Tell me who JTR was

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

The one thing about Kelly that Lechmere doesn't have, is a proven history of murder and hostility towards women. Yeah, where was he in '88 and '89? In England quite probably and the police seemed to have thought so too as memos show people were questioned about him. One supposes that a straight shot up to London from Broadmoor, as least for a time, would make perfect sense as it would have been the ideal place to get lost in while making plans for the next destination. Still, no evidence at all that he was there or that he killed anyone else.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Barnaby: I think that Lechmere is a viable suspect and I have learned much from reading Fisherman's and Lechmere's posts, but I believe that this is an overstatement.

It is my own personal take on things, Barnaby, nothing more than that. To me, the odds that all of the details pointing in his way are all just coincidences - that he actually did call himself Cross colloquially, that it was coincidental that Nichols´wounds were hidden, that it would have been Mizen who lied about the other PC, that Lechmere would not have heard Paul until he was thirty feet away etcetera, are too high to allow more for a verdict of not guilty than one of guilty.
That having been said, I am perfectly aware that any half-decent lawyer would get Lechmere off in a wink, given the material we have.
And keep in mind that poster Lechmere and I are not siamese twins - I very much doubt that he would go along with my take.

Two things bother me about Lechmere.

LOTS of things bother ME about him

First, I find it hard to believe that the police didn't investigate him at some point. Fisherman and Lechmere make strong arguments for this man's guilt 125 years later. Surely contemporary law enforcement could make similar inferences. The fact that he wasn't a suspect leads me to believe he was cleared, much like Hutchinson.

A fair point. But if the police investigated him and wrote him off, then why did they never pick up on his true name?

Second, if we grant that the Ripper killed all or most of the canonicals, then it wasn't unusual for him to take weeks off between murders. In fairness, he could also get to work quickly between murders too (perhaps very quickly!). But my point is it was within his capacity to refrain from killing for whatever reason for weeks at a time.

That´s a hard matter to assess. Looking at other serialists, we can see that there are cooling-off periods between the killings. Many serialists kill with longer intervals than our man.
There is also the question of getting the right setting, if you like. I think there is every chance that a number of women had lucky escapes without even knowing it.

Now suppose Lechmere is the Ripper and he is interrupted with Nichols. So much so that he is interjected into the case, provides an alias, has to testify, etc. I would think that this would be a really good reason to take a break, yet he is at work next week.

I don´t think the breaks are practically induced, more than to an inferior degree. when the urge and the opportunity is there, these men kill.
I think there is a significant chance that Lechmere was an accompished killer when he slew Nichols. Bearing that in mind, he could have felt very much at ease and not threatened by the police at all. It may even have been something he enjoyed, as part of the game.

To be equally critical of my own suspect, one thing bothers me about James Kelly. He can't be placed in Whitechapel during any of the murders. Otherwise, he is a spectacular suspect.

Kelly is interesting, no doubt about that. But I do not rank him alongside Lechmere at all. I fail to see that we will ever find another suspect that is as intimately connected to the case as Lechmere is, who was found by the body of a victim, who has a working trek that passes that murde spots at the right times, who can be found to have used a false name when speaking to the police and who was implicated as a liar by the police the way Lechmere is implicated by Mizen (not that the confused PC would have realized that this was what he did...).
Such men do not grow on trees.

All the best, Barnaby!
Fisherman

[Sally]

The trouble with Barnett,,,

.. [apart from the recorded facts of his interrogation and alibi that is]

... is that there is no motive. He was the one who left Kelly - not the other way around. How does that fit into a 'jealous spurned lover' scenario, exactly?

Well, ok, it might - we could stretch credulity a little and do some speculating - could still work.

Except that... we know from later records that he got together with his 'wife' Louisa pretty soon afterwards. For all we know, he had already met her when he split with Kelly - quite possible - I mean he'd hardly be likely to broadcast the fact in the circumstances, would he?

Whether he'd met her or not when Kelly was murdered, the fact that he did start a relationship with another woman, by his own account, before the end of 1888, would seem to indicate that he had moved on.

As we now know, he remained with Louisa for the rest of his life and appears to have led a very ordinary, mundane life. To date, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that he was ever in any kind of trouble with the police, let alone murder.

Could he still be Kelly's killer? Sure - anything is possible - but making a convincing case against him in the light of the known facts is tricky. It requires convoluted reasoning and special pleading.

