From what I’ve seen all that is hearsay. As with every JTR "suspect" the confusion abounds about which person exactly people are talking about because of the imprecise records. As I understand it, there is an official record of a "Cross" as a witness, but people couldn’t find any information on Cross so they assumed he was actually some other guy… and then down the pipe this gets reported as a "fact" that he lied about his name, and every other indiscrepancy between multiple people is chalked up as more willfull lies and suspicions all told by the same person.

The only fact is that this taxi driver came upon a body. That makes him about as good of a Ripper suspect as that fisherman at the Lake does for Zodiac.

Welcome back myst.

I watched that documentary and thought the very same things. I even sent morf a pm about it because, whether his conclusions are right or not, the approach reminded me of what we do here and at the very least it was interesting to see that being represented.

Welcome back myst.

I watched that documentary and thought the very same things. I even sent morf a pm about it because, whether his conclusions are right or not, the approach reminded me of what we do here and at the very least it was interesting to see that being represented.

Hi traveler! long time no talk!!!!

Yes, duck, I know it LOOKS like speculation. But since you (kinda) asked for it- here is the rundown.

Charles Cross usually walked to work within a few minutes of his friend, who worked at the same place. They would be close by in their morning commutes with each other. This is an important point.

Charles Cross enters into Buck’s Row. It must be several minutes later, and his friend, his coworker, (and keep in mind that Buck’s Row, rare among East End locales, has NOT changed in terms of the bones of the streets and houses and is a long street with more visibility than the later locales) walks up as well. As he enters into Bucks Row he sees Cross standing over a body. He approaches. His friend leans down to touch the woman’s chest. This is the important point- he does NOT see any blood. He doesn’t see any sort of messing with the clothes. Nothing. This is incredibly important- because, if the body had been there for more than say, a few minutes, the man would have been literally STANDING in a pool of blood.
They walk away and encounter a policeman. And this is where it gets weird. Cross says, "there is woman’s body back there but the police are already there", something to that effect. Now, this is a lie. He did NOT want that cop to go back there and assume that Cross was the last person to see her. So he lies and says that a cop has already arrived on the scene. Coincidentally, when the cop goes back to the body, another policeman HAD arrived. It was not until later that they realized the discrepancy, and Cross had to testify to a grand jury to this effect. They knew he had lied.
Not only that, but that policeman who "discovered" the body saw a pool of blood as he walked up.
That pool of blood was not there before.
The body was so fresh that Cross’s friend had noticed no blood. Based on timelines and witnesses, Cross would have been the only one able to commit the crime. And it is totally canonical, no doubting its the Ripper. His commutes all coincided with the murder scenes. This is a far sight different from what you are mentioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sfVUKvVVcs
Here is a link to the youtube video. Check it out and give your thoughts.

I can’t find my Ripper book, but it’s Rumbelow’s and I trust his information. I don’t really feel like looking it up on the net just now, I’ll take your word for it that it happened that way.

I don’t have the case details memorized here, so bear with me. Wasn’t it he case that after discovering the body the two men alerted a patrolman and he instructed them that he was not allowed to leave his route, so they had to go find someone else or similar effect?

My main problem with this theory is that it sounds like Cross as the Ripper came upon a totally random victim by chance, which was not the Ripper’s MO, while he was on his way to work, knowing that his friend would be coming along behind him. Does that make any sense?

His story about not seeing any blood was most likely true,but in the literal sense. He did not see it. That does not mean it is not there. Forgive the graphic description, but you don’t slice upon a persons neck like that without blood getting everywhere, I don’t care how short of a time span it was.

I also don’t buy that the Ripper could be a guy who could keep it together enough to talk to police officers at his crime scene, let alone at an inquest, which is basically the same thing as a trial for that period.

I can’t find my Ripper book, but it’s Rumbelow’s and I trust his information. I don’t really feel like looking it up on the net just now, I’ll take your word for it that it happened that way.

I don’t have the case details memorized here, so bear with me. Wasn’t it he case that after discovering the body the two men alerted a patrolman and he instructed them that he was not allowed to leave his route, so they had to go find someone else or similar effect?

My main problem with this theory is that it sounds like Cross as the Ripper came upon a totally random victim by chance, which was not the Ripper’s MO, while he was on his way to work, knowing that his friend would be coming along behind him. Does that make any sense?

