The probabilities of the MM '3'..A possible scenario?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ve always thought that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the upper echelons of the police were either incompetent buffoons or else corrupt. I don’t see the fact that the killer wasn’t caught as being down to police incompetence or indifference either. August 31st to 9th November, just 5 murders (unless there were more of course) woman killed and the killer disappears into the night. No clues at the crime scenes, no DNA, no fingerprints, no CCTV, no knowledge of serial killers. Look how long serial killers remain at large until they are caught (unless they remain at liberty of course) and that’s with all of the technology, facilities and knowledge of the modern day police.

I also don’t think that it’s particularly strange for two senior police officers or more to have differing theories and opinions after the event. Should we really be surprised when this occurs.

And in the real world what is the likelihood of senior police officers simply inventing suspects? In the movies maybe?

[Doctored Whatsit]

I’ve always thought that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the upper echelons of the police were either incompetent buffoons or else corrupt. I don’t see the fact that the killer wasn’t caught as being down to police incompetence or indifference either. August 31st to 9th November, just 5 murders (unless there were more of course) woman killed and the killer disappears into the night. No clues at the crime scenes, no DNA, no fingerprints, no CCTV, no knowledge of serial killers. Look how long serial killers remain at large until they are caught (unless they remain at liberty of course) and that’s with all of the technology, facilities and knowledge of the modern day police.

I also don’t think that it’s particularly strange for two senior police officers or more to have differing theories and opinions after the event. Should we really be surprised when this occurs.

And in the real world what is the likelihood of senior police officers simply inventing suspects? In the movies maybe?

I am in broad agreement with Herlock, in that there is no evidence of police incompetence, just no tangible clues to pursue. I also agree that senior police officers having different opinions is therefore unsurprising. The problem I have is that there are differences in facts quoted, and evidence used which appears to be unknown not just to us, but other serving police officers.

Macnaghten was quite clear that "no one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer". His named suspects were only "more likely than Cutbush" to have been JtR. However, Anderson was equally clear, and totally contradictory, saying, "the only person who ever saw the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him". Swanson took this further, and referred to a positive identification at the "Seaside Home", which would have obtained a conviction, and the witness was a fellow Jew. No other police officers appeared to be aware of this quite sensational identification. So, did anyone see JtR or not? Only Anderson and Swanson seem to think so.

Who was this Jewish witness? It couldn't have been the oft quoted Lawende, as he only saw a woman who could have been Eddowes, and a man whom he said on oath that he didn't think he would recognise again. Even if the woman was Eddowes, which cannot be accepted absolutely, and even if he could identify the man, which he couldn't, he can only place the suspect in the vicinity of the crime scene. The suspect if identified, only had to say, "Yes, an unfortunate did chat me up, but I told her to bugger off, and she chatted up another man nearby, and I left". We are nowhere near convicting with Lawende's evidence.

Joseph Levy, was with him, but on oath said that he did not take much notice of them, and could not give a description of either of them. He also said that the spot was "badly lighted", making their evidence even more unhelpful.

Perhaps Schwartz would be a better witness, as he saw actual violence just by the crime scene, within minutes of the murder. But does BS man, who shouted "Lipski" appear to have been Jewish? Probably not!

Getting pretty desperate now ... we have the massively unlikely and surely fictitious acount of Sgt White's reported encounter "up a certain alley" which surfaced in the press many years later, and White wasn't a Jew. Finally, we have the mysterious dustman mentioned by Acting Super West who saw a man the morning of Chapman's murder with blood on his clothing. We have no more info I believe, so I assume that his evidence was too vague to be helpful, but if so, it is odd that West chose to mention him specifically. Now if he saw this man with blood on his clothing leaving 29 Hanbury Street at a time matching other evidence he would be an excellent witness, but he never gets mentioned again, so surely he isn't that Jewish witness. So who could this witness possibly be, and why do no other police officers know anything about him, or the Seaside Home identification? It's a mystery!

[The Rookie Detective]

I am in broad agreement with Herlock, in that there is no evidence of police incompetence, just no tangible clues to pursue. I also agree that senior police officers having different opinions is therefore unsurprising. The problem I have is that there are differences in facts quoted, and evidence used which appears to be unknown not just to us, but other serving police officers.

