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Trevor Marriott
This face reconstruction is based on a description of German merchant seaman Carl Feigenbaum contained in New York prison records. Feigenbaum is among scores of potential suspects in the 1888 "Jack the Ripper" murders.
A reconstruction of a murderer's face has reawakened interest in one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries: Who was the serial killer behind Britain's "Jack the Ripper" murders in 1888?
More than 100 suspects have been suggested over the years, including Lewis Carroll (author of "Alice in Wonderland") and Victorian painter Walter Sickert (who was fingered in a book by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell after a $4 million investigation). This week, the BBC is throwing a spotlight on a dark-horse candidate: German merchant seaman Carl Feigenbaum, who was executed in New York in 1896 for a totally different killing.
Feigenbaum was convicted for the murder of his landlady in Manhattan, and his attorney, Willam Sanford Lawton, said afterward that his client admitted to having an "all-absorbing passion ... to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way." It was Lawton who first suggested that Feigenbaum was behind the murders of women in London eight years earlier.
More than a century later, retired British police detective Trevor Marriott has put together Lawton's claims and other evidence to build a case against Feigenbaum, and the case received a big boost from the BBC One program "National Treasures Live."
Marriott matched up shipping records with the timing of some of the murders, and suggested that Feigenbaum's ship could have been docked in London at the time. He also argues that not all the killings attributed to Jack the Ripper were done by the same person, based on his analysis of the locations and the different ways in which the the victims were slashed to death.
The traditional lore surrounding Jack the Ripper is that he must have been familiar with anatomical dissection, because he removed the internal organs of his victims so quickly and skillfully. Marriott contends that the organs couldn't have been cut out at the scene of the crime, but were removed at the London mortuary by doctors in training.
To add a little spice to the story, Marriott provided the BBC (and Cosmic Log) with a reconstruction of Feigenbaum's face, based on a description of the suspect from his New York admittance form.
Does Marriott make his case? Xanthe Mallett, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Dundee who reported on the story for BBC One, says she's still on the fence. "Initially, I thought Carl Feigenbaum was that serial killer. His profile fit," she writes on the BBC website. "But further evidence ... may show these murders were not all committed by the same person. Feigenbaum could have been responsible for one, some or perhaps all."
Others put less stock in Marriott's hypothesis. In a detailed analysis published on "Casebook: Jack the Ripper," one of the best-known websites for Ripperology, Wolf Vanderlinden says Marriott's theory is "plausible but not proven":
"Could the Ripper have been a German sailor? Or an American sailor? Or a Portuguese sailor? Or a Malay sailor? Of course. Could he have been a butcher, baker, tinker, tailor, beggar man or thief? Of course. Could he have been Carl Feigenbaum? Not with the almost complete lack of evidence that has been presented to support his candidacy. Wishful thinking cannot solve this puzzle."
In an email, Marriott acknowledged that his theory has been a hard sell among "hard-line Ripperologists," particularly because of the dissection issue:
"The thought that the killer, after killing the victims, removed these organs has been an integral part of the Ripper mystery for 123 years. In fact it is one of the reasons that has kept the Ripper mystery alive all of these years. So of course there are those that for whatever reason want to keep it as it is and choose not to accept new findings."
What do you think? Will the mystery ever be solved, or will it continue to be one of the world's best-known unsolved "cold cases"? To add to the mystery, here are some links to past speculation in the case of Jack the Ripper:
- Analysts put a mustached face on Jack the Ripper
- Records shed light on the Ripper's victims
- History's greatest unsolved crimes
- Casebook: Jack the Ripper
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
The Ripper was a Chinaman?
That picture looks like Jackie Chan.
Nope, that's not him! Jack the Ripper is one of my co-workers! He's always letting a good ripper once in awhile!
That was my first thought too. He does NOT look German.
"Ah Dude, I believe the preferred nomenclature is Asian-American, please."
Except that Jack the Ripper wasn't American. As far as we know.
Good grief, what time period are you from? Chinaman? Come on into the 21st century, please.
Really....who cares what he looked like. Unless he's a vampire or a warlock he is dead and since the killings have stopped I would say he's dead.
"Asian-American?" The guy was from Europe, so I suppose you could say "Asian-European." But the U.S. is the only country that has a problem identifying race as race, and attempts to avoid the issue by coming up with this ridiculous hyphenation of continents.
...Anyway, I think he looks more Inuit than Oriental.
He does look Oriental. A bit hard to reconcile. However, my money's on Lewis Carroll -- he was one twisted dude, and I wouldn't doubt anything he might have done. I couldn't even stand Alice in Wonderland as a child, and it still gives me the creeps.