His story about not seeing any blood was most likely true,but in the literal sense. He did not see it. That does not mean it is not there. Forgive the graphic description, but you don’t slice upon a persons neck like that without blood getting everywhere, I don’t care how short of a time span it was.

I also don’t buy that the Ripper could be a guy who could keep it together enough to talk to police officers at his crime scene, let alone at an inquest, which is basically the same thing as a trial for that period.

Rumbelow! He’s my favorite by far of all the Ripperologists. His "The Complete Jack the Ripper" has scarcely left my bookshelf since I was in the 4 grade. It was a crazy leap up from Nancy Drew, let me tell you.
In terms of the two men, that would be Cross and his friend, the coworker I mentioned. Cross had lied about a cop already being there, and that is in the grand jury documents. The police officer that did arrive later told the grand jury that he had simply been on his beat and had not been alerted of a body in Buck’s Row. Later, when the other patrolman mentioned the two men, Cross and his friend, he said that Cross had told him "not to worry" about it because they had found a body and a cop was already there. That’s what is so strange. The only reason Cross would have had to lie was that he KNEW he was the last person to be with that body, and that that would be suspicious. Especially being that his friend had not even seen a drop of blood. The rapidity of the blood spill- it would have been so fresh that the blood had not begun to seep out. The patrolman who found the body saw the blood and it was increasing in size. Couple that with Cross’ lies, and the fact that just the month prior to the beginning of the Ripper murders that he had had an upheaval in his family life, his family had moved away and he was living with his mother and a daughter….
AND besides that, Cross gave the wrong name to the police. I forget what the name was, maybe Letchly? Anyway they had some difficulty tracking him down because of that. Turned out that was his stepfather’s name. He had given the wrong name purposefully that night.
One of the CID guys on the program said that if this case were happening today Cross would have been the top of the list, because of his known, provable proximity to the body so incredibly close to the time of death (so close, in fact, that he would either have had to SEE the Ripper, from a distance, as he approached into Buck’s Row, or BE him) and his practically sitting on top of every single murder scene on every one of his daily routes. And the fact that he drove a butcher’s wagon. Maybe "Leather Apron" wouldn’t be too far off.
As far as the blood splatter, that’s what was so interesting. Examining the coroner’s report, those injuries could have been made to the body in less than 2 minutes. The fact that there was no blood spray was consistent with her mode of death- she was already dead when the cutting happened, or unconscious, I cannot remember which- but the comeuppance of it all was that the arteries would not be spewing blood. They would be seeping blood out- and rapidly. But no spray. That in fact, someone could have killed her and had very little blood on them at all.

And as far as missing the blood- his friend testified that he leaned down, touched the woman’s chest, her clothes were not in disarray. He thought she was simply drunk. He didn’t realize she was dead. To miss that amount of blood walking up to a friend of yours crouched over a body, I find hard to believe. Because the cops were literally standing in it. It would have taken a few minutes for the blood to pool like that. Consistent with her injuries. The timeline and forensic evidence makes it almost impossible to believe that the RIpper would not have been seen by several people under those circumstances. But no one else was there that could not have been accounted for. Just the way the street was, and the number of cops there- the window of operation is merely a sliver. Cross just seems hemmed in by his own lies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sfVUKvVVcs
Here is a link to the youtube video. Check it out and give your thoughts.

Thanks for that Stratcat. Wasn’t sure if I was allowed to post youtube links.

Hm.. yes, excellent point about the strangulation. That would do it. Not out of the realm of possibility. Based on the rest of what you said, I would have to say that makes a pretty good suspect. I’m not convinced to close the case, but I’m keeping an open mind on it.

Now as for Z, where you thinking about Jimmy O? That is what came to my mind.

Hm.. yes, excellent point about the strangulation. That would do it. Not out of the realm of possibility. Based on the rest of what you said, I would have to say that makes a pretty good suspect. I’m not convinced to close the case, but I’m keeping an open mind on it.

Now as for Z, where you thinking about Jimmy O? That is what came to my mind.

Yes, its hard to prove anything conclusively, but I like the approach. I like mere facts being all that you need, really. I like that idea- not the endless psychological profiling that won’t tell you anything.

And yes. Z. Jimmy O? James Owen? Wasn’t he at Lake Herman? Those discrepancies in the shots?

