Was he Jack the Ripper?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....berline-named-as.html

Could it be that Chief-Inspector Frederick Abberline was in fact Jack the Ripper?

/// Last month it emerged Scotland Yard is fighting a legal battle to withhold secret Ripper files compiled by Special Branch officers in the 1880s.///

Why would Scotland Yard wish to withhold secret files complied as long ago as the 1880's?

[Sqad]

Very, very unlikely in my opinion, as the main evidence seems to be the handwriting of Jack's diaries is the same as the investigating officer.

Problem is.....the authenticity of the diaries is questionable.

[SeaJayPea]

perhaps he was a freemason.

[Brenden]

I always had a leaning towards Dr Tumblety being a leading suspect -but hey - i am no Sherlock Holmes

[emmie]

Perhaps they know who it is, but can't say as it might have been a member of the aristocracy or a well known Physician. I came across a site about Jack the Ripper the other day and i can honestly say i wish i hadn't, i was browsing for something else, it was more than grisly i can tell you.

[scotman]

I saw the programme about Dr Tumblety on TV some years ago. I recall that a pretty good case was made.
Recently the crime writer Patricia Cornwell proposed the artist Walter Sickert but that seems to have been discounted as total fantasy on her part.

[rov1100]

The killer was either in the medical profession or a failed student of medicine with a warped mind judging by his methods of handling the body.

///An analysis of his methods revealed that several of the Ripper's victims had their throats cut, while those killed also had organs removed such as the uterus or the heart.///

[emmie]

The pictures they had on this website i stumbled on were horrific

[Kromovaracun]

If I remember right, the 'medical background' thesis has been pretty effectively ruled out - the Whitechapel murders were more elementary butchery than they're generally seen as being.

The most likely suspect IMO was either Kosminsky or if not him then someone like him, purely because it fits in pretty well with what we know of serial killers today.

Abberline seems an extremely unlikely candidate... British intelligence organisations (incl. Special Branch) are renowned among academics for extreme levels of secrecy, withholding documents that are well over 100 years old. Obviously we can't really tell if there's a good reason for it, because we can't see the documents.

[scotman]

please remind me. Who was Kosminsky?

[Kromovaracun]

Kosminsky was a fairly average Pole with a pretty well-proven history of mental illness who was resident in or near whitechapel at the time. As I say, it's entirely possible that Kosminski was innocent, but if it wasn't him then it would have been someone like him (who given the circumstances were far from uncommon in Victorian London).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Kosminski

[THECORBYLOON]

You can't use it in the Isle of Man either.

[THECORBYLOON]

Wrong thread... DOH!

[scotman]

thanks for the reminder

[Kromovaracun]

@em: Yeah, I know what you mean - glad someone said it. There's a slightly pantomime-ish view of Jack the Ripper that's fairly current now, and I even remember reading on the Crime Library an assertion that if he'd have been active today he'd 'barely make the headlines'. Even by modern standards the whitechapel killings were really, really, really horrific.

[paddywak]

After all this time I doubt we'll ever get to know the truth, every time somebody writes a book on the subject they seem to come up with a new suspect and reasons to support their theory. Like Brenden and Scotman say Tumblety looks pretty good for it could have been any of the other major suspects or somebody we've never heard off.

[spudqueen]

scotman - I think you'll find that there was a book written in the 1980's about Walter Sickert being a possibility for Jack the Ripper. Him being a suspect is nothing new.