discussion of Aaron Kosminski's psychological profile

[Natalie Severn]

I would like to add that I think Rob House has done some fantastic research into all this and that most of us who have followed it are indebted to him for it.
Who knows,Rob may come up trumps yet!
Best,
Norma

[robhouse]

Your last post pretty much proves my point. And yes I will go on the record and state very definitively that "Aaron Kosminski may not have been Jack the Ripper."

His doctors did not write that he was "harmless" as you seem to have intended to put in quotes, then left off the end quote. But of course it is too much to expect you to be exact in your wording. And as I have pointed out to you at least about 10 times, we do not have access to the entirety of Kozminski's record, so your oft repeated "30 years" comment is blatantly false... unless you have seen the missing 16 years of Kozminski's Leavesden record, which I know you haven't.

There is no real point in continuing this discussion with you.

[Natalie Severn]

See above.

He is also the only person with any sort of evidence against him(even if that evidence is flimsy). Quite incredible considering the pages upon pages of "suspects" discussions on this site alone.

What "evidence"?

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie, I apologize for getting involved and im sure Rob can speak for himself.

No-one on here needs to "prove" anything with regards to suspects. It is not a criminal court. It is a messageboard concerning a series of murders which happened 120 years ago. Murders which we only have fragmentory written records for. All that can be done is to give a workable scenario.

I suspect you already knew this.

Yes,but Jason, Henry Smith,Melville Macnaghten and Robert Anderson referred to the hunt for the Ripper in each of their autobiographies.Macnaghten and Anderson claimed they either knew who he was or thought they did.Henry Smith said nobody knew not then or twenty years later.I know who I believe.

[jason_c]

Yes. Ok,Now you prove to us here ,that Aaron Kosminski,who was a mentally ill young man,not in any way considered dangerous,but who suffered from hallucinations and was taken into care after 'eating out of gutters" and "drinking straight from taps" and had never had a criminal conviction and who his doctors wrote was "harmlessand who actually never wavered once, in thirty years from that diagnosis,not anyway in any of the notes that are available., you explain to us just how come this chap was Jack the Ripper.

See above.

He is also the only person with any sort of evidence against him(even if that evidence is flimsy). Quite incredible considering the pages upon pages of "suspects" discussions on this site alone.

[Natalie Severn]

Rob wrote:

It is impossible to make any progress in any discussion with you because whenever someone answers one of your charges, and you have hit a roadblock

But that applies to you.You will not acknowledge that Aaron Kosminski may not have been Jack the Ripper.

[jason_c]

Lets stay real here shall we.You are speculating wildly about a mentally ill man who the Chief Commissioner of the City of London police said was not Jack the Ripper !.
But you are saying that this Chief of City Police ,Smith,who devoted a chapter of his autobiography to it was wrong and that Robert Anderson was right.
So you tell me Rob,you explain why Robert Anderson was correct and you prove it.
Its all speculative nonsense without a shred of evidence to back it up.

Natalie, I apologize for getting involved and im sure Rob can speak for himself.

No-one on here needs to "prove" anything with regards to suspects. It is not a criminal court. It is a messageboard concerning a series of murders which happened 120 years ago. Murders which we only have fragmentory written records for. All that can be done is to give a workable scenario.

I suspect you already knew this.

[Natalie Severn]

Many serial killers have good behavioural records once in prison.

Yes. Ok,Now you prove to us here ,that Aaron Kosminski,who was a mentally ill young man,not in any way considered dangerous,but who suffered from hallucinations and was taken into care after 'eating out of gutters" and "drinking straight from taps" and had never had a criminal conviction and who his doctors wrote was "harmlessand who actually never wavered once, in thirty years from that diagnosis,not anyway in any of the notes that are available., you explain to us just how come this chap was Jack the Ripper.

[robhouse]

Natalie,

It is impossible to make any progress in any discussion with you because whenever someone answers one of your charges, and you have hit a roadblock, you always fall back on the whole Henry Smith thing, which is like a mantra with you. It is not related to what was being discussed. But since you have no counter argument to the points I raised, in direct response to points you mentioned, it is "Henry Smith, Henry Smith." What does Henry Smith have to do with what we were discussing? Nothing. Frankly I am not terribly interested in why Henry Smith said what he did. I would assume that he simply did not agree with Anderson's conclusion, which is fine. Others also disagreed with Anderson. People on the Green River case disagreed with Reichart. So what. That will always happen. It doesn't mean that Reichart was wrong. I would also not be in the least surprised if Henry Smith was not kept in the loop regarding the Kozminski inquiries. It is my belief that the MET would have wanted to keep all this very quiet, largely because they were unable to convict Kozminski, and didnt want word to get out about him for various obvious reasons which I have explained before.

