An eminent South African historian believes he has stumbled on the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Charles van Onselen said at first he wasn’t sure he wanted to publicize the conclusions he drew when he noticed parallels in the century-old, unsolved Ripper case and the background of Joseph Silver, who terrorized women as “King of the Pimps” in Johannesburg.

“I was left with a choice: I have got intelligent speculation, which I think is pretty long way down the track to proving that this guy was the Ripper. Do I include or exclude it?

“If I include it, it buggers up the book and people get excited for the wrong reasons. If I exclude it and a really sharp professional spots it ... I had to explore this possibility,“ he said, sitting in his tree-filled garden, about 3 miles from where Silver reigned, in a city still regarded as one of the most crime-ridden in the world.

The publicity around van Onselen’s “The Fox and The Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath”, published in April, has made much of Silver being Jack the Ripper, the notorious Victorian serial killer who murdered at least five East London prostitutes in 1888.

But van Onselen, an acclaimed biographer who specializes in South Africa’s criminal history and who took nearly three decades to research the book, only makes his Ripper case in the final 25th chapter, written in the last 36 months.

While the book has been well-received, reaction from “Ripperologists” has been skeptical as van Onselen makes his case on circumstantial evidence.

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Below: Joseph Silver on policephoto, 1909.

Everybody claims to have identified him yet nobody can ever show any proof, or even compelling evidence.

This is an interesting tidbit but I’m not sure it solves the crime. As previously mentioned, everyone has a theory.

Had the investigation been done better (the coppers didn’t do a very good job, even by the standards of that time), we might have more of a chance of actually solving it. However, I don’t believe even that would help us in the modern age to solve the crime. We are too far removed from that era chronologically. Hell, the Black Dahlia hasn’t ever been solved and that happened only in the 1940s (I think - not sure on the era for her murder).

I am not above admitting that I love it when a new Ripper theory comes out!

It took 25 yrs for the green river killer to be caught, even when more advanced DNA came out.  and there continue to be murders and disappearances that continue to be unsolved

A Ripperologist on jtrforums.com and casebook.org (see his comprehensive Donston Blog) is presently debunking what he calls the “Roslyn Donston Hoax”. The case for Roslyn Donston Stephenson as Jack the Ripper was flimsey at best, according to Howard Brown, and at worst, faked. Donston was in the hospital during the murders, in a ward where the patients were not allowed to leave, but an author placed him in a different ward. Honest mistake or outright hoax or wishful thinking, I don’t know.

BTW, any opinions on the Ripper Diary? Almost 15 years and they’ve been unable to uncover the “hoaxers”.

Read the Roslyn Hoax thread to understand the deeper truths behind the case, including it’s Royal, Jewish, Masonic and Grail aspects. It’s not a hoax.
Or, if it is, it has more information than you’d get from established sources. I wonder if Silver knew brothelkeeper, “Morgenstