Complete History of Jack the Ripper (82 page)

The man who brought Carrie Brown to the East River Hotel was never traced. However, in July 1891 the New York City police secured a conviction against Ameer Ben Ali, alias ‘Frenchy’, for the murder. Frenchy had occupied a room across the hall from Carrie’s on the fatal night and it was their contention that when the first man left Frenchy crept to Carrie’s room, robbed and killed her, and then slipped back to his own room. Their case was supported by the discovery of bloodstains in the hallway between the two rooms, on both sides of Frenchy’s door and in his room. Frenchy protested his innocence to the last. ‘They say that the man who was with the woman had
large and lovely moustaches,’ he wailed. ‘Just look at my moustaches. They are neither long nor thick.’ He was found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Eleven years later, after fresh evidence suggested that the incriminating bloodstains may only have appeared
after
the coroner, police and reporters had been over the premises, Governor Benjamin Odell ordered his release.

The conviction of Frenchy was unquestionably unsafe. So who did kill Carrie Brown? We just don’t know. In 1901 new evidence emerged to accuse a Danish farmhand working in Cranford, New Jersey, at the period of the murder. Absent on the fatal night, he returned home the next morning and left without notice a few days later. His employer allegedly discovered a key like those used at the East River Hotel and a bloodstained shirt in his room after he had gone. Had this information real substance one would have expected it to have been made public at the time. As it is the employer said nothing until approached by the press ten years later and that has to make his tale suspect.
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Mary Miniter did not get a good look at Old Shakespeare’s companion on the fatal night. When the couple booked into the hotel he stayed in the background and appeared ‘anxious to avoid observation’. Nevertheless, some of the details she remembered about him recall Chapman. The Pole is a possible suspect – but only just. For on 5 April 1891, when the English census was taken, he was still living in Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. We don’t know when Chapman took passage for New York. If his decision to emigrate owed anything to the illness and death of his son in March it might have been in April. And that could place him in New York in time for the Carrie Brown killing. It is undoubtedly food for thought that the American press began to speculate that Jack the Ripper had appeared on the New York waterfront at about the time Chapman, who would become Abberline’s chief suspect in the Ripper case, disembarked there. But clearly it will take nothing short of proof that Chapman was in the city when Carrie died to invest the American connection with real credibility.

The matter must rest there for the present.

George Chapman could have been Jack the Ripper. We have uncovered nothing to eliminate him from our inquiry. And he fits the evidence better than any other police suspect. But that does not make him a strong suspect. It is obvious that neither Abberline nor his colleagues were able to establish any tangible link between Chapman and
the murders, and coincidences in opportunity, medical qualifications, appearance, social circumstances and character, however intriguing, inevitably fail to persuade by themselves. In his recent comments on the Ripper case Jonathan Goodman, doyen of true crime writers, hit the nail squarely on the head: ‘Of those [suspects] named, I think the least unlikely is George Chapman.’
²⁶

I have little hesitation in declaring Druitt, Kosminski and Ostrog ‘Not Guilty’. In the case of Chapman I prefer recourse to a verdict long recognized only in Scottish law – ‘Not Proven’.

‘W
E ARE INUNDATED
with suggestions and names of suspects!’ Thus wrote Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to Sir James Fraser, his counterpart in the City, on 9 October 1888.
¹

It is a complaint that is as true today as it was a century ago. Year by year we are presented with a fresh crop of improbable identity theories. In the twelve months before this book went to press we have had William Westcott (surgeon and occultist), Thomas Cutbush, James K. Stephen and Montague Druitt (again, and this time in tandem!), Dr William Thomas (the Welsh Ripper) and James Maybrick. And next year? Who knows?

When I began my own search for Jack the Ripper I decided to concentrate upon the contemporary police suspects because I felt that it would be amongst these, if anywhere, that I would find him. Sadly, by the end of my study two things had become painfully apparent.

First, there was no single police view on the subject. Different officers espoused different theories. Indeed, just about every detective in the CID, even those who took no part in the Whitechapel investigation, seems at one time or another to have had a pet theory on the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Benjamin Leeson did not join the force until 1891. Nevertheless, we find him hinting in his memoirs that a ‘certain doctor’ known to him, who was never far away when the crimes were committed, could have ‘thrown quite a lot of light’ on the mystery. Detective Inspector Sewell
of Brixton, retiring in 1898, put out a different theory: ‘Although the exact identity of the man was never discovered, most of us believe that he was a Lascar sailor, who came to London at pretty frequent intervals. When the crimes ceased in London they commenced after a short interval abroad, and generally they were either in or near a port. In the police force today the belief is that the murderer is either dead or is confined in some criminal lunatic asylum.’ Yet another suspect is referred to by John Littlechild, ex-head of the Special Branch, in a letter of 1913 to the journalist George R. Sims.
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The second conclusion suggested by a study of police records is that, with the exception of Lawende’s dubious identification of Kosminski, none of their theories seem to have been based upon tangible evidence linking a suspect to the crimes. Rather, men were suspected because one detective or another thought them the type of person the police should be looking for. We hear a lot about insanity, medical knowledge, cruelty to women and the like, precious little about real
evidence
.

Chapman is the most likely of the known suspects to have been Jack the Ripper. But in all honesty I cannot find a convincing case against any of them. And there is every possibility that the man the Victorians called ‘the master murderer of the age’ was in reality a complete nobody whose name never found its way into the police file . . . some sad social cripple who lived out his days in obscurity, his true identity a secret now known only to the dead.

Fortunately, it is not quite the end of the search.