I have been thinking a lot about the first killing- the first canonical one anyway- Lake Herman Road. Seems to me there is a bit of confusion re. the cars, where they were parked, the hunters….it seems that something there is sort of not clicking for me. I keep thinking, if you look at the timeline, you can kind of get a sense of the Zodiac’s approach. I keep thinking about that. The hunters came up on an empty car, it wasn’t the victims car, it was in this corridor of time that would have made you wonder if it belonged to the murderer, and no one is in it. I keep thinking- was he driving around in a state,ready to kill? Or was he waiting there? Did he get out of his car, and lay in wait somewhere behind the victims’ car, in that small treeline? Looking at the crime scene photos, I only see one place where it seems he could have confidently crouched down to wait. How premeditated was it? His approach would seem to maybe tell you something about that.

But it just seems that the first Z killing doesn’t get the penetrating gaze it deserves. If it was his first, how did he decide on who? And what about the car with the two men in in it seen driving towards Benecia? There are definitely characters that night that have not been fully accounted for.

The 95% DNA match only applies to EDDOWES DNA, not the DNA linked to Kozminkski.

There are in fact TWO DNA profiles, one of which, yes, matches to a rather large pool of Brits, likely because Eddowes was a native Brit. Kozminkski’s putative DNA on the other hand is a different thing altogether.

The fact of the matter is that the shawl is linked to Eddowes historically, and contains a *SECOND* DNA profile that matches to that of Kozminski’s familial mtDNA, which is not comparable to 95 to 99% of England’s DNA pool.

I really wish people would stop lying and misrepresenting facts to keep this stupid true crime narrative alive. If you cannot get the facts right, go do something else, like collect stamps. Same goes for the fools on Wikipedia who think there is only ONE DNA profile, when there are in fact……TWO!

Or what about the tubular arterial spray of human blood located on the shawl? Even if you discard the "Eddowes DNA", you have to admit there is plenty of evidence the shawl was at the scene of a murder. Even if one of Eddowes’ descendants cut their finger over the shawl, a preposterous claim, you still have to explain why the article of clothing is clearly drenched in a jetting pattern of human blood. Isn’t the claim of finding this shawl at the Eddowes crime scene far more likely than the counterclaim of finding it at another murder, and that its provenance just so happened to get confused in the minds of the those who originally collected and stored the shawl?

It was Kozminski. It was ALWAYS Kozminski.

Hell, if you go through the short list of contemporary suspects, examining each one, you can scratch them all out for a variety of good reasons, which I will not do here. After you’ve finished, the only guy remaining is Kozminski. Are you trying to tell me then that the cops at the time didn’t properly execute their duties, but so-called Ripperologists are going to somehow "solve the case" more than a century later, even though most of the police documentation, which apparently at least partly pointed to Kozminski, per Swanson and Anderson, is long gone????

What a heaping load of steaming fantastical manure. Nothing but wishful thinking and daydreaming.

Why would Swanson and Anderson say he was their prime suspect? Why would McNaughten say he was a favored suspect? Why did the killings stop after he was placed under surveillance? Why is his familial mtDNA on the shawl? Why did Hazelwood and Douglas claim that someone like either him or Cohen were likely the killer? Why are all the murders in a circular pattern around his home at the time? Why would a non-Jew scrawl those words above the bloodied cloth? Why does Kozminski’s profile so greatly resemble so many other similar killers throughout criminal history?

And don’t give that rubbish about howhe couldn’t speak proper English. The dude appeared at an inquest for a dog muzzling charge and apparently spoke accented English just fine. And all that crap about him not having the ability to lead prostitutes into darkened corners…what a load of bollocks! They were prostitutes! Like they cared about the guy’s linguistic capabilities, and like they’re going to fornicate in the light! And these victims weren’t high class hookers. Instead they were penniless, often quite sick street urchins. They would have screwed a dog for a dime!

I am without a doubt so sick of this case. I am so sick of people constantly inventing new suspects and new nonsense just to perpetuate it. It’s OVER. You will never ever get any closer to proving "some guy" was the killer than that that was already done back in 1888-89. And back then, the police thought they had their man. You know his name. Aaron Mordke Kozminski.

Really, you think the guy tried to attack his sister with a knife, a virtual recreation of all the Ripper’s crimes, because he was a nice, non-violent guy??? Nice non-violent guys don’t attack siblings with sharp weapons. Psychotic homicidal lunatics do!

I really have to wonder if it’s political-correctness that compels people to keep suggesting native white Brits instead of a swarthy Polish Jew who, in the words of the contemporary police, was their only real suspect….well I have news for ya: immigrants kill people, too. Shocking news, I know, but it’s actually true. Political-correctness be damned.