In order to accept him as Kelly's killer we'd have to accept that he killed her apparently without motive in a horrific manner and then went back to his humble existence, having managed to fool the cops in the meantime, despite initially being a prime suspect.

If we want him to be respnsible for all the Ripper murders, we'd have to accept that he committed a range of horrific crimes against women and then stopped and immediately after went on to cohabit with another woman for the rest of his days, holding down a job and apparently free of the mania that had struck him for a few brief weeks.

As I said, tricky - being handy with a fish knife just doesn't seem to be enough to convict him.

In response to the title question of this thread, I doubt that we'll ever know. In the meantime, we can fit up as many suspects as we like for the job - it's easy enough to do.

I think I read somewhere that there are over 100 proposed suspects to date? Apart from the truly silly untenable ones [we all know who they are] there could be a case, albeit flawed, for all of them.

[richardnunweek]

Hi...
The biggest clue to the identity of Mary Kelly's killer, may be to ask oneself this question..''Do we believe the late Dan Farson's account of the grave spitting letter''?
Its that simple..
If we consider it never existed .., or it did but was a hoax..then we are back to square one..
But if it did exist, and the contents were true, then one of the two men at the service of Kelly was a good suspect for being her killer...absolutely no doubt..
One was Joseph Barnett.
The other one is not recorded..
Lets face it if M Druitt, or George Chapman, was present at the graveside..would we dismiss the tale so lightly?
Regards Richard.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fish,

That was the first time I have read your article. I enjoyed it very much.

Best wishes.

Thanks, Hatchett - that´s good to hear!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Hi fisherman,you have put forward a very good case proposing lechmere as our killer and he is just as likely as my personal favourite which is Druitt.when viewing the appalling photo of Mary Kelly we can safely say whoever was doing this was a million miles away from being normal that murder was far and beyond murder and mutilation so I cannot see our killer simply going of and retiring and living happily ever after.

I agree to a large extent. However, much as Charles Lechmere lived on for many years after the Ripper scare, nobody knows what kind of life he had. On the surface, he opened up a small shop and kept his marriage together etcetera.

On the surface, Gary Ridgway was a happy worker with a very content wife who loved him deeply and affectionately.

On the surface, Dennis Rader was a useful, hard striving citizen, with a wife and kids.

On the surface, John Wayne Gacy was a pillar of society, helping young men to get a job with him, throwing entertaining parties, helping out in society as Pogo the clown ...

Psychopaths and sociopaths are often very skilled actors.

All the best,
Fisherman

[GUT]

G'day Brenda

One thing that has always troubled me....when someone was written about in the newspapers of the time as being questioned about the murders, more than once it was stated along the lines of "...showing himself to be a respectable gentleman, he was released...." it always implied to me that anyone that could pull off the "respectable" bit was spared a grilling that all suspects being questioned should have endured.

I read it being that he has shown himself as a person beyond reproach, I think that sometime we fall into the error of using today's language to interpret something said in 1888.

I'm not saying the police were dumb by ANY means. However I don't think they had the knowledge of serial killers that we have today....and how much do we REALLY know even today? We're still learning about these people all the time.

But they had a thorough knowledge of killers in general, even today the police look at each murder individually.

[Brenda]

But my point is that Joe going through that doesn't make him a better suspect, to me the only thing that really makes him a suspect is that he was in a relationship with Mary, the first person the police usually look at is the partner and domestic killings were nothing unusual in 1880s. So I really can't imagine he wasn't given a long hard look.

He was interviewed by police for a period of 4 hours. If there were any more interviews, I don't think a record of that survives. To me, that's not a long hard look. Also, any evidence of Barnett in Mary's home could easily be explained away because he had lived there. And we just don't know how far the police went with investigating...for example Barnett said he was playing whist, but did they go out and find the people he was supposedly playing with and pin them down about times, etc? We just don't know.

One thing that has always troubled me....when someone was written about in the newspapers of the time as being questioned about the murders, more than once it was stated along the lines of "...showing himself to be a respectable gentleman, he was released...." it always implied to me that anyone that could pull off the "respectable" bit was spared a grilling that all suspects being questioned should have endured.

I feel like a calm and collected sociopath (whether Barnett or no) could easily play the respectable part.

I'm not saying the police were dumb by ANY means. However I don't think they had the knowledge of serial killers that we have today....and how much do we REALLY know even today? We're still learning about these people all the time.

