The JtR Meta-poll

[DJA]

contemporarously

The one thing we can learn from polls is that the answer is always goverened by the question.

ROFL!

[Fisherman]

ROFL!

Enjoy, DJA. It´s on me.

[Fisherman]

Oh, it´s my turn now:

"They simply had no intention of catching him."

ROFL!

Gee, am I glad I only got the spelling wrong...

[DJA]

Your point being?

Ah! You don't have one.

[Fisherman]

Your point being?

Ah! You don't have one.

My point? My point is that I would much rather get the spelling wrong than the factual matters.

From a different perspective, I´d rather be laughed at for misspellings than misunderstandings.

Then again, those who misunderstand stand a better chance not to realize why they are being laughed at, so I may just be deceiving myself here...

[DJA]

Yes.

Crikey,have to expand that to five letters.....why?

[Fisherman]

Yes.

Crikey,have to expand that to five letters.....why?

Why I prefer misspelling to misunderstanding...? Let´s not go there, DJA.

[Sally]

Thanks for starting the poll Rivkah

I don't think the Ripper has been named

I do think Tabram may have been an earlier Ripper victim.

More or less no to the rest as it stands at the moment.

[Harry D]

JtR is someone who was known to the police at the time.- Most likely a local ruffian who had been arrested before, perhaps even in connection with the murders as a minor suspect but wasn't followed up.

JtR is a suspect named by a modern investigator. - Not as far as I know. I think the real Ripper was probably too obscure to build a book/documentary around.

JtR has never been named by any investigator. - I think his name is definitely out there and he has perhaps received a brief mention but not in the context of being the Ripper.

Caroline Maxwell saw the real MJK. - Who knows? Everything about Mary Kelly and her murder is a complete mystery.

MJK died sometime between the Maxwell sighting, and Bowyer's discovery. - See above.

MJK was not the Miller's Court victim. - And again.

Stride was not a Ripper victim. - Nope. Throat cleanly cut left-to-right, at the height of the murders, less than a hour before another 'Ripper' attack.

Tabram was a Ripper victim. - Nope, radically different MO & signature.

At least one torso victim was a Ripper victim. - Can't be ruled out. I've toyed with the possibility that Torso committed the Ripper murders on his 'off days'.

Excluding Stride, the C4 were by different hands. - That's negatory, good buddy.

[Wyatt Earp]

Here are my quick takes on these hot-button issues:

JtR is someone who was known to the police at the time.

Yes; there are newspaper reports that the police took a look at William Bury in connection with the Ripper murders.

JtR is a suspect named by a modern investigator.

Yes; Euan Macpherson and William Beadle both beat me to Bury and have correctly named him as Jack the Ripper. Posters on here keep claiming that “no one knows who the Ripper was,” but it’s worth pointing out that none of these people have been able to produce an effective rebuttal of the Bury ID I published in Ripperologist. Until someone in the field can produce such a rebuttal, these types of posts should be ignored.

JtR has never been named by any investigator.

The Ellen Bury murder can be closed mapped to the signature described by Keppel et al, and as I’ve explained at length elsewhere, Bury was not a copycat and that close signature match could not have been a coincidence. The Ripper is in plain sight within the pool of named suspects.

Caroline Maxwell saw the real MJK.

I am not sure about Caroline Maxwell. She swore under oath that she saw Kelly that morning. At this point in time I do not see a sufficient basis to discount her statement.

MJK died sometime between the Maxwell sighting, and Bowyer's discovery.

As above.

MJK was not the Miller's Court victim.

I don’t see convincing evidence for this claim.

Stride was not a Ripper victim.

I think our stats people have told us that it’s very unlikely there would be two unrelated murders in such close proximity to each other in space and time. It’s very unlikely that Diemschutz would have arrived at the precise moment between the cutting of Stride’s throat and the commencement of mutilations. What’s not very unlikely, I think, is that Stride knew her assailant. I think the scenario I recently outlined in the Stride section—that Jack was BSM, and that he made a snap decision to murder Stride to shut off the possibility of a police investigation—is the probable explanation of what actually occurred.

Tabram was a Ripper victim.

We know that the MO of a serial killer can vary among crime scenes, and so “different MO” is a nonsense objection to Tabram. Either Bury made a mess of himself with Tabram, or he realized that multiple stab wounds were not a reliable way of ensuring death, or both, and he decided to switch to cutting throats. And as I showed in a table at the end of my article in Ripperologist, William Bury’s unique homicidal signature is very much on display at the Tabram crime scene. Tabram fell by Bury’s hand.

At least one torso victim was a Ripper victim.

I don’t see convincing evidence for this claim.

Excluding Stride, the C4 were by different hands.

I’m definitely open to the possibility of a copycat murder among the C4—whenever there is a high-profile series of crimes, there is always the possibility that one or more copycats will decide to get in on the action. However, I do not see convincing evidence of a copycat murder among any of the C4. Keppel certainly knows his way around serial killers, and he and his team evidently didn’t see convincing evidence for a copycat murder until they came to McKenzie, which they excluded from the Ripper’s tally. These were very unique and very savage murders, and until someone can produce compelling evidence to the contrary, it is correct to assume that they were the work of a single killer. As Keppel and his team explained, there is signature evidence linking all four of these murders.

With the Ellen Bury and Alice McKenzie murders we are at a fork in the road—they could not have been murdered by the same person. As I explained at the end of my article in Ripperologist, the Ellen Bury murder is the better signature fit of the two. And of the two, the Ellen Bury murder is the only one that cannot reasonably be described as a copycat murder (Ellen Bury’s throat wasn’t cut). The correct call is that Ellen Bury and not Alice McKenzie was the Ripper’s final victim.

[belinda]

I think it's possible he was somebody known to the Police at the time but I'm not sure if they knew he was actually Jack The Ripper. Also believe that Martha Tabram was a Ripper victim

[RivkahChaya]

Now that there are 22 responses, the poll results are starting to look really interesting.