Bowden Endacott

[Sunny Delight]

Hi Sunny Delight,

Thanks. I think the simulations help consolidate the witness statements into an easy format, they are just estimates and show that what we've been told is possible and makes a coherent story. As such, they can't be dismissed, but at the same time, it doesn't mean it's all true. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. Still, I find it to be one (and certainly not the only) approach available to us that allows us to independently "verify" the plausibility of witness statements, and suggest which aspects might be less reliable than others. So far, most of the time the statements seem to hold together as a set pretty well.

But I get your drift, and yes, I like your Sutcliff example. A century on, we would be left with things like his wife's alibi, and without anything to suggest she lied, we would be left wondering and unable to solve it and I'm sure there would be those arguing both sides.

I keep hoping the missing suspect file will get returned. I don't think it would immediately solve the case, but it would be interesting information, particularly if it contains information about how various suspects were eliminated. Knowing the extent of the police investigations into a "suspect" would be very helpful to us. It would allow us to evaluate our confidence with regards to how they followed up on and came to their conclusions. We often presume the police of the day either dug deep into every detail, or the polar opposite, that they did little more than ask the suspect where they were and never looked into it. I rather suspect the truth lies between those two extremes, but where in between is the question.

- Jeff

I think the accepted thinking is that the Police were thorough. They were however simply overwhelmed. One can only imagine the amount of paperwork generated and the difficulty in processing and managing it. 90 years later Yorkshire Police were also overwhelmed by the Yorkshire Ripper although of course this was the largest Police operation in UK history. But yes it would be helpful to understand how the Police came to suspect individuals and if so how they were eliminated. I tend to agree with you that it probably was in between in regards the amount of digging done.

Yeah I think actually seeing the statements running as it were on a timeline with visual aids is immensely helpful. I commend you for taking the time to do it and to my suprise they do tend to hold together pretty well.

[Sunny Delight]

I believe Sonia Sutcliffe gave her husband an alibi for at least one of the murders . Did she know he was the ripper ? Probably not, but it helped him evade justice at least for a while.
My own feeling is that Jack was a local and was probably interviewed, with perhaps someone like PC Laptew having suspicions against him [ the lull in October or after MJK, perhaps both ]. He may have been given an alibi by someone close to him, not because they were shielding the ripper but because they didn't want to believe the worst and believed him innocent, or were suspicious that the police were trying to fit their family member/friend up, or both. Also we can only narrow the time of death down for some of the murders. We are still arguing today what time it was when Mary and Annie, for instance were murdered. So someone could have given Jack an alibi for say Mary's murder in the morning when she was killed at 4 am or vice versa.
Also lets look at the witness evidence , Hutchinson for example described a well to do Jew , but lets suppose his evidence isn't reliable and Jack was more say rough looking , someone say like Blotchy . And of course we have a chief suspect earlier on in Pizer. Either could have allayed someones fears at the start or the end of the crimes that their husband/father/brother etc was the ripper and alleviated any potential fears that there might be a time gap in the alibi or if they weren't 100% sure of said time. . IE Jack is a mad, or well to do Jew so it can't be my gentile brother. Or Annie was killed at 2 am so it can't be my husband Jacob who didn't leave the house that morning until 4:30 am.
And last the victims themselves. I personally believe the police at the time believed the C5 and Martha were murdered by the ripper [ as I do ] . But what if that is wrong ? And say Liz was killed by someone else when Jack did have an alibi . Again that could have helped dispel someones fears about a suspect. .
That's not to say I believe Jack was given an alibi for one or more of the murders or someone close to him had suspicions against him, but it could be a possibility.
Regards Darryl

I agree that the array of suspect descriptions could have assuaged someone's fears if they felt suspicious of a family member or friend or even a neighbour. A lot of these type of killers are seen as a little weird, bit of a loner but not particularly aggressive or someone who would spread fear to those around them. So as you say a Gentile brother who was a bit of a loner is hardly anything to write home about as it were. I too agree that the Ripper must have been interviewed or at least spoken to about the killings. It may not have been as a suspect but the door to door enquiries in particular must have at least once or twice snared him. Sutcliffe was interviewed due to good Police work- tracking of the £5 note, car seen repeatedly in red light districts, tyre checks of his vehicle. On almost every interview occasion his wife gave him an alibi for multiple murders. This kind of Police work wouldn't have been available to the Whitechapel detectives. They faced an incredibly difficult task.

I do wonder if the Police were inundated with names of suspicious characters and if amongst those names lies the name of the Ripper. I think it may have been Donald Rumbelow who quipped that when we go to heaven and get to the gates- when St. Peter reads the name of Jack the Ripper everyone will look at each other and say-WHO???? This is also my belief. A nondescript man who was a little odd but who worked hard at his job and was neat and tidy but a little obsessive. Not particularly bright but fairly streetwise and cunning. Pretty much like someone we have met somewhere in our lives. But with a very severe mental health issue with extreme serial fantasies that may or most likely would not have been apparant to those around him.

