Jack the Ripper ID'ed

Modern methods work again and wenow have a high probability suspect for the crimes committed by Jack the Ripperin the late nineteenth century that also explains time and place.

A confession is impossible, butwe have at least four crimes in London and New York that conform and with the perpetrator caught committingthe one in New York.  It will never get much better than that itcertainly explains the cessation and periodicity of activity.

This is a nasty tale and legendthat has gone on far too long with far too many spurious suspects thrown intothe pot.  Having a proven killer caughtin the act is a good way to close the book.

Jack the Ripper was a German sailor, detective claims

Published: 7 Apr 11 15:07 CET

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110407-34257.html

Jack the Ripper was probably a German merchant seaman named CarlFeigenbaum.

That’s the theory proposed by English former murder squad detectiveTrevor Marriott.

He spoke to The Local.

They are history’s most notorious serial murders and among the world'smost famous unsolved crimes.

Between August and November 1888, five prostitutes were killed and horriblymutilated in and around London’scrowded, impoverished Whitechapel area.

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and MaryJane Kelly had their throats slashed and – with the exception of Stride – theirabdomens mutilated. Then the killings stopped abruptly. The murderer was neveridentified. And the Jack the Ripper phenomenon began.

In the 123 years since, countless suspects have been proposed – and rejected –from various poor Polish immigrants to Queen Victoria’s physician William Withey Gull andeven Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale.

But according to English former homicide detective Trevor Marriott, Jack theRipper was most likely a German merchant sailor from Karlsruhe named Carl Feigenbaum. 

Marriott, author of "Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation"and "The Evil Within: The World’s Worst Serial Killers," aired histheory in Germanythis week in a ZDF documentary co-produced by National Geographic.

Marriott says he has used modern policing methods to overturn many of the oldassumptions about the Ripper murders and gathered evidence that points toFeigenbaum, who was eventually convicted and executed for murdering JulianaHoffmann in New York in 1894.

“There is a case for suggesting he might have been the first trans-continentalserial killer,” Marriott says.

In 2002, the retired Bedfordshire policeman – who’d had a long-running interestin the Ripper case – decided to sift through the evidence, see what could bediscounted, and determine what facts remained.

"When I looked through it, I thought, 'There are lots of things here thatare not right, that are not factually correct'," he says. "The Rippermystery is based on many wild, speculative, uncorroborated theories.'"

The police at the time believed the Ripper was a local man – and subsequenttheories have generally assumed that he was at least a Londoner. But Marriottakes a novel approach, alleging that the murderer might have been a sailor.

“There were two merchant docks close to Whitechapel, and Whitechapel hadhundreds of prostitutes and we all know that where seamen are, there areprostitutes as well,” he says. “It’s an area that hadn’t been explored by thepolice at the time back in Victorian times, so it was a totally new leadreally.”

Hundreds of vessels came in and out of Londonevery day. It was a “mammoth task,” he says, but he went through thousands ofshipping records and found that there was a vessel, the Reiher, that was dockedon all the dates of the murders save one. On that date, another vessel from thesame line was docked.

The plot thickens

Around the same time, Marriott learned that what he calls a “Ripper-likemurder” – of a woman named Juliana Hoffmann – had taken place in New York in 1894, sixyears after the five women in Whitechapel. The man convicted for that murderwas German Carl Feigenbaum, who was also using aliases including Anton Zahn andCarl Zahn.

“He was bang to rights on that murder. He was arrested leaving the scene of thecrime and the police found a long-bladed knife outside which was obviouslyattributed to him. When they searched his property, they found a kind of sheathand sharpening stone which indicates he’d been carrying it around for sometime.”

Marriott’s research revealed Feigenbaum had been a merchant seaman and hadworked for the Norddeutsche Line, which owned the Reiher.

“There was a strong connection there ... Once I started to widen the net, Ifound there was a number of unsolved, Ripper-like murders in Germany between1889 and 1894 in addition to others in and around Whitechapel - outside of theoriginal five women who everybody believed were the only victims, and otherRipper-like murders in and around the New York area,” he says.

He went to the Bremenarchives to check crew lists for the Norddeutsche vessels – and was frustratedto discover that the key records had gone missing.

“All the other records were there, but the crew lists for this vessel thatrelate to the three months of the Ripper murders in the UK were all missing.”

However, he did find records showing that Feigenbaum had been working for theNorddeutsche Line for “many, many years,” he says.

William Sanford Lawton, the New York lawyer who defended Feigenbaum in theHoffmann murder, later said that while on death row, Feigenbaum admitted beinga pathological killer and mutilator of women. Lawton made the connection withthe Ripper, conducted some inquiries and was quoted in newspapers in 1896saying he could put Feigenbaum in Whitechapel at the times of the five murders.

The unasked question

“Sadly, the press never asked the $64,000 question, ‘What were thoseinquiries?’” Marriott says.

One possibility is that Lawton found the Bremen maritime recordsfor the Reiher and removed them, he says.

Marriott had an advantage over other Ripper sleuths in that he started with agenuinely open mind and approached the case like any modern murder inquiry. Heeliminated suspects considered “prime” and broadened the inquiry to considerothers who fit the facts, he says.

This even included eliminating at least one of the five murders assumed to bethe Ripper, based on the characteristics of the crimes. 

“One, the murder of Elizabeth Stride, was definitely not the work of the Ripperand there are major question marks surrounding the murder of Mary Kelly aswell,” he said.

Of course the debate will go on. Marriott admits that no theory is watertight,but had the police considered the merchant seaman theory, they would have cometo the same conclusion as Marriott and would have been in a better position tosolve the crime. Modern police would, for instance, have established asimilarity with the New Yorkmurders and sent somebody over to interview Feigenbaum before he was executed.

He also says he has found new documentary evidence that he is still examining,and hopes that publicity in Germany may encourage descendants of Feigenbaum’sto come forward with information.

“This has always had a worldwide following and it will continue to do so,” hesays.

“There’s quite a lot to suggest Feigenbaum was involved in these murders. Wecan’t say 100 percent. But Feigenbaum is the prime suspect for these murdersbecause there is more evidence that points to him than to any other suspect.”