H.H. Holmes

[Uncle Jack]

Holmes would certainly match the descriptions but that is about it.

[jonwilson]

Could America's first serial killer coincidently been Britain’s as well? Take a look at this article…

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...s_similar.html

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was the guy who said I am Jack right before he died from getting hanged.

[Uncle Jack]

I would encourage anyone interested in HH Holmes to find a good book and prepare to be amazed

Any particular books you can recomend Brenda?

[Brenda]

I would encourage anyone interested in HH Holmes to find a good book and prepare to be amazed. While his "torture castle" is horrific, his later crimes against the Pitezel family just defy any kind of logic whatsoever. This man was truly depraved.

But no, I don't think he was Jack.

[DaveMc]

From the article :
"Surely, Jack was not satisfied by this unfortunate turn of events. Within three hours, Catherine Eddows had fallen, giving birth to the now infamous Double Event. Her body had been disemboweled, her throat cut, and her nose completely severed. Furthermore, her heart and lungs were thrown aside, with her entrails twisted into the gaping wound around the neck.

I don't recall such a colorful description being in the autopsy report or any other.
Nor the heart and lungs removed.

Sensationalizing like that has me suspicious about any other "facts".

[Rick Mattix]

Yeah, the case is pretty flimsy and I can't buy any sort of connection here but it's an intriguing enough thought that I used to pore through books and articles on the Holmes case trying to find where he was in 1888 and no one seems to know. Or even to have asked. Have never seen any suggestion before that Holmes might have been the Ripper, or that he was ever in London, but it kind of amazes me as he and Jack were contemporaries and almost equally notorious in their day as the world's most diabolical killers.

There's a world of difference tho between a mad doctor torturing victims to death in secret chambers and a slasher who quickly kills his victims right out on the street, plus Dr. Holmes' crimes seem to have been motivated at least partially by profit.

[Harry Poland]

Intersting.

The big problem is actually placing Holmes in London at the time of the killings. I'm not impressed with the asserion that "Holmes was unaccounted for during the fall of 1888" I would like to see some hard evidence before I could lend any credence to it, Ripper theories are almost always propped up with similar assertions that simply don't hold water when put to the test.

Also Holmes was a torcherer whereas Jack seemed to favour a quick dispatch of his victims, perhaps this was due to the more public location of the ripper murders.

Still an intersting candidate worthy of further study. I must confess I'd never heard of him before

[Nschaal]

Could America's first serial killer coincidently been Britain’s as well? Take a look at this article…

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...s_similar.html