I swear, by the fall of this century, a billion people will have been labeled the killer, even though the far most likely perpetrator was there before you the entire time: a dirty, crazy, paranoid, violent, alienated young sex-craved fatherless Jewish immigrant named Aaron Mordke Kozminski. Deal with it or stay in Wonderland. Your choice.

P.S. As far as the Zodiac vis-a-vis the Ripper…good luck with that. Some guy examines the few, fragmented extant records, finds "some name", and then constructs an entirely selective and coincidental case against him (like we haven’t seen THAT before!) and what? What does that mean? He’s "solved the case"? Give me a break. That’s not how criminal cases are solved. Ever. That’s not how detectives operate. That’s how bored people on the Internet pass their time: pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, who was himself a total work of fiction, a fact people seem to forget.

Like I said….good luck with that. You’ll be here fifty, five hundred, years from now trying to pass off John Doe #2165133614 as the Zodiac and John Doe #9461352212214968581325448 as Jack the Ripper. The sun will turn into a red giant, consuming the earth, and the last surviving human will be trying to prove The eighth Duke Of Sandwich was both killers.

Shaking my damned head.

P.P.S: Who is Rumblelow and why doesn’t he know the difference between touch DNA, which wouldn’t last decades on the shawl’s surface, and interior DNA retrieved via a novel pipette method? Is Rumblelow a trained scientist? An expert in criminal forensics? If not, why is he offering his inexpert laymen opinion, and why is it repeated on Wikipedia?

Here’s what I wrote to Jari Louhelainen last year:

Dear sir,

[redacted]

His reply:

Dear [redacted],

Jari

Sorry JR, I didn’t read all of your post, but I will when I have time and I’ll get back to you on that.

A couple things though.

A. You seem to be talking about A.Kosminski and the recent book about him and the DNA, but this thread is talking about a different suspect, Charles Cross.

B. Donald Rumbelow is, I believe a former Scotland Yard det.?, who has studied and written on JTR. Unless it’s been since updated in the last few years, his "Complete Jack The Ripper" book was written in the 80’s and revised a few times since, but that was before touch DNA technology existed, and the version that I read didn’t say anything about DNA at all.

edit: Ok I read the whole thing. I still don’t see the point, but I have to sort of disagree with you here. This is all smoke and mirrors. Just like with every Zodiac suspect, you can write up a summary that makes it sounds like he is without a doubt 100% guilty.

Only one question matters to me: What connects him to the murder? For pretty much every Zodiac suspect the answer is nothing. Same for JTR. Same for Kosminski. At least Cross can be placed at the crime scene. If he had the same History as AK, then I’d be a lot more confident, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

JTR may very well be AK. I have no doubt that if he isn’t, then he is someone just like him. But that’s a problem for him, not a strength. If Jack left the area and repeated his crimes in the exact same way then we would probably know it. If he did what Zodiac did, then we probably will never know it. And if Zodiac didn’t write those letters, we would probably never know that there was a Zodiac killer either. That’s a scary thought, but that’s how it is.

In other words it’s more than possible that JTR really was someone that no one has ever heard about and he simply walked away and no one will ever know.

The 95% DNA match only applies to EDDOWES DNA, not the DNA linked to Kozminkski.

There are in fact TWO DNA profiles, one of which, yes, matches to a rather large pool of Brits, likely because Eddowes was a native Brit. Kozminkski’s putative DNA on the other hand is a different thing altogether.

The fact of the matter is that the shawl is linked to Eddowes historically, and contains a *SECOND* DNA profile that matches to that of Kozminski’s familial mtDNA, which is not comparable to 95 to 99% of England’s DNA pool.

I really wish people would stop lying and misrepresenting facts to keep this stupid true crime narrative alive. If you cannot get the facts right, go do something else, like collect stamps. Same goes for the fools on Wikipedia who think there is only ONE DNA profile, when there are in fact……TWO!

Or what about the tubular arterial spray of human blood located on the shawl? Even if you discard the "Eddowes DNA", you have to admit there is plenty of evidence the shawl was at the scene of a murder. Even if one of Eddowes’ descendants cut their finger over the shawl, a preposterous claim, you still have to explain why the article of clothing is clearly drenched in a jetting pattern of human blood. Isn’t the claim of finding this shawl at the Eddowes crime scene far more likely than the counterclaim of finding it at another murder, and that its provenance just so happened to get confused in the minds of the those who originally collected and stored the shawl?

