The Suspects

There were few suspects actually considered by reason of evidence found at any of the crime scenes. Most of the suspects came to light in the lull after the murder of Mary Kelly, when the police had the time to piece together the evidence and consider who might be responsible.

F.B.I. Psychological Profile of Jack the Ripper

• White male, aged 28 to 36, living or working in the Whitechapel area.

• In childhood, there was an absent or passive father figure.

• The killer probably had a profession in which he could legally experience his destructive tendencies.

• Jack the Ripper probably ceased his killing because he was either arrested for some other crime, or felt himself close to being discovered as the killer.

• The killer probably had some sort of physical defect (or illness) which was the source of a great deal of frustration or anger

With the passage of time the list of suspects has grown and the possibility of us ever knowing who actually committed the crimes has diminished.

Below are listed the suspects and the reasons to suspect them or eliminate them from the list.

John Pizer

John Pizer was a shoe maker, living at 22 Mulberry Lane. Pizer's claim to fame came from the fact that his nick name for many years prior to the crime was "Leather Apron".

When a leather apron was found hanging on a water spigot in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, a hue and cry went up by the populace. In the confusion and rumor mongering that ensued, Pizer was immediately labeled a suspect by the community.

There were gangs of citizens actually wandering the streets of London in a vigilante effort to find the murderer. If one of them had run across Pizer his fate would have certainly been in doubt.

Pizer, not being a stupid man, took to hiding until Sargent Thicke arrested him at 9 AM on the Monday morning following the murder of Annie Chapman.

He was subsequently released for lack of evidence as his alibi was found to be solid.

Pizer request to be present at the inquest of Annie Chapman, in an effort to clear his name. He stated in court that he was not present in the area on the night of the murder and presented witnesses to that effect.

Even though he was cleared of any connection to the murders, there were those on the police force who continued to view him as a suspect..

Joseph Barnett

Joseph Barnett may have been a suspect in the murder of Mary Kelly but he was never considered a suspect in the other murders until 1975 when a writer by the name of Bruce Paley first introduced the idea.

After meticulous research and with attention to detail, Paley published his book, "Jack The Ripper: The Simple Truth", in 1995.

Paley purposed that Barnett was madly in love with Kelly and in an effort to "scare" her off the streets, killed the other women. When this did not work he ended up killing Kelly.

Paley makes a very strong case and his evidence is well researched and thought out. any serious list of suspects must now include Barnett.

The strongest indicator is the physical description of Barnett compared to the witnesses. He bares a striking resemblance to their accounts.

George Chapman
a.k.a. Severin Antoniovich Klosowski

Detective Inspector Abberline considered Chapman to be his own personal choice as the Whitechapel killer.

He only admitted this after Chapman was hung on April 07, 1903 for the murder of three of his wives. How he came to the attention of the Inspector is unknown by this writer.

George Chapman was born Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, in the Polish village of Nargornak on December 14, 1865 to Antonio and Emile Klosowski.

He received medical training in Warsaw and may have actually trained as a surgeon.

The best estimate of his arrival in England is sometime after February 1887, as a receipt for hospital fees paid by Klosowski in Warsaw shows he was still there at the time.

Although he had medical knowledge and has since proved his ability to kill, one wonders if he his ability to speak English was sufficient to have committed the murders? Several witnesses heard the killer speak and his Polish accent would have been immediately apparent, yet none mentioned that he sounded like a foreigner. One witness did say that the suspect "looked" like a foreigner but we have no idea what they meant by this.

The major point of difference between the murders he was hung for and the Whitechapel murders is the method of execution. He poisoned his wives and the Ripper used a knife and force to succumb his victims. Though it is not unheard of for a serial killer to change his "Modus Operendi" it is unusual. Serial killers are generally of above average intelligence and learn from their mistakes, this is one of the reasons they are so hard to catch.

Montague John Druitt

Montague John Druitt first came to the attention of the London police on December 31 1888, when his body was found floating in the Thames River.

Henry Winslade, a waterman on off Thorneycroft's Wharf in the Thames, discovered the decomposed body around 1:00 PM that day, bringing it ashore and notifying the authorities.

Constable George Moulston 216T, made a complete listing of possessions found on the corpse:

• Four large stones in each pocket
• £2.17s.2d cash
• A check for £50 and another for £16
• Silver watch on a gold chain with a spade guinea as a seal
• Pair of kid gloves
• White handkerchief
• First-class half-season rail ticket from Blackheath to London
• Second-half return ticket from Hammersmith to Charing Cross dated December 1, 1888

He had apparently committed suicide by putting stones in his pockets and jumping into the river in a state of depression.