HappyinCA
Lighten up! He looks Chinese and is German thus Cathoryn was correct in combining the two nationalities together as Chinaman. Lol! I have your back Cathoryn.
No he wasnt a "Chinaman" but your're definitely an idiot.
give it time .Some knucklehead con willblame obama..just watch!
HAHA! Moneym@n, obviously these people have never seen The Big Lebowski. I thought the exact same thing when I read that post! :)
It's about drawing a line in the sand, dude
Au contraire, MAXX, some libtard will blame Bush.
your so right maxx! it will get political. LMAO
I've already trash-canned a couple of Obama/Bush comments, and I considered trash-canning this one on P.C. grounds as well ... but the comments are so interesting that I'll let it stand, unless people just can't abide the C-word. It sounds like you folks are being pretty level-headed about it so far, however. Stay classy, commenters.
lol stay classy? These freaks are throwin out chinaman and oriental like a bunch of bigots from the 30's. But hey, as long as the comments are "interesting", eh?
Moneym@n you're out of your element here, and that rug really tied the room together...
No that is Jack the Rapper! I have his latest album, "Only my momma luvs me but, she could be jivin too.
All right: Chinaperson. And while we're at, instead of German, it should be Gerperson, too.
Anyway, they'll never figure out who Jack the Ripper is. That's what makes the whole case interesting.
It's Keanu Reeves
Let's not fight over a word that wasn't invented as anything more than a description. "Chinaman" would indeed be what descendants of Chinese people would have been known as while Jack the Ripper was around. The word isn't used anymore, but I do find it surprising that he was an Asian.
Asian?... He looks kind of like Gary Ridgeway.
The Chinaman thing would be appropriate in this context, since it WAS 1888 after all ....
;)
The Ripper Case, one of the most interesting "unsolved" serial murder cases in the world and one of my favorite subjects for study and conjecture.
There was a book written 10-15 years ago by an FBI profiler that identified the ripper very convincingly.
Using modern profiling methods he identified the live-in male friend of the last prostitute killed (Mary Kelly?? I can't remember) as the real Jack the Ripper.
1. All the murders occurred near their rooms. A public water faucet located just around the corner from their rooms was used at least once by the Ripper to wash up.
2. He was known by all the prostitutes who were killed and he could have approached them without causing alarm.
3. He was a fishmonger and carried a fish filleting knife as part of his work kit. He had to carve up and gut the fish for the buyer.
4. He had a speech impediment, which the profiler said was common among serial killers. They usually have an impairment of one kind or another. There were also some family issues the profiler cited as typical but I don't remember what those were know.
5. He was interviewed twice by police, his interviews are preserved and make for very interesting reading.
6. The last murder was a locked room mystery. It occurred inside the prostitutes rooms, not on the street like the others. She was carved up and mutilated in a manner very different from the others indicating to the profiler there was a "emotional" quality to this murder lacking in the others.
7. The room was locked. This could be accomplished by someone who had their own key.
The author theorized (based on the testimony of another prostitute who was her close friend and confidante) that the final victim was getting ready to toss the male companion out. He wanted her to give up the trade but she had no other way of making money and her income was vital to their survival. He believes the suspect killed the first prostitute to scare the final victim out of the trade. According to her friend she was terrified by the killing. She could not read, but the suspect would by the newspaper (probably use it to wrap fish the next day) and read her all the gory details. When she persisted in her profession he killed the second and third prostitutes. Telling her all about it by reading the newspaper to her. If I remember correctly the final victim told her friend she was going to toss him out that night and she was found murdered the next day.
Neither the profiler or I understand why the police didn't arrest this fellow, but he certainly sounds like the guy.
I read Patricia Cornwall's book and was not impressed. I think the FBI profiler has correctly identified the Ripper. Case solved.
The most compelling aspect of his theory is the difference between the first victims and the final victim. They were all killed on the street and carved up in a "medical" way, not mutilated. The final victim was killed in her rooms, her body and face were slashed and her body mutilated more violently than the previous victims. Also, she shared the rooms with one of the male suspects whom she was supposedly going to toss out the night she was murdered. He carried a filleting knife and lived right in the middle of the murder area. Pretty good circumstantial case if you ask me.
No wonder he killed women. He was probably rejected quite often, thus, harboring a hatred toward women.
No, that guy is better looking than me and I still bang chicks my boss fawns over. Yeah.
He looks Chinese, not German.
Baldman Great response! You are exactly why I like reading the comments because guys like you put the spice in it. Thanks and I mean that because you really made me laugh!!! Keep up the good work!!!!
