change in modus operandi

[slysnide]

My point exactly Sam. I've noticed that many of the suspects were suspect for similar reasons when there was a lack of reasonably measurable evidence that'd make them good suspects.

Like Aaron Kosminski for example. Granted he was a legally insane man, but he wasn't homicidal, for if he were, there'd be no reason for him to stop killing, and plus if he was a violently dangerous person then he wouldn't be on the streets anyway. Which leads me to my question: Why were people like Aaron Kosminski even made suspects when there's enough going against them? I mean just 'cause someone's weird and lived nearby doesn't make them a plausible suspect, especially with the expertise required to remove organs in so few cuts without damaging surrounding organs all in the dark & fog. That pattern alone is a gift for the investigators as it narrows their list of suspects to ones who'd have knowledge of those things whether they were working in such fields at the time or in the past.

[Sam Flynn]

There were many doctors with surgical knowledge in London...

... and it's by no means established that Klosowski could even remotely be classified as one of them. In fact, given his provincial (village) apprenticeship and short-lived, basic training (a handful of months at a hospital, tuition fees reckoned in cents rather than dollars), it's rather unlikely that he'd had much practical experience of surgery at all. At least, not surgery of the type purportedly "required" by the Ripper.

[slysnide]

Hey Natalie.

By thousands I was referring not just to the suspects, but to the people in general and thus the amount of people who could've plausibly been JTR that just flew under the radar. After all, not all the vics were slayed in Whitechapel per se, but in adjacent districts like Spitalfields and London itself as was the case with Eddowes. So proximity is always in question, but 'whitechapel' isn't associated with all the murders, meaning locations where JTR probably lived would be expanded into those other districts. And most of the vics lived in Spitalfields. Point being that given the thousands in London and the many as of yet undocumented 'suspects' who could plausibly be responsible, then JTR could've lived almost anywhere within a mile of the crime scenes as Mitre Square was several blocks away from Berner Street.

And I wasn't meaning to discredit Abberline, but the case againt Chapman is rather weak. There were many doctors with surgical knowledge in London, and many from abroad who visited during this time, so since the murders weren't occuring daily, then it's not the most reasonable way to measure guilt, as numerous suspects were located near or in Whitechapel at this time. Though some suspects like Cream, Ostrog, and Carrol have airtight alibis thus eliminating them as suspects, but are suspects anyway. The MO for Chapman killing his 'wives' was a radical change that came after the ripper murders. Thus to decrease viciousness of killings is extremely odd, as it happens the other way around through escalation. Plus, nearly all the suspects dressed the same and had the same black handlebar mustache. But of course Abberline was a great detective of which much of this site's data is based upon, but for GC to become his prime suspect is decidedly odd, especially since MJK and future vics didn't fit JTR's MO, and were most likely committed by other persons.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Slysnide,
I dont quite follow you here when you say there are "thousands in London"...do you just mean thousands of men to choose from?
Abberline had actually considered a very large number of suspects both in 1888 and presumably after 1888, prior to coming down on Chapman as his "prime suspect".He disagreed very strongly with Macnaghten"s theory about a "drowned doctor" presumably Druitt,and with Anderson"s "caged lunatic"suspect.He told journalists that this was a lot of nonsense and that the ripper had NEVER been caught.
Abberline had seen the victims,walked the streets of Whitechapel night after night as a working detective with "hands on" experience of the Ripper Investigation and had never come close to catching him, and he said that no other police officer[of any rank] had come even close to capturing the ripper either.Abberline cannot be simply "dismissed" as he was a very important working detective on the case at the time and knew far more about it than many who wrote after the event! The statement of rejection by Abberline on the theories of "drowned doctors and caged lunatics" was endorsed by Major Henry Smith,the very important City Police Chief who visited Mitre Square on the night of Catherine Eddowes"s murder,and who stated, equally forcefully,that the ripper "had us[the police] completely beat"- and "we are no nearer knowing who he was twenty years later".

However when this murderer Chapman came up for trial in 1903 ,and the murder trial judge and jury were told by a witness named Wolff Levisohn that Chapman had ,in 1888, worked at a barber shop on the corner of the Whitechapel Road and George Yard where Martha Tabram was murdered,Abberline took note.
When he realised Chapman had been trained as a surgeon and when Abberline considered that several of the doctors had considered the murders could have been committed by a person trained in surgery, Abberline began to take an even closer look.
Abberline had also interviewed the witness,George Hutchinson who claimed he had seen a man talking with Mary Kelly at 2 am in Commercial Street ,on the night of her murder.He described the man as being dressed in the sort of fashionable clothes which we know-albeit from later photographs of Chapman -that he loved dressing up in and its from these photos too that we can see what a remarkable resemblance there was of Chapman to the 1888 "photofit" or rather police drawing of Hutchinson"s man-same deep set eyes,bushy eyebrows etc.
Chapman was a serial killer who Wolff Levisohn,who knew him and was an important witness at Chapman"s 1903 trial for murder claimed lived and worked in Whitechapel in 1888.Incidently the Post Office Directory of 1889 has Chapman"s address down as 126 Cable Street.This means Chapman had applied for his address in Cable Street to be included in the post office directory "IN 1888"----possibly the latter part of 1888 but in 1888 nontheless.
The address of 126 Cable Street where Chapman was living for definite in September 1889,was directly opposite where the Pinchin Street torso was found in September 1889.Cable Srett is also five minutes from the Berner Street crime scene of Liz Stride.
Best Wishes
Natalie Severn

