The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (47 page)

was related to a second crime, discovered nearly two PROBLEM: No real-life candidate identified.

years later.

Severin Antoniovitch Klosovksi
(1865–1903), aka On February 13, 1891, a prostitute named Frances

“George Chapman,” a Polish barber-surgeon and

Cole was found in Spitalfields, throat slashed, her resident of Whitechapel in 1888; poisoned three abdomen ripped open. Merchant seaman James Sadler common-law wives after 1895 and was hanged for was arrested for the homicide and several times the third offense. At his arrest, Inspector Frederick remanded prior to his release for lack of evidence. An Abberline supposedly remarked, “So you’ve

alcoholic prone to violent rages, Sadler had been seen in caught Jack the Ripper at last!”

Whitechapel the day Mackenzie died and shipped out PROBLEMS: No evidential link to the crimes;

to the Baltic two days later. Satisfied, albeit off the sadistic slashers rarely (if ever) switch to poisoning.

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“JACK the Ripper”

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream
(1850–92), poisoner of Gull was partially paralyzed by the first of several four Lambeth prostitutes in 1891–92; supposedly strokes in 1887; prevailing law would have

cried, “I am Jack the—” when he was hanged.

annulled the alleged marriage; subsequent research PROBLEM: Cream was imprisoned in Illinois

indicates the woman in question was not Catholic.

at the time of the murders.

Walter Richard Sickert
(1860–1942), a major British
Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward
(1864–92), artist, described in various theories since 1976 as the Duke of Clarence and Heir Presumptive to the either the lone Ripper or a participant in Dr. Gull’s throne of England, first named as a Ripper suspect Masonic plot. One graphologist claimed (in 1993) in 1962. Most “Royal Ripper” theories describe that the Ripper’s “Dear Boss” note was written in the prince as a woman-hating homosexual, driven Sickert’s disguised handwriting. Novelist Patricia mad by syphilis, whose deer-hunting experience Cornwell revived the Sickert case in 2002

taught him to gut corpses.

(strangely omitting any mention of authors who PROBLEMS: No evident links to the murders;

plowed the same ground before her) and report-

no proof of syphilis; official records place him far edly spent $4 million pursuing her suspect. DNA from London on the dates of all five murders; gay testing of various “Ripper” letters proved fruitless, serial killers typically seek same-sex victims.

and the “case closed” verdict ultimately rests on
James Kenneth Stephen
(1859–92), a tutor (some amateur psychoanalysis of Sickert’s paintings.

say gay lover) of Prince Albert Victor, first pub-PROBLEM: No proven link to the murders.

licly named as a Ripper suspect in 1972.

Robert Donston Stephenson
(b. 1841), aka “Dr.

Allegedly suspected by Inspector Abberline

Roslyn D’Onston,” first named as a Ripper sus-

(based on a diary, possibly forged, that surfaced pect in 1987. Stephenson allegedly committed the in 1988), Stephen supposedly hated women in

murders as part of a black magic ritual.

general and prostitutes in particular. Some stu-PROBLEM: No evident link to the crimes.

dents of the case regard his handwriting as simi-James Maybrick
(1838–89), a Liverpool cotton bro-lar (or identical) to that of several “Ripper”

ker, allegedly the author of the “Ripper diary”

notes.

published amidst great controversy in 1993.

PROBLEMS: No evident links to the crimes (or

PROBLEMS: No evidence besides the “diary”

to a homosexual affair with the prince); many

connects him to the crimes; several analysts brand

“Ripperologists” believe
all
correspondence from the “Ripper diary” a forgery dating from the

the killer was a hoax, authored by newsmen or

1920s.

cranks.

Dr. Francis Tumblety (1833?–1903), an Irish-Ameri-Prince Albert Victor
and
James Stephen,
named as can “herb doctor” arrested in London on Novem-TEAM KILLERS by Dr. David Abrahamson in
Murber 7, 1888, on multiple counts of assault (against der and Madness (1992).

four men) dating back to July; released on bail, he PROBLEMS: Same as above for both suspects;

fled to America before trial. Obituaries named numerous historical errors; Scotland Yard denies him as a Ripper suspect, but the case against him Abrahamson’s claim that he based his theory on was first publicized in 1995.

information from police files.

PROBLEMS: No proven link to the crimes; dif-

Dr. Alexander Pedachenko (1857?–1908?), Russian fered greatly in appearance from alleged descrip-doctor who emigrated to Britain, alleged (in 1928) tions of the Ripper.

to have committed the murders in connivance

Joseph Barnett (1858–1926), a London fish porter with the Czarist secret police “to discredit the who lived with Mary Kelly until two weeks before Metropolitan Police.”

her death, first named as a suspect in 1995.

PROBLEMS: Dubious sources; no evident link

PROBLEMS: Cleared by police in 1888; no

to the crimes.

proven link to the murders.

Sir William Gull (1816–90), physician in ordinary to James Kelly (d. 1929), a London resident confined to Queen Victoria who treated Prince Albert Victor an asylum after killing his wife in 1883; he

for typhus in 1871, first linked to the Ripper case escaped in January 1888 and remained at large

in 1970. Gull is accused of leading a conspiracy to until his voluntary surrender in February 1927.

silence those with knowledge of Prince Albert Vic-Deceased two years later, he was first named as a tor’s illegal marriage to a Catholic commoner, suspect in 1986.

mutilating the victims in accordance with

PROBLEMS: No proven link to the murders;

Masonic ritual.

no explanation for their brief duration, while PROBLEMS: No evident link to the crimes;

Kelly remained at large for another 39 years.

