Favoured Suspect...

[Lewis C]

Hi Lewis,

I take your point, although I think it might have been irresponsible, and a little illogical not to investigate Bury further if there was any reason to think that they may have been hanging the ripper. The police were being heavily criticised - albeit rather unfairly - for their continued failure to catch the killer and make the women of Whitechapel safe again. It would have been a huge relief to everyone concerned had they been able to find evidence that Bury was their man, but instead they eliminated him, sending a signal that the ripper was still around and could strike again at any time.

Conversely, if they had tried to reassure the public, without the evidence to back it up, that the ripper murders had ended with Bury's execution, it would have come back to haunt them if and when another similar murder was committed - as was indeed the case. I'm not sure they could have won either way, but I'd like to think they'd have taken it a tad more seriously than to drop Bury from their inquiries after his long drop and hope for the best.

Love,

Caz
X

That's a good point, Caz. I doubt that Bury's imminent hanging was the primary reason that they didn't look into him for very long, but maybe if they were inclined to doubt that he was the Ripper anyway, maybe it played a minor role.

[GBinOz]

hi fiver
do we know why the hangman suspected bury? it really seems odd to me that berry, who wrote a book including all the famous criminals he'd hung, didnt include bury more with the ripper connection. you would think he would have jumped at the chance to write about how he had hung the ripper!

Hi Abby,

While he may have had suspicions at the time, by the time his book came out in 1892, after Mckenzie, Pinchin St and Coles, it had become clear that the police were still looking for the ripper. This seems to have allayed his suspicions to the point where he considered Bury a just a wife killer.

Cheers, George

[John Wheat]

Hi Abby,

While he may have had suspicions at the time, by the time his book came out in 1892, after Mckenzie, Pinchin St and Coles, it had become clear that the police were still looking for the ripper. This seems to have allayed his suspicions to the point where he considered Bury a just a wife killer.

Cheers, George

Berry may have wanted not to include Bury in his book because it would surely have all become about Berry hanging the Ripper and not everything else that had happened in Berry's life.

[Sunny Delight]

Berry may have wanted not to include Bury in his book because it would surely have all become about Berry hanging the Ripper and not everything else that had happened in Berry's life.

We will never know. Probably more likely though that Bury didn't actually tell him anything worth talking about.

[caz]

It doesn't seem they did though Caz.

But I don't know why they discounted Bury as the ripper, nor how much effort they put into doing so. Do you?

You personally believe he is a strong ripper suspect, while the police at the time evidently came to the opposite conclusion. Do you think they would have done so on nothing more than a hunch or a lazy assumption, when so much was at stake? Being able to hang Bury as the ripper, and not just a one-off wife killer, would have been huge.

If you are speculating that they did very little to investigate the JtR angle because you believe further inquiries ought to have led them to see Bury through your eyes, that would be a circular argument, wouldn't it?

Could it not equally have been the case that they did investigate the JtR angle as far as they reasonably could, in the hope of solving a whole series of murders with the one length of rope, but found enough evidence to rule Bury out, or not enough to make a case?

Love,

Caz
X

[John Wheat]

But I don't know why they discounted Bury as the ripper, nor how much effort they put into doing so. Do you?

You personally believe he is a strong ripper suspect, while the police at the time evidently came to the opposite conclusion. Do you think they would have done so on nothing more than a hunch or a lazy assumption, when so much was at stake? Being able to hang Bury as the ripper, and not just a one-off wife killer, would have been huge.

If you are speculating that they did very little to investigate the JtR angle because you believe further inquiries ought to have led them to see Bury through your eyes, that would be a circular argument, wouldn't it?

Could it not equally have been the case that they did investigate the JtR angle as far as they reasonably could, in the hope of solving a whole series of murders with the one length of rope, but found enough evidence to rule Bury out, or not enough to make a case?

Love,

Caz
X

It doesn't seem as though they put much effort into Bury perhaps their prejudices prevented them from investigating Bury properly. I'm suggesting that if they had investigated Bury more thoroughly there'd likely be some record of it.

[Lewis C]

But I don't know why they discounted Bury as the ripper, nor how much effort they put into doing so. Do you?

You personally believe he is a strong ripper suspect, while the police at the time evidently came to the opposite conclusion. Do you think they would have done so on nothing more than a hunch or a lazy assumption, when so much was at stake? Being able to hang Bury as the ripper, and not just a one-off wife killer, would have been huge.

If you are speculating that they did very little to investigate the JtR angle because you believe further inquiries ought to have led them to see Bury through your eyes, that would be a circular argument, wouldn't it?

Could it not equally have been the case that they did investigate the JtR angle as far as they reasonably could, in the hope of solving a whole series of murders with the one length of rope, but found enough evidence to rule Bury out, or not enough to make a case?

Love,

Caz
X

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't find enough evidence to make a case against him, since I think that's where we are with him. I think he's the strongest among a weak group of suspects, and yet I think it's more likely that the killer was someone other than him than that it was him.