OK whos your favored suspect/s and why?

[Aethelwulf]

I often wonder if we are missing a trick with the Martha Tabram murder. If, as many do, we believe she was a victim of JTR then is it possible that the soldier who was with Tabram that night is our killer? At 5:30am in George Yard buildings Dr Kileen examined the body and determined she had been dead for 'about 3 hours' so roughly 2:30am.

At approximately 2am PC Barrett spoke with a soldier loitering near the North entrance of George Yard. When approached he said he was 'waiting for his mate who had gone off with a girl'. Now we have no way of knowing if this girl/woman was Tabram but it is very interesting that this happened so close to the presumed TOD(not a perfect estimation but the mitigating factors present in other cases are not as pronounced- I.e temperature, extent of mutiliation so might be close enough). We have some evidence Tabram was in the company of soldiers prior to this encounter albeit a few hours had passed. Any thoughts?

Although it's generally dismissed, given that Tabram was stabbed in the throat when a penknife/claspknife, it's worth remembering Ada Wilson was also stabbed in the throat. Given the account below, where her attacker demands money then blows up with an over the top reaction, I have no trouble imagining the same man stabbing Tabram 39 times:

She said that she occupied both parlours of the above house, and was about to retire to rest when she heard a knock at the door, and upon going there found a total stranger waiting, who demanded money, adding that if she did not at once produce the cash she had but a few moments to live. She refused to give the money and the man at once drew from his pocket a clasp knife, with which he stabbed her twice in the throat. From the details of the man's appearance given by Wilson, the following will be found a fairly accurate description of the man:- Aged about 30, height 5 ft. 6 in.; face sunburnt, with fair moustache; dressed in dark coat, light trousers, and wideawake hat.

Her neighbour possibly suggests the man was already in the room, but it seems Wilson had men coming and going a lot so not clear it is the same person IMO. I've seen it written this isn't something the ripper would have done/poor warm-up for the autumn, but it was over 4 months before tabram. 'Criminal versatility' is also one of the ticks for a psychopath. So there is no need to see this as a warm-up for the autumn, he just wanted money, didn't get it and attacked. Also worth noting that the police actually questioned Peter Sutcliffe's father for a blunt force head trauma burglar attack in the 1960s (not realising it was very likely the son).

IMO, Bury is a very strong suspect for the Wilson attack. He lived just under a mile away and had form for demanding money with menaces (pinned wife to bed and held knife to her throat in argument over money plus other examples), taking money, very short temper, penknife attacker/murderer, slept with a penkife under his pillow. Used and knew prostitutes. Age 28 at the time, said to have fair sandy facial hair, his known drinking could account for the red face. With hat and boots and likely wide uncertainty in estimating heights by witnesses, would fit height (as an example, the man that attacked farmer, seen by many in daylight, was said to be short, short thick fellow, 5'4" but also up to 5'7" in height).

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Although it's generally dismissed, given that Tabram was stabbed in the throat when a penknife/claspknife, it's worth remembering Ada Wilson was also stabbed in the throat. Given the account below, where her attacker demands money then blows up with an over the top reaction, I have no trouble imagining the same man stabbing Tabram 39 times:

She said that she occupied both parlours of the above house, and was about to retire to rest when she heard a knock at the door, and upon going there found a total stranger waiting, who demanded money, adding that if she did not at once produce the cash she had but a few moments to live. She refused to give the money and the man at once drew from his pocket a clasp knife, with which he stabbed her twice in the throat. From the details of the man's appearance given by Wilson, the following will be found a fairly accurate description of the man:- Aged about 30, height 5 ft. 6 in.; face sunburnt, with fair moustache; dressed in dark coat, light trousers, and wideawake hat.

Her neighbour possibly suggests the man was already in the room, but it seems Wilson had men coming and going a lot so not clear it is the same person IMO. I've seen it written this isn't something the ripper would have done/poor warm-up for the autumn, but it was over 4 months before tabram. 'Criminal versatility' is also one of the ticks for a psychopath. So there is no need to see this as a warm-up for the autumn, he just wanted money, didn't get it and attacked. Also worth noting that the police actually questioned Peter Sutcliffe's father for a blunt force head trauma burglar attack in the 1960s (not realising it was very likely the son).

IMO, Bury is a very strong suspect for the Wilson attack. He lived just under a mile away and had form for demanding money with menaces (pinned wife to bed and held knife to her throat in argument over money plus other examples), taking money, very short temper, penknife attacker/murderer, slept with a penkife under his pillow. Used and knew prostitutes. Age 28 at the time, said to have fair sandy facial hair, his known drinking could account for the red face. With hat and boots and likely wide uncertainty in estimating heights by witnesses, would fit height (as an example, the man that attacked farmer, seen by many in daylight, was said to be short, short thick fellow, 5'4" but also up to 5'7" in height).