When his rooms were searched a suicide note was found which said in part, "Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die."

His mother had been confined in Brook Asylum in Clapton in July of 1888 suffering from mental illness.

Other than the fact that he committed suicide near the time of the last murder and then they stopped, there is no other evidence that connects Druitt to the crimes.

He only slightly resembles the physical description given by witnesses being of slim build but athletic, he did though have a mustache.

Frederick Bailey Deeming

Frederick Deeming first came to the attention of the police as a suspect in the murders in 1892, when he confessed to being the killer while in an Australian jail awaiting execution for the murder of his second wife.

Frederick Bailey (also written Bayley) Deeming, born in 1842, was said to have had an unnaturally strong relationship with his mother. Upon her death in 1873, Deeming became emotionally distraught, and remained in such a state for quite some time afterward.

A sailor, Deeming one day while at sea, fell ill with a severe attack of "brain fever". On several occasions he is noted to have committed acts of a ludicrous nature and afterward claimed that his mother had told him to do it

Deeming was known to the Australian police mostly for financial matters, what we would call today a "paper hanger". He passed bad checks and devised various scams to part people from their money, there are no instances of violent behavior during these times.

After one failed scam he decided it was wise for him to move his family to England. Deeming at this time had a wife and four children by her.

They took up residence in Mersyside, Liverpool. And seemed to have a quiet and peaceful life until his family just seemed to disappear one day.

He told his neighbors that his wife and children had left him and he then returned to Australia.

A later occupant of the house, in an effort to find the source of a strange rancid smell, tore up the floor boards of the kitchen to find their remains. They had all been killed with a knife.

Upon returning to Australia, Deeming remarried but again his wife disappeared and he left his house on Christmas Day 1891 and went into hiding.

When the bodies of his first wife and children were found the authorities contacted the Australian authorities and they went to his house and found his second wife also under the floor boards.

Deeming was arrested in March of 1892 in Perth, Western Australia.

He was hanged on May 23 1892, and is claimed to have sung a little ditty while standing on the scaffold:

"On the twenty-first of May,
Frederick Deeming passed away;
On the scaffold he did say --
"Ta-ra-da-boom-di-ay!"
"Ta-ra-da-boom-di-ay!"
This is a happy day,
An East End holiday,
The Ripper's gone away."

Though it is doubted by many investigators, that Deeming was the Ripper, the fact is that the dates surrounding him are not at all correct. As is shown in the poem above.

He was in England during the time of the Whitechapel murders but there is no evidence except his own admission against him. Given the fact that many feel he was mentally insane his confession is suspect.

Michael Ostrog
a.k.a. Bertrand Ashley, Claude Clayton (Cayton), Dr. Grant, Max Grief Gosslar, Ashley Nabokoff, Orloff, Count Sobieski, Max Sobiekski, et alia.

Micheal Ostrog was well known to the police as can be seen by a summary of his criminal record below:

• 1863: While using the alias Max Grief (Kaife) Gosslar, Ostrog committed theft at Oxford college, and was soon after sentenced to ten months in prison.

• 1864: Convicted at Cambridge, sentenced to three months in prison. In July, appeared in Tunbridge Wells under the name Count Sobieski.

• Imprisoned in December of 1864, sentenced to eight months.

• 1866: Acquitted on charges of fraud, January 1866. On March 19th, stole a gold watch and other articles from a woman in Maidstone. Committed similar thefts in April.

• Arrested in August 1866, and sentenced to seven years in prison.

• 1873: Released from prison in May. Committed numerous other thefts, and subsequently arrested by Superintendent Oswell in Burton-on-Trent. Produced a revolver at the police station and nearly shot his captors.

• 1874: Convicted in January of 1874, sentenced to ten years in prison.

• 1883: Released from prison in August, 1883.

• 1887: Arrested for theft of a metal tankard in July. Sentenced to six months hard labor in September 1887.

• Listed as suffering from "mania" on September 30th, 1887.

• 1888: Released, March 10 1888, as "cured."  

• Mentioned in Police Gazette, October 1888, as a "dangerous man" who failed to report.

• Sentenced to two years imprisonment in Paris for theft, November 18th, 1888.

• 1891: Committed to the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum.

• 1894: Charged for an 1889 theft at Eton.

• 1898: Charged in Woolwich for theft of books.

