JACK’S WORLD - Part Three by Tour Guide Richard Walker

Hello this is Richard Walker again looking into the mystery of Jack the Ripper. In my previous post, I mentioned the idea that the murders arose out of a Royal Conspiracy revealed in 1973 by researchers for a BBC documentary.

Stephen Knight then used the conspiracy to create his blockbuster Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution in 1976.

Fourteen years later, in 1990, Jean Overton Fuller reworked it in Sickert And The Ripper Crimes.

Eleven years later, in 2001, the story was made into the film From Hell, starring Johnny Depp.

The very next year, in 2002, crime writer Patricia Cornwell presented her take on the tale. She focused on one of the characters in the story in Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed.

Fifteen years later she produced another title for the New York Times bestseller list with RIPPER: THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER SICKERT.

Patricia claims to have spent $600,000 buying up paintings by Walter Sickert to obtain his DNA.

It certainly brings Jack’s world into the modern world, and Patricia is not alone.

DNA was the magic ingredient that made Russell Edwards's 2014 book Naming Jack the Ripper a worldwide bestseller. And it’s quite a story.

A story that Russell sells with remarkable confidence. He says:

“I’ve spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitely solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now - we have unmasked him.”

Russell doesn’t just rely on DNA evidence to identify the killer as Aaron Kosminsky. He presents an eyewitness, Israel Schwartz, who Russell tells us “was considered then, and now, a very important witness.”

Who was Israel Schwartz?

In casebook.org Christopher Scott wrote:

Schwartz is potentially one of the most important, and certainly one of the most studied of witnesses in the Whitechapel case. On the night of the murder of Elizabeth Stride in Berner Street, Schwartz witnessed an altercation involving a woman he later identified as Stride and one, possibly two, men. According to Schwartz this incident occurred at 12.45 a.m. and on the exact spot where Stride's body was found fifteen minutes later.”

Russell says that the curator of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum, Alan McCormack, told him about a moment when the police arranged for Israel Schwartz to come face to face with a man they were holding at a Seaside Home on the south coast in 1890. Russel says;

Aaron Kosminski was placed in a room at the Seaside Home. Israel Schwartz was led into the room by a police officer and confronted with Kosminski. He was then immediately led out of the room and asked if this was the man he saw attacking Elizabeth Stride on the night of her murder. Alan McCormack was adamant that there was what he described as ‘an unhesitating ID’.”

Russell goes on to say:

The police asked Schwartz if he would be willing to testify to the fact, and he refused on the grounds that he could not bear to have it on his conscience that he had sent a fellow Jew to the gallows.

Now, before we examine this eyewitness evidence more closely, let me explain where the DNA evidence enters the story.

In 2007 Russell went to an auction in Bury St Edmunds. He writes: “Why was this auction so important to me?” He explains it was all because of “an old silk shawl, damaged, with pieces missing”. He thought it was beautiful.

But the real draw for him was its provenance. “According to the vendors’ family history, this shawl is purported to have been removed from Jack the Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes by his great-great uncle, Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson”.

Once he had the old silk shawl, Russell found a top scientist, Dr Jari Louhelainen, who became sufficiently excited by Russell and his project that he agreed to “do these tests in his own time for me, free, as long as he could write a paper on his findings when it was all over.

This is where the DNA testing began.

DNA testing is the one thing that everybody mentions when they talk about the book. It is the one thing featured in all those headlines that generated that massive international press launch for Naming Jack the Ripper.

DNA testing is science at its purist. If any scientific investigation requires total adherence to the scientific method, it is DNA testing.

The scientific method for acquiring knowledge requires careful observation and rigorous scepticism because our desire to make assumptions can distort how we interpret what we discover.

Now Dr. Jari is doing work for Russell that he says is very expensive. He’s doing it for free.

He’s doing it so “he could write a paper on his findings when it was all over.”

Like Naming Jack the Ripper, Jari’s academic paper could generate an interest that other academic papers would never achieve. Could there be a ‘desire to make assumptions’?

Another problem has been pointed out: Russel’s infectious enthusiasm has alerted Dr. Jari to just what it is that he is looking for.

The danger is that Dr. Jari will keep testing until he finally discovers what they are both looking for.

The problem could have been avoided if Russell had just handed over the shawl while saying, “Please examine this.”

No mention of Aaron Kosminski, Catherine Eddowes or - most important of all - no mention of that guaranteed headline grabber ‘Jack the Ripper’.

But then why would Dr. Jari agree to do the work for free?

Russell writes up the search for DNA with great spirit. It’s an exciting journey while always reminding the reader of Jari’s scientific approach.

As you may imagine, some experts expressed scepticism that a shawl examined in the early 21st century would be capable of providing any reliable DNA deposited on it in 1888. A lot of DNA would have accumulated as the shawl was handed around for over a hundred years.

More significantly, a mitochondrial expert from the Medical University of Innsbruck, Dr Hansi Weissensteiner, pointed out that mitochondrial DNA cannot be used to positively ID a suspect; it can only rule one out since thousands of other people could have had the same mitochondrial DNA.