[Sunny Delight]

As I've mentioned before, I think a lot of what you've written here is very sensible, although I believe it is a fairly accurate description of what we know of Bury. If it wasn't for Hasting's work on Bury we would know absolutely nothing about his movements and how he always seemed to be missing from home on the nights in question and acting suspiciously, and how the police investigated him, and at some level very strongly suspected him. We wouldn't know things like:

‘The police established that he was missing from his lodgings on the night Mary Kelly was done to death and that he was in the habit of carrying that knife around with him. His description was very much like that of the man who had been speaking to Kelly on the night of the crime.’

e.g., I find the simialrity below too specific to belive Bury didn't kill Eddowes - this is also most likely the night he 'absented himself in the most suspcious manner and the behaviour and physical description of BS is very similar to Bury:

Ellen: ‘On the inner side of the right labium was a wound 2 inches in length, penetrating the skin. Beginning about an inch behind the anus was an incised wound running forwards and to the left, into the perineum, and dividing the sphincter muscle’.

Eddowes: ‘The incision went down the right side of the vagina and rectum for half an inch behind the rectum’.

Not that I want to turn this into a Bury thread, but there are things you have written about Sutcliffe that seem so obvious to us now, but he was overlooked for so long, that is very simialr to how most people view Bury IMO.

Well the thing is we have very circumstantial evidence in regards Bury, if even that. You say that the behaviour and physical description of BS man is very similar to Bury. We have one witness statement describing the man's behaviour which appears violent and somewhat impulsive. That may be similar to Bury. It may also be similar to thousands of other men living in Whitechapel at that time. Physical descriptions are problematic and if the description did match Bury well then that may be seen as something that can't rule Bury out. But how many others could not be ruled out? And what is more we don't even know if BS man was the killer. I tend to believe that he was but we can't be sure.

So we have him absent from his lodgings carrying a knife on the night Mary Kelly was killed. Do we know he was carrying a knife for certain? How did the Police ascertain his absence so long after the event? No description of any man resembling BS man was seen with Kelly the night she died. So again taking 2+2 and making 8 is not feasible.

Of course the incisions made by Bury in regards his wife are interesting and worthy of discussion and research but that appears to be the height of it. Bury may appear to be a suspect worthy of research but we must be careful to let the evidence lead us not the suspect as invariably with the focus on the suspect you can make anything fit. Just as Anderson did.

[JeffHamm]

I think the accepted thinking is that the Police were thorough. They were however simply overwhelmed. One can only imagine the amount of paperwork generated and the difficulty in processing and managing it. 90 years later Yorkshire Police were also overwhelmed by the Yorkshire Ripper although of course this was the largest Police operation in UK history. But yes it would be helpful to understand how the Police came to suspect individuals and if so how they were eliminated. I tend to agree with you that it probably was in between in regards the amount of digging done.

Yeah I think actually seeing the statements running as it were on a timeline with visual aids is immensely helpful. I commend you for taking the time to do it and to my suprise they do tend to hold together pretty well.

Hi Sunny Delight,

I suspect they were thorough for the standards of the day, but it is what those standards were that interest me. They had to rely on gathering what really amounts to "more witness statements" given they didn't have objective recordings like CCTV, or tracking phones, credit card trails, etc. That could mean they were more experienced in how to evaluate them than we suspect, and seeing how they were handled would be interesting. On the other hand, since that time we've learned more about witness statement reliability, and how errors may get introduced, and so forth, so it could also go the other way and their "expertise" may have been misguided. That sort of question interests me, even if in the end it's not going to solve the case I think it's a fascinating area just from it's historical perspective alone. In order to get at that we would need the details of the investigation's procedures, and sadly, those types of details are long gone.

- Jeff

[Aethelwulf]

So we have him absent from his lodgings carrying a knife on the night Mary Kelly was killed. Do we know he was carrying a knife for certain? How did the Police ascertain his absence so long after the event?

All we have is what Hastings ascertained from detectives that actually worked on the Bury case. We don't know who they were but I guess they were referring to first hand knowledge and could have even showed Hastings some of the missing suspect notes. The police must have been very interested to bother sending two detectives to hear his final words. Apparently the police spent months looking into Bury and the circumstantial evidence was said to point to him being the ripper, although it seems to have come down to whether he would confess or not.

