Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (28 page)

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 stone. 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

The murder occurred in a lodging house at Great Coram Street in the centre of London. The victim was Harriet Buswell. She had left her lodgings at about 10pm that night after borrowing a shilling (5p) from a fellow lodger, and had returned with a male guest, supposedly a German, around midnight. She had returned home with bags of apples, oranges and nuts as well as her guest, and was then able to pay her landlady half a sovereign (50p). The man was heard to leave the house at 6.30am on Christmas morning. At about midday, other occupants of the house, concerned about not seeing her, opened the locked door to her room and found her brutally murdered her throat had been cut.

It is unclear as to whether the police merely had suspicions or any direct evidence but they went to Ramsgate and arrested the chaplain of a German ship Dr. Gottgried Hessell. Following interrogation and seemingly reliable identification evidence they charged Hessell with the murder. However, the case was thrown out at court due to the identification evidence being deemed to be unreliable and the fact that the police had not interviewed the alibi witness given by Dr. Hessell. This case still remains unsolved. Sadly no details of Dr. Hessell are known (age, description etc.) and one significant matter regarding this murder is that another witness who was never called (I wonder why?) gave a statement to the police.

The witness was a greengrocer who stated he served the victim with fruit at about 12.40am. He gave a description of the man with her: “
The man looked like a mechanic. He had on dark, but common clothes. He was a stern-looking young man, and I should know him again. I guess him to be about 5’ 6” to 5’ 8” in height. He had small black spots like moles on his face. He was a dark-complexioned aged about 24-25 years.”
Perhaps the reason he was never called was that his description was totally different to Dr. Hessell. In any event this case was never solved.

Having regard to Feigenbaum’s age when arrested he could have been able to commit these murders. Due to the passage of time there is no record of Feigenbaum’s whereabouts on the dates of both murders.

In the earlier chapter on the murder of Mary Kelly I made mention of the Metropolitan Police file numbered MEPO 18/1 and the Crime Record Book. Another entry in that book related to the murder of Harriet Buswell. This file however had a Special Branch number SB 77. The entry was amongst a number of other entries in the book relating to the Whitechapel murders. This raised a number of questions. Did the police suspect that the same killer who murdered Buswell was also responsible for the Whitechapel murders, and why was Special Branch involved? The latter question would later become even more important.

April 11th 1890 Hurley, Wisconsin USA

The murder of Laura Whittlesay as reported in the Northern Star Newspaper, Wisconsin and a newspaper from Bessemer, Michigan.
Hurley was last night the scene of a murder that equals in horror any of the Whitechapel crimes. Early this morning the body of Laura Whittlesay, alias Lottie Morgan, a woman of the demi-monde, was found in the rear of Ives' saloon, the toughest place in town. Over the right eye was a deep, long cut which caused her death. An axe was discovered with bloodstains upon it in a shed nearby. This was undoubtedly the weapon used by the murderer. A revolver identified as belonging to the victim was found near her head. None of the chambers were empty. Several valuable diamond rings and other jewellery and over $20 in cash were found on the body showing conclusively that the deed was prompted by other motives than robbery. The Morgan woman was last seen about eleven o'clock in John Sullivan's saloon, from whence she started up an alley towards her rooms. The murderer was probably lying in wait for her and struck her and left her as she fell. The only explanation offered at all plausible is that she was killed by a jealous lover of whom she had quite a number. The police say there is no clue to the perpetrator of the ghastly crime. Lottie Morgan was a favourite actress here in the balmy days of Hurley variety theatres but has since fallen to the lowest depths
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