Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files

by Marriott, Trevor

  I have to sympathise with Lawton with regards to the position he found himself in as far as the confidentially aspect is concerned. I myself now work as a defence advocate and on a daily basis attend police stations to advise persons in custody. Over the years I have represented murderers, rapists and robbers. I always make a point of asking the client if he is guilty of the offence for which he has been arrested for, and if they have committed any other similar offences which may come to light through the police enquiry whilst in custody.

  There are times when I ask this question and a client will openly confide and tell all. However, there are other times when clients will just sit and smile. When this happens my years of experience tell me that they are hiding perhaps guilt and other offences. More persistent offenders play the system. They may have committed other offences but they also know that unless they make a full and frank admission to the police, there is every likelihood that there will not be any evidence to convict them. Of course in this day and age with modern technology, offences do come to light sometimes several years after the offence was committed. But way back in Victorian times they did not have the benefit of these sciences. So my interpretation of Feigenbaum’s reaction and silence when questioned by Lawton is that he had very likely had committed other offences.

  So what is known about Carl Feigenbaum? He himself stated that he came from Karlsruhe in Germany. However, during the trial a prosecution witness told the court that Feigenbaum had stated that he came from a town called Capitolheim. The court stenographer may have recorded this detail wrongly, as I can find no other reference to a town or city of that name in Germany.

  Feigenbaum told the court that he arrived in the USA in 1890. This may be another lie, however, as there would be later evidence I discovered to suggest that he may have been travelling back and forth between Germany and the USA but did not take up residence until possibly 1891 or even later, as was mentioned during the trial. He had told another witness that he was married but gave no details of his wife or where she was or what happened to her. However, when spoken to by a police officer after his arrest, he stated that he was single.

  Another prosecution witness testified that Feigenbaum had stated that he was married and had children. Feigenbaum told the court that he had two sisters and a brother who were in Germany. Later during his trial he stated that he had a brother called John, who was living in Brooklyn, New York. Feigenbaum gave no specific details as to how he himself had arrived in the USA or where he had been or what his early work was. I could not find his name or any name he is known to have used on any official immigration records I checked. I firmly believe that he did not arrive as an official immigrant.

  Feigenbaum stated that shortly after arriving in the USA he had been to Orange County, but it is unclear which one he meant, because there is an Orange County in California and another is a district of greater New York. During the trial he was asked if he had been to the following towns in the USA: Port Austin in Michigan, Sioux Falls in South Dakota and South Falls in Oregon. Astoria was also mentioned, but is not known which of the three US towns of this name was being referred to, as one is in Illinois and another in Oregon. Or the one that is again, a suburb of greater New York. It never became clear what the relevance of these questions was, but there must have been evidence to suggest that he had been to these places, probably from papers and documents found by the police which were subsequently connected to him and which are discussed later.

  The prosecution may have been aware of other murders or non-fatal attacks on women in those towns and were trying to link him to them. Even so, these questions raised in court appear to corroborate Lawton’s statement that Feigenbaum had travelled the country. But because they were not directly connected to the trial they were never properly expanded upon. Nevertheless, they would turn out to be important to my investigation, because some of those towns mentioned in court are located in the Midwest, and in the Midwest town of Hurley, there was an undetected Ripper-like murder; this further corroborates Lawton’s statement that he knew Feigenbaum to have been in those locations at the time of the murder and that, in his view, he could have been the person responsible.

  Feigenbaum gave his occupation as a flower gardener and indicated that he had followed this trade in Germany. At his trial the prosecution were able to portray him as a loner, drifter during the months leading up to his arrest, producing evidence that he moved from lodging house to lodging house, staying for only a few days before moving on, sometimes owing money for rent. Coincidentally, women ran all of these lodging houses.

  Police inquiries at one of the lodging houses where he had stayed revealed a small box, containing papers and letters, which, it was suggested, he had left behind. Some of the papers were letters and documents in the names of men who had resided at lodging houses where Feigenbaum had stayed. It is very likely that Feigenbaum had stolen these papers and, if so, I assume that was in order to appropriate the owner’s identities. However, what would turn out to be significant in my investigation were letters addressed to a man by the name of Anton Zahn. These would later add weight to my belief that Feigenbaum could have been involved in the Whitechapel murders and had been working as a German merchant seaman visiting London at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

  At first, Feigenbaum denied both that the box was his and that his name was Anton Zahn but admitted he had been using this name to stay at the lodging houses mentioned in court. He stated that Anton Zahn was someone he had befriended. Anton Zahn, he said was a merchant seaman working as a fireman, on a Bremen registered vessel named either the Emms or the Eider, and Feigenbaum had been collecting his mail from the local post office in that name and had opened it. He stated that he did not know of this man’s current whereabouts and that his reason for opening the letters was to reply to Zahn’s sister in Germany.

