Favoured Suspect...

[Lewis C]

Could someone please explain to me anything realistically that Lechmere has going for him? Other than he found a body guff.

He was a heterosexual male between the ages of 20 and 45 that lived in the area. I don't know what makes him a better suspect than the hundreds of other men that fit that description other than that he found a body.

[Lewis C]

Don't get me wrong, John, I'm not necessarily saying that I think Chapman is the best suspect, although I do think he's up there... I'm basically saying that Abberline wasn't a fool for putting Chapman forward as his man.

I'm not as convinced that the M.O. of Chapman's domestic murders are a problem for him being a candidate for the Ripper. He couldn't slice up his missus and hope to get away with being the Ripper if he was caught, though we do have some talk of him threatening Lucy with a knife in New Jersey. He's a multiple murderer of women, whichever way we look at it. If there's anything that cancels Bury, Kelly and Chapman out for me, it's the fact that they can all be considered as killing people close to them, and the Ripper was killing randoms. That's not to say that they couldn't have been killing randoms as well, as obviously Abberline felt that Chapman was doing just that.

Again, though, I'm not necessarily trying to put the case forward for Chapman being the man. I don't have any favourite suspect, I feel like if it wasn't one of those three, or "Kosminski", then it was somebody who was probably interviewed but slipped under the radar because they were seemingly normal.

Cheers

Hi Mike,

I agree that known murderers are people that should be looked at closely as suspects, because murder is something that most people don't do, so people who are known to be murderers have shown that they are among the very small part of the population that isn't above that. In addition to the 3 killers that you mentioned, I suggest that there's one more worth considering: Frederick Deeming. Not only was he a murderer, but he used the same methods of murder - throat cutting and strangulation - that the Ripper used. He was discounted at one time because it was thought that he was either in jail or in South Africa at the time of the Ripper killings, but I think that the best information that we have now is that he was in England and not in jail at that time.

[John Wheat]

He was a heterosexual male between the ages of 20 and 45 that lived in the area. I don't know what makes him a better suspect than the hundreds of other men that fit that description other than that he found a body.

So as I thought very little then.

Cheers John