On visiting the state archives in Bremen, Germany I discovered that all the crew lists for the Reiher and its voyages to London on all of the murder dates were all missing. Now I found this very strange when the archives contained hundreds of records of crew lists for almost every boat that sailed from Bremen, yet these few were missing. I had hoped that I would be able to identify a seaman, or seamen, who were on board that boat when it was docked in London on the dates of the murders. This turned out to be one of a number of instances where important Ripper related documents were found to be missing from official archives.
I then uncovered other murders, which occurred in the USA and Germany, and all took place after the cessation of the Whitechapel murders. They all occurred between 1891 and 1894. All had a very similar MO and fitted into a significant time pattern, all remained unsolved save for one which would become very significant and subsequently lead to a major breakthrough regarding the possible identity of the killer known as Jack the Ripper.
I have set out below the full list of all the murders in chronological order. The reports are as they appeared in the various newspapers of the day. As can be seen none of the dates overlap. This suggests that the same killer may have been responsible for some or all of the murders I have documented. I am fully aware that in some of these murders persons were arrested and interviewed. However, no one was ever charged so the cases were never officially closed, so an open mind must be kept when discussing them, when looking at the full catalogue of the unsolved murders.
Unfortunately, due to the passage of time there were no official police records left on any of the murders. The USA police records were only kept for a period of 75 years and then destroyed. The same applies with regards to prison records.
The full list of dates and locations of unsolved Ripper-like murders is as follows. These include the following details of the first two shown on the list:
Apr
1863
Central London
**
Dec 24th
1872
Central London
**
Aug 7th
1888
Whitechapel London
Aug 31st
1888
Whitechapel London
Sep 8th
1888
Whitechapel London
Sep 30th
1888
Whitechapel London
Nov 8th
1888
Whitechapel London
**
Jul 17th
1889
Whitechapel London
Oct
1889
Flensburg Germany
Apr 11th
1890
Wisconsin USA
Apr 28th
1890
Benthen Germany
Feb 13th
1891
Whitechapel London
Apr 24th
1891
Jersey City USA
**
Oct 25th
1891
Berlin Germany
Jan 31st
1892
New Jersey USA
Apr 3rd
1892
Berlin Germany
Aug 31st
1894
New York USA
** Denotes found murdered in a locked room
The last murder is the most interesting. This occurred on August 31st 1894 and the location was close to the scenes of the Carrie Brown murder on April 24th 1891 and the Elizabeth Senior murder on January 31st 1892. The most significant point in relation to this crime was that the perpetrator was apprehended moments after committing the murder whilst attempting to flee the scene of the crime. He was found with traces blood on his hands. The murder weapon, a long knife with a six inch highly sharpened blade was found nearby, and when examined by a doctor, had traces of what was believed to have been the blood of the victim. When a later search of the suspect’s room was conducted police found a cloth bag, which they suggested was the bag which the knife had been kept in. Also found in the room was a whetstone for sharpening the knife. The suspect had been residing with the victim and her son for only a few days as a lodger. Further enquiries showed that he had been travelling around the New York area as well as other parts of the USA.
The man arrested was later convicted and sentenced to death for this murder. After losing his appeal he was finally executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing Prison on April 27th 1896. The killer’s name was Carl Feigenbaum. He was known to have used several aliases around the country, one of which was Carl Zahn. This is suggested may have been his real name. Other aliases he was believed to have are Anton Zahn, and Carl Strohband. On examining this particular case closely and the antecedents of Feigenbaum and from all the facts I had gathered through my long protracted enquiry into the Whitechapel murders, my suspicions led me to suspect that this man could have been involved in the Whitechapel murders and may in fact have been the elusive Jack the Ripper.
At the time of his arrest Feigenbaum gave his age as 54, which would mean he was born in Germany around 1840. There are entries in the German merchant seaman’s register in the Bremen Archives for a Carl Feigenbaum born 1844. These show that up until 1878 he was employed as a merchant seaman for the Norddeutsche Line when they stopped keeping records. It should also be noted that in 1875 records show he deserted one ship in New York. Whether he then worked under another alias after 1878 or whether he went back to using his own name is not known.
Sadly the entries for this register did not continue after 1878. So we can prove that Feigenbaum had worked as a fireman on German merchant ships owned by the same merchant fleet that operated vessels between Bremen and London at the time of the Whitechapel murders.
Following his arrest in 1894 and subsequent execution in 1896 there were no more Ripper-like murders. From the aforementioned list setting out all the murders, it can be seen the first murder occurred in 1863. By reason of his approximate known birth date this would have put him at age 23 at the time of this murder.