Macnaghten was quite clear that "no one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer". His named suspects were only "more likely than Cutbush" to have been JtR. However, Anderson was equally clear, and totally contradictory, saying, "the only person who ever saw the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him". Swanson took this further, and referred to a positive identification at the "Seaside Home", which would have obtained a conviction, and the witness was a fellow Jew. No other police officers appeared to be aware of this quite sensational identification. So, did anyone see JtR or not? Only Anderson and Swanson seem to think so.

Who was this Jewish witness? It couldn't have been the oft quoted Lawende, as he only saw a woman who could have been Eddowes, and a man whom he said on oath that he didn't think he would recognise again. Even if the woman was Eddowes, which cannot be accepted absolutely, and even if he could identify the man, which he couldn't, he can only place the suspect in the vicinity of the crime scene. The suspect if identified, only had to say, "Yes, an unfortunate did chat me up, but I told her to bugger off, and she chatted up another man nearby, and I left". We are nowhere near convicting with Lawende's evidence.

Joseph Levy, was with him, but on oath said that he did not take much notice of them, and could not give a description of either of them. He also said that the spot was "badly lighted", making their evidence even more unhelpful.

Perhaps Schwartz would be a better witness, as he saw actual violence just by the crime scene, within minutes of the murder. But does BS man, who shouted "Lipski" appear to have been Jewish? Probably not!

Getting pretty desperate now ... we have the massively unlikely and surely fictitious acount of Sgt White's reported encounter "up a certain alley" which surfaced in the press many years later, and White wasn't a Jew. Finally, we have the mysterious dustman mentioned by Acting Super West who saw a man the morning of Chapman's murder with blood on his clothing. We have no more info I believe, so I assume that his evidence was too vague to be helpful, but if so, it is odd that West chose to mention him specifically. Now if he saw this man with blood on his clothing leaving 29 Hanbury Street at a time matching other evidence he would be an excellent witness, but he never gets mentioned again, so surely he isn't that Jewish witness. So who could this witness possibly be, and why do no other police officers know anything about him, or the Seaside Home identification? It's a mystery!

Excellent post.

It certainly is a mystery.

But sometimes mysteries speak for themselves.

I wouldn't say that the police were incompetent in a literall sense; because we can't use that as the reason why the Ripper was never caught, and there's no direct evidence to prove that the likes of MacNagthen, Anderson, and Swanson were incompetent.

However, it is clear that they didn't know who the Ripper was.

Not a clue.

On that basis, I wouldn't call them incompetent, I'd say they lacked the integrity to be honest and confess they had failed to find the killer because he had evaded their efforts to catch him.

The problem is that some people; especially men of high of high standing and power imparticular, aren't usually the most forthcoming in swallowing their ego and admitting they're wrong or a failure.

And therein lies the rub with the 3 aforementioned senior officers.

Anderson appears to be deliberately ambiguous, and play a game of show and tell, whereby he tells us lots of information, but fails to reveal any specific information of any real value. This is a common psychological method employed by someone who wants to appear to know more than anyone else about a specific subject, burnin reality is no different to anyone else.
Swanson then seems to jumps on the Anderson bandwagon, by appearing to use Macnagthen's early list of faux suspects and then chosen Kosminski from said list.
But typically, Swanson just gives a surname.
Why?
Well, because he likely had no idea who Kosminski was.

Of course, if it can be proved that there's no way that Swanson was aware that Kosminski was written on Macnagthen's list, then that changes things somewhat, because then we have 2 senior officers referring to the same surname of Kosminski.

However, because Macnagthen wrote his Memorandum before Swanson wrote in the marginalia, then it seems almost impossible that Swanson wouldn't have been aware of MacNagthen's list that included Kosminski.


The issue surrounding Aaron Kosminski having been chosen as THE Kosminski, is that he doesn't fit the criteria well enough to be the correct man.

I admit that the chances of there being an actual Kosminski in the asylum, is quite a coincidence, but outside of that, nothing really fits what was collectively said by the senior officers.

If we actually look at what all 3 men said and blend it all together, we can see quite clearly that most of what they stated was either wrong or unable to be verified or corroborated.