We have to conclude that the DNA does not provide the irrefutable evidence that would allow Russell to announce, “This is it now - we have unmasked him.”

But, of course, there is the other evidence that Russell presents to support his case, the eyewitness evidence of Israel Schwartz.

Evidence that could not be offered to a court of law because, as Russell says, “The police asked Schwartz if he would be willing to testify to the fact, and he refused on the grounds that he could not bear to have it on his conscience that he had sent a fellow Jew to the gallows.

Now, Russell doesn’t mention one writer who was sufficiently aroused to respond to this allegation.

Writing under the pen name of ‘Mentor’ in The Jewish Chronicle, Mentor wrote:

“According to Sir Robert Anderson, the police "formed a theory" - usually the first essential to some blundering injustice. In this case, the police came to the conclusion that "Jack the Ripper" was a "low-class" Jew, and they so decided, Sir Robert says, because they believe "it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice". Was anything more nonsensical in the way of a theory ever conceived even in the brain of a policeman? Here was a whole neighbourhood, largely composed of Jews, in constant terror lest their womenfolk, whom Jewish men hold in particular regard - even "low-class" Jews do that - should be slain by some murderer who was stalking the district undiscovered. So terrified were many of the people - non-Jews as well as Jews - that they hastily moved away. And yet Sir Robert would have us believe that there were Jews who knew the person who was committing the abominable crimes and yet carefully shielded him from the police. A more wicked assertion to put into print, without the shadow of evidence, I have seldom seen.”

Surely, even the most ardent supporter of Russell Edwards would have to concede that ‘Mentor’ makes a good point.

But Russell goes on to say: “Even though Aaron Kosminski had been clearly identified, (Really? Clearly identified for Russell maybe.) the manner in which this identification was made was problematical, because to present it as evidence in court it would have to have been a full line-up of men from whom Kosminski was chosen. As a result, the police had the moral proof, but the legal proof was not good enough, a matter bemoaned by Robert Anderson.”

Robert Anderson may well have bemoaned this failure to convict after Israel Schwartz “clearly identified” Aaron Kosminski. However, it’s possible that another miscarriage of justice was averted.

Eyewitness evidence is not held in the same high regard that it once was, as can be shown by this excerpt from policinginsight.com posted on the 3rd of December 2022 by Dr Joanna Pozzulo, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

Eyewitness misidentification has been found to be the leading cause of known wrongful conviction, contributing to approximately 70% of known wrongful convictions that have been overturned by DNA testing. Eyewitness identification error - when a witness identifies an innocent suspect.”

We must keep in mind the fact that Berner Street was not well provided with gas lights and Isarel Schwartz was eager to get away from the altercation and  so didn’t stop to examine the man and the woman.

Then, he did not report his concerns to the police until the evening - that is, after the event had been reported in the newspapers.

Also, Israel was not rewarded with entry to the mortuary and a view of Elizabeth Stride until the next day.

Could he confidently assert it was the same woman with a gap of more than twenty hours?

But all that is as nothing when we consider that twenty months had elapsed between Israel Schwartz telling the story that he had been frightened by the sight of an angry man attacking a woman at a quarter to one on a gloomy Whitechapel morning and the moment when the police led Israel Schwartz into a room to confront the suspect.

Twenty months!

I doubt that in such circumstances, I could confidently identify a man I had passed after a gap of twenty minutes.

Twenty months between a fleeting nighttime sighting and an attempt at a shred of reliable eyewitness evidence.

Did the police seriously believe the result of this identification?

The scientific method for acquiring knowledge requires careful observation and rigorous scepticism because our desire to make assumptions can distort how we interpret what we discover.

Russell has a perfectly understandable ‘desire to make assumptions’. He spent an undisclosed sum of money and invested a lot of time and energy because, as he said, “I believed it was genuine, and I wanted it. I wanted it very badly”.

All of which may have challenged Russell’s rigorous scepticism.

Now, while questions can be asked about Russell’s credentials as a scientist, his business credentials are excellent.

According to the East Anglian Daily Times, the ‘undisclosed sum’ paid by Russell at the Bury St Edmunds auction back in 2007 was £5,200.

Seven years of research culminated in the launch of Naming Jack the Ripper, which attracted international publicity that was beyond the wildest dreams of 99% of all nonfiction and fiction authors.

Then, one year after the book launch, The Daily Mail of the 9th of July 2015 ran a story under this headline:

“Bloodied shawl worn by one of Jack the Ripper’s victims said to prove identity of serial killer goes to auction for £2.9 MILLION”.

“I believed it was genuine, and I wanted it. I wanted it very badly”. And with that kind of potential return on investment, I believe many of us would find that our ‘rigorous scepticism’ would wilt under our dynamic entrepreneurial ‘desire to make assumptions’ that indeed this shawl ‘was genuine’.

Thank you for checking out this post. I hope to meet you on one of my Jack the Ripper Whitechapel walks, which go out at 7 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays. This is Richard Walker saying goodbye.

Richard Walker