[slysnide]

Abberline's suspicions against this guy are too UN-believeable to be believed. There are tens of thousands in London, and he shows up before the murders, leaves afterwards, poisons 3 'wives' which breaks the ripper's MO, and he lived in the same buildings where Martha Tabram was murdered, yet she wasn't a ripper victim. There were scores of other doctors around at the time, and it's not like the murders were happening every day such that you could reasonably measure one's arrival & departure dates from London effectively. If that's the best Abberline had, then either Scotland Yard truly had nowhere else to go with the case, or Abberline was desperate for a suspect.

Seriously, the three official suspects at the time were Geroge Chapman, Michael Ostrog who was in prison at the time of the murders, though his crimes were all theft related, and lastly, Aaron Kosminsky, a polish jew turned 'astrological' believer who was only a suspect because a witness saw him and refused to testify againt a fellow jew, and there were too many differences between the witness discription and Kosminsky, who wandered the streets aimlessly, and was eventually confined back in asylum and died in 1919 with no surgical knowledge or place to take the missing organs such that they'd be unnoticed.

[Ben]

Hi CD,

“How does Chapman differ from the witness descriptions other than age which can be accounted for?”

I think the more pressing question is how is he similar to any of the eyewitness descriptions. The issue of age can indeed be accounted for, and most plausibly on the grounds that Klosowski was appreciably younger than the various sightings because he wasn’t the individual seen.

“The point is that he had one. Take it for what it is worth.”

So did the majority of the male population. Klosowski’s cap was a distinctly nautical one, and we know he developed an interest in all things nautical during his tenure in Hastings, which was after the ripper murders.

“I also think that it is a quite a coincidence that he had surgical training of some type.”

But what does it “coincide” with if the real killer didn’t have any anatomical knowledge or surgical skill? We wouldn’t argue that Bond’s observation that the killer had no expertise "coincides" with William Bury also not having any expertise.

The trouble with Neil is that he was clearly working from a secondary source – Hargrave Adam – to make his case for Kloswoski. He even used a confused eyewitness description, presumably Adam’s, that bore no resemblance to anything that emerged from 1888, as one of most damning indications of supposed guilt. That’s not to poo-poo Klosowski’s candidacy in general, but it’s a bit of a worry that a case can be constructed on such shaky foundations.

All the best,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks for your input Micheal.
I dont know what motivated Chapman and I dont accept your arguments about motivation.
It has just been on the news here that a paranoid schizophrenic killer who was also into cannibalism and murdered a friend and cooked and ate part of his brain murdered twice in two months because of "systemic failures" in mental health care .However he was so clever at pulling the wool over peoples eyes that even experienced psychiatrists were completely fooled by his amiable personality.Eight years after his commital to Broadmoor,he had proved such a mild mannered,helpful, perfectly behaved patient that mental health experts decided he could live "in the community" under supervision.....with tragic results.When released he first butchered his friend and returned to care , on afternoon release,he strangled a fellow inmate all within the space of two months.When charged with the murder of his friend he said he had eaten his brains with butter and that it was really nice.
This person followed none of the expected behaviour of a paranoid schizophrenic and was able to appear to behave perfectly normally even when seriously mentally unwell.
His murderous behaviour included killing people by strangling,by knifings and by using a hammer.He appears to have been motivated in one case at least by cannibalism-----killing his friend so that he could eat him .
Now psychiatrists are saying his behaviour was of an "atypical" mental disorder.
How anyone could talk about the "MO" or "signature" of such a killer beats me,and yet many serial killers are paranoid schizophrenics like this serial killer and like him and the serial killer Robert Napper--- who I wrote about the other day, their signature and MO is variable or non existent and the reason they kill is because ,despite their abilty to fool even their psychiatrists at times,they are actually very seriously ill in the head and believe they are being commanded by God or the devil to kill people-not because they are passionate about anything.Far from it,they are the most cold blooded and dispassionate of all killers.So was the ripper in my opinion.
Best Norma

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Jack didnt kill....he killed so he could cut.

I like that. Kudos for an interesting slant.

Hi Nats,

You know I can appreciate your passion for this criminal and If I felt the same way I can see how arguments can be made.

