Dear Boss P.S.

[sleekviper]

If he did...

If he did make the mistake of sending the wrong letter in the wrong envelope, he is here expressing a concern of a possible mistake to someone by not cleaning the red ink from his hands. He must have addressed the envelopes first, turned them over and placed them to the side to provide room for the two pieces of paper, rushes to get it off without checking for the right envelope, comes back and writes the note on the the side of the copy. He changed the direction, and it appears the ink, to add the personal note to someone. He also titles this one..."Dear Boss"...which is odd in the traditonal sense of the word "Boss". He clearly is saying that he is incharge until he gets caught, so Jack is using Latin, or rather the Latin base of boss, and saying "Dear Stupid". That is what I think anyway.

[lynn cates]

dull killer

Hello Sleek. Any particular reason for regarding this missive as genuine?

In my case, I held on to the letters for an inordinate amount of time because hope springs eternal in the human breast.

You see, without the letters, but especially "Dear Boss," the case is MUCH less interesting. Jack may even be a garden variety sexual serial killer and not an evil genius (a la Moriarty) who taunts the police and makes impossible escapes.

The best.
LC

[sleekviper]

I think...

I think that it is real, and that Jack messed up. Ok, he writes out the same letter twice, and addresses both envelopes, and realizes that he is close to missing the postal pickup time. He hurriedly puts one copy in the envelope, and rushes down to make the pickup. He gets back, and writes the personal note about not getting the ink off his hands, and that they are calling him a doctor, with the laugh...thinking it was going to whoever knows what he is doing...but it went to the news...he sent the wrong copy, and never double checked.

[alucard]

Re Best and his editor...

I recently caught the Channel 5 (UK) documentary on Jack the Ripper with "former" News of the World editor Kelvin Mckenzies. Not only is he a perfectly formed scumbag of the highest order, but the programme was cheap and poorly hacked together, yet he does seem to have a convincing theory on the origin of the Dear Boss letter. I was of the opinion that it originated with Tom Bulling and Charles Moore of the Central News Agency, but his argument putting forward The Star's journo Fred Best and editor T.P. O'Connor was interesting. Comparisons of Best's hand writing were compared with the Dear Boss letter and they were very similar indeed. The thing that annoyed me to no end however was how Mckenzies belittled Best for writing the thing, yet praised O'Connor for (allegedly) coming up with the idea in the first place, simply because he was the editor, therefore (like him) a superior being. What a complete and utter w***er!

[Lozle]

... Or which is an incredibly strong arguement would be the the letter was written by Journalists - in particular, Best and his editor. The editor was most likely involved to contribute to the identity discretion. Also to raise publicity for the newspaper.

[Lozle]

Hey,
The red ink, I believe - and which I think is widely accepted - as a reference to blood?
Well, the delay for 2days can be explained that when the letter was delivered and received by the police, that was a Thursday I believe?... correct me if i'm wrong, I have a habit of thinking too much and getting a bit muddled.
Well the delay of 2 days could be that he had the impulse to go to / went to church on Sunday to get the blood off of his hands, began writing the letter, sent it on the Tuesday / Wednesday, the police received it on the Thursday.
At the time religion was very popular, and one theory researchers have put forward - and like the Yorkshire Ripper - is that JTR was compelled to do so by God... after his killings he may have had the urge to go to church to inform God on his latest "work", to get a job well done / congratulated by God and to be "clensed", ready to move on to the next victim?
This theory would also fall in to the possibility of the theory of performance of rituals at the killings.
Many thanks.

[jack_the_ripper_1880]

I was reading through "Dear Boss" last week, and realized that I just plain couldn't understand the first part of the postscript. "Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it." After years of studying JTR, I had no idea why that was there, no idea what the writer was trying to say. So I asked a few people and looked through some old threads, and I did get a few most interesting suggestions. But only a few, and there was no agreement! So I ask, what do you think is going on here?

Thanks for any help whatsoever.

They say the red ink is blood and i also have been reading the letters on this site and it look like that the handwriting is 4 different peoples handwriting

[protohistorian]

Chris,
What about the DNA if any from the postal services workers, what about Central News Journalist's DNA, then of course all the people that handled the correspondence in between, from police to the public records office. Given that there has been air exposure to these paper items as well, and DNA would be taken from oils that have leaked from said fingers, this still can be taken in minute globules from water in the air and thus we have evaopration, there may not be anything left to get a DNA sample, it would be the same for the saliva from the postage stamp as well, as in evaporation from heat and handling, left in a sunny position etc but then who's DNA if any could & i wouldn't think so would be looked at and where can a comparison be made?
I really do think the idea of DNA with the JTR case is at a loss.

The global average for a generation is 19, the victorian English context would be a little longer but probably not more than 22. The potential is also there that it could be lower, maybe 17. Either way 6 generations at least. You would need mitochondrial dna (female specific) to make any sense of it. The length of the dna strand is more than 6 million base pairs, In males it is divided every generation in addition to merging with different female DNA every generation. You would have better luck sweezing an intelligent thought out of Rosie O'Donnel

Thanks for your reply, Shelley. Yes, obviously, THEY didn't have the knowledge/technique for doing an analysis than that. But, if we'd find anything from the suspected real Ripper, he could be traced down. It wouldn't be easy, of course.

