Jack the Ripper with Jim McKenna: A Suspect

[00:00:00] Content Warning, this episode contains discussion of murder and graphic violence against women.

[00:00:06] We've all heard of Jack the Ripper. He's a symbol as much as he is a real historical serial killer,

[00:00:12] a figure representing brutal base evil, as well as society's violent disregard of impoverished women.

[00:00:19] In a nutshell, Jack the Ripper is a still unidentified serial killer who preyed upon women

[00:00:25] whitechoppel district in 1888. He had five canonical victims, although there is debate on the exact

[00:00:31] number. His crimes were marked by an intense brutality and desire to mutilate. Unfortunately,

[00:00:37] despite an intensive investigation, no one was ever prosecuted for these vicious crimes.

[00:00:43] Today we're back with Ripperologist Jim McKenna. He knows a ton about this case because he's

[00:00:48] been studying the Ripper for many years. He's also recently come out with a book,

[00:00:53] Penny Black, a collection of mysterious stories to draw on Jim's own fascination with horror.

[00:00:59] Please check it out. We're linking to it in our show notes.

[00:01:03] We spoke to Jim in our previous episode. If you haven't heard that yet, go back and check it out.

[00:01:08] Today, Jim is going to walk us through his theory of the murders. It's in-depth. He's

[00:01:13] going to name names and give reasons. He'll point out the intriguing possibilities,

[00:01:18] as well as the problems with coming to a conclusion about a centuries old case.

[00:01:23] My name is Ania Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[00:01:28] And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting,

[00:01:33] interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:38] And this is Jack the Ripper with Jim McKenna, a suspect.

[00:02:26] It's such a terrifying case. I'm curious. What are your thoughts about what happened?

[00:02:34] We do know that serial killers do stop sometimes, usually due to age. It seems like I'm

[00:02:40] thinking of specifically BTK and the Golden State Killer. But what are your thoughts on

[00:02:46] what might have happened here? Polania, I agree with you. One of the things that I

[00:02:52] always take when I... And there's pretty much about I would say hate, but don't like about

[00:02:57] some conversations I hear is when somebody will say, well, it's impossible that she left

[00:03:04] her keys here because she would never have done that. Okay? Yes, you would have. You've done it.

[00:03:12] I've done it. We change our methods and serial killers too. Well, they never stop. They cannot

[00:03:18] stop. You don't know that. With enough blunt force applied in some kind of direction,

[00:03:26] somebody can change force and they often do. So, yeah, getting to my beliefs. Okay? I think the

[00:03:34] best way to look at this is to look at the evidence that is there. Now with the Jack the Ripper case,

[00:03:43] we have a lot of knowledge about this. You know, I just detailed a lot of information to you

[00:03:48] about the area, the people, the different social structures, and even a little bit into

[00:03:54] the police who are investigating the case. But that's just a lot of broad knowledge about

[00:04:01] Jack the Ripper as a whole. But if you look at the case itself, there are very few facts.

[00:04:08] You know, as investigative journalists, I think some of the things you've done have been into

[00:04:14] really long ago sort of cold cases where memory is not a part of it anymore and all you really

[00:04:20] have are facts that you want to get to that can lead you to a broader understanding. And this is

[00:04:26] really the opposite. We have this large, like I said, iconic image, but very few facts. I was

[00:04:32] very excited, you know, as a young man because November 1988, well, that was 100 year mark and

[00:04:38] they were going to open the Ripper record. And I was excited. I was all kinds of excited

[00:04:43] as were Ripperologists just all over the place. And it turned out to be interesting, but not

[00:04:48] much. All right, the file had been filtered through pieces of it had been taken for other projects.

[00:04:57] There was some interesting information in there, but not as much as anyone thought.

[00:05:02] And then it also turns out that the bulk of the information on a very exhaustive investigation

[00:05:08] for the time was destroyed by the Nazis in World War II because the Blitzkrieg hit London.

[00:05:15] And several police stations and record halls were hit by bombs. And what did remain, which was not

[00:05:25] much, was salvaged up, boxed or bailed up and stuck in a dank warehouse until somebody had

[00:05:31] a chance to sort through this mess. And let's be clear, they always had better things to do.

[00:05:37] So a lot of the interview case notes and these things like this are gone. So we're looking

[00:05:43] at this in a sideways. We're looking at this from letters of people who were involved,

[00:05:49] diaries of who were involved, memoirs, newspaper articles, which are questionable,

[00:05:55] but the notebooks and conversations by reporters are illuminating, you see. So we're looking

[00:06:02] at this from a couple of different directions, but that's where I think it has to start.

[00:06:08] And you also need to be sure to contextualize this properly. You have to put these

[00:06:15] in its location, in the context that it happened, and try not to add filters that seem to make sense

[00:06:25] that have become vogue or we think may be right over the last 135 years.

