Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (26 page)

Altogether Mr. Abberline considers that the matter is quite beyond abstract speculation and coincidence, and believes the present situation affords an opportunity of unravelling a web of crime such as no man living can appreciate in its extent and hideousness.

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The Argument For and Against
Klosowski

A
bberline was ecstatic when he first heard of Klosowski’s arrest and even more so when he listened to the Attorney General, as he made his opening statement at Klosowski’s trial, where he traced the events leading up to Klosowski coming to England in 1888. The pieces were all beginning to fall into place, and Abberline was as certain as he was ever going to be that Klosowski was the man he and his team had struggled so hard to capture fifteen years earlier.

Probably the main source of any argument against the probability of Klosowski being the Ripper is that most criminologists and behavioural therapists today maintain that the vast majority of serial killers continue their modus operandi, and that this is what links so-called signature crimes. As a general rule, poisoners are usually cold blooded and calculating, whereas those who go about their ghastly deeds using the method of brutish mutilation are more likely to show tendencies of being mentally unbalanced. Some say that this conclusion is incorrect, that subjects can and will change their modus operandi as they gain experience – a condition known as learned behaviour.

The next step in the argument against Klosowski being the Ripper is that according to a number of witness statements from people who claimed to have heard the Ripper actually conversing with his victims just before the crimes, they all understood very clearly what he was saying, and some even mentioned that he spoke in what they described as an ‘educated manner’. We must bear in mind that this was in the autumn of 1888, and that Klosowski had only just immigrated to London one year previously. It could, of course, be possible for an educated Polish immigrant to have learned perfect English in such a short period of time, but there are no records of Klosowski having such an education, or even having private lessons in English. This then, according to the disbelievers in the Klosowski theory, rules him out completely as a Ripper suspect.

Another piece of information in the case against the Klosowski theory also comes from witnesses. In 1888, Klosowski would have been just 23 years old. Not one single witness described the man they alleged to be Jack the Ripper as that young. The majority of witnesses described the person they saw as between 35 and 40 years of age, while the youngest estimates were by PC Smith, who described him as 28, and Schwartz and Lawende, who thought he looked about 30. Klosowski’s first wife, Lucy Baderski’s brother and sister all claimed that Klosowski’s appearance changed very little over the entire period they knew him. If what they say is true, and there does not seem to be any reason not to believe them, then perhaps it would be possible for Klosowski to have looked somewhat older than his age.

Even Inspector Abberline admitted that this did pose something of a stumbling block regarding his theory of Klosowski being the Ripper, but, as he later pointed out, almost every witness stated that they only saw the suspect’s back, and it is easy to misjudge age from a back view.

Finally, we come to the subject of the ‘similar murders committed in America’ often referred to as evidence that Klosowski was indeed the Ripper. In actual fact, there was only one murder during the period that Klosowski was alleged to have been there, and that was of an elderly prostitute named Carrie Brown, or ‘Old Shakespeare’ as she was known. The assistant housekeeper at the lodging house where Carrie Brown was murdered, described the man she had seen Brown with as about 32 years of age, 5ft 8in tall, of slim build, with a long, sharp nose and heavy moustache of a light colour. He was dressed in a dark brown coat and black trousers, and wore an old and much-dented black derby hat. She said he had a foreign accent, and was possibly German.

The description could possibly fit Klosowski but it was so loose that it could have fitted almost any other foreign immigrant. The important question here, however, is Klosowski was even in Jersey City at this particular time.

On 5 April 1891, when the English census was taken, Klosowski was listed as still living in Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. The next listing for Klosowski being in England is shown as a whole year later, when he returned from America. When American records were searched, they did not show Klosowski being in Jersey City before 24 April, which seems to rule out completely his involvement in the Carrie Brown murder. But if we cast our minds back, it was the death of their son in March that prompted Klosowski and Baderski to move to America. Therefore it would be logical to assume that they moved to America as soon as possible between the date of his death on 3 March and after the census register of 5 April. That leaves just nineteen days for Klosowski and Baderski to pack their possessions and move to Jersey City. Nineteen days to settle in and for him to murder Carrie Brown. For most people such a tight fit would be almost impossible, but we must remember this was Klosowski, and a short study of his modus operandi shows that, with him, nothing is impossible!

