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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:
Hey, I'm a Chinaman, and I resent being called an Asian. We LOVE it!! Call us Chinamen, please!
I enjoyed reading each comment - it is amazing how supposed adults can act so much like wee bairns. The insults and and sly suggestions are comical. The comments are more entertaining than the actual article - no insult intended.
There are so many details that were left out of the police reports and evidence that no longer exists - how an anyone say they have the answer and keep a straight face? All the speculation in the world will not solve this crime. It is simply "science fiction" at this point in time. I like science fiction - however I live in the real world and know when something is not "real".
Wishing everyone a great day !!
Well, I hope the article was at least a little bit interesting. At least I learned something about 19th-century mortuary policy... ;-)
It was interesting - although, there were no revelations, it is good to consider different angles to the story. I simply have considered the reality of the situation and found that there is nothing to be done - forensically - that will ever solve this case. Unless and until there is a way to gather concrete evidence against an individual, speculation is all there will ever be.
The idea of DNA being used, as suggested, is ridiculous and impractical. The person who suggested it has no concept of how DNA works or that biological material deteriorates over time (a very short time) if not stored properly.
People in the world today, only live in the here and now - they don't know or care about how people lived in the past. This is evident in a lot of the statements above. They think that there has always been "running water" and "flushing toilets". To truly understand how a Nineteenth Century murder investigation was conducted - one must first understand the thoughts and ideals of that time period. The women who were murdered were "trash" and therefore the investigation was not carried out in the same manner as, say, the Sheriff's wife's murder would have been. On top of that there was not a protocol in evidence gathering, for future DNA retrieval in the future.
Hoping everyone has a grand day!!!
Look at the serial murderers we do know: they are usually from the same vicinity and "social strata" as their victims, i.e. they blend in, they know the area, they are known and trusted by their victims, they can enter and leave crime scenes without arousing suspicion. They are not foreign sailors, they are not celebrated artists (fluff novelist Patricia Cornhole has been sniffin' too much formaldehyde!!!), they are not members of "the Royal Family," and so forth, ad nauseum. Any homicide detective--unlike most fiction writers--will tell you: when you have a murder victim, look close to home.
Jack the Ripper is one of the most fascinating murder mysteries of all time. Too bad it's unsolvable.
Hey! Is that Joe Scarborough?
The drawing looks like an Eastern Asian person. Hmmmmmmmm
This theory is not knew at all.
It seems those who now present it have done very little research and analysis into the ripper case and the over all Whitechapel cases.
What is the possible point in this facial mockup?
Wish the news industry would ignore these overnight instant-experts and stop making them look credicble.
when i saw him my firts impression it was the french actor "ALAIN DELON"
Whatever. Patricia Cornwell solved this murder mistery. It was Walter Sickert. Read her book, "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper- Case Closed".
Awful book -- I tried to read it and was so bored I gave up about halfway through. She had already decided who did it and twisted what facts are known to fit her theory.
Seriously, why even bother with this? Does it matter anymore who did it? The world will never know, and you can theorize and guess all you want, but why? There is no correct answer to be found. Society tends to keep the darkest of the past alive, forgetting all the good that happened. Guess they have to feed the necrophiliacs their daily dose of death, be it memories or current affairs.
Has anyone ever considered the fact that the killer could have been a woman? I don't know the details of the case, but it seems to me that it's always assumed that a man is Jack the Ripper... maybe it was a woman disguised as a man (or not at all) - women would have been more trusting of fellow woman, and maybe if it was a woman she had an axe to grind for these ladies taking up with her man? Just throwing another line of discussion out there :)
Could it have been a jilted wife and it was actually Jacqulin the Ripper.
"Oriental"? "Chinaman?" I don't think you have to say "Asian American", but "Asian" is the correct racial term. You all must not live around a large Asian population. While I think we can overdo things, I also think we do need to be a bit more sensitive. Maybe the term "honky" or "white trash" could be considered acceptable if we have to resort to what I frankly consider offensive descriptors.
I find it interesting that you automatically assume that the people who posted those remarks were white...
Scotland Yard know exactly who the Ripper was but if the information becomes public what will happen to the scores of books, tours, and revenue generated by tourists? Better to keep the mystery alive is good business sense.
@Jack baptist, Calm down man! You are a bit too defensive of a child murder. Sounds like you would want to do it too. Someone should get your ISP address and keep an eye on you. Might just save a childs life one day. You really think of child murder as if it was a trip to the store or something? No big deal?
During the time of the killing, there had been several attempts by the English police to attribute the killings to someone other than a local person. People had a hard time believing that a "civilized" Englishman could be responsible for such butchery. The theory in this article seems to offer more of the same. Not all that different, I guess, from today, where every mass killing is first assumed to be by an immigrant or a Muslim.
Quite a few posts, by the way, show that people like to comment without reading the article. Sad.
Want to know what would be wierd? What if the Jack the Ripper murders were done by multiple people all using the Jack the Ripper name as a cover up, and all murdering and mutilating in similar ways. It could be more than one person in that sense. Kinda like some serial killer version of anonymous.
This was so long ago! Who cares? Come on people, get a life!
I tried to read it. Got about halfway through and was so bored with it, I gave up. She had already decided who JTR and was twisting the facts to fit her theory.
Interest article, but I agree, this guy sure looks more Asian than German!
Typical BBC @!$%#wittery.. I don’t know why Marriot should take credit for many of these ideas-the idea of organ removal in the mortuary, multiple killers, etc were floated years ago (by Karyo Magellan for one) and probably several others…it’s nothing new. Marriot does a dirty lawyer's trick and omits what is inconvenient to his case-that the killer most likely lived in the area, and, when overheard speaking , i think it was ‘You’re all right for what we talked about?’ he had an English accent.