[00:06:32] I can tell you that I do not think that a celebrity or a known person is the killer.

[00:06:38] All right. No, I do not think Lewis Carroll killed was Jack Ripper. All right.

[00:06:44] The guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland was a creepy guy. We know that now.

[00:06:48] Yeah, he was.

[00:06:50] All right. Oh yeah.

[00:06:52] Yeah.

[00:06:54] And you don't think the royal family did it?

[00:06:57] Sorry to Alan Moore.

[00:06:59] Yeah, I love from hell. Don't get me wrong. That's a fantastic graphic novel,

[00:07:05] but and I'm scared of Christ's church to this day.

[00:07:08] Me, every time I look at that Hawkshorn church there or Hawksmore church,

[00:07:13] I go, you know, I think, no, that's scary.

[00:07:16] But no, I don't think that an artist, Walter Sicker comes to mind.

[00:07:19] Have you heard of that one at all?

[00:07:21] Yeah, that's the suspect put forth by Patricia Cornwell, if I remember correctly.

[00:07:26] Correct. All that's on that really, really briefly.

[00:07:30] I have no intention of disrespecting anybody as I'm talking about this, by the way.

[00:07:34] Ad hominem attacks are just not me.

[00:07:36] I'll goof on myself all day long, but I'm going to leave every I'm going to be nice to everyone else.

[00:07:41] Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:07:43] But there's no writer, no politician, no artist, no writer, no artist.

[00:07:49] No politician, no artist, no royal dynastic air or their attendants, their surgeons, their drivers

[00:07:56] are actually viable suspects in the larger male.

[00:08:00] You yeah, they could have been, but no, they weren't.

[00:08:03] It's just kind of the same thing.

[00:08:04] Why is everyone who has a past life Napoleon?

[00:08:07] You know,

[00:08:09] Right.

[00:08:09] Can just be some random peasant.

[00:08:12] Yeah, I know if I had one, I was executed for something and probably stealing a pig or something.

[00:08:17] I just know, you know, I also do not believe the killer was an American.

[00:08:24] Now there are American suspects.

[00:08:26] The silliest one was when a descendant of H H Holmes tried to make a claim that

[00:08:33] his descendant was Jack the Ripper and Donson.

[00:08:36] Just know there's a popular suspect named Tumble T Francis Tumble T

[00:08:42] who was definitely a poop and a weirdo, but he was not the Ripper.

[00:08:47] He was up to some Stoll Duggery, certainly.

[00:08:51] The killer was not an American.

[00:08:53] In my opinion, he was a British citizen or a recent immigrant from Europe.

[00:08:58] He may have been a sailor, but if so, Whitechapel or Spittlefield was definitely his home.

[00:09:04] Because he knew the place.

[00:09:05] He was comfortable there and it was not that he got to the place to do his crimes then left.

[00:09:11] He was immersed in the zeitgeist in that area.

[00:09:16] I do not believe he was from the upper or middle classes.

[00:09:19] Now that was the thing that was going around at the time because

[00:09:22] everybody was following this case and there was kind of this wild

[00:09:26] thrill that people got to think, oh, he could be one of us.

[00:09:30] You know, he could be going down to the darkness,

[00:09:33] to the poverty stricken areas and he could be doing that and then coming back.

[00:09:38] And that even made it into the dance halls and music shows at the time.

[00:09:42] There was a popular character, recurring character in these called Champagne Charlie

[00:09:47] and he was kind of a coffee goofy guy, upper class guy.

[00:09:51] And he was portrayed a few times in every sinister aspect during this time to give people a thrill.

[00:09:57] But no, he wasn't.

[00:09:59] I believe he did have a job though.

[00:10:01] And I think he held it as long as his decaying mental state allowed him to.

[00:10:08] He was not homeless.

[00:10:09] He had a place to live.

[00:10:11] Oh, it could have been like I said a space on the floor,

[00:10:14] but he had a place to live and people knew him.

[00:10:19] I believe that he had a good knowledge of anatomy,

[00:10:22] but not necessarily human anatomy or at least he had anatomy

[00:10:27] that was initially not learned on a human body.

[00:10:30] If you follow what I'm saying, he could navigate around a body cavity.

[00:10:35] But I don't think that he was trained at that at all.

[00:10:39] And I doubt that he worked in a field like the cork washer or something like this

[00:10:44] where he had access to body.

[00:10:46] He had to know more or less where the organs were to do what he did.

[00:10:51] And I think that's about it.

[00:10:55] I do not believe he was left handed,

[00:10:57] but if you will think the river was left handed.

[00:11:00] The reason for that is because of bruising on the body

[00:11:04] that suggested that the women were grabbed from behind

[00:11:08] and the knife pulled across their throat.

[00:11:11] I don't think that that's the case.

[00:11:12] I don't think that's how the murders happened.