Your theory is fine if one believes Ada Wilson's story about an attempted robbery.

[Abby Normal]

Although it's generally dismissed, given that Tabram was stabbed in the throat when a penknife/claspknife, it's worth remembering Ada Wilson was also stabbed in the throat. Given the account below, where her attacker demands money then blows up with an over the top reaction, I have no trouble imagining the same man stabbing Tabram 39 times:

She said that she occupied both parlours of the above house, and was about to retire to rest when she heard a knock at the door, and upon going there found a total stranger waiting, who demanded money, adding that if she did not at once produce the cash she had but a few moments to live. She refused to give the money and the man at once drew from his pocket a clasp knife, with which he stabbed her twice in the throat. From the details of the man's appearance given by Wilson, the following will be found a fairly accurate description of the man:- Aged about 30, height 5 ft. 6 in.; face sunburnt, with fair moustache; dressed in dark coat, light trousers, and wideawake hat.

Her neighbour possibly suggests the man was already in the room, but it seems Wilson had men coming and going a lot so not clear it is the same person IMO. I've seen it written this isn't something the ripper would have done/poor warm-up for the autumn, but it was over 4 months before tabram. 'Criminal versatility' is also one of the ticks for a psychopath. So there is no need to see this as a warm-up for the autumn, he just wanted money, didn't get it and attacked. Also worth noting that the police actually questioned Peter Sutcliffe's father for a blunt force head trauma burglar attack in the 1960s (not realising it was very likely the son).

IMO, Bury is a very strong suspect for the Wilson attack. He lived just under a mile away and had form for demanding money with menaces (pinned wife to bed and held knife to her throat in argument over money plus other examples), taking money, very short temper, penknife attacker/murderer, slept with a penkife under his pillow. Used and knew prostitutes. Age 28 at the time, said to have fair sandy facial hair, his known drinking could account for the red face. With hat and boots and likely wide uncertainty in estimating heights by witnesses, would fit height (as an example, the man that attacked farmer, seen by many in daylight, was said to be short, short thick fellow, 5'4" but also up to 5'7" in height).

good post wulf. as usual you make a strong case for bury. what is the source for burys fair sandy facial hair?

[John Wheat]

It is my opinion on the topic from where the Ripper had his medical knowledge, but that he had medical skill is cast Iron by the simple facts of what happened at Mitre Square! Show us the "interested amateur" able to successfully extract a kidney on his knees, in near darkness, in 3-5 minutes, done not leaving a victim looking like a bomb had gone off, but done in steps a 1888 doctor could recognise and would have done similarly himself!

And once again: The mutilations postdate the successful kidney extraction and knowing not to cut through the navel or fixing the sigmoid area in the rectum was surgeon´s knowledge in 1888, even today few persons outside the medical occupations know this.

But this is not cast iron proof. You are passing your opinion off as fact.

[John Wheat]

good post wulf. as usual you make a strong case for bury. what is the source for burys fair sandy facial hair?

I'm with Abby. Great post Aethelwulf.

[Aethelwulf]

good post wulf. as usual you make a strong case for bury. what is the source for burys fair sandy facial hair?

Steve Earp had compiled all of the descriptions of suspects and Bury - think the original source might of been the dundee courier but his website with all the info on hasn't been working for weeks. Hopefully he will resurrect it at some point. I think the quotes were 'dark hair with facial hair inclined to be sandy' and 'dark hair with facial hair a shade lighter'. Think I've posted it before somewhere but will have to search. Will also post a map at some point, all Bury had to was basically come out of his house, cut across a cemetery, along a street at he'd be at Maidman Street, something like 3/4 mile. It's possible Bury didn't want to loose face for not having any money at his wedding on 2nd April. He could also have just wanted drinking money for the Easter weekend. He didn't get access to Ellen's money until they were married.

I also wonder about Bury's total compliance with Elizabeth Haynes when threatened with the police a week later. Given that Wilson's attack would have been investigated from Bow, it wouldn't take a very enterprising detective to make a connection between a knife being held to a woman's throat over money, and Wilson

Bury also stabbed ellen in both groins and I believe Tabram was also stabbed in a similar location

[Chava]

Blotchy. The man who attacked Ada Wilson & tried to cut her throat. Seen with Catherine Eddowes. Seen with Mary Jane Kelly. Blotchy all the way for me!

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Blotchy. The man who attacked Ada Wilson & tried to cut her throat. Seen with Catherine Eddowes. Seen with Mary Jane Kelly. Blotchy all the way for me!