More on the positive side, as far as Abberline was concerned, were a number of facts. The first was that the date of Klosowski’s arrival in England coincided exactly with the start of the series of murders in Whitechapel; the murders also promptly ceased in London when Klosowski went to America, where a series of similar murders began to happen. There was also the fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before immigrating to England, where a number of experts agreed that the Whitechapel murders were the work of someone with a detailed knowledge of surgery. It was also stated that the recent poisoning cases were proven to have been carried out by someone with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine.

Another striking similarity that arises between the two sets of murders is that most experts agreed that the Ripper must have had a regular job, since all the murders occurred on weekends. The Ripper was, in all probability a single man, with no family ties, hence his propensity for staying out at all hours of the night. At Klosowski’s trial, his first wife, Lucy Baderski, brought up the fact that her husband had been in the habit of staying out into the early hours of the morning. She even described how he once attempted to murder her with a long knife while they lived in America.

It was also a well-known fact that Klosowski had an enormous sexual appetite, and although the Ripper never actually committed any normal sexual acts with any of his victims, he was still classed as a sexual serial killer, for the simple reason that he always mutilated his victims’ sexual organs. Klosowski was a known mass murderer, which should be taken into account. There were many men who fitted the description of the Ripper in 1888, but few who were known to be able to commit murder, and fewer still who were known to be capable of committing mass murder.

Klosowski was a man who seemingly took pleasure in watching his wives being slowly tortured to death by poison. Apart from the poisoning, he was capable of almost anything; even the attempted stabbing of his first wife, in such a cold-blooded manner, while they were living in New Jersey makes Abberline’s theory of him being guilty of both sets of crimes seem all the more plausible.

Some experts expound the theory that someone who takes lives on a wholesale scale finds it impossible to stop until they are either arrested or die. The argument against this is the dissimilarity of character in the crimes, but the ghastliness is never eradicated. The victims in both cases continue to be women, but they are of different classes, and therefore call for different methods of dispatch.

Some years later, another police officer, ex-Superintendent Arthur Neil, also endorsed his belief that Abberline’s theory regarding Klosowski was right. He urged that Klosowski took to poisoning his women victims as part of his diabolical cunning or insane urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity.

To sum up the verdict for or against Klosowski: he was a misogynist with medical skill and American experience; he was of foreign extraction, very similar in looks and general description, apart from age, to witness descriptions at the time; he lived and worked in the immediate area of the murders throughout the autumn of 1888 when the Ripper murders took place; the Ripper murders ceased the moment he moved to America; another Ripper-style murder took place in America almost as soon as Klosowski moved there. Everything falls into place, with the exception of his modus operandi. One question remains unanswered, probably forever, and that is whether a frenzied and savage mutilator of women can, in any way, turn his modus operandi around and become a calculating poisoner just seven years later.

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Highly Implausible?

W 
e have been through a list of the main suspects in the Ripper case, and we have explored the pros and cons of Inspector Abberline’s number one suspect, Severin Klosowski. The most talked about, written about and romanticised name in any book, film or discussion about Jack the Ripper, however, is invariably Prince Albert Victor, known as ‘Eddy’ to his friends, and how the Freemasons allegedly came to his aid.

By their very nature, Freemasons have always been a target for gossip and insinuation. Even the Goulston Street graffiti was said by some to be linked to them, mainly because of the spelling of the word ‘Juwes’, which, it has been alleged, referred not to ‘Jews’, but to Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, the three killers of Hiram Abiff, a semi-legendary figure in Freemasonry. This then, said the conspirators, must be part of a Masonic plot.

Actual evidence implicating the Freemasons in the Ripper case was far and few between. The legend grew that a group of highly placed members of the brotherhood were actually involved in a murderous conspiracy to suppress knowledge of a secret and illegal marriage between Prince Albert Victor (Eddy), heir presumptive to the throne, and a shop assistant named Annie Crook, who duly delivered the prince a child.

Their conspiracy involved finding the only other person who knew of this tryst, which was Mary Kelly, an old friend of Annie Crook, who had been employed by the couple as their nanny. When the group of Freemasons found out that both Crook and Kelly had worked as prostitutes in the East End, their target was enlarged, and they set out to silence Kelly and anyone who might have known her or that she might have related the story to.

As unbelievable as it seems, this was accepted as fact by quite a number of people. In fact, it was this version of events that were used in numerous films and television series. The Freemasons’ version ends with them, having completed their ghastly deeds, withdrawing back into the shadows; and although the case was never really closed, no one was ever caught for the crimes and so the legend of Jack the Ripper lives on to this day.