[00:11:14] I'll get to that in a second.

[00:11:16] I think his goal was murder and not sexual assault.

[00:11:19] Was there a sexual component to the crime?

[00:11:22] Probably, you know, the way that these things are.

[00:11:26] But the goal was to kill straight up.

[00:11:30] Three of the five victims, like I said,

[00:11:32] were not identifiable sex workers and it's just speculations.

[00:11:36] All right.

[00:11:37] There were two, Elizabeth Stride and Mary Jane Kelly,

[00:11:42] that could have been engaged in prostitution.

[00:11:46] And perhaps, especially with Mary Kelly inviting a stranger into her room,

[00:11:51] you know, that really suggests that perhaps

[00:11:55] that was a catalyst to her death.

[00:11:57] And I do believe that is possible.

[00:12:00] But the three others, they were exhausted.

[00:12:02] They were ill and they were alone and that made them vulnerable enough.

[00:12:06] Now I got to go a little deeper into kind of a personal thought process.

[00:12:11] Please do.

[00:12:11] If you want to understand what happened by taking a look at the body,

[00:12:17] at the evidence, you need to not look at the last one, Mary Jane Kelly.

[00:12:23] All right.

[00:12:24] A lot of people over the years, too many people have romanticized

[00:12:28] to Mary Kelly.

[00:12:30] She was the youngest one for starters.

[00:12:33] She was said to be very pretty.

[00:12:37] She was also the one that we don't have any information about.

[00:12:41] We don't know where her family, we don't know where she came from.

[00:12:44] Maybe she was from Ireland, maybe she was from Wales.

[00:12:47] No one is really sure.

[00:12:49] And that is an open invitation to fill in the blanks on your own.

[00:12:56] And people have.

[00:12:57] I read a book a few years ago by an American doctor who somehow

[00:13:02] claimed that he was a family descendant of Mary Kelly.

[00:13:05] Now where he came up with that, I still don't know.

[00:13:09] And I was interviewing him at the time and I just had a really hard time

[00:13:12] whatevering over that because wow, people have romances that look at Alan

[00:13:16] Moore from hell, right?

[00:13:18] Mary Kelly is a prominent figure in that.

[00:13:20] In the Royal conspiracy theory, he was an American.

[00:13:24] He was an assistant to Walter Sticker.

[00:13:27] So people only look at that and her mutilation was the most efficient.

[00:13:31] So if you really want to understand it, go to her and I say no.

[00:13:36] I think you need to look at the fourth one, Chazernetto.

[00:13:40] And you can see what he wanted to do writ large on her body.

[00:13:45] If you take a look first at Holly Nichols and then at Annie Chapman,

[00:13:49] you see a progression of permissive violence.

[00:13:53] He was unsure about what he was doing with Holly Nichols and he left her on the street

[00:14:00] without clearly mutilated her, but not exactly what he wanted.

[00:14:04] He felt insecure at something of somebody heard a banging outside of

[00:14:10] the backyard at Hanbury Street that may have scared him away, some people think.

[00:14:15] And he didn't get as far as he wanted to do with Annie Chapman

[00:14:18] or maybe he didn't know it.

[00:14:19] But I think with Chazernetto, he did everything he wanted to do.

[00:14:24] He displayed that body.

[00:14:27] He mutilated the faith in a very specific way, including two triangular shaped cuts

[00:14:35] under each eye, which is weird.

[00:14:39] All right.

[00:14:39] I've never seen a rational explanation for that.

[00:14:42] I've heard some ideas and I've always discounted them.

[00:14:45] He meant to do that.

[00:14:46] He was, you know, for one of the another way to put it, he was decorating.

[00:14:50] And I think that if you look at that, you could get a really good idea

[00:14:54] of what he saw in his twisted, perverted mind, whatever bats and fire were going on in there.

[00:15:02] This is what was telling him to do.

[00:15:05] I think the method of killing except for Mary Kelly and maybe this is how he stood dooder

[00:15:10] was he choked out the victim from the front, grabbed him by the throat quickly

[00:15:14] and gripped hard, cutting off the blood until they passed out.

[00:15:18] Immediately when they were on the ground, he cut their throat, kind of covering it

[00:15:21] so the blood would not get on him as it's sprayed out.

[00:15:25] And while they were bleeding out, then he began his eviscerations.

[00:15:29] What happened very rapidly.

[00:15:31] The police, I believe they had suspects.

[00:15:35] And as I referenced before, those suspects became a little more

[00:15:38] accurate once police officials moved away from the gang theory.

[00:15:43] There was time in there that they became more willing to look the likelihood of a Jewish

[00:15:47] immigrant because there was evidence that was pointing that way.

[00:15:50] One of them was a red herring.

[00:15:51] You've probably heard of leather apron.

[00:15:54] Yes.