The details of the New York murder of Juliana Hoffman in 1894 for which he was arrested are as follows, and are taken from a copy of the official court transcript given by the appeal court judge, which I purchased from the Court Archives:
“On the night of Friday, August 31, 1894, in a house on Sixth Street in the city of New York. The deceased, Juliana Hoffman a widow fifty-six years of age, was in the house with her son Michael, a boy sixteen years old, in two rooms on the first floor over a store of a building on Sixth Street, near Avenue A, in the city of New York. Carl Feigenbaum a German, who came to this country in 1891, a gardener by occupation, having no family here, and, prior to the homicide, had drifted about in the city of New York and vicinity, occasionally getting employment, but having no steady work, and was poor and often without means. He had lodgings from time to time at various places, sometimes paying in part therefore, and in other cases staying for a few days at a place and leaving without paying the sum agreed. On Wednesday, August 29, 1894, he applied to the deceased for a room, and arranged with her that he should occupy the back room of the two rooms of her apartment for a sleeping room, he to pay therefore one dollar a week, and Mrs. Hoffman was to furnish him breakfast, for which he was to pay her eight cents for each meal. He occupied the back room on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and on Friday evening, about ten o'clock, went to his room, which opened out of the front room, leaving the deceased and her son therein. During Friday evening, while the three were together in the front room, the deceased took from a closet in that room, which was left unlocked, a small pocket book and left the house to purchase some bread for her and her son's supper, and on her return placed the pocket book in the closet again. After the defendant had returned to his room the deceased and her son went to bed, the mother sleeping on a lounge on one side of the room near one of the two front windows, the son sleeping on a couch at the foot of, and at right angles to the lounge. The son was the
only person who was an eyewitness to anything, which occurred between the defendant and the deceased prior to the homicide. He was awakened about midnight, or a little after, by a scream from his mother. He then saw the defendant standing by the side of the lounge, with a knife in his hand, facing the deceased, who had partly raised herself up on the lounge. The son kicked at him and got out of bed, and the defendant then turned towards him with the upraised knife. The son fled to the front window furthest from the lounge, got out backward and stood upon the cornice of the building and cried "murder, police." He testifies that he put his head into the room and saw the defendant strike his mother with the knife in the neck. His cries alarmed the neighbourhood, and a policeman and other persons ran towards the house. The defendant was then seen coming out of an alley at the side of the house on Sixth Street, having on a shirt or undershirt and trousers, but having no hat or shoes on and soon commenced to run, but was pursued and overtaken by the officers and brought back to the house and into the room, the scene of the homicide. The deceased was found lying on the floor near the lounge, bleeding from an incised wound in the neck, apparently unconscious, and she died shortly after. A witness who lived in a house overlooking the alley, hearing the alarm given by the son, went to the window of her room looking upon the rear of the house occupied by the deceased, and saw the defendant on the roof of an outbuilding adjacent to the bedroom which the defendant had occupied, from which he clambered down into the alley before spoken of. On searching the alley a short time after the defendant's arrest a knife was found, with which, as was shown, the wound in the neck of the deceased might have been inflicted, with blood stains upon the blade. There was evidence also that there were bloodstains on the hands of the defendant when he was brought into the room after his arrest. In the room occupied by the defendant was found a whetstone, such as was used in sharpening tools, and a blue cloth cover, which was suitable for the covering of the knife found in the alleyway. Neither of these articles had belonged to the deceased or her son. The door of the closet in the front room was found open and the pocket book was lying open on the shelf. There was little or no money in it the evening before; after it was replaced by the deceased on her return from the baker's, but this was not known to the defendant. There was another large pocket book in a trunk in the room, which contained six dollars, which had not been disturbed. The sole defence was a denial of the identity of the defendant with the person who stabbed the deceased. The defendant was sworn as a witness in his own behalf and his story was that a man named Weibel with whom he had become acquainted, and who knew that he had a room in the house of the deceased, attracted his attention by a whistle after the defendant had gone to bed and he thereupon went down and let him into the house, and that both then got into the one bed, and that the witness was awakened by a scream from the deceased, and finding that Weibel had left the room, he got up, and supposing that Weibel had attempted to escape by the alley, he went out on the roof and into the alley to find him, and in this way he accounts for his being in the alley and going into the street. The improbable story of the defendant, as to which there was no corroboration, as might be supposed, was not credited by the jury. It is unnecessary to go into further detail of the evidence. There can be no reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of the crime charged and except for the grave character of the case, we should have deemed it quite superfluous to call attention by an opinion to the facts, which justified the Conviction.
“The question of motive is comparatively unimportant where the other evidence points unmistakably to the guilt of a defendant. In the present case there could not under the circumstances be any evidence from a living witness (other than the defendant) of what had transpired between the defendant and the deceased before the son was awakened by the screams of his mother. Whether the defendant went into the room to steal the pocket book and was discovered by the deceased, and this led to the tragedy, is mere matter of conjecture. It is sufficient to say that the guilt of the defendant was satisfactorily proven. The case was ably tried before an experienced and able judge. The few exceptions taken raise no serious question and none have been relied upon by the counsel for the defendant. The charge was clear, careful and impartial, and it becomes our duty to affirm the conviction.”
I realised that despite gathering all this circumstantial evidence I was a long way away from being able to positively say that Feigenbaum was involved in the Whitechapel murders or in fact was the elusive Jack the Ripper. But then what I now believe to be some of the final pieces of the jigsaw came together.
Having dug deeper into everything connected to this murder and Carl Feigenbaum, more significant facts emerged which singularly did not amount to too much at the time but later collectively made my suspicions about him being concerned in the Whitechapel murders even stronger.
Feigenbaum was represented at his trial by a young attorney by the name of William Sanford Lawton who was a partner in a law firm Foote and Lawton who had offices in the Home Life Building New York City. Following Feigenbaum’s execution Lawton broke his code of confidentiality to the press revealing details of conversations he had with Feigenbaum and his past crimes. What he revealed would be crucial as far as the final pieces of my investigation were concerned.
During the two years between Feigenbaum being arrested and being finally executed Lawton saw him on many occasions and built up a rapport with him and was the only person Feigenbaum trusted. This is not unusual in murder cases for a prisoner to confide in his lawyer. However, any conversations between them at that time would have been the subject of confidentiality and Lawton would not have been permitted to reveal them to the police or the public without the permission of Feigenbaum, and during this confidentially period of time if Feigenbaum had committed other murders and had confessed them to Lawton he certainly would not have wanted them made public or to even give the authorities any inclination he may have committed other murders. Although the later revelations made by Lawton suggested that if he had confessed to any other such crimes it might have saved him from the electric chair.
Feigenbaum was tried and despite entering a plea of not guilty was convicted. He had protested his innocence right up until he was found guilty in court. He was still protesting his innocence even after his appeal failed and right up until the time of his execution.
Following Feigenbaum’s conviction and his appeal being rejected by the appeal court, Lawton submitted a clemency appeal on the grounds of Feigenbaum being insane. Had he admitted any more horrendous murders prior to this then it might have given more weight to this appeal. However, after he was medically examined by a state medical examiner he was deemed to be sane and the clemency appeal was rejected...
So what made Lawton break his client confidentiality? Before speaking, the lawyer explained that he revealed the secret because he felt it to be his duty to science and the law. So what did Lawton reveal? He stated, “One night I stayed talking with him for over two hours and during this time, he told me, “I have for years suffered from a singular disease which induces an all absorbing passion, this passion manifests itself in a desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way. At such times I am unable to control myself”” Lawton went on to say, “I began to search Feigenbaum’s record. I learned that he was in Wisconsin at the time the country was startled by the news of the murder and mutilation of several women there, when I saw him again I mentioned the Whitechapel murders to which he replied, “The lord was responsible for my acts, and that to him only could I confess.” I was so startled that for the moment I did not know what to do I then looked up the dates of the Whitechapel murders and selected two. When I saw Feigenbaum again and was talking with him I said: "Carl, were you in London from this date to that one," naming those selected. "Yes", he answered, and relapsed into silence. I then communicated with London and discovered that Feigenbaum was also there when other women fell victim to the knife of some mysterious assassin.” Lawton then stated, “I later questioned him cl
osely and found that he could converse with intelligence on surgery and dissection. When I asked if he knew anything about these subjects he would feign an ignorance that was unnatural. The man was a devil,” concluded Mr. Lawton. “His motive for crime was his frightful desire for mutilation. I will stake my professional reputation that if the police will trace this man's movements carefully for the last few years their investigations will lead them to London and to Whitechapel. He had been all over Europe and much of this country. He seemed on first acquaintance to be simple-minded, almost imbecile, yet the man was crafty beyond measure. He had means of his own, as was proved by a will he made before his death, yet he always professed extreme poverty.”
Assistant District Attorney Vernon M. Davis, who prosecuted Feigenbaum, said: “If it were proved that Feigenbaum was 'Jack the Ripper' it would not greatly surprise me, because I always considered him a cunning fellow, surrounded by a great deal of mystery, and his life history was never found out. The case was an odd one, and the People had to furnish a motive for the murder. This was the money which was kept in Mrs. Hoffman's closet or trunk.”
Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files Page 20