Deconstructing Jack in Paperback

[David Orsam]

Response to Howard Brown Part 3

If, on the other hand, Simon is not saying that Hughes-Hallett murdered Nichols but was only responsible for Chapman (which itself is unclear) then who murdered Nichols and Eddowes? Are they two standalone murders? Where do we find this stated in Simon’s book?

As I mention in my article, in his 2008 Ripperologist article entitled “Deconstructing Jack”, Simon relies heavily on the police evidence as to the finding of the body to reach a conclusion that the Nichols murder was a standalone but, in the book, this entire argument seems to have been abandoned - none of the police evidence being mentioned – in favour of Nichols potentially being a victim of the disguised Colonel.

For the reasons I have given in the article, it seems very unlikely that Hughes-Hallett disguised as Edward Stanley was the original Whitechapel Murderer responsible for the murders of Tabram, Nichols and Chapman although I should say that it has been pointed out to me that the Colonel attended a vote in the House of Commons on 8 August 1888 at a time when his regiment was based in Gosport and this suggests that he was able to come and go as he pleased from Gosport; meaning that it’s not right for me to say, as I did, that he had a cast iron alibi for the Tabram and Nichols murders and I have consequently amended this part of article.

To my mind, the question of whether Simon is really saying that Hughes-Hallett murdered Nichols or not is impossible to answer with any degree of certainty from reading his book and equally impossible to answer from his book is the question of who killed Eddowes.

[David Orsam]

Response to Howard Brown Part 4

It may be that Simon’s focus on the discrepancies in John Kelly’s evidence suggests that he thinks Kelly murdered Eddowes so that we have yet another standalone murder in the sequence. If that is what he is saying then one would surely have expected this to be stated very clearly – it’s not a difficult thing to say after all - along some form of explanation as to why Kelly committed the murder but we don’t get any of that from Simon.

I also don’t think we can ignore the fact that Simon strongly believed for at least 30 years that a single individual murdered Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes. To the extent that he has changed his mind – which he is perfectly entitled to do – I would have expected him to have explained himself and to have told us of some compelling reason why he did so.

Did he, for example, change his mind about who murdered these three women in 2005 after reading Wolf Vanderlinden’s articles and coming to the conclusion that Scotland Yard detectives were roaming around North America looking for evidence with which to damage Charles Parnell? The problem here is that I fail to see how the supposed activities of Scotland Yard in America could have played any part in his thinking about who actually committed the murders.

Sure, I understand that he believes that the name "Jack the Ripper" was created by the authorities for some purpose or another and that THIS was the elaborate hoax that but I can’t see that this would have any effect on the murders themselves.

[David Orsam]

Response to Howard Brown Part 5

In attempting to decipher what Simon is saying in his book, we can’t ignore his internet post in 2011 in which he said:

"Saying Jack the Ripper never existed is not the same as saying that one or more unknown killers never existed."

If I may take the liberty of amending this sentence to remove the rather ambiguous alternative solution included in it, Simon is effectively saying this:

"Saying Jack the Ripper never existed is not the same as saying that an unknown killer never existed."

In other words, I read that as a clear statement that an unknown killer – by which he must mean an unknown multiple murderer – could have existed but "Jack the Ripper" nevertheless did not exist. That’s how I read him anyway. Any other interpretation doesn’t make sense. He can’t surely have been saying in that sentence that there were five unknown killers can he?

And we should note also that he said in the same year:

"There was no Jack the Ripper… who was singly responsible for the five murders under consideration."

Why phrase it like that? Why not say there was no Jack the Ripper because all five women were murdered by different people? That would be a very simple and straightforward explanation but he never ever says it.

To repeat a point I made in the article. He never says anywhere – on the internet or in his book – that there was no serial killer or Whitechapel Murderer in 1888. It’s always "there was no Jack the Ripper".

Perhaps he can come on here to clarify and say that his view is that there was no multiple murderer of women in 1888 and all five canonical victims were killed by different people, if that’s what he wants to say, and even better if he can give us the page reference(s) of where he actually says this in his book.

[David Orsam]

Response to Howard Brown Part 6

What seems to have happened is that, some four years after his 2005 epiphany, having discovered in about 2009 that Hughes-Hallett was Stanley’s commanding officer, Simon, independently of his theory about JTR not existing, came up with the idea that the two men were one and the same. As he said in his JTR Forums post on the subject on 4 April 2009 "Fancy that for a coincidence" and "When it comes to Jack the Ripper I distrust coincidences". One certainly has the feeling that the Hughes-Hallet theory has been rather crowbarred into his JTR "does not exist theory" because they don’t quite sit together. Simon wasn’t supposed to be looking for a serial killer but he somehow managed to find one!!

A shame that he did not have the courage of his convictions to go the whole hog and say that Hallett-Hughes murdered Tabram, Nichols and Chapman and then fled the country. The authorities knew he was the murderer but didn’t want to arrest him because they saw their chance to create a "distraction" (for whatever purpose it is that Simon is saying they wanted to do this) by first creating the JTR letter and then themselves arranging for some more "Ripper" murders. So they sent two operatives out to create a double event in one night to murder and mutilate Stride and Eddowes only the killer of Stride was interrupted and the timings got a bit mixed up so that it couldn’t properly be attributed to one person but, with the police on board, and by silencing key witnesses, they managed to sort that little problem out. Then the coup de grace being the murder of Kelly at which point the plan had achieved its objective, Parnell was proved to be a terrorist (NOT!) and it all fizzled out. Something like that anyway. At least it would have been a story which we could all understand.

But at present I don’t understand it. As far as I am aware Simon does NOT say, as Howard Brown understands him, that each of the C-5 was killed by a different person. But I could be wrong.