134

“JACK the Stripper”

Rev. John George Gibson (?–?), a Canadian preacher she died. Suspect Kenneth Archibald confessed to the who left his Scottish parish in 1887, whose where-murder later that month, then recanted his statement, abouts are unknown until he surfaced in the

blaming depression. He was subsequently cleared at United States in December 1888. In 1992, author trial.

Robert Graysmith named Gibson as the Ripper

Helen Barthelemy, age 20, was the first victim found and as the slayer of two women murdered at Gib-away from the river. On April 24, her naked body was son’s San Francisco church in April 1895.

discovered near a sports field in Brentwood, four front WILLIAM HENRY THEODORE DURRANT was con-teeth missing, with part of one lodged in her throat.

victed of the latter crimes and hanged in April Traces of multicolored spray paint on the body sug-1897, in what Graysmith calls a miscarriage of gested that she had been kept for a while after death in justice.

a paint shop before she was dumped in the field.

PROBLEMS: No evidence links “Pastor Jack”

On July 14, 21-year-old Mary Fleming was dis-

to any of the London murders, and Graysmith’s

carded, nude and lifeless, on a dead-end London street.

resort to fiction (including a fabricated “diary”

Witnesses glimpsed a van and its driver near the scene, from Durrant) weakens his case in the California but none could finally describe the man or vehicle with slayings.

any certainty. Missing since July 11, Fleming had apparently been suffocated or choked to death—as opposed to strangled—and her dentures were missing

“JACK the Stripper”

from the scene.

Seventy years after “JACK THE RIPPER” murdered and Margaret McGowan, 21, had been missing a month disemboweled prostitutes in London’s East End, a new when her nude corpse was found in Kensington on generation of hookers learned to live with the ever-pre-November 25, 1964. Police noted the familiar traces of sent fear of a lurking killer. This “Jack” carried no knife paint on her skin, and one of her teeth had been forced and penned no jaunty letters to the press, but he was from its socket in front. The last to die was 27-year-old every bit as lethal (claiming eight victims to the Ripper’s Bridget O’Hara, last seen alive on January 11, 1965, five) and possessed of far greater longevity (operating her body found on February 16 hidden in some shrub-over nearly six years, compared to the Ripper’s 10

bery on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton. Her front weeks). At the “conclusion” of the case, both slayers teeth were missing, and pathologists determined that shared a common attribute: despite a wealth of theories and assertions, neither “Jack” was ever captured or identified.

On June 17, 1959, prostitute Elizabeth Figg, 21, was found floating in the Thames, clad only in a slip, her death attributed to strangulation. Four and a half years passed before discovery of the next murder, with the skeleton of 22-year-old Gwynneth Rees unearthed during clearance of a Thames-side rubbish dump, on November 8, 1963. The cause of death was difficult to ascertain, and homicide investigators later tried to disconnect both murders from the “Stripper” series, but today the better evidence suggests that these were practice runs, the early crimes committed by a killer who had yet to hit his stride.

Thirty-year-old Hannah Tailford was the next to die, her naked corpse discovered in the Thames by boatmen on February 2, 1964. Her stockings were pulled down around her ankles, panties stuffed inside her mouth, but she had drowned, and the inquest produced an “open”

verdict, refusing to rule out suicide, however improbable it seemed.

On April 9, 1964, 20-year-old Irene Lockwood was found naked and dead in the Thames, floating 300

yards from the spot where Tailford was found. Another drowning victim, she was four months pregnant when Police sketch of “Jack the Stripper” (Author’s collection)
135

JESPERSON, Keith Hunter

she had died on her knees. The corpse was partially she had telephoned the FBI and falsely accused John of mummified, as if from prolonged storage in a cool, dry robbing banks. When the G-men cleared him, she place.

repeated the accusation to local police.

Despite appeals to prostitutes for information on Pulled in for questioning, Pavlinac accused her hus-their “kinky” customers, police were groping in the band of Taunja Bennett’s murder, and police obtained a dark. Inspector John Du Rose suggested that the last six search warrant for the couple’s home. None of Ben-victims had been literally choked to death by oral sex, nett’s missing personal effects were found, as searchers removal of the teeth in four cases lending vague support hoped, but they did turn up an envelope addressed to to the hypothesis. A list of suspects had supposedly Sosnovske, with “T. Bennett—a Good Piece” written on been narrowed down from 20 men to three when one of the back. Sosnovske, for his part, denied killing Taunja those committed suicide, gassing himself in his kitchen or writing the message.

and leaving a cryptic note: “I cannot go on.” It might Laverne Pavlinac, meanwhile had radically changed mean anything—or nothing—but the murders ended her story. In the first version, John had merely boasted with the nameless suspect’s death, and so police seem of the murder, spilling enough details that she was con-satisfied, although the case remains officially unsolved.

vinced of his guilt. In the new tale, Pavlinac admitted Who was the Stripper? Suspects range from a watching him rape and kill Taunja on the night of Janu-deceased prize fighter to an unnamed ex-policeman, but ary 21. It was enough for the authorities; Sosnovske Du Rose favored a private security guard on the Heron was promptly charged with murder, and Laverne was Trading Estate, his rounds including the paint shop indicted for aiding him in the crime.

where at least some of the victims were apparently There were problems with the story, even so. Most stashed after death. The only “evidence” of guilt is the critically, police had several witnesses who reported see-cessation of similar crimes after the suspect’s suicide, ing Taunja Bennett at a bar in Gresham the night she but numerous serial killers—from the original Ripper to died, 25 miles from the restaurant where Sosnovske the ZODIAC and “Babysitter”—have “retired” once they allegedly met her. Taunja had been playing pool, the achieved a certain body count. The best that we can say witnesses said, with two unidentified men—neither of for Scotland Yard’s solution is that it is plausible . . . but them John Sosnovske. It made no difference to the unconfirmed.