We know he had two knives on him and slept with one under his pillow. We don't know what exactly the police knew but as he slept with a knife under his pillow, my guess would be he probably carried a knife most of the time. From what Hastings found out the police talked to Bury's neighbours at the other addresses he was using, and concluded he had the opportunity to commit the crimes. He was missing from his lodgings on the night of the Chapman murder and apparently behaved like a madman when he returned home later that day. It seems he was also missing on the double event night and also left his lodgings very suspiciously (no details of exactly what this means though).

Of course the incisions made by Bury in regards his wife are interesting and worthy of discussion and research but that appears to be the height of it. Bury may appear to be a suspect worthy of research but we must be careful to let the evidence lead us not the suspect as invariably with the focus on the suspect you can make anything fit. Just as Anderson did.

It's not really the same and the similarities with some of the other injuries is too easily dismissed. Anderson's case against Koz appears wafer thin to me - all we know is that he threatened his sister, not strangle and mutlilate a woman. As well as the groin stabs and abdominal cuts, ellen also had an incision running obliquely down from the bridge of her nose. Beadle does a much more thorough comparison of the various injuries.

Broadly, we're looking for a sexually motivated post mortem mutilator with strangling. If not the ripper, Bury was a deeply disturbing man. The medical evidence suggests that at some point after his wife's body 'lost it's vital elasticity' Bury returned and stabbed each groin. Later playing a game of cards over the body in the trunk, in which he had stashed a couple of cheap finger rings of very inferior metal which could well have been the two yanked off chapman's hand. It's hard to imagine the type of person that could have done that to Kelly - I don't find it hard to imagine it was Bury, especially as he was missing from home. Re the description - Bury appears to have gone out dressed smartly to smoking concerts and owned kid gloves, tall silk hat, black fur lined coat. Personally, although poo pooed by all, I believe the police statement is a credible ref to Bury as Aman. We know he changed into smart evening wear in Dundee.

At this stage in the game we aren't going to find a more likely sus than Bury IMO. Doesn't mean it was him of course, but IMO the author of the C5 doesn't just drift off silently. For me it is too much of a coincidence that a man of Bury's form and profile is in the area and missing from his lodgings on the very nights in question.

[Aethelwulf]

we must be careful to let the evidence lead us not the suspect as invariably with the focus on the suspect you can make anything fit. Just as Anderson did.

True but you are doing the same thing, to a greater extent IMO.

You have concocted an 'unknown suspect' profile:

A nondescript man who was a little odd but who worked hard at his job and was neat and tidy but a little obsessive. Not particularly bright but fairly streetwise and cunning. Pretty much like someone we have met somewhere in our lives. But with a very severe mental health issue with extreme serial fantasies that may or most likely would not have been apparant to those around him.

You are being led by what you believe to be a lack of any meaningful evidence to create your perfect suspect. Of course your suspect has no albi and has the perfect profile and location - he can fit any paramters of JtR beacuse he is entirely fictious. The real world has real suspects. Logically, there aren't going to be many people that would contemplate and go through with a murder-mutilation scenario. In fact the list of people who were proven to be in the area and did something so unusual to the extent of being near identical in the most perverted aspects to some of what the ripper did consists of one name.

[Darryl Kenyon]

I think the accepted thinking is that the Police were thorough. They were however simply overwhelmed. One can only imagine the amount of paperwork generated and the difficulty in processing and managing it. 90 years later Yorkshire Police were also overwhelmed by the Yorkshire Ripper although of course this was the largest Police operation in UK history. But yes it would be helpful to understand how the Police came to suspect individuals and if so how they were eliminated. I tend to agree with you that it probably was in between in regards the amount of digging done.

I agree Sunny , they had to follow up every lead , people looking suspicious in pubs, men with what looked like blood on their hands or carrying a knife etc . The numerous letters which came in pertaining to know who Jack was, or actually saying they were the killer. People giving all kinds of witness descriptions passing them on as their own when they were someone elses . Streets teeming with people living a day to day existence . Even evidence which you could probably rely on such as timings of a possible suspect were probably out in some of the murders. And of course eyewitness testimony which we know now isn't as reliable as once maybe thought possibly led the police in the wrong direction in some cases , age of killer etc

Regards Darryl

[Darryl Kenyon]

I keep hoping the missing suspect file will get returned. I don't think it would immediately solve the case, but it would be interesting information, particularly if it contains information about how various suspects were eliminated. Knowing the extent of the police investigations into a "suspect" would be very helpful to us. It would allow us to evaluate our confidence with regards to how they followed up on and came to their conclusions. We often presume the police of the day either dug deep into every detail, or the polar opposite, that they did little more than ask the suspect where they were and never looked into it. I rather suspect the truth lies between those two extremes, but where in between is the question.