[00:15:56] Leather apron was an actual weirdo guy who wore a leather apron like a cobbler's apron

[00:16:02] and who loved to yell and berate women he knew were prostitutes out on the street

[00:16:08] and harass them and even chase them.

[00:16:10] And a filthy discarded leather apron was found in the backyard of Hanbury street

[00:16:15] and that hit the media.

[00:16:17] They eliminated him as a suspect, but I think that that was part of the reason they

[00:16:22] started being willing to look at maybe there were Jewish immigrants that they needed to talk to.

[00:16:27] Fears over public outrage and their own failures played a big part

[00:16:33] in the high level decisions of the Metropolitan Police.

[00:16:36] Okay.

[00:16:37] They had a lot of clear ideas that were happening and we can see those from the very strange

[00:16:42] direction.

[00:16:44] Okay.

[00:16:45] And this is an example I can give to give you to kind of demonstrate what

[00:16:49] riparology is really like.

[00:16:52] Robert Anderson was the superintendent of police.

[00:16:55] He was in charge of inspection.

[00:16:57] He was under Melville McNaughton.

[00:16:59] Anderson was told by McNaughton to put another man named Donald Swanson in

[00:17:07] overall supervisory charge of the investigation.

[00:17:11] This happened in mid-September.

[00:17:13] Swanson was given an office in Scotland Yard.

[00:17:16] He was relieved of all of his other duties and he was told to focus on the white

[00:17:21] chapel murder that he had and the word went out.

[00:17:25] He had permission to see every cable, every telegram, every interview note, every

[00:17:29] record, every single thing had to come through his office so he could see it.

[00:17:34] And he stayed at that post for two years.

[00:17:37] He saw this thing inside and out.

[00:17:41] In 1910, he had retired and Robert Anderson, the head of all of this, had

[00:17:49] written two memoirs.

[00:17:50] He had a very broad career not only in police work.

[00:17:54] One of those volumes is called The Lighter Side of My Official Life.

[00:17:58] Swanson had a copy of it.

[00:18:01] Okay, here we go.

[00:18:04] Flash forward to 1981.

[00:18:07] James Swanson, the grandson of Donald Swanson, was looking through his grandfather's stuff.

[00:18:14] He found that book.

[00:18:15] He opened it and he found that his grandfather had written something in

[00:18:22] the margins of the book on the page that has to do with Jack the Ripper.

[00:18:26] That is now known as the Swanson Marginalia.

[00:18:30] Oh my gosh.

[00:18:35] Yeah, the Swanson Marginalia because it is a fascinating little thing where he takes

[00:18:43] a step farther because Anderson was really vague with what he wrote about...

[00:18:48] Anderson had sort of written that, well, it's not very polite for me right now to

[00:18:55] say what I think about everything that happened with the Jack the Ripper case.

[00:18:59] I can even tell you that I could identify who it is, which is a hell of a thing to

[00:19:04] say in a book.

[00:19:07] But he said it is not good form to undercut the etc., etc., ongoing investigation, whatever.

[00:19:15] And he didn't say that.

[00:19:18] Look, to me, why am I picturing Nigel Bruce tiff-tossing this over his eggs and bacon?

[00:19:28] Okay.

[00:19:29] I'm dead.

[00:19:29] I'm dead because now that's all I'm seeing.

[00:19:33] So thanks a lot, Jim.

[00:19:37] But I am.

[00:19:38] That's what I think.

[00:19:39] And the thing is that Swanson described out what the guy's actually talking about.

[00:19:46] That there was a suspect.

[00:19:48] The suspect had been identified by an eyewitness.

[00:19:52] The suspect knew he had been identified by a witness, but the witness would not make an

[00:19:58] official claim because they were both Jews.

[00:20:04] And the witness was afraid of causing a hysteria, not for his own safety, but he was afraid.

[00:20:12] Given the history of Jews and violence, you know what?

[00:20:16] I'm not surprised.

[00:20:17] And I don't know if I blame the guy.

[00:20:19] Okay.

[00:20:20] I'll tell you that point.

[00:20:21] Yeah.

[00:20:22] According to the Swanson marginalia, this man who was under observation for deranged mental

[00:20:29] health, he had tried to attack someone with a knife and he was taken in.

[00:20:34] He was also one of the reasons that he was under therapy was he was quote,

[00:20:39] prone to solitary vices.

[00:20:42] Oh, okay.

[00:20:45] Yeah.

[00:20:46] Yeah.

[00:20:48] He was released.

[00:20:50] He was released and he was put under watch night and day.

[00:20:55] Then he had a mental breakdown and he was bound up and he was taken to a workout where

[00:21:03] he was put under protective observation.

[00:21:05] He went crazy in there too.

[00:21:07] And then he was put into a lunatic asylum where he died in the 19th.

[00:21:12] Now this is from Donald Swanson.

[00:21:14] This was the Swanson marginalia.