The man seen with Mary Kelly was described as 'A short, stout man [wearing] a longish coat [with] a blotchy face, and full carroty moustache' and aged 36.

The man who attacked Ada Wilson was described as 'Aged about 30, height 5 ft. 6 in.; face sunburnt, with fair moustache; dressed in dark coat ... and wideawake hat.'

The man seen by Lawende with Catherine Eddowes was described as 'Age 30 ht. 5 ft. 7 or 8 in. comp. fair, fair moustache, medium build, ... appearance of a sailor.’


I don't see how a 'short, stout man [with] a full carroty moustache' and aged 36, could be the same as someone 'Age 30 ht. 5 ft. 7 or 8 in. comp. fair, fair moustache, medium build'

I would point out that Ada Wilson was attacked six months before Eddowes was murdered, by which time the murderer's sun-burnt skin might have improved considerably.

Is there anything about Ada Wilson's assailant that makes you think he may have had the appearance of a sailor?

[JeffHamm]

When comparing eye-witness descriptions, it is important to keep in mind just how variable our estimates of things like age and height can be. Differences of 4 or more inches, for example, do not exclude anything, and both estimates can be way off the mark. Also, estimates of height could be given as estimates in feet and inches or in more subjective terms, like short, medium, tall, etc. There is often no relationship between these, despite what it "feels like", or what "common sense" might suggest (remember, common sense is just what we think would be the case rather than what evidence shows us to be the case).

Here's an article on estimates of height by eyewitnesses. It's a summary of the topic type article rather than a specific study (though I'm planning on searching around for some to have a look at the numbers as well), and written for a general audience rather than targeting specialists in the field.

Anyway, eye-witness testimony is unfortunately pretty awful, and two people describing the same person can produce widely different descriptions. This, of course, is not good news for us, given most of what we have to work with with regards to "suspects" is based upon eye-witness descriptions. I'm hoping to find some real data on just how variable estimates of height and age are, as knowing this will allow us to make an objective assessment with regards to whether or not two people could be describing a common person rather than us having to rely upon our own unique set of personal biases and subjective impressions about similarity. Seriously, humans are rubbish at this sort of thing and thinking that one person describing someone as 5'4 vs another saying 5'7" means they must have seen two different people is simply incorrect. Of course, they might have seen two different people, that we do not know, but we also do not know they had to have seen two different people based upon those two height estimates.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Ooo, found a nice paper already (Lindsay, Semmler, Weber, Brewer & Lindsay, 2008. How Variations in Distance Affect Eyewitness Reports and Identification Accuracy. Law and Human Behaviour. DOI 10.1007/s10979-008-9128-x) . Will have to go through it more carefully, but thought I would present the findings of most interest. This study has a good sample size, over 1300 participants, so the findings should be pretty robust. The short version of what they did was to have people view a person for 10 s (the "target person" would emerge from behind a wall or something like that, face them for 10 s, then go back behind the obstruction). Either immediately, or after a 24-48 hour delay, the participant was to provide estimates of the person's age, weight, and height. This was all done during daylight, so under much better conditions than many of the sightings we're dealing with.

Anyway, they break things down for short vs longer viewing distances, and so forth, and yes, shorter viewing distances tend to produce better estimates, the take home message doesn't change all that much. Their height and weight data is reported in metric, but I've converted it to feet/inches and pounds here as that is more likely to be comparable with the statements of the day.

So what percent of people estimate height, weight, and age within 3.94 inches (10 cm), 22 lbs (10 kg), or 10 years? (ignoring the viewing distance aspect). Well, those percentages are 67.8%, 68.4%, and 46.1%! Meaning, there's almost a 1 in 3 chance of someone's estimate of height and weight being off by more than roughly +-2 or +-11 lbs, respectively. And the chance of being outside of +-5 years is greater than the chance of being within that range.

Meaning, let's say two people see the same person who is 5'6". One of them estimating that person as being 5'4" and the other estimating them as being 5'8", places both witnesses inside of that 67.8% range. And it wouldn't be that unreasonable to find that one of them falls in the 1/3 people whose estimate is even worse (i.e. 5'9"; etc).

Looking at the descriptions we have, the discrepancies we are focusing on are will-o-the-wisps, and it is entirely possible for them to be describing the same person because we're rubbish at this sort of thing.

Obviously, as I've said before, this does not mean they are describing the same person, it only means we cannot claim the descriptions are so different that they must be describing different people.

- Jeff

[Hair Bear]

When comparing eye-witness descriptions, it is important to keep in mind just how variable our estimates of things like age and height can be.