• 1900: Imprisoned for theft of a microscope at London Hospital, Whitechapel. Known to be partially paralyzed by this time.

• 1904: Released from prison and entered St. Giles Christian Mission, Holborn.

• Nothing further is known of Ostrog after this time.

The first mention of his being a suspect in the Whitechapel murders though, was in the MacNaughton Memoranda written in 1894. Which states in part:

"Michael Ostrog, a mad Russian doctor and a convict and unquestionably a homicidal maniac. This man was said to have been habitually cruel to women, and for a long time was known to have carried about with him surgical knives and other instruments; his antecedents were of the very worst and his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactorily accounted for. He is still alive."

It is hard for this writer to find the reasoning behind his being a suspect. He is way to tall as can be seen in the description of him below. He would have stood out in any crowd.

He is also a career criminal, what we would call a "small time crook" today, who dealt exclusively in property items that could be easily pawned. Criminals can and do escalate the level of severity of their crimes but they generally stick to what they know and consider themselves good at.

We do know that he produced a firearm when arrested in 1873 and is purported to have tried to shoot his captors but the information indicating his physical condition or mental state at the time is lacking. He may have been drunk or in the midst of a period of mania. We just don't know.

How did this man escalate from petty crime to murder?

He may have been mentally ill but that does not mean that he is homicidal.

Physical Description of Ostrog

• Five foot, eleven inches in height.
• Dark brown hair.
• Grey eyes.
• Often dressed in a "semi-clerical" suit.
• Had a scar on right thumb and right shin
• Had numerous flogging marks on his back.
• Two large moles on right shoulder, one on the back of his neck.
• Described as a Russian, Russian Pole, and a Polish Jew at various times.

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream

Every list of suspects in the Ripper murders has to include Dr. Cream. Why I have no idea. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that he committed the murders.

The major fact that takes him out of the running is that he was in Joliet Prison, Illinois from 1881 to 1891.

He was charged and found guilty of the death of Matilda Clover, and was sentenced to hang on November 15, 1892. It is purported that he made a partial statement during the hanging that , "I am Jack....". He never finished the statement as the noose went tight at that very moment.

He is presented here only to satisfy those who think that he may have been the killer.

Francis Tumblety
a.k.a. J.H. Blackburn, Frank Townsend

Francis Tumblety has been a suspect since almost the beginning of the investigation.

Born in either Ireland or Canada (which is not known) in 1833, he was the youngest of eleven children.

While living in Rochester New york with his family, he is known to have peddled pornographic pictures on the canal boats that ran through the area, (c1845).

Sometime around the same period he also began working at a small drug store run by a Dr. Lispenard, and is said to have "carried on a medical business of a disreputable kind", as reported in the Rochester Democrat and Republican, December 03 1888.

Around 1850 (just before the death of his father), Francis left Rochester, and started his own practice as an Indian herb doctor, which seems to have been prosperous. 

He next shows up in Montreal in the fall of 1857, where he again made himself known as a prominent physician.

He was asked to run in the provincial elections of 1857-8, but declined the offer in what would become typical Tumblety fashion.

Tumblety was arrested on September 23, 1857 on the charge of attempting to abort the pregnancy of a local prostitute named Philomene Dumas. It was alleged that he sold her a bottle of pills and a liquid for the purpose, but Tumblety was released on October 1.

A verdict of ‘no true bill’ was reached on the 24th and no trial was ever undertaken.

In September of 1860, he  was again in trouble, when a patient named James Portmore died while taking medicine prescribed by Tumblety.

In his typical brazen fashion, Tumblety showed up at the coroner’s inquest and questioned Portmore’s widow himself as to the cause of death. 

Fearing the worst Tumblety fled to the town of Calais Maine.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Tumblety moved to the capital and put on the airs of a Union army surgeon, claiming to be friends with President Lincoln, General Grant, and a host of other well-known political figures.

He began wearing uniforms and medals that he was not entitled to and was arrested several times for it.

It was at this time that Tumblety’s alleged hatred for women became quite apparent, as seen in the testimony of a Colonel Dunham, who was one night invited to dinner by Tumblety:

"Someone asked why he had not invited some women to his dinner. His face instantly became as black as a thunder-cloud. He had a pack of cards in his hand, but he laid them down and said, almost savagely, 'No, Colonel, I don’t know any such cattle, and if I did I would, as your friend, sooner give you a dose of quick poison than take you into such danger.' He then broke into a homily on the sin and folly of dissipation, fiercely denounced all women and especially fallen women.

