A retired murder squad detective claims that he has not only identified Jack the Ripper – the the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer responsible for the brutal slayings of five women in London during autumn of 1888 – but has also created an image to identify what the legendary killer looked like.
Ripper expert Trevor Marriott says that a German merchant named Carl Feigenbaum is the prime suspect – out of over 200 others that had been named 123 years ago – in the world’s most famous cold case.
Feigenbaum, convicted of murdering his landlady in Manhattan, was executed by an electric chair in New York’s Sing Sing prison in 1894.
Feigenbaum’s lawyer, who claimed that his client expressed a “desire to kill and mutilate every woman” who fell in his way, also reportedly suspected him of the Ripper murders too.
In addition to the testimony from Feigenbaum’s lawyer, Marriott reportedly arrived at his conclusion based on evidence from police documents and letters.
One example is an article by a forensics expert from which Marriott deduced that the close proximity from the murder sites to docks would enable a sailor to make a quick getaway unnoticed.
Looking into old records, Marriott found that Nord Deutsche Line, a German merchant vessel group, had a ship called the Reiher docked at the time of the murders. Feigenbaum was a seaman aboard this ship.
With no known images of Feigenbaum in existence, Marriott produced an e-fit photo (seen below) for BBC One’s National Treasures Live based on the description on the admittance form when he was in prison in New York.
For more information regarding Marriot’s theories on the Jack the Ripper case, head over to BBC’s website .