[00:21:17] Once you start, you take a look at exactly what you have some very strong suspects emerge.

[00:21:23] If you're listening to the murder sheet, you love true crime.

[00:21:26] That means you're willing to stare into the darkest places in order to seek the truth.

[00:21:31] There's a truth in fictional darkness too, namely horror and thriller stories that tap into our

[00:21:36] morbid sides.

[00:21:37] Well, if that sounds interesting to you, we'd encourage you to pick up a copy of Penny Black,

[00:21:42] a collection of stories from riparologist and fiction author Jim McKenna.

[00:21:45] I'm a big fan of collections of short stories.

[00:21:48] I love the punch that a short story can pack, the brief chili immersion into new worlds.

[00:21:53] My favorite stories here are probably The Space Between the Stars,

[00:21:57] a haunting tale about a sheriff investigating a backcountry murder who stumbles onto something

[00:22:01] much, much worse.

[00:22:03] Along with Penny and the Wolf, a story about ranchers facing supernatural terror.

[00:22:07] I just love the way Jim blends horror and action in this book.

[00:22:11] We bought the book and we've really enjoyed it.

[00:22:13] We just tore through the stories and it's a welcome addition to our admittedly already

[00:22:18] too large library.

[00:22:19] If it sounds interesting, we'd strongly recommend it to you.

[00:22:22] We think Jim is great and we love supporting talented independent fiction writers.

[00:22:27] It's the perfect gift for the horror lover in your life, or you can treat yourself to it if

[00:22:31] you'd like to experience spooky, spine-tingling terror and dread, but like in a cozy way,

[00:22:37] reading on your couch on a dark rainy day.

[00:22:39] We'll link to the Amazon page in our show notes.

[00:22:41] I wanted to go one more place before I identify who I think, who I think.

[00:22:48] A few years ago, a shawl appeared, purportedly owned by Catherine Edo.

[00:22:53] This has been lurking around for a while according to the idea that there was a police constable

[00:22:59] on the scene in Miter Square.

[00:23:01] He had taken the shawl and he hid it away.

[00:23:06] It was passed down through his family as being one of the murder victims.

[00:23:10] It was sold at auction in I think the 1990s, late 1990s and then DNA tests were done on it.

[00:23:20] According to this was when in 2015, I think in 2017, they announced that they had solved

[00:23:26] the murder, that they had identified Catherine Edo's familial DNA on the shawl and identified

[00:23:36] a killer.

[00:23:38] Both of them based on some kind of family thing, but I don't believe it and I'm not just saying

[00:23:45] that because I don't want my misbroken, okay?

[00:23:48] I was very excited when this happened for a reason that I'm going to drop, but the

[00:23:53] thing is that they were up to something.

[00:23:56] They refused to give any of the scientific information out.

[00:24:00] They refused to have their studies and information peer reviewed, the methodology

[00:24:05] behind it getting the DNA and what they were identifying as a DNA profile turned out to be

[00:24:12] very small and subject to a very large segment of the population.

[00:24:17] And then they just ban it and refuse to talk about it anymore, which is weird.

[00:24:23] Very suspicious frankly.

[00:24:26] However, I would have probably liked to hop up on a soapbox and jump up and down

[00:24:31] because they identified my suspect.

[00:24:34] And that suspect is also the name that was given in the Swanson Marginalia.

[00:24:39] It was also in something called the Mignotin Memoranda and that name is

[00:24:44] Kosminski, specifically Aaron Kosminski.

[00:24:51] But again, we've got to go into the weeds on this thing because there's problems with

[00:24:56] identifying.

[00:24:58] He is often confused with two and possibly even three other people.

[00:25:03] And a wonderful researcher named Martin Fido in the late 1980s and into the 1990s,

[00:25:11] following this theory that Kosminski was the suspect, which is the line that's in

[00:25:16] the Mignotin Memoranda.

[00:25:19] He actually went to find the old asylum record and he found them.

[00:25:25] And over a month, he painstakingly looked through all of them to try to find the

[00:25:30] name.

[00:25:31] And at first he failed.

[00:25:34] And then when it came back with a different spelling, he did actually find something.

[00:25:40] And then that was kind of associated with another name.

[00:25:46] And that name was Kosminski.

[00:25:48] So Kosminski, Kosminski.

[00:25:51] And then another third name called Aaron Cohen.

[00:25:54] If this is all confusing to you, good because it's a very different name.

[00:25:59] Good because it is confusing.

[00:26:01] All right, I could sit here with a laser pointer and a poster board and I still

[00:26:07] can't quite explain it correctly.

[00:26:09] But the idea is that because of mismanaged records,

[00:26:15] miscellings of names, and an unsure ongoing record of interrogation in reports,

[00:26:23] we don't exactly know which Aaron Kosminski were talking about, what his origin was,

[00:26:29] or when he was exactly apprehended.