He then invited us into his office where he illustrated his lecture so to speak. One side of this room was entirely occupied with cases, outwardly resembling wardrobes. When the doors were opened quite a museum was revealed -- tiers of shelves with glass jars and cases, some round and others square, filled with all sorts of anatomical specimens. The ‘doctor’ placed on a table a dozen or more jars containing, as he said, the matrices (uteri) of every class of women. Nearly a half of one of these cases was occupied exclusively with these specimens.

Not long after this the ‘doctor’ was in my room when my Lieutenant-Colonel came in and commenced expatiating on the charms of a certain woman. In a moment, almost, the doctor was lecturing him and denouncing women. When he was asked why he hated women, he said that when quite a young man he fell desperately in love with a pretty girl, rather his senior, who promised to reciprocate his affection. After a brief courtship he married her. The honeymoon was not over when he noticed a disposition on the part of his wife to flirt with other men. He remonstrated, she kissed him, called him a dear jealous fool -- and he believed her. Happening one day to pass in a cab through the worst part of the town he saw his wife and a man enter a gloomy-looking house. Then he learned that before her marriage his wife had been an inmate of that and many similar houses. Then he gave up all womankind."

It was at this point that Tumblety began his many wanderings. He traveled between Europe and the United States many times and stayed for several years in England.

He returned to Liverpool in June of 1888, and once again found himself at odds with the police.

He was arrested on November 7th, 1888 on charges of gross indecency and indecent assault with force and arms against four men between July 27th and November 2. These are charges of homosexual acts which was illegal at the time.

Tumblety was then charged on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders on the 12th of November 1888. Tumblety received bail on November 16th, and a hearing was held on November 20th at the Old Bailey. The trial was postponed until December 10th.

Tumblety immediately fled to France under the alias ‘Frank Townsend’ on the 24th of November, and from there took the steamer La Bretagne to New York City.

New York authorities were informed of his impending arrival in the city and had the ports watched, but to no avail.

Many American newspapers reported that Scotland Yard had followed him across the Atlantic, and it is known that Inspector Andrews did follow a suspect to New York City around this time.

The next time he is heard of, 1893, he is again residing in Rochester New York. He does not seem to fall afoul of the law from here on in.

He died in 1903 and a collection of preserved uteri was found amongst his possessions.

Francis Thompson

I have no idea how Thompson ever came to be on the list of suspects but there are some interesting points brought out here, that should be considered. Wilder ideas have been investigated in this case.

Born on December 18th 1859, Francis Thompson was the son of Doctor Charles Thompson.

In 1870, Thompson enter a Catholic School and began studying for the priesthood. He progressed well and seemed to be an average student. He failed or quit (which is not known) and left the school in 1877.

Thompson then registered at the Machester Royal Infirmary in 1878 and studied as a surgeon. He seemed to only be adequate in this endeavor as he failed his medical exams three times finally giving up in 1885 and going to London.

In 1879, Thompson suffered from a severe lung infection and was prescribed Laudanum, which is an Opium derivative. He subsequently began addicted to opium. At this time his mother gave him a book, probably hoping that it would help him see the failings of the drug. The book was called, "Confessions of an Opium Eater" by De'Quincey. Thompson became enamoured of this writer and read everything he wrote. Of note should be a book written by De'Quincey in 1827, called "Murder Considered One of the Fine Arts".

Thompson arrived in London in 1885 and tried his hand at various jobs, seeming to master none of them. He then joined the army as a soldier but was released for the inability to master the drill.

It appears that from this time forward he becomes one of the homeless masses that wandered the streets of Whitechapel. It is rumored that he claimed to be in love with a prostitute but there is no evidence to support this.

What we do know is that he frequented the area around the landmark Christ Church erected in 1714. This seems to be a central point for all the killings.

Also of note is the fact that each one of the murders was committed on a feast day of a Saint;

• Mary Anne Nichols - Feast of St. Raymond - Patron St. of midwifes, children, child bearing and the innocent.
• Annie Chapman - Feast of St. Adrian - Patron St. of soldiers and butchers.
• Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes - Feast of St. Jerome - Patron St. of Doctors and scholars.
• Mary Kelly - Feast of St. Theodore - Patron St. of soldiers.
• All of these Saints were Eastern Crusaders.

Is there a religious connection to the murders and Jack the Ripper?

James Maybrick

There is such a vast amount of information on James Maybrick that this suspect will require his own page. Please use the link below.

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