It was Kozminski. It was ALWAYS Kozminski.

Hell, if you go through the short list of contemporary suspects, examining each one, you can scratch them all out for a variety of good reasons, which I will not do here. After you’ve finished, the only guy remaining is Kozminski. Are you trying to tell me then that the cops at the time didn’t properly execute their duties, but so-called Ripperologists are going to somehow "solve the case" more than a century later, even though most of the police documentation, which apparently at least partly pointed to Kozminski, per Swanson and Anderson, is long gone????

What a heaping load of steaming fantastical manure. Nothing but wishful thinking and daydreaming.

Why would Swanson and Anderson say he was their prime suspect? Why would McNaughten say he was a favored suspect? Why did the killings stop after he was placed under surveillance? Why is his familial mtDNA on the shawl? Why did Hazelwood and Douglas claim that someone like either him or Cohen were likely the killer? Why are all the murders in a circular pattern around his home at the time? Why would a non-Jew scrawl those words above the bloodied cloth? Why does Kozminski’s profile so greatly resemble so many other similar killers throughout criminal history?

And don’t give that rubbish about howhe couldn’t speak proper English. The dude appeared at an inquest for a dog muzzling charge and apparently spoke accented English just fine. And all that crap about him not having the ability to lead prostitutes into darkened corners…what a load of bollocks! They were prostitutes! Like they cared about the guy’s linguistic capabilities, and like they’re going to fornicate in the light! And these victims weren’t high class hookers. Instead they were penniless, often quite sick street urchins. They would have screwed a dog for a dime!

I am without a doubt so sick of this case. I am so sick of people constantly inventing new suspects and new nonsense just to perpetuate it. It’s OVER. You will never ever get any closer to proving "some guy" was the killer than that that was already done back in 1888-89. And back then, the police thought they had their man. You know his name. Aaron Mordke Kozminski.

Really, you think the guy tried to attack his sister with a knife, a virtual recreation of all the Ripper’s crimes, because he was a nice, non-violent guy??? Nice non-violent guys don’t attack siblings with sharp weapons. Psychotic homicidal lunatics do!

I really have to wonder if it’s political-correctness that compels people to keep suggesting native white Brits instead of a swarthy Polish Jew who, in the words of the contemporary police, was their only real suspect….well I have news for ya: immigrants kill people, too. Shocking news, I know, but it’s actually true. Political-correctness be damned.

I swear, by the fall of this century, a billion people will have been labeled the killer, even though the far most likely perpetrator was there before you the entire time: a dirty, crazy, paranoid, violent, alienated young sex-craved fatherless Jewish immigrant named Aaron Mordke Kozminski. Deal with it or stay in Wonderland. Your choice.

P.S. As far as the Zodiac vis-a-vis the Ripper…good luck with that. Some guy examines the few, fragmented extant records, finds "some name", and then constructs an entirely selective and coincidental case against him (like we haven’t seen THAT before!) and what? What does that mean? He’s "solved the case"? Give me a break. That’s not how criminal cases are solved. Ever. That’s not how detectives operate. That’s how bored people on the Internet pass their time: pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, who was himself a total work of fiction, a fact people seem to forget.

Like I said….good luck with that. You’ll be here fifty, five hundred, years from now trying to pass off John Doe #2165133614 as the Zodiac and John Doe #9461352212214968581325448 as Jack the Ripper. The sun will turn into a red giant, consuming the earth, and the last surviving human will be trying to prove The eighth Duke Of Sandwich was both killers.

Shaking my damned head.

P.P.S: Who is Rumblelow and why doesn’t he know the difference between touch DNA, which wouldn’t last decades on the shawl’s surface, and interior DNA retrieved via a novel pipette method? Is Rumblelow a trained scientist? An expert in criminal forensics? If not, why is he offering his inexpert laymen opinion, and why is it repeated on Wikipedia?

I had to doublecheck your name to make sure you weren’t Mike R, since you used some variation of the word "idiot" about eleventy billion times. I hope you feel better.
You claim to know tons about the Ripper and you never heard of Rumbelow? Ok. Kinda like investigating JFK and being ignorant of the Warren Commission. Not the best analogy perhaps, but….
I would like you to post some citations to this info, re. Kosminksi’s DNA. Getting clobbered on the head- I don’t know, maybe its just me, but I would rather see facts than tirades, like I said, its probably just ME.

I hope it wasn’t his grandmother’s paisley shawl.