Letters: Authentic or Hoaxes

[Howard Brown]

And I'm sure our mutual friend (and my fellow city-dweller) Howard Brown would agree. LOL

Your mutual friend,pal...I'm on me own over here.

I'd consider the possibility that the Lusk letter may have been legitimate...simply and unscientifically because I think its less likely to have been a joke ( As,ironically,a similar series of jokes were carried out nearly contemporaneously in our beloved Murder City back in the 1870's by college students from Penn who left human organs on porches and in mailboxes out on W.Market St. (all the way towards the Schuykill and near Baltimore Pike) )... due to the effort involved which seems a little excessive meaning the letter.

I've yet to find ( not that this proves anything,of course ) an example of someone sending a human organ to someone else with a note or concomitant letter )...like "Here you go,Mr. Jones...eat this !"

To me,its as if the content ( the letter's content ) demonstrates a sickness in the author ( the address,From Hell, and the wording ) hard to imagine being only a joke. Thats just an opinion and I know it runs contrary to the status quo.

In other words, just sending an organ was a sick joke...but the content ( the address and wording) sort of takes the whole thing to a different level....at least to me. For someone to send the letter & kidney together required more than just sitting down and writing a letter. I completely disagree that anyone inside the MEVC would even consider something of this nature, as they were businessmen, not college kibbitzers or idle wankers who wanted to upset Lusk.

[JTRSickert]

hey everyone,

I wanted to start this thread because I've always found the Ripper letters to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the case. While I do believe that the majority of them are hoaxes, I don't think we can definitely say that every, single one of them is fake. We all know kilelrs do sometiems communicate via letters to press or police so I do think it is at least possible that one or more of the letters is fro mthe actual killer and I'm not necessarily talking about the "Dear Boss," "Saucy Jack" or "From Hell" letter either. Those are the ones that receive the most attention, but we have to remember HUNDREDS of letters were sent that were allegedly from the killer. So, what I wanted to discuss in this thread is to get everyone's opinion to see if any letters you think are: very fascinating, disturbing, or even likely to have come from the killer. Remember, some of the letters state that JTR is not claiming responsibility for some murders and that he has moved to other locations, so I think those are quite interesting. If you have the book "Jack the Ripper: Letters From hell," I would suggest you comb through that book and see if any of them catch your eye. I'll start...

One of the ones I found particularly interesting was the October 1888 letter that was sent from Philadelphia, in which the killer says he did not have time to finish his work with the "London Whores" and has gone on to New York and then Philadelphia. Now, obviously, I don't think this is from the Ripper since Mary Kelly was killed in early November 1888, (if yo ucount her as a JTR victim, that is), but I thought it was interesting since I am from Philadelphia. Mr. Richard Jones was kind enough to make a reproduction of that one in his Casebook publication (Thanks again, Richard!) And I'm sure our mutual friend (and my fellow city-dweller) Howard Brown would agree. LOL

Anyway, please let me know which ones you think are the most intriguing and let me know especially if you think it's possible (not likely, not definitely, but possible) to have come from the killer. Thanks again!