648357922161031

Discuss!

Thank you for showing me this section of "Facebook". It's nice to know that an idea I once mentioned about a possible link between the "Rache" clue in "A Study in Scarlet" and the "Goulston Street graffito" was noted by the gentleman in his own studies of the case (I can't tell if he read my little essay on that, but it is nice to see somebody picked it up). "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was written by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893, five years after the "Autumn of Terror", and so it has little to do with the actual events of those murders. Indeed, if cutting off the ear of the victims of the double killing in that story is being linked (because they are mailed to a relative of one of the victims) to the mailing of a kidney (or part of a kidney) to an interested party in the 1888 murder investigation, it is putting the cart before the horse. In fact I find it more interesting that in November 1888 the other famous/infamous mutilation that month (away from Mary Kelly's martyrdom in Dorset Street) was Vincent Van Gogh's cutting off his ear lobe and trying to give it to the woman who was with Paul Gauguin. The basis, as I have heard, of the sending of the severed ears in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was an incident involving a mailed box containing the ear or ears of a slave that was mailed in the 1850s to Harriet Beecher Stowe, after she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

Oh, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in St. Petersburg by a nihilist group who were encouraged by a man in a Russian prison named (spelling here) Netchaev. He was a model for Stefan Verevyenski in Dostoievski's novel, "The Devils" about such revolutionaries (whom the author did not admire) and the novel after Netchaev was put into prison in the 1870s. Moreover, you can say that Tsar Alexander was recently assassinated - if you use "recently" to mean seven years before Whitechapel (no really outrageous stretch there - but it is not like it was a year before). Alexander was blown up by nitroglycerin bombs (he survived for a few hours, horribly mutilated) in March 1881. You might as well (to my way of thinking) try linking it to the assassination of President James Garfield on July 2, 1881 by Charles Guiteau (Garfield lingered until he died on September 19, 1881), or to the "Phoenix Park" Assassinations of Chief Secretary to Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish, and Thomas Burke (the under-Secretary) in May 1882, or for that matter the shooting in the back assassination of Jesse Woodeson James by Robert Ford in April 1882. They were recent too in 1888!! Hey, why only back seven years. Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, and Thomas D'Arcy McGee was shot in Ottawa in April 1868!! Orsini tried to kill Napoleon III (and killed 14 innocent bystanders) outside the Paris Opera House with bombs in February 1858! Oxford began the long number of attempts against Queen Victoria in 1840! Perceval was killed in the House of Commons by Bellingham in May 1812. We can go all the way back to Gaius Julius Caesar and the Ides of March 44 B.C. or before that if we want.

If somebody is going to present a theory like this, with each revelation so complex and chancy, it may have some valid points in it, but it looks like it was built with bits and pieces. If somebody can read the entire theory, and finds it holds water well...good. To me, seeing what I just saw, I ended up disliking the entire thing on sight.

Jeff

[c.d.]

It is certainly a possibility but I am having trouble warming to it. If the crimes had involved robbery or something mundane and commonplace like that then I would be more open to it. But it is hard to believe that there were two, three or even four incredibly sick individuals who somehow found each other and bonded together for whatever reason.

You also have the reward issue. A very tempting sum for a poor Whitechapel resident willing to rat out a compatriot and that never came to fruition.

c.d.

[John Wheat]

Not sure if this has been mentioned or discussed here:

"What if I could show you that Jack the Ripper was actually a team of 3 men, commissioned, organized and funded by a fourth? And that eyewitness descriptions always match one of the 3, if not all 3?"

Read more here.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sherlock-holmes-and-the-autumn-of-terror/what-if/1648357922161031

Discuss!

But it clearly wasn't. End of discussion.

[Pcdunn]

Surely this was recently discussed in the Ripperologist article "The Four Jacks" (or something similar)?

[drstrange169]

Great many comparisons to the Xmere theory.

Diemshitz had known connections to all the murder sites, even more so than Xmere.

He was first to find the body.

He's story was contradicted by a policeman.

etc. etc.

Good stuff for fiction, but lacking any real evidence to take too seriously.

[Pcdunn]

Much as I adore Sherlock Holmes and his newer adventures, I'm uneasy at this mixture of Jewish and Christian symbolism, rituals, cultural mores, and really-- England as the Great White Whale?

I can't say that it makes much sense, or is likely to have solved the problem of who was Jack the Ripper.

Love your site and the photos, however, and will certainly check out the book.

[Damaso Marte]

You see the occasional "team of 2" theorist in Ripperology, but this is the first team of three theory I've seen.

Of course, many on this site believe in three or more separate killers who were not working together.

[Harry D]

I'm open to the idea of the Ripper & Thames Torso killers working in conjunction with each other, if there were indeed two serial killers. I might even be sold on the Fenian conspiracy (the Ripper murders were an effective terror tactic, be it by accident or design).