[00:26:33] But if I had to put somebody's name to this, it would be Aaron Kosminski.

[00:26:39] He fits pretty well.

[00:26:42] Tell us about him.

[00:26:44] Well, he was a Polish immigrant escaping the pogrom in Poland.

[00:26:52] Pogrom, by the way, was the persecution of Polish Jewry by the Russians at that time.

[00:26:59] And they were seeking asylum and granted asylum in Great Britain.

[00:27:04] He came over and first worked as a hairdresser, which sounds odd, but there you go.

[00:27:10] And a barber.

[00:27:12] He started demonstrating very wild and erratic behavior.

[00:27:16] He started talking nonsense.

[00:27:19] He started acting out in ways that were violent if anyone touched him.

[00:27:24] He became obsessed with food, so much so that he would not allow himself to be fed

[00:27:31] and would only eat food he found on the street.

[00:27:35] All right, which is really strange.

[00:27:38] He developed some kind of an intense persecution complex that was not really defined.

[00:27:46] And like I said, let's throw in the solitary vices.

[00:27:49] For that, it was either his wife or a common law wife that he eventually tried to attack

[00:27:55] and stab for the night.

[00:27:57] That's what ended, that's what put him in the asylum.

[00:28:01] It was during that time that a witness who had seen the fourth or the third victim,

[00:28:09] Elizabeth Stride, talking to someone on the street, a man named Lowende,

[00:28:14] he said, he got a really good look at this guy.

[00:28:17] They took him to a place, something called the Seaside Home, which was a kind of convalescent

[00:28:24] home for police officers that had just been built.

[00:28:27] And then they took Cosminski out of the asylum and they brought him there so he could see the guy.

[00:28:33] And according to Anderson and the Swanson marginalia,

[00:28:38] he identified him but was not officially swear to it.

[00:28:42] So the exact reason that put him at the seams of different crimes, well frankly we don't know, it's gone.

[00:28:50] But there was enough reason that three of the top officials in charge of the investigation

[00:28:58] all had him on their shortlist.

[00:29:00] Swanson for his part actually named him as that's the guy.

[00:29:05] You see?

[00:29:06] So are there gaps in there?

[00:29:09] Absolutely.

[00:29:11] And I have known about Cosminski for a long time and I've rolled with it, I've discounted it.

[00:29:20] There is another story that exactly goes along with this, the story of a man named David Cohen.

[00:29:29] David Cohen was a raiding lunatic who a couple of weeks after, oh by the way all of these arrests

[00:29:35] and taken out of society and things, they happened just a few weeks after Mary Kelly was killed.

[00:29:42] So it took him off the board.

[00:29:46] That's the thing I forgot to mention.

[00:29:48] You see what I mean?

[00:29:50] So David Cohen is another example.

[00:29:53] Now he was a man who was found raiding in the street and he was insanely violent.

[00:29:59] Again we have a lot of missing records but it took a long time for him to get over the

[00:30:05] psychotic episode and arguably if he ever did at all because we don't have an exact record of it

[00:30:10] but apparently he died while still in things.

[00:30:14] Or did he?

[00:30:15] Because there has been speculation that the records of Cosminski,

[00:30:21] Cosminski, David Cohen have been mixed up.

[00:30:26] And one person may reference person A just somebody who thinks they're talking about

[00:30:34] person B you see and is saying oh yeah well he told me person A was this and that's not what he said at all.

[00:30:43] You see it's kind of like if you're trying to identify where Kevin went

[00:30:49] and somebody misidentified him as me and they gave my whereabouts.

[00:30:55] Oh man.

[00:30:56] Yeah I know.

[00:30:59] Okay.

[00:31:00] Yeah.

[00:31:01] So if I had to lock down on one is that my favorite suspect as far as a likely one I want to say yes.

[00:31:10] I spent a lot of time with another guy named William Berry, B-U-R-Y.

[00:31:16] And I've written quite a bit about him.

[00:31:19] He is a remarkable suspect in my mind to this day.

[00:31:23] He was an abusive alcoholic who lived with his wife right there in just kind of south of Spittlefield.

[00:31:33] The reason that and I suppose I just have to put it this way the reason that he is a

[00:31:40] suspect that I really like is because he had a horse and a cart.

[00:31:45] All right now follow me on this.

[00:31:47] His job was he delivered sawdust.

[00:31:50] He was a sawdust man and he delivered sawdust to different places around Whitechap.

[00:31:55] Picked it up in the morning, delivered it late at night to slaughterhouses and other places

[00:32:00] that would use it as an absorbent on their floor.

[00:32:03] He was known to be very violent.

[00:32:04] He attacked people with knives a couple of different times getting into fights,

[00:32:08] tried to kill his wife.

[00:32:10] She stayed with him and shortly after the death of Mary Kelly he had had enough

[00:32:17] and he moved away.