He doesn't look German, but he does look like a Hun as in Attila. The ending of his last name "baum" is decidedly jewish. It wouldn't surprise me that a retired Bobbie intent on insuring his pension would want to draw blame away from English Royalty. Murders wrong but I never thought the motive was against woman, but hookers. A cover up for indiscretions is a more likely scenario if it was a Royal.
So no I think it was not Feigenbaum & I don't care who killed some hookers over a hundred years ago why maybe but not so much who I guess they go together. Tell me what happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Who shot JFK & why? Accept I know it was the Federal Reserve / Roth family bankers, because JFK was getting ready to do away with the bank. Why doesn't our undocumented president have a birth certificate? It was a finely written article I'm just missing the type of investigating reporting I grew up with.
Baldman's response is great?!
Maybe to the other little boys. It wasn't at all funny....
Who cares who it was! What they gonna do hang his bones. Money could be used to figure out how to feed the world and rebuilding 3 world countries dispite what the U.S. economy looks like!
@Vanessa: take a chill pill and lighten up. As long as no diseases/cheating/unwanted pregnancy are involved, getting laid is fun for everyone.
Yeah, Spartan, it's all fun and games until someone catches a disease/cheats on their spouse/creates a child they don't want/looses an eye. How juvenile can you be? Casual sex gets a bad rap because all too often the things you listed are the result of such behavior. Sure, it's all fun until that happens. But just like any child, you do what you want and think "it could never happen to me" -- until it does. Vanessa is as entitled to her opinion as you are, so take your chill pill and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Well, it would be pretty hard for medical students to be the ones who first removed all the organs at a school since they had already been removed at the scene of the crime. That argument just doesn't make any sense.
Unless they hadn't been removed at the scene of the crime.. then it makes more sense
Ah someone with common sense refreshing
Remember that Wayne Williams probably didn't kill more than half the "Atlanta Strangler" victims. At least half may have been killed by their moms' domestic partners.
I'm only replying here because it won't allow me to reply to the first thread. I found the "chinaman" comment offensive. This society still has a long way to go.
No,this isn't the face of Jack the Ripper,but it's good for a story.
On the organ removal issue, Marriott provided some extended comments, and I quoted only a little part of it in the item. Here's more (which gets into some graphic details ... be aware of that):
Alan Boyle: ----- Male Bovine Fecal Matter !!!!!
That's all very well, Alan, but Marriott's argument still doesn't hold water. The organs were removed before the bodies ever reach the mortuaries. So unless Marriott is suggesting that the bodies were taken to the mortuary, butchered for the organs, and then dumped on the street again, he doesn't offer anything truly usable.
I assume the organ removal were discovered during the autopsy. Are you suggesting the official autopsies were done after the bodies had already been tempered with by medical students?
You are correct in that assumption the bodies of the victims who had orgams removed were taken from the crime scenes on handcarts and left unattended at the mortuaries for 12 hours before the doctors came to carry oiut the post mortems.
Bona fide medical personell cover not only medical students but antomists and doctors to
I am not a Ripperologist, but I have been fascinated by the story for many decades. I have seen many if not most of the TV specials and shows about the murders. A couple of years ago, there aired what I believe to be the DEFINITIVE explanation of the crimes. While at the moment I can't recall the show, it might've been on the HISTORY or DISCOVERY channel. The core of the claim was that the English police did in fact have the Ripper in custody, but didn't know it at the time. He was one of the original suspects at the time and he was incarcerated in an insane asylum while the investigation was still going on. He escaped from the institution, and fell off the English police's radar.
On this show a search was made for him and they claim that after the English murders he was traced to several American cities where a similar series of gruesome murders took place over the next several years. They claim that the time line for the American murders fits his appearance in these American cities exactly. The killer eventually made his way back to England where he was rearrested as an escaped mental patient and put back into an institution, but without any evidence or even knowledge of the American crimes or even of the English police's certainty of his guilt in the English murders. I believe that the evidence presented in this TV show is quite definitive, and is the best evidence to date of what actually happened - so much so that I am confident that the crime is now solved, but not acknowledged as such by the English authorities.
Speculation about what happened based on suppositions of medical prowess or any other connection is just that - and actual proof is impossible to come by. So far this hypothesis presented on this TV show seems to nail it all down and is absolutely the very best presentation that I've seen or heard. Therefore, for me the crime is solved. And the English police were actually on top of the thing all along contrary to the media's representation of them.
Ah, ok. At first I was having a difficult time wrapping my brain around this theory until I read Trevor's comment. Now it makes more sense!
Yes, thanks so much to Trevor for chiming in!!!