Ill add only this....if Klosowski was in George Yard and stabbed a woman to death on the Bank Holiday the first week of August, thats still a far cry from his being the Ripper. Geography isnt everything...otherwise wed have a few hundred thousand suspects...which is I believe 7 more that we have now..

We know of a few bad apples around at that time, for these to have been Chapman there needs to be motivation. Just seeing women die, or stuffing his hands into a wound and extracting organs are desired activities, not motivations. And it appears Jack didnt draw out the killing phase to savor those moments. It seems to me that when someone poisons someone close to themselves there is a form of passion that is a part of the killing motivation. The reason why he kills ....

I believe one of the reasons these cases have such staying power is due to the fact that the killer was so unemotional and even clinical in some murders....the ones I can attribute for myself anyway, Polly and Annie.

Now Mary was killed by someone whose motivations included passion, some emotional component. Could be hatred, ecstasy, anger, revenge,....and Liz was perhaps engaged in intimate conversation with her assailant, seemingly much more personal than the first two. The first was hammered, the second, sick. And dispatched like meat...but with a butchers touch, not a hairdressers.

My best as always Nats......any new art pics by the by???

[Natalie Severn]

Well I beg to differ,Sam.
I simply can"t imagine Levisohn giving two lots of evidence,one at the police proceedings and one at the trial itself,both under oath and stating with certainty on both occasions to a judge and jury no less in one of these,that he met Klosowski at the White Hart public House in 1888 where Klosowski was working in the basement............... What exactly would he have had to gain lying under oath about a date?...............Indeed Levisohn is most specific with each detail ----but it is too late tonight for me to type out -but I can do so over the week- end if you wish to have sight of more of his recorded words?
Most telling are his words about the basement of White Hart pub in George Yard about which Levisohn very clearly states the following:

UP "UNTIL" 1889 -the accused [Klosowski]was an ASSISTANT to a hairdresser at this shop [ ie at the White Hart basement barber shop]/THEN he became proprietor."The timeline is pretty clear.
But Sam,whats the point ?-----just as you know better than the police surgeon, Dr Phillips ,what skill was evinced by the Whitechapel murderer"s knife mutilations,so do you also appear to claim that you are able to better assess the character of one of the prime witnesses viz Wolff Levisohn ,at Chapman"s murder trial of 1903 and to be able to determine [by telepathic wizardry?]whether or not he was a reliable witness!
Best
Norma



In fact it is Mrs Rauch "s testimony which has the preponderence of inaccurate or somewhat misleading statements in it-I would have thought--- eg "I came over here in August,and they went to America ABOUT the following Whitsuntide"....it would have been helpful if she could have stated a month.......
Moreover she is WRONG about the date of their wedding---saying it was on August Bank holiday 1889 when in point of fact they married on 23rd October 1889.

[Sam Flynn]

I believe it to be more than likely Sam,that Klosowski was working in the basement of the White Hart pub ,which is at the corner of George Yard ,in the Summer of 1888.

First there is Wolf Levisohn

There is ONLY Wolf Levisohn's testimony to that effect, Nats - and I consider him a somewhat unreliable witness for a number of reasons. Any timeline should be based upon the testimony of Ethel Radin (with whom Klosowski lived) and the Baderskis (who were related by legal marriage to Klosowski), rather than the melodramatic testimony of a travelling salesman who saw Klosowski only sporadically.

For example, take the testimony of Mrs Rauch (nee Baderski), Klosowski's sister-in-law, who arrived in England in 1890. Tellingly, she testifies that her first meeting with Kłosowski "in a public house in Whitechapel Road", which was almost certainly the White Hart. Here again we have a key pointer to the fact that Kłosowski's association with the establishment was rooted in 1890, and not earlier.

Based on these much closer intimates of Klosowski, the most logical timeline goes thus:

West India Dock Road - 1887/1888
Cable Street - 1888/89
White Hart - 1890

Klosowski seems to have been heading North - which is entirely congruent with the idea that his growing experience/reputation as a barber (and possibly an increased confidence in English) would have allowed him to penetrate the more "up-market", cosmopolitan parts of the East End as time went by.

What you say about Cable Street is probably correct (I believe he was indeed living there in 1889), but we can't state as fact that Klosowski definitely lived around the corner from George Yard when Martha Tabram was killed. Based on the consensus testimony of those who knew him most intimately, he almost certainly didn't work there until sometime after he left Cable Street.

[Natalie Severn]

Why I think Klosowski was in George Yard in Summer 1888

That is by no means an established fact, Nats - on the contrary, it's pure, unsupported conjecture and almost certainly not true.

(Anyone know the emoticon for "Tearing my hair out"?)

I believe it to be more than likely Sam,that Klosowski was working in the basement of the White Hart pub ,which is at the corner of George Yard ,in the Summer of 1888.