[00:32:19] He moved to Dundee, Scotland.

[00:32:22] Shortly thereafter he murdered his wife.

[00:32:25] He murdered his wife and he cut up her abdomen pretty bad.

[00:32:31] When the police noticed a smell or a smell was reported they went in and they investigated

[00:32:40] his house and they walked down into the cellar of this house and they found the body.

[00:32:46] What they also found written in chalk on one of the doors,

[00:32:50] where the word Jack the Ripper is behind these doors.

[00:32:57] I think that he is a dark horse candidate and the reason I keep

[00:33:02] that I said about the cart and the horse.

[00:33:05] First off before I do that there were a lot of cryptic comments that his wife had made

[00:33:10] about the Whitechap murders because they were gossiping with their new neighbors.

[00:33:15] She made a lot of strange comments about how she knew for a fact that they were over

[00:33:19] that Jack the Ripper is gone now.

[00:33:23] And there was other things that are just cryptic, kind of creepy and cryptic.

[00:33:27] There was another thing that caught my attention is that in the real heat waves of these crimes

[00:33:35] when the bodies would be discovered a lot of times they were freshly dead and police

[00:33:40] were fanning out all over the place and they were looking for people who were moving down the street.

[00:33:46] I don't think they were looking at horses and carts.

[00:33:50] I think they were looking around them at the people who were sculpting down the way

[00:33:55] and if you want to move secretly and hide in plain sight in Whitechapel

[00:33:59] then don't be a pedestrian and that stuck with me since I was 20 years old.

[00:34:05] Is it right? I don't know but there you have it.

[00:34:09] Geez. How do you keep all of this straight? Because so much of what you've been saying,

[00:34:15] I mean everything from maybe suspects records getting confused and people weighing in with

[00:34:22] DNA and then vanishing. I mean how do you try to and it really sounds I commend you for this.

[00:34:28] It really sounds like you've really tried to kind of take everything with a grain of salt.

[00:34:33] You're not becoming emotionally invested in one POI which is something we've seen in plenty of cases

[00:34:39] where people can do that. How do you maintain that balance and also keep all this information straight?

[00:34:47] Yeah, it's a lot. I'm a sucker for pretty much any Jack the Ripper book that comes out

[00:34:53] whether I keep it for a long time or not. I said to my wife once I think I've read

[00:34:59] the coroner's inquest of Pauline Nichols more times than I saw my parents give.

[00:35:05] After a while things just become semantically significant in different ways. How do I balance it?

[00:35:11] I have kept a series of different records and files when I was in high school. I had a

[00:35:18] Ripper file in a three-wing Empire Strikes Backfinder. When the computer age came I started

[00:35:25] keeping my own files and records that way. I have a spreadsheet index of names that I've created and when

[00:35:33] a new one shows up from a source I will drop it in there and then start doing research on it when

[00:35:38] I have time. I will become good at selecting different avenues to pursue knowing that the

[00:35:46] only thing I'm going to really do with this is to tuck it away. It may mean something,

[00:35:50] it may not. It's just something I like. I like deep complicated hobbies. I'm not an athletic

[00:35:58] man so I like to do things that are inflectively challenging. For a while there I got really into

[00:36:05] the American Civil War and I spent a lot of years researching and studying that phenomenon and then

[00:36:11] I let it go because it didn't interest me anymore. I'm fascinated with the works of William

[00:36:17] Shakespeare and I give him to all of the time. There are other true crime cases that I follow

[00:36:22] from Lizzie Borden as a fascinating one that I've done a lot of research on, the Act Man of New Orleans

[00:36:28] or the Cleveland Torso murders. I like the unsolved ones obviously. The important thing is to be

[00:36:33] realistic and don't get mad at people if they don't agree with me or if they say something

[00:36:39] that I think is silly. Just comment and move on. I kind of learned my lesson on

[00:36:44] sharing things in forums. I will write essays but I almost never read the commentary on them because

[00:36:50] sometimes the critique becomes ad hominem attacks and I'm not really, I don't deserve that and I

[00:36:56] don't think anyone else does either. Patricia Cornwall is a good example of somebody who has

[00:37:01] been subject to a lot of criticism. I disagree with her methodology but I don't disagree with

[00:37:09] her as a person. I think that she did her best. I think the problem that he had was she came into it

[00:37:17] wanting to identify Walter Sticker as the ripper and not, I want to find out who the ripper is.

[00:37:26] Okay and that's a big difference. I am also very well aware of something that is

[00:37:34] cold and silent and that is this. He got away with it. He got away with it. It's 135 years on.

[00:37:44] He will never be bought to trial. There will never be sufficient evidence that conclusively proves

[00:37:51] that he did it unless there's unknown time travel drone footage that I'm not aware of.

