[Fire_fly]

I am doing a psychology project on Jack The Ripper. I need to write a report about his psycological make-up, and history. Do you have any information for me? Also, has there been any new evidence proving or disproving who actually committed the murders?
Thanks-

[chaz1797]

You know I always wondered who he was or for all we know he could be a she, but it interes me the findings on the Ripper so if you find some information to say, it would be appreciated

Thanks and best of wishes and God bless

Chaz :)

[Fire_fly]

Thanks for the reply. Check out "Portrait of a Killer, Jack the Ripper: Case Closed BY Patricia Cornwell.
It's a great book, it helped me with my research. :)
Fire_fly

[superman]

I read Jack The Ripper--Portrait of a Killer here is some more info:

It is without a doubt, Painter Walter Richard Sickert

*Sickert's genitlas were deformed, so many believe he may have been unable to have sex; which psychologically may have made him bitter toward sexually active women; hence, the prostitutes. When he had surgery on his genitals when he was 3; he had no one there to console him; the doctors basically tied him down like Frankenstein and did surgery on him without any painkillers, so you could see where he felt a lot of mental pain.

*He wasn't ever close to anybody, including his wives. He'd leave them at months at a time.

*Sickerts watermarks on his letters matched those of Jack The Ripper's

*Many of the places Sickert went to were places where Ripper letters were sent from.

*He was opposed to women's rights

*He painted dead prostitutes

*He was a loner and hard to get along with.

*He never really had an alibi!

Visit www.patriciacornwell.com

[serialwife]

Patricia Cornwell's book is a little far fetched just like the rest of her Fiction novels. The movie "From Hell" is just as likely to be true. However her are a few things that need to be considered.
The Ripper was an aristocrat due to the type of carriage that he rode in and the gifts found on the dead hookers. Fruit was a luxury item in that era and many of the hooker were found with grapes in their stomach content.
Secondly, there is a strong masonic tie to the Ripper murder pointing to a someone in the medical field. Many think it was the Prince of Englands doctor or even the Prince since he was suffering from severe dementia brought about by Syphilis.
Third, it could be something as simple as a midwife (ie Jill the Ripper) botching abortions.
Finally, it is important that we realize that over the years much of the forensic evidence of from the Ripper case has been stolen from the Yard. Cornwell's correlation as in someways correction.. I think Sickert probably did write the letters.. he profile suggests that his was so intelligent he would like to belittle the police.

[Lavaughn]

It has not been proven that the victims were killed anywhere else but where they were found, although the lack of blood around a couple leads one to suggest this. Also, only one eyewitness account mentions the possibility that one of the victims had grapes bought for her before completing her "transaction." The business of all 5 victims having grapes in their stomach contents is Hollywood make-believe, I'm afraid. In addition, we would do well to remember that no one has ever proven that the letter writer(s) and the killer were one and the same.

Lavaughn
Jack the Ripper and Me
www.jtrandme.blogspot.com

[serialwife]

Nothing in the Ripper case can be truly confirmed. No one can truly say the murders were in fact related, but there is a high correlation. Many of the bodies were left were they were killed others were dumped in alleys. If you look at some of the older books written by criminalist of the period they will give you more information on the victims and their stomach contents. We spent an entire school semester working the geographic profile of the Ripper.

[Lavaughn]

I would agree that it is hard to prove much of what happened then, and that forensic evidence is either too old or missing, leading to supposition rather than fact. But I have read many reports from the times, including the reports of Bond and Llewellyn, two doctors who performed autopsies. And from their notes are all the "facts" we are going to get. Everything else is theory. Yet, in their notes, the stomach contents section contains no mention of grapes. That is all I meant. A movie is all well and good, and theorizing how Jack got his victims compliant is also interesting to do, but just going by the evidence we have (the doctor's reports), it is not provable that any such thing like the movie posited happened. There is a difference between theorizing and going completely against established facts, like the movie does. And there is a difference between saying "you can't prove this" when the underlying facts either support that extrapolation or they don't. There is no proof that Mary Kelly was pregnant, as has been posited; neither is there proof that the victims even knew each other at all. There is also nothing to "prove" that Mary Kelly was really the woman killed last. But we do have her lover's identification of the body; thus, we would have to "start" by ignoring the identification of the body by the one person who knew Kelly best in order to suppose that Mary did not die at the hands of the Ripper. This is not to rule out the possibility, but it's dangerous to say "this is true, this is not" when the basics, such as autopsy reports, do not support this. Starting with Depp as Abberline (who was short, fat and middle-aged, not addicted to opium and died not of an overdose but of old age) and using many fictitious characters like Kidney, the movie was more in the spirit of the murders and the era rather than interested in putting forth a plausible explanation to the killings. I got my information about the stomach contents from:

Jack the Ripper A to Z by Paul Begg, Keith Skinner, and Martin Fido.
The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow
Jack the Ripper: Inquest of the Final Victim by John Smithkey III
The Casebook: Jack the Ripper at www.casebook.org

These are a good starting point for any interested party. The first book puts forth (as does Begg's recent Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History) the circumstances of the events of Autumn 1888 while resisting the temptation to name a suspect.

Your point about the positions of the bodies is a good one, since, as you say, we cannot know for sure whether the bodies were moved or not. A lack of blood at a couple of the crime scenes still makes me pause for thought. Why would he move one or two and not others? He obviously cared nothing about them being discovered. But then why kill Mary Kelly in her lodgings? It was only the coincidence of her being behind on her rent and MCarthy sending someone to get it from her that led to her being discovered so quickly.

I've been interested in this case for about 25 years now. It's still as fascinating as it was when I started.

[serialwife]

I don't believe any of the movies about Ripper. My point in that analogy was that the movie From Hell was just as likely to have happened as the information delivered in Mrs. Cornwell's novel.
It would not be an unlikely extrapolation that the victims could have possibly known one another. Due to the locations of the bodies and the territorial nature of prostitutes. The location were key in the profiling work we did. Yes, it is true that some of the crime scenes lacked sufficient blood. Leading one to believe the bodies were in fact moved. How he wooed his victims is not known.. probably never will be. We can't even with a reasonable degree of certainty actually tie all the bodies to one killer.
As for the question of the preganancy with the damage inflicted to the lady it is impossible to tell if she were pregnant or were not pregnant. Botched midwifery however is theory.