Alan,
Thanks to you for chiming in, as well. It's nice to see the article's author adding to the boards.
it will never ever be solved and thats what makes it so interesting and keeps people wondering and the fact that someone got away with it
Just a day or so ago, I read a quite detailed article about the analysis of Neanderthal DNA. If they can obtain and study, so carefully, DNA from many tens of thousands of years ago, why can they not study DNA from less than 150 years ago. I am assuming the location of the at least some bodies of the victims are known. Unless the killer was wearing surgical gloves (and maybe even then) they should be able to locate DNA from him/them/her/it. Identifying his DNA would be problematical, but Feingenbaum's body location as well as that of at least a few others others are probably known. In some cases, relatives might be willing to allow examination of DNA. I suggest starting with Queen Elizabeth. One of Queen Victoria's sons was a suspect (or so it has been rumoured.
Even if the killer left sufficient DNA of himself in or on the corps, the bodies have been buried over 150 years. That would only work if the body was fresher. You'll be hard pressed to match the victim's and the suspects' DNA from bones. The best they can get is the DNA of the victims themselves for ID.
I'm still confused about the claims with organ removal. Unless he's lying, Donald Rumbelow included photos of the mutilated women, at the scene of the crime. So, if that's the case, why then, would we say it occurred in the morgue? Are the photos mislabeled? It seems odd that, had it been done in an official capacity, no one took responsibility for removing the organs as part of their job. Also, doesn't it seem a big jump to have no organs removed at the crime scene, and then suddenly organs are removed at the morgue and people credit to to JTR? I don't know. I'm by no mmeans an expert, but this just seems a non sequitor, to me.
The bodies were mutilated at the scene but no one checked the bodies at the scene to ascertain if organs had been removed
It looks like the Governator.
too bad color photos didn't exsist back then, they said he could have been a german,american,portuguese or malay sailor but he could have been japanese,chinese,korean, or mexican sailor as well,either way he was a cleaver killer in history as well as the zodiac and maybe the black dahlia killer as well.
Discover Channel had a show where they brought in a forensic detective from New York to go over the Ripper cases again & try to piece it together.
He made a very strong argument for it being an escaped psychiatric patient named James Kelly, who learned his knife skills as an upholsterer.
After years on the lam & all the killings in England, similar Ripper-like murders began in NY.
After a few years, Kelly returned to the English asylum & claimed to have taken a ship to NY.
Who knows, but it was a very interesting show !
Terry H-33411
I agree the Discovery program was very persuasive.
It looks like one of Conan O'Brien's celebrity baby composites.
It looks like actor Charles Bronson.
I suspect everyone - and I suspect no one.....
How could we know now, the story is too old , no evidence only therory. You guys want to find who and how someone was killed. Try the Casey story and get justice for the little one.
Enough with Casey Anthony! She was NOT the only kid in the USA ever killed! Seriously. WTF?
there is no joy in mudville... for the mighty tot mom ...has snuck out...
LOL, plain bob! Good one.
Why should we focus on Casey Anthony? We already know she killed her daughter, but she can't be tried twice for the same crime. Looks like we're not the only ones who should move on!
@kaleidoscopeyes
You don't know that Casey Anthony killed her daughter. Were you there when Anthony killed Caylee? Do you have proof that indicts Anthony beyond a reasonable doubt? If not, then you just assume she killed Caylee.
We all know who killed the Casey baby.
We all know Casey had something to do with the death. Leaving your kid next to the pool and going shopping isn't the same as drowning her personally. The former is negligence (which is a crime but the prosecution was too stupid to charge her with it), the latter is murder.
Okay, Team Casey Anthony... point taken. You're absolutely right. I wasn't there. But neither were you (I assume) so you don't know that she didn't. Regardless, my point was she was found not guilty, so even if she did do it she can't be tried again (double jeopardy). People need to let it go and move on...
And anyway, this thread is about Jack the Ripper and I'm much more interested in that.
I wish people would focus on CURRENT crimes.
Let it freakin' rest already!
Yeah, I agree completely.
Have there been any more updates on DB Sweeney?
if you was hope'n for a jack tripper article...oh well...threes company fans...will just have to wait...
.... sorry, not a very interesting story , besides, Jack is long dead ...... the modern serial killer makes Jack the Ripper look like a choir boy.
None of his victims lived. No one saw anything. LOVE the speculation here.
What a stupid and pointless article..it's easy to build a case against a dead man when there are no remaining witnesses in the first place.
pathetic.
These women were ''ladies of the evening'' but did any or all of these transaction take place in a bar other than alley ways? because if so credible witnesses especially the bartender could have had seen him if say he JTR was conducting a ''business transaction''. in that era i believe there was always an empty room above said''bar''.