[00:37:57] All right. He got away with it and I cannot do anything about that in the end. I can look at

[00:38:06] it with fascination. I can write about the cultural impact of the ripper on film and media

[00:38:13] and popular culture. I can write about suspects. I get the delicious opportunity to look into

[00:38:19] where they were from and what their lives were like which is wonderful. So I'm well

[00:38:23] set on this but my expectations are reasonable and frankly low.

[00:38:28] I mean it's so fascinating to me because so much of what we've talked about today

[00:38:34] just kind of makes me, I don't know in an odd way feel a little bit better about our current times

[00:38:40] because sometimes I frankly despair of true crime circles on the internet and everything gets so

[00:38:47] crazy and there's so much rampant speculation and people doing horrible things like just making

[00:38:52] stuff up or doing crank work and even some of the violence that you see happening in the United

[00:39:02] States and around the world but things like this do remind you that everything has always been terrible

[00:39:08] in different ways but around true crime the behavior that a lot of human being sort of

[00:39:15] display on that can be pretty bizarre and counterproductive I guess to put it diplomatically.

[00:39:23] Yeah, I think that one thing that I've written quite a few books all of them are fiction. However,

[00:39:30] I've written a lot of Word essays articles what whitechapel.org called dissertation okay whatever

[00:39:38] on the case over the years but I've never written a book and I thought about it and I'm still now

[00:39:46] that I'm doing that for a living now I'm considering it but I think that if I was to do that

[00:39:56] it would be more of a broader view of the whitechapel murders as a touchstone experience

[00:40:06] in western culture and western history a larger a larger theme I would not do that awkward clumsy

[00:40:13] dance of trying to identify a specific suspect which I think is hard it's difficult and you

[00:40:22] you know even with the Aaron Cosmis you heard me with the name you drop so quickly into

[00:40:30] to hear say in speculation and at the end you just don't know what I do know is worth talking about

[00:40:41] and worth writing about and that is what the east end of London was like what the lives of these

[00:40:47] women were like and how that has changed the lens and the focus of pop culture true crime

[00:40:56] and and other things to this day I would strongly encourage you to write that because I think that

[00:41:04] would be fascinating to read well you're not the only one I was talking about this to my wife

[00:41:11] yesterday maybe day before yesterday and she does what she always does on this she she looked

[00:41:17] up from her book and said you know I really think you should do that not a twice and went

[00:41:20] back to her business and let me go about it she gives me a lot of white robot that's kind of a

[00:41:28] oh man I think she was thinking wow that means you wouldn't talk to me about it yeah you should

[00:41:33] do that you could do that right now ring him up I mean you're so well spoken on this subject

[00:41:43] and I just feel like I would be very interested to read your thoughts just the storytelling you've

[00:41:47] displayed in our interview makes me yeah thank you you know what I'm going to put a pin on that it may

[00:41:54] it may happen I have to ask you or you're an author and where can people if they're intrigued by some

[00:42:00] of you know what you've been saying and sort of might want to read some of your work where can

[00:42:06] they go well I have been writing under pseudonym on amazon and Kindle for a couple of years now

[00:42:13] and I have a lot of those a lot of books out there and I've been really happy with my progress

[00:42:18] but that's not me technically so so there I do have a book coming out under my own name

[00:42:26] and it is a collection of horror stories actually it's their long-form novellas

[00:42:32] and all featuring a central character and her name is penny black and that will be

[00:42:39] my first book under my own name penny black by the way is the name of the world's first

[00:42:46] adhesive postage stamp it has queen victoria on it wow so that's going to be coming out

[00:42:54] it'll be available on amazon under jim mckenna I'm really excited about that this has been

[00:43:00] delightful I mean this is I mean it's such an upsetting and awful topic but I really enjoyed

[00:43:05] this conversation I know Kevin did too and we just want to thank you for taking the time to

[00:43:10] speak with us and like share your expertise on this case with us you're welcome and it has been a

[00:43:15] pleasure to talk to you I've been a fanboy of yours for a while and I like I like what you do

[00:43:22] and I like the integrity that you do it with there are a couple of podcasters that I like they

[00:43:28] have a certain kind of organic integrity to what they do you two are certainly one of them

[00:43:34] the other one if you want sort of a comparison there's one called philifornia dream this lady who

[00:43:39] speaks really from the heart and sometimes with some very snarky hilarious opinions about

[00:43:45] crimes and the thing is that her integrity and your integrity fascinates me thank you

[00:43:53] we really appreciate that and we're going to have to check out that show I love the name

[00:43:57] yeah but yeah yeah her series on the serial arsonist the california serial arsonist is fantastic

[00:44:06] thanks again to Jim he's not only a great guest but he's been a wonderful supporter of our show

[00:44:11] going way back by penny black and the other books we mentioned they're linked to in our show notes

[00:44:18] thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of

[00:44:22] the cases we cover please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com if you have actionable information

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