- Jeff

Indeed Jeff . It is strange, for instance that in one extreme we have Littlechild writing he had never heard of Druitt. Yet on the polar opposite we have Mac confidently asserting he was the killer. And in the middle Abberline mentioning that a report was compiled on Druitt and his suicide . How much did they look into Druitt's background on said report? Did they follow up on why he was dismissed from the boys school for example ?

Regards Darryl

[Sunny Delight]

True but you are doing the same thing, to a greater extent IMO.

You have concocted an 'unknown suspect' profile:

A nondescript man who was a little odd but who worked hard at his job and was neat and tidy but a little obsessive. Not particularly bright but fairly streetwise and cunning. Pretty much like someone we have met somewhere in our lives. But with a very severe mental health issue with extreme serial fantasies that may or most likely would not have been apparant to those around him.

You are being led by what you believe to be a lack of any meaningful evidence to create your perfect suspect. Of course your suspect has no albi and has the perfect profile and location - he can fit any paramters of JtR beacuse he is entirely fictious. The real world has real suspects. Logically, there aren't going to be many people that would contemplate and go through with a murder-mutilation scenario. In fact the list of people who were proven to be in the area and did something so unusual to the extent of being near identical in the most perverted aspects to some of what the ripper did consists of one name.

We don't know what JTR was like, you are correct. Perhaps he was nothing like I describe. Perhaps I have it down to a tee. I am basing most of it on what we know amd tibbets on what we have learned since JTR on the 'type' of person this kind of killer is. The Ripper obviously did not stand out as otherwise he would have been caught or been seen as highly suspicious. Therefore likely he was nondescript. He appears to have been employed based on the times of his attacks. I am assuming he was neat and tidy being obsessive about this based on other killers of this type: Napper etc. His escapes from the scenes of the crime surely elicit a degree of cunning and his ability to seek out Prostitutes must show a degree of planning and a streetwise kind of knowledge. But that is basically that really. His killings surely show this was a mentally deranged person with extreme fantasies being acted out.

As I say Bury is an interesting character but is someone who is far from convincing as a key suspect.

[Aethelwulf]

We don't know what JTR was like, you are correct. Perhaps he was nothing like I describe. Perhaps I have it down to a tee. I am basing most of it on what we know amd tibbets on what we have learned since JTR on the 'type' of person this kind of killer is. The Ripper obviously did not stand out as otherwise he would have been caught or been seen as highly suspicious. Therefore likely he was nondescript. He appears to have been employed based on the times of his attacks. I am assuming he was neat and tidy being obsessive about this based on other killers of this type: Napper etc. His escapes from the scenes of the crime surely elicit a degree of cunning and his ability to seek out Prostitutes must show a degree of planning and a streetwise kind of knowledge. His killings surely show this was a mentally deranged person with extreme fantasies being acted out. But that is basically that really.

There is no reason the above coulnd't apply to many suspects, including Bury, as we don't really know enough about their characters. I seriosuly doubt the mentally deranged aspect which largely contradicts your idea of being non descript and not standing out. Look at people like fred west, sutcliffe and bundy, clearly not deranged.

As I say Bury is an interesting character but is someone who is far from convincing as a key suspect.

Totally absurd statement. The person that mutilated a woman in ways very reminicent of the ripper and appears to have been away from his lodgings on the nights in question, and strangely fits pretty much every criteria of the one considered profile of the killer, and many aspects of the physical descriptions, is not a key suspect. As I said, If Bury is not a key suspect, there is no key suspect as no one else did anything even remotely close to the ripper. we also have to set aside some quite significant police sentiments.

• In describing the investigation conducted by the Scotland Yard detectives, Hastings reported, “the facts they gathered pointed more and more clearly to Bury being Jack the Ripper, but it was a slow task, entailing months of work, and they had been ordered to make nothing public”
• “On the day before his execution two detectives were sent from London to be present should he make a last statement. This I myself only learned years afterwards, so carefully guarded was the secret, but it shows the importance Scotland Yard attached to their discoveries”

Why anyone would put a home brew fictitious suspect over a far more convincing real, brutal, evil suspect who was clearly never ruled out is beyond me. Bonkers.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The Ripper obviously did not stand out as otherwise he would have been caught or been seen as highly suspicious.

Which is why he is most unlikely to have been Aaron Kosminski!


He appears to have been employed based on the times of his attacks.

The fact that two of his five murders occurred on a Friday morning does not suggest that he was employed at the time of the murders.


I am assuming he was neat and tidy being obsessive about this based on other killers of this type: Napper etc.

Lawende described his suspect as shabby.


His escapes from the scenes of the crime surely elicit a degree of cunning and his ability to seek out Prostitutes must show a degree of planning and a streetwise kind of knowledge.

Which again rules out Kosminski.