From this distance of time C14 analyses could be taken with a couple of years of mistake. This method could help in orienting us in the time, if something's a fake or not. The second step could be the collecting of the possible DNA samples. Eg. from letters, envelopes. Even if the stamps were printed on the envelopes, there would be a good chance to see the openings of the envelope, if it had been sealed with the saliva-sample of JTR.

The problem can be how to extract the DNA sample without damaging the original letter, envelope.

Everybody has relatives, close or not, but everybody must have relatives. 120 years is not that far away. The researchers could create a data-base for it, and try to find the relatives.

Of course, the lack of money and the personal right rubbish could prevent these steps to be done. But it's not impossible.

Chris,
What about the DNA if any from the postal services workers, what about Central News Journalist's DNA, then of course all the people that handled the correspondence in between, from police to the public records office. Given that there has been air exposure to these paper items as well, and DNA would be taken from oils that have leaked from said fingers, this still can be taken in minute globules from water in the air and thus we have evaopration, there may not be anything left to get a DNA sample, it would be the same for the saliva from the postage stamp as well, as in evaporation from heat and handling, left in a sunny position etc but then who's DNA if any could & i wouldn't think so would be looked at and where can a comparison be made?
I really do think the idea of DNA with the JTR case is at a loss.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

Of course, I know Patricia Cornwell tried to use DNA evidences in her book, which was quite convincing, actually. But I don't think she's right.

Not to turn this into a Cornwell thing but I actually think she was just being flash all the while pissing on the case and ruining an innocent man's name. I remember watching her documentary on YouTube thinking 'that's slander', it was really shocking actually. Sickert's the last person to have been the Ripper and was likely just interested in the case like the rest of us, only expressing his interest through his paintings instead. Nothing more.

That aside, I think DNA testing the letters was a little moot too. Not only is it 95% likely that they're all fake, but what's the point in obtaining DNA from them when there's nothing to compare that DNA too? I doubt 100% that any of the suspects, other than Sickert (who probably did so as a joke), wrote a single one of those hoax letters.

[Nothing to see]

I agree with you. I really admire Cornwell. She has her theory and she spent a great deal of money to back it up. But the mitrochondrial DNA does not point to Sickert and only Sickert. He also changed stationery which doesn't help this theory. I'm not expert enough on this point but I think he was in France during one of the murders?

He may have written one of the letters, or 2. But I don't think he wrote the lot and I don't believe he was Jack. I saw the original 'Dear Boss' at the Docklands Exhibition. There were others there as well. IMO they were written by many different hands in many different styles of writing.

[chris14]

Of course, I know Patricia Cornwell tried to use DNA evidences in her book, which was quite convincing, actually. But I don't think she's right.

[chris14]

Thanks for your reply, Shelley. Yes, obviously, THEY didn't have the knowledge/technique for doing an analysis than that. But, if we'd find anything from the suspected real Ripper, he could be traced down. It wouldn't be easy, of course.

From this distance of time C14 analyses could be taken with a couple of years of mistake. This method could help in orienting us in the time, if something's a fake or not. The second step could be the collecting of the possible DNA samples. Eg. from letters, envelopes. Even if the stamps were printed on the envelopes, there would be a good chance to see the openings of the envelope, if it had been sealed with the saliva-sample of JTR.

The problem can be how to extract the DNA sample without damaging the original letter, envelope.

Everybody has relatives, close or not, but everybody must have relatives. 120 years is not that far away. The researchers could create a data-base for it, and try to find the relatives.

Of course, the lack of money and the personal right rubbish could prevent these steps to be done. But it's not impossible.

Not that I think any of these letters are written by the killer, but pretending for a moment that they were, he might've gotten too carried away with mutilating Eddowes and simply forgot to 'clip' her ears off until he was later reminded when writing his little update of his latest 'work' in the Saucy Jacky (wicked name BTW) postcard.

That's a fair point Mascara & Paranoia, i wonder why JTR didn't take the rest of Kate's nose off and bring it back with him, as he took part of her kidney as well as her womb. Not to mention why he didn't cut the rest of the ear and take that. It obviously had to do with something inside her, in his mind. JTR could have taken the nose and the ear if he wanted to, he had the time to.

Whether a general consensus exists on Bulling being the author of DB/SJ is a moot point, Bill. Personally, I find Bulling's handwriting quite dissimilar to that of Dear Boss, even allowing for some disguising of the handwriting. (I should point out that I don't see that the handwriting in DB/SJ etc. appears particularly "disguised" anyway.) I'm not the only one who doubts that Bulling wrote them either.

Whatever, whilst it might be redundant to discuss these letters in terms of the Ripper being their author, they are quite intriguing little mysteries in and of themselves.

Sam,
I can't remember which of the letters that was supposedly from Jack, but i do remember comparing such a letter with Bulling/Bullen's handwriting and Bulling/Bullen's signature was exactly the same handwriting that was supposed to be from Jack the Ripper, so Bulling/Bullen did have a hand in writing letters that was supposed to be from JTR, however it may not have been him alone. So which ever way it's looked at they were sensationalised correspondence perporting to be from the Ripper when infact they were not.