That perhaps tells us all we need to know about the subject of Kosminski.

[Doctored Whatsit]

So, we are saying, I think, that MacN, Anderson and Swanson were utterly reluctant to admit that they had failed, and that Swanson and Anderson actually chose to claim that they had solved the mystery, but couldn't prove it in court because of a reluctant witness, but despite claiming to have proved their case, they can be seen to have their facts wrong? That is certainly a possibility.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’m saying that we can’t be certain that the truth doesn’t lie somewhere in there. We don’t know, for example, what MacNaghten’s ‘private information’ was so we can’t evaluate it and even if we discovered it at this late hour we might still not be able to deduce anything from it. So in this particular case we have three options as far as I can see, a) Macnaghten just plucked Druitt’s name out of thin air to allow him to compile his ‘likelier than Cutbush’ list, b) he’d actually received some private information which suggested that Druitt might have been guilty but he in fact wasn’t, or c) he’d received some private information which suggested that Druitt might have been guilty and he was.

My own opinion is to dismiss option a) as extremely unlikely. Leaving us with b) or c). We certainly can’t prove him guilty and we can’t eliminate him with any degree of certainty.

In a case where we have a suspect based on a proven forged diary (who is still being promoted) plus a plethora of other suspects whose mere existence appears enough to justify suspecthood and against whom there’s not a jot of evidence then I would always suggest that we keep an open mind on suspects named by senior officers. No more.

[Lewis C]

Excellent post.

It certainly is a mystery.

But sometimes mysteries speak for themselves.

I wouldn't say that the police were incompetent in a literall sense; because we can't use that as the reason why the Ripper was never caught, and there's no direct evidence to prove that the likes of MacNagthen, Anderson, and Swanson were incompetent.

However, it is clear that they didn't know who the Ripper was.

Not a clue.

On that basis, I wouldn't call them incompetent, I'd say they lacked the integrity to be honest and confess they had failed to find the killer because he had evaded their efforts to catch him.

The problem is that some people; especially men of high of high standing and power imparticular, aren't usually the most forthcoming in swallowing their ego and admitting they're wrong or a failure.

And therein lies the rub with the 3 aforementioned senior officers.

Anderson appears to be deliberately ambiguous, and play a game of show and tell, whereby he tells us lots of information, but fails to reveal any specific information of any real value. This is a common psychological method employed by someone who wants to appear to know more than anyone else about a specific subject, burnin reality is no different to anyone else.
Swanson then seems to jumps on the Anderson bandwagon, by appearing to use Macnagthen's early list of faux suspects and then chosen Kosminski from said list.
But typically, Swanson just gives a surname.
Why?
Well, because he likely had no idea who Kosminski was.

Of course, if it can be proved that there's no way that Swanson was aware that Kosminski was written on Macnagthen's list, then that changes things somewhat, because then we have 2 senior officers referring to the same surname of Kosminski.

However, because Macnagthen wrote his Memorandum before Swanson wrote in the marginalia, then it seems almost impossible that Swanson wouldn't have been aware of MacNagthen's list that included Kosminski.


The issue surrounding Aaron Kosminski having been chosen as THE Kosminski, is that he doesn't fit the criteria well enough to be the correct man.

I admit that the chances of there being an actual Kosminski in the asylum, is quite a coincidence, but outside of that, nothing really fits what was collectively said by the senior officers.

If we actually look at what all 3 men said and blend it all together, we can see quite clearly that most of what they stated was either wrong or unable to be verified or corroborated.

That perhaps tells us all we need to know about the subject of Kosminski.

Hi RD,

Anderson and Swanson seem to have gotten something wrong, so I think we need to consider various possibilities depending on what they got right and what they got wrong. Maybe they got the name wrong but got the timing of his death right, in which case David Cohen may be their suspect. Or maybe it's the other way around, and Aaron Kosminski is their suspect. Or maybe they got both right, but no record of this man can be found in a lunatic asylum, maybe because the record has been lost, or mavbe because they were mistaken about him being caged in an asylum. And regardless of which of these is right, maybe they were right about their man being the Ripper, and maybe they weren't.