- Jeff

And choice of words. I can't recall the specific murder, but I was watching a documentary about a killer whom an eyewitness had described as a "tall". The cops got nowhere with their investigation, so decided to check back on this witness, this time asking him to be more specific about the height, which they took to mean anything from 6-0 to 6-4. It seemed his original "tall" meant 6-8, which gave them a whole new perspective and they soon tracked down the killer.

[John Wheat]

I'm not sure how useful the eye witness descriptions are in the Ripper murders. Eye witnesses descriptions can vary vastly for the same person and we don't know who did and didn't see the Ripper.

[JeffHamm]

And choice of words. I can't recall the specific murder, but I was watching a documentary about a killer whom an eyewitness had described as a "tall". The cops got nowhere with their investigation, so decided to check back on this witness, this time asking him to be more specific about the height, which they took to mean anything from 6-0 to 6-4. It seemed his original "tall" meant 6-8, which gave them a whole new perspective and they soon tracked down the killer.

Hi Hair Bear,

Exactly! That is the main take-home point of that first summary article I posted a link to so you are on well supported ground. Words like "Tall" are subjective descriptions of height. Each of us "knows" what "tall" means, but forgets that each of us "knows" something different. When I say tall I might mean something very different than you do when it comes to turning that into an actual height (as the example you've given illustrates). It is really difficult for us to overcome that aspect of our thinking, which is why some debates around comparison of eye-witness descriptions can get so heated. "The witness said short and stout and the other said medium build, etc". If I "know" medium build to be something like 5'8", and fit, while "short and stout" must mean something like 5'2" and over weight, but you "know" that someone of medium build is more like 5'5", and stout doesn't mean overweight, then I'm going to have a very hard time accepting your argument they could be describing the same person. And indeed, they could be, because we have no idea what the witness "knew" medium build to mean or what "short and stout" means. Subjective terms are just that, they are subjective and people use them differently. Without being able to go back and get more information from the witnesses, we cannot calibrate their descriptions and any insistence on our part that we are being "objective" in our comparison of the eye-witness's subjective statements is a failure to recognize just how little we actually know of the people they are describing. One witness's "salt and pepper" could be another witness's "dark".

Again, recognizing this still doesn't tell us the witness's are describing the same person, but given how uninformative such descriptions are, we simply cannot say they definitely are not describing the same person.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

I'm not sure how useful the eye witness descriptions are in the Ripper murders. Eye witnesses descriptions can vary vastly for the same person and we don't know who did and didn't see the Ripper.

Hi John Wheat,

Indeed, descriptions of men seen with woman who might have been the victims is not exactly slam dunk information. I think, because of the desire to put a name to JtR there is a tendency to ignore just how non-specific the information we have is. In the end, if any of the men seen are the murderer of the victim they were seen with, I think we're more or less left with "a fairly average looking fellow" most of the time (which is probably the case in my opinion). Hutchinson's description stands out, but his description is far too detailed to be reliable and either his memory is filling in gaps or he's over egging his description to the press (we see something similar in the Lloyd's article by Paul, who overstates his role and diminishes Cross/Lechmere's).

- Jeff

[Lewis C]

Hi Hair Bear,

Exactly! That is the main take-home point of that first summary article I posted a link to so you are on well supported ground. Words like "Tall" are subjective descriptions of height. Each of us "knows" what "tall" means, but forgets that each of us "knows" something different. When I say tall I might mean something very different than you do when it comes to turning that into an actual height (as the example you've given illustrates). It is really difficult for us to overcome that aspect of our thinking, which is why some debates around comparison of eye-witness descriptions can get so heated. "The witness said short and stout and the other said medium build, etc". If I "know" medium build to be something like 5'8", and fit, while "short and stout" must mean something like 5'2" and over weight, but you "know" that someone of medium build is more like 5'5", and stout doesn't mean overweight, then I'm going to have a very hard time accepting your argument they could be describing the same person. And indeed, they could be, because we have no idea what the witness "knew" medium build to mean or what "short and stout" means. Subjective terms are just that, they are subjective and people use them differently. Without being able to go back and get more information from the witnesses, we cannot calibrate their descriptions and any insistence on our part that we are being "objective" in our comparison of the eye-witness's subjective statements is a failure to recognize just how little we actually know of the people they are describing. One witness's "salt and pepper" could be another witness's "dark".

Again, recognizing this still doesn't tell us the witness's are describing the same person, but given how uninformative such descriptions are, we simply cannot say they definitely are not describing the same person.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

This issue came up a couple of weeks ago in a discussion of who Schwartz's BS man might have been. Schwartz estimated his age as 30. I take it from what is said here that it's very possible that BS man could have been as young as 23 (or much older than 30 for than matter, but the candidates we were discussing were young).