Is This Jack the Ripper?

Detective creates composite photo of German suspect
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 31, 2011 5:50 AM CDT
Is This Jack the Ripper?
If Scotland Yard had this photo in 1888, they might have been able to crack the Ripper case.   (University of Dundee)

It's more than a century too late to show it to witnesses, but the first photo of a prime Jack the Ripper suspect has emerged. Trevor Marriott, a British homicide detective who went on the trail of the Ripper after retiring, created the composite photo from descriptions of German merchant Carl Feigenbaum, whom he believes was behind the 1888 murders in London's East End, the BBC reports. Feigenbaum was executed in New York's Sing Sing prison in 1894 for the murder of his landlady and his own lawyer believed he was the Ripper.

At the time of the Ripper killings, Feigenbaum—who told his lawyer he had a "desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way"—was on board a merchant vessel docked only a short walk away, Marriot discovered. The detective says the merchant became his top suspect after he realized that although some of the victims' organs were skillfully removed, this may have happened in the mortuary, meaning the Ripper wasn't necessarily a surgeon as had long been believed. (More Jack the Ripper stories.)

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