[GUT]

G'day Brenda

But my point is that Joe going through that doesn't make him a better suspect, to me the only thing that really makes him a suspect is that he was in a relationship with Mary, the first person the police usually look at is the partner and domestic killings were nothing unusual in 1880s. So I really can't imagine he wasn't given a long hard look.

[Brenda]

Lots of people go through that and worse and don't go out killing!

Indeed, but serial killers aren't like the rest of us.

[GUT]

G'day Brenda

My favorite suspect is Joe Barnett. Something is just "off" about him for me. I feel like he was a man under tremendous stress, he lost his good job as a fish porter (and his license) around the time the murders started. Losing a good job in Victorian London could mean going from making ends meet to the very end of the line, this had to have been a huge life-shattering happening for him. After his job was gone, his relationship with Mary also began to deteriorate, and he was "losing control" of his life. Serial killers are all about control. I feel like he may have killed as a way of letting off steam, trying to get some "control" back (in his mind, anyway), and obviously there would have to be a lot of sexual turmoil factors involved as well.

Lots of people go through that and worse and don't go out killing!

But you're right it could have triggered something.

[Brenda]

.

I've been reading these boards for about 11 - 12 years now, so much impeccable research and so much compelling evidence for many suspects.

However, my most favorite suspect is one of the most unpopular, and he remains my favorite not because of all the evidence stacked against him, but because of just plain "female intuition" (I know, I know...)....

My favorite suspect is Joe Barnett. Something is just "off" about him for me. I feel like he was a man under tremendous stress, he lost his good job as a fish porter (and his license) around the time the murders started. Losing a good job in Victorian London could mean going from making ends meet to the very end of the line, this had to have been a huge life-shattering happening for him. After his job was gone, his relationship with Mary also began to deteriorate, and he was "losing control" of his life. Serial killers are all about control. I feel like he may have killed as a way of letting off steam, trying to get some "control" back (in his mind, anyway), and obviously there would have to be a lot of sexual turmoil factors involved as well.

I feel like the unmanageable stress brought out the violence and serial killer in him, and when Mary became the unmanageable (and "uncontrollable") stress, that's when he killed her.

Totally unscientific and unprovable....but it's just what I feel.

[GUT]

G'day Barnaby

Hi GUT,

I believe that a concerted effort was made to locate him the day after the MJK killing. I believe they went to his mother-in-law's house (his last known address). He apparently had a really creepy relationship with her, given that he murdered her daughter and all.

Two issues here, I am not sure how concerted it actually was and why only after MJK? I would have thought they would have been looking for him much, much earlier.

I like James Kelly because it is such a good story. Here is a mentally unstable individual who works with a knife as an upholsterer, has severe sexual hangups, catches an STD from a prostitute because he can't perform with his fiancé/wife, crazily blames her, accuses her of cheating (who knows if this is true and who cares?) and knifes her to death, develops/maintains a creepy relationship with the middle-aged mother-in-law while at Broadmoor, then escapes just in time for the murders. I love it!

His mother-in-law, as I understand it was one of the petitioners for clemency, which always made me wonder if there was some truth to his suspicions about his wife.

The downside as I mentioned is that he may have been in France, or anywhere for that matter. And that he does reappear decades later, suggesting that he either wasn't an out of control serial killer or that he stopped.

But I wouldn't rule him out just because we don't know where he was, obviously the police thought he may have been nearby, but then again Mcnaghten thought Ostrog was n England.

[Barnaby]

Hi GUT,

I believe that a concerted effort was made to locate him the day after the MJK killing. I believe they went to his mother-in-law's house (his last known address). He apparently had a really creepy relationship with her, given that he murdered her daughter and all.

I like James Kelly because it is such a good story. Here is a mentally unstable individual who works with a knife as an upholsterer, has severe sexual hangups, catches an STD from a prostitute because he can't perform with his fiancé/wife, crazily blames her, accuses her of cheating (who knows if this is true and who cares?) and knifes her to death, develops/maintains a creepy relationship with the middle-aged mother-in-law while at Broadmoor, then escapes just in time for the murders. I love it!

The downside as I mentioned is that he may have been in France, or anywhere for that matter. And that he does reappear decades later, suggesting that he either wasn't an out of control serial killer or that he stopped.

[GUT]

G'day Barnaby

I too have had a long hard look at James Kelly, the only thing that worries me is that non of the surviving documents seem to indicate that he was ever seriously on the police radar, think [from memory] after one murder there is a report that the police looked for him, but as an escaped killer I think that there would have been a number of times when they had a look.

Even f they don't seem to have looked too hard.