First there is Wolf Levisohn who is here recorded in transcripts from the Police Court Proceedings regarding Chapman"s murder trial 7th January 1903:

Wolf Levisohn,of 135 Rosslyn Road,South Tottenham,said he was a traveller in hairdresser"s materials.
HE FIRST MET THE ACCUSED IN A SHOP UNDER THE WHITE HART PUBLIC HOUSE, 89 High Street,Whitechapel, in 1888.The accused,in conversation,which began by reference to medicine,said his name was Ludwig Zagowski,and that he came from Warsaw..................

Stanislaus Baderski:[later that day]
.......Lucy [his sister and Klosowski"s wife]met him in the Polish club in St John"s Square,Clerkenwell.Both sisters used to visit the Polish club and Lucy became acquainted with the accused who kept a barber"s shop in Cable Street.Later he heard of a wedding feast, but was a little late.Lucy told him the marriage took place in Union Street,Whitechapel,on 23rd October,1889.
HIS SISTER AND THE ACCUSED LIVED AT CABLE STREET FOR ABOUT 6 MONTHS.
This proves that he actually LIVED at 126 Cable Street and didnt simply act as an absentee barber shop proprietor there .Moreover, it is from 126 Cable Street address that he is recorded as having applied and been accepted ,in the latter part of 1888, to be included in the Post Office Directory of the following year----ie 1889......the year of the Pinchin Street torso murder!
Cheers
Norma

[c.d.]

Hi CD,

I'd exercise a degree of caution when deferring to Sugden on matters Klosowski, and while I'd be the first to concede that there are many weaker suspects, we need to be particularly careful with the above list. For instance, #1 is just wrong. He doesn't match the witness descriptions, and his ownership of a peaked cap (#2) was more than likely to have coincided with his tenure in Hastings, when he developed in interest in all things nautical. #4 may be irrelevant if the ripper murders and mutilations evinced no "surgical" skill, #5 is dependant upon when exactly the killings commenced and ended, and as for #7, it appears that Neil in particular was working from second-hand confused hearsay sources when outlining his case against Klosowski.

I'd have to agree that Bury is marginally more plausible.

Best regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,

How does Chapman differ from the witness descriptions other than age which can be accounted for?

As for the peaked cap, we don't know when he acquired it. It hardly makes him the Ripper. The point is that he had one. Take it for what it is worth.

You are right that the murders and mutilations might have required no skill. But there is the issue of the kidneys and the way that they were removed. I also think that it is a quite a coincidence that he had surgical training of some type. Again, everybody has to take it for what it is worth.

Chapman is not ruled out as far as when the killings commenced and ended.

I defer to Sugden with regard to Neil (I'll throw caution aside). It is true that Abberline, Godley and Neil got some of their facts wrong with regard to Chapman. But I don't think that any of those facts were the sina qua non which completely negates their whole conclusion. And even if it were simply their gut feeling that Chapman was the one, given the fact that it was held by three of the detectives who were there at the time, I think it should make us take notice. Again, take it for what you think it is worth.

c.d.

[c.d.]

I don't believe Bury was questioned by Abberline, CD, anymore than Abberline said "You've got Jack the Ripper at last" when Godley arrested Klosowski. There's no contemporary evidence for either event having taken place, as far as I'm aware.

Hi Sam,

I could have sworn that I read that somewhere. I thought it was on the suspects page but every time I try to access that page my computer freezes up. I will try to see if I can find it somewhere else.

c.d.

[c.d.]

[QUOTE=perrymason;97872]Hi cd,

You mean that youve never suggested that certain victims that do not fit the Ripper MO as laid out in the Canonicals 1,2 and 4 should be included anyway? Because killers change how they go about their business? Isnt that the standard position for inclusion of Mary Kelly,..that Jack must have changed his MO and what he does to women, cause we all know that Jack had to have killed Mary, right?

Hi Michael,

Your views on the C5 are well known. But this isn't the Spanish Inquisition (which of course no one expects!), you are free to accept it or not accept it.

I think this comes down to semantics and the meaning of M.O. (sounds like Clinton). If the victim was a prostitute and had internal organs removed then she fits the M.O. But wait, there were different organs taken -- ok, then that is a completely different M.O. and must have been a different killer. The same argument goes on and on. A prostitute with her throat cut and organs removed. Fits the M.O. But wait, it was a different location and the age of the prostitute was different -- ok, then that is a completely different M.O. and a completely different killer. A prostitute with her throat cut and internal organs removed then she fits the M.O. But wait, she was killed indoors, ok, then that has to be a completely different killer.

So, as you can see, it all depends on how you want to look at it. There were differences in all of the C5. Anybody can make an argument based on those differences that they constituted a change in M.O. and thus we are looking at five different killers.

c.d.