Our study of the historical facts has already enabled us to deduce a certain amount about the killer. We are pretty safe in thinking of him as a local man, white but possibly of continental origin, in his twenties or thirties. He dressed respectably and was of average or slightly less than average height. A single man in regular employment, he was right-handed and possessed some degree of anatomical knowledge and surgical skill.

History cannot take us further. But perhaps psychology can.

Anyone who has read or seen
The Silence of the Lambs
will know that criminal psychological profiling has become a useful instrument in the detection of serial murderers and rapists. Essentially it is the task of the profiler to help police prioritize suspects. In order to do this he carefully examines the scene of crime information and then, drawing upon his knowledge of similar offenders and behavioural science, attempts to provide an outline
of the likely behavioural and personality traits of the unknown perpetrator.

Fiction claims too much for the technique. It cannot be expected to produce a word portrait of the criminal that is accurate in every detail because human behaviour is so very complex and unpredictable. And there are obvious problems inherent in applying it to historical cases. Few profilers are also historians. Yet any profile is only as good as the data upon which it is based. Which means that for past cases the historical evidence must first be competently researched and evaluated. Few historic cases, too, can be recovered in the wealth of detail ideally required by the profiler. A good profiler, for instance, will wish to see scene of crime photographs that depict the scene from every angle. Such photographs were taken in only one of the nine Whitechapel killings. However, I quibble. Psychological profiling can help to catch murderers.

The modern use of psychological profiling in criminal investigation was pioneered by the famous Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. In 1988, a century after the Whitechapel murders, Supervisory Special Agent John E. Douglas of the FBI attempted a reconstruction of the killer’s personality.
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Douglas opines that the Ripper was raised in a family with a domineering mother, probably fond of drink and the company of different men, and a weak and/or absent father. The boy thus grew up without consistent care or contact with stable adult role models. He became socially detached and developed ‘a diminished emotional response toward people in general’. His anger was internalized. But, in his younger years, his pent-up destructive emotions were expressed by lighting fires and torturing animals. He developed a fantasy life which, as he grew older, included the domination, abuse and mutilation of women. As an adult the Ripper was an asocial loner. At work he was seen as quiet, shy and obedient, and his dress was neat and orderly. He would look for employment in positions in which he could work alone and experience vicariously his destructive fantasies, perhaps as a butcher or hospital or mortuary attendant. He was not adept at meeting people socially and his sexual relationships were mostly with prostitutes. He may have contracted venereal disease. If so it would have fuelled his hatred and disgust of women. He is unlikely to have been married. He carried a knife in order to protect himself against possible attack. ‘This paranoid type of thinking would in part be justified by his poor self-image.’ He lived or worked in the
Whitechapel area and his first homicide would have been close to his home or place of work.

The FBI distinguish two main types of serial murderer. The disorganized offender does not plan his crimes or stalk his victims. He attacks on impulse. The crime scene will betray confusion, the body left there unhidden, weapons and other clues thoughtlessly abandoned for investigating officers to find. By contrast the organized offender thinks his crime through in advance. Victims are selected and stalked with care. The crime scene is neat and orderly. It reflects control. And the murderer takes care to escape detection. He is unlikely to leave obvious clues at the scene and may transport and hide bodies elsewhere. The differences in method displayed by these two types of murderer are believed to reflect differences in personality. The disorganized offender will likely prove a loner, socially inept, single and employed, if at all, in positions demanding little skill or communication with the public. The organized offender, on the other hand, will be intelligent and articulate, the type of man who may have considerable educational achievements, who usually lives with a female partner and holds down steady skilled work. In the organized offender situational stress, like marital problems, may precipitate murder. In the disorganized offender no external trigger is needed. The impetus to kill, a prevailing sense of rage and hostility, lurks deep within his personality.
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To judge from John Douglas’ profile of Jack the Ripper, he would place him in the disorganized category. But caution is necessary here. However useful the FBI typology is as a starting point for discussion it is a simplistic analysis. Many offenders will exhibit characteristics of both types. The Ripper is clearly one. In some ways (the probability that he was single, the local nature of his crimes and his disposition to leave bodies unhidden at the murder scene) he undoubtedly does fit into the disorganized group. But in others (his ability to engage victims in conversation, the disciplined character of his mature modus operandi and his care to remove weapons and clues from the scene) he sounds much more like an organized offender.

Perhaps the best known exponent of offender profiling in Britain is David Canter, Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey. Professor Canter believes that Jack the Ripper felt himself at odds with society, venting his anger and resentment on those he saw as easy victims. There was probably some history of
psychological disturbance in his background of which those who had dealings with him would have been aware. Friends may have found him a loner, withdrawn and difficult to relate to. He may have been married but if so the degree of relationship between his wife and himself would not have been the norm. At some time in his life the Ripper probably held down a position requiring some skill. He was able to initiate contact with potential victims so his work may have involved limited social contact with people. Canter is convinced that the Ripper lived or had some sort of base within the Whitechapel area and that the first murder attributed to him was not the first crime he committed.
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As our experience with offender profiling grows the technique will undoubtedly be honed to a greater degree of refinement. We may, of course, also get lucky and uncover fresh documentary evidence on the Ripper case itself. But any new evidence is unlikely to change the general picture of the case presented in these pages. The development of offender profiling, though, should enable us to look at our facts in new ways, to suggest fresh avenues of research. For example, both John Douglas and David Canter advise us that the Ripper probably committed other offences in the same area before the first murder attributed to him. Is it not possible, then, that a search of local magistrates’ court records for the five years preceding the murders may turn up a new suspect, regularly accused perhaps of indecent assault, rape or street robbery, a suspect who fits the facts and the profiles we have noticed? If so it will have uncovered a better suspect than any we have inherited from the police file.