[Natalie Severn]

Lets stay real here shall we.You are speculating wildly about a mentally ill man who the Chief Commissioner of the City of London police said was not Jack the Ripper !.
But you are saying that this Chief of City Police ,Smith,who devoted a chapter of his autobiography to it was wrong and that Robert Anderson was right.
So you tell me Rob,you explain why Robert Anderson was correct and you prove it.
Its all speculative nonsense without a shred of evidence to back it up.

[robhouse]

"Many serial killers have good behavioural records once in prison."

Exactly.

[robhouse]

"There is no indication whatever that his doctors concurred with that suggestion.It is completely ignored and no mention whatever is made to it again."

The same could be said for the statement that he was not dangerous. This was never mentioned again except for being copied from one form to the next. Moreover, the "self abuse" comment was added to Kozminski's asylum record as the cause of his insanity. And, this was not simply a theory upheld by "some lay people." It was believed to be true by many medical practitioners at the time.

[jason_c]

There is no mention whatever in any notes on Aaron Kosminski from Colney Hatch or Leavesdon of him having a sexual problem.The comment that refers to his alleged "self abuse" stays simply as a comment that has been reported by one of his family .At the time masturbation was thought to cause blindness and madness by some lay people .There is no indication whatever that his doctors concurred with that suggestion.It is completely ignored and no mention whatever is made to it again.
Jack the Ripper was a violent killer-first and foremost.So you ought to realise that the most likely reason he targeted the women he did, who were homeless ,addicted to drink and desperate to earn their doss money for the night,was not because they were "prostitutes" but because they were the easiest of all targets to kill and mutilate.That they were prostitutes may have enabled him to justify his murderous rampage---as the Yorkshire ripper did but are you seriously suggesting he wouldnt have killed and mutilated other women ---and probably men too, had he found them "easy targets"? Peter Sutcliffe claimed he only killed prostitutes.What a liar! What about the young student who had just stepped off a bus? The male colleague he nearly killed with his hammer ? What about several other of his early victims?
Aaron Kosminski"s doctors never once recorded that he was dangerous,violent, had criminal tendencies or gave the slightest hint of being him being detained in an Institution for the insane for anything other than his visual and auditory hallucinations and the steady deterioration of his condition during the entire thirty years he was in Colney Hatch and Leavesdon.

Many serial killers have good behavioural records once in prison.

[robhouse]

You are changing the subject Natalie. You suggested that the Police would not have allowed Kozminski to be committed to Colney Hatch if they believed he was the Ripper. It is clear, however, that they did not really have many (if any) other options. They could not convict him, they could not have him committed to Broadmoor. Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that the police were in any way involved in having Aaron placed in Colney Hatch (although they may have been, but who knows.) So you have to be realistic. What options did they have? You have not suggested any, except to say that they would have trumped up some false charge and tossed him in Broadmoor extralegally. I countered and said that the London authorities did not use Gestapo tactics. You have not really responded sufficiently to any of these points, but instead, when you do not have an answer you change the subject and start talking about masturbation or Henry Smith. In addition, it seems ludicrous to think that the employees at the asylum, who dealt with dangerous lunatics on a daily basis and who also used various methods of physical and chemical restraint, would not have been able to deal with the Ripper. In any case, if you take a serial killer... typically a cowardly sort of person who is a loner, who targets vulnerable victims at night on the streets... and put him into a confined environment where he is under constant supervision, it seems highly unlikely that he is going to be given access to knives, or allowed to roam the halls looking for victims.

[Natalie Severn]

There is no mention whatever in any notes on Aaron Kosminski from Colney Hatch or Leavesdon of him having a sexual problem.The comment that refers to his alleged "self abuse" stays simply as a comment that has been reported by one of his family .At the time masturbation was thought to cause blindness and madness by some lay people .There is no indication whatever that his doctors concurred with that suggestion.It is completely ignored and no mention whatever is made to it again.
Jack the Ripper was a violent killer-first and foremost.So you ought to realise that the most likely reason he targeted the women he did, who were homeless ,addicted to drink and desperate to earn their doss money for the night,was not because they were "prostitutes" but because they were the easiest of all targets to kill and mutilate.That they were prostitutes may have enabled him to justify his murderous rampage---as the Yorkshire ripper did but are you seriously suggesting he wouldnt have killed and mutilated other women ---and probably men too, had he found them "easy targets"? Peter Sutcliffe claimed he only killed prostitutes.What a liar! What about the young student who had just stepped off a bus? The male colleague he nearly killed with his hammer ? What about several other of his early victims?
Aaron Kosminski"s doctors never once recorded that he was dangerous,violent, had criminal tendencies or gave the slightest hint of being him being detained in an Institution for the insane for anything other than his visual and auditory hallucinations and the steady deterioration of his condition during the entire thirty years he was in Colney Hatch and Leavesdon.