  Coincidentally, my enquiries revealed that the ships Feigenbaum mentioned were in fact two steamers operated by the Norddeutsche Line of Bremen. These two vessels operated a passenger service between Bremen, Southampton and New York and were from the same merchant line that operated the merchant vessels, which were sailing between Bremen and London at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

  I knew I had to reopen the previous line of enquiry with regards to the merchant seaman theory. First, I needed to look into the two boats mentioned by Feigenbaum and their movements and whereabouts at the time of the murders. Then I had to see if any crew lists for any of these boats were still in existence. In doing so, I hoped to gain information that would positively link Feigenbaum to either the Reiher or other boats by showing a crewman in the name of Carl Feigenbaum, or Anton or Carl Zahn. If I could show that he had been a merchant seamen on the Reiher it would further corroborate the statement made by his lawyer William Lawton.

  My first line of inquiry into the two ships proved very interesting. Feigenbaum has stated that Anton Zahn was a fireman on either the EIDER or the EMMS. By his own admissions, he was referring to a period of time shortly before his arrest. However, it is a fact that the EIDER ran aground off the Isle of Wight in January 1892, over two years before his arrest. So Feigenbaum must have had some knowledge of, or direct contact with, the boat before January 1892.

  In the crew lists for these two boats for the period 1888-94, I could find no other references to Anton Zahn, Carl Zahn or Carl Feigenbaum. So, if Feigenbaum had been a merchant seaman during these years, he was not shown under the names I had for him on the transatlantic routes from Bremen to New York between August and November 1888. Had he been shown there, he could be eliminated from any involvement in the Whitechapel murders or being the elusive Jack the Ripper.

  So where was he? Well, as I have suggested previously he could have still been working as a merchant seaman, travelling back and forth between Bremen and London and other European ports. In any event, Lawton had stated that he himself had discovered that Feigenbaum was in London at the time of the murders, but we don’t know what enquiry he carrie
d out to confirm Feigenbaum’s movements. Could Lawton have got hold of the crew lists back in 1894? Was this how he had linked Feigenbaum to Whitechapel at the time of the murders? Sadly we may never know due to the passage of time and the missing crew lists.

  So the mystery remains. When Lawton made his statement to the press, why didn’t the reporter asking the questions simply ask Lawton what those enquiries were? And what were the results? I find it hard to believe that, although he was interviewed by several newspapers about this matter, no one bothered to ask those two important questions.

  Under cross-examination during his trial, Feigenbaum admitted that he did in fact have a sister in Germany called Magdalena Strohband. Strangely, the letters referred to previously and addressed to Anton Zahn were from a female called Magdalena. Feigenbaum finally admitted that the letters were from his sister to himself, leaving the court in no doubt that he and Anton Zahn was the same person.

  At the time of the Julia Hoffman murder Feigenbaum was 54, that would have made him 48 at the time of the Whitechapel murders. The following details about Feigenbaum have been taken from the official admission record from Sing Sing Prison, which is the only remaining prison document relating to him. He would have been asked to give these details on being initially processed at the prison:

  Name Carl Feigenbaum

  Born Germany

  Age 54

  Married - It is unclear as to whether the prison officer completing the form wrote it on the form expecting a yes or a no or whether Feigenbaum indicated he was married.

  Occupation - Florist

  Height - 5.4ins

  Weight - 126lbs

  Religion - Catholic

  Complexion - medium

  Read - Yes

  Write - Yes

  Smoke - Yes

  Shoe size - 8

  Hat size - 6-7

  Hair - Dark Brown thin on top of head

  Eyes - Grey, Small deep set

  Forehead - High and heavily arched

  Nose - Large, Red with pimples

  Teeth - Poor nearly all gone on left side

  Tattoos - Anchor in Indian ink on right hand at base of thumb

  Habits - MAD!

  The last entry is significant he describes himself as being mad. He either believed he was mad or was cunning enough to think ahead to the later issues of raising a defence of insanity. The only picture of him was a sketch made by an artist, which was made during his trial: Picture 1.

  Whilst awaiting execution he apparently made a will that indicated he did have money in a German bank in New York, which he left to his sister in Germany, he gave her name as Magdalena Strohband but there appears to be nothing more known of her. Despite making extensive enquiries to date the will has never been traced.

  I have been unable to find out further information on the will or his sister or the so-called property he owned. I would have expected the will to have been probated in the government office at Westchester New York, which was the nearest probate office to Sing Sing Prison. However, they have no records of this will. I came across a newspaper article from Cincinnati, Ohio, which gave details of Feigenbaum’s execution and this stated that his will would be probated there however, there is no record of this will having been probated there either. The only other thought would be that he gave the will to William Lawton who had it probated elsewhere. However, there is no central registry in the USA and so trying to track it down was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

  The same applies to trying to trace his sister he gave her surname as Strohband. It is not known if this was her married name. If she were not married then Carl Feigenbaum could in fact be Carl Strohband. Adding another name to his list of aliases and making it almost impossible to trace him back to Germany, as all of these surnames were fairly common German names.

  I made extensive enquiries in an attempt to trace the original case papers of William Sanford Lawton. These would have been invaluable as they may have shown what enquiries he had carried out into the movements of Feigenbaum and what they had revealed, as well as perhaps giving me more of an insight into Feigenbaum who everyone describes as a man of mystery, whose life was also shrouded in mystery.

  However, sadly this line of enquiry was also doomed to fail. In an ironic twist of fate I discovered that on February 13th 1897, William Lawton committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in Lincoln Park, Chicago. He had been in Chicago a week and was on his way to visit his mother in California. There was no known reason for his suicide and no suicide notes were left.

  However, I wonder if following the breaking of his confidentiality in relation to Feigenbaum he incurred the wrath of the Bar Council or the New York Lawyers Council and was or had been the subject of disciplinary proceedings. If so then perhaps the fear of being disbarred had played on his mind to the extent he became mentally unstable.

  I had previously stated in my profile of Jack the Ripper that I believed the killer to have been between 40 and 50 and may have been a loner. In later years Feigenbaum was definitely a loner. Lawton stated Feigenbaum had a desire to kill and mutilate women. Feigenbaum was also described as being cunning as is documented in the 1894 New York murder. When he was initially arrested shortly after the murder still in close proximity to the murder scene he quickly came up with a plausible story this shows the ability of a man to think quickly on his feet. By him jumping out of the window and on to a flat roof and then jumping to ground level, shows his agility even at 54. We know that Jack the Ripper also had these same attributes to avoid detection and make good his escape in and around Whitechapel.

  The murder of Juliana Hoffman and her killer Carl Feigenbaum is of course the most important murder of the whole investigation. As has been documented it was suggested by the prosecution that the motive for her murder may have been theft. Now if one looks more closely at those circumstances that may not have been the case.

  It was suggested that Feigenbaum knew where Mrs. Hoffman kept her money and so he attempted to steal it whilst she was asleep and that when she woke up and saw him he stabbed her and cut her throat with such ferocity that her head was almost severed. If theft were his intention then why would he be carrying the knife? That would have made it harder for him to search for the money holding a knife. If he had wanted to steal and knew where she kept her money why did he simply not wait for her to leave the house and then steal it? I suspect that he intended both, which is consistent with the Elizabeth Senior murder.

  The statement made by Lawton to the press is also crucial to the Ripper investigation. When he made his statement he invited the police to investigate Feigenbaum and his movements in relation to the Whitechapel murders. Neither the New York Police nor the Metropolitan Police in London appeared to have pursued this line of enquiry, and I have to ask why not? Surely if they had spoken to Lawton he could himself have given them details of the enquiries he conducted, and this is where Lawton’s credibility as a witness is confirmed. Lawton would not have made that statement if the facts contained in it were false or untrue. He would have known that facts mentioned by him would likely be closely scrutinized and tested. So this is another reason to accept his statement as being correct. The other issue is that if Lawton was fabricating his statement, as some have now suggested he was, then why did he not simply come out and say that Feigenbaum had actually confessed to being Jack the Ripper? After all who could rebut this, certainly not Feigenbaum?

  It is also fact that serial killers tend to start their killings at a relatively young age. In the case of Feigenbaum I would suggest that Mrs. Hoffman was not his first and only victim, as some researchers would suggest. There are also researchers who suggest that Feigenbaum could not have been Jack the Ripper due to the fact that Mrs. Hoffman was not a prostitute and she was killed indoors.

  I would remind them of two important issues, the first being the fact that one of the Ripper’s victims Mary Kelly was also killed indoors, so the issue of where the killer killed is not cast in sto
ne. In addition, as a comparison, Peter Sutcliffe aka “The Yorkshire Ripper” who is now a convicted serial killer, who killed many women in the mid 1970s; he initially started killing prostitutes whom he picked up in his car and murdering them inside his car. However, he later went on to prey on single women walking alone at night. At one point there was a lull of 11 months between his murders, so for those who would say Jack the Ripper suddenly stopped in November 1888 should not dismiss Feigenbaum simply because that specific murder did not match previous Ripper crimes.

  I have now set out below details and my observations regarding all of the unsolved murders I uncovered in Germany and the USA and the two early London murders:

  April 1863 London

  Emma Jackson, a prostitute aged 28 and single was found murdered in a room in a brothel in St Giles, Bloomsbury. She went there with a man described as being foreign. There are no other details of this man. A room for the night was paid for. Nothing more of her or the man was seen until the following morning when the room was entered. She was found lying on her back on the bed, her feet touching the floor. One arm lay on her chest, one on her abdomen. She was wearing stockings and a chemise, which had been turned, below her breasts. The upper parts of the bedclothes, her head, hair and neck were saturated with blood and there were blood spots on the wall by the corner of the bed. She had five wounds to her throat, and the cause of death was partly by suffocation and partly by blood loss from the throat cutting. Her body had blood smears and bloodied fingerprints over arms, thighs and buttocks and her body had been moved across from the position on the bed where the throat cutting had taken place, after death. Coins and a thimble were found in the centre of the bed under the body, so there was no robbery motive. No one was ever arrested for this murder and to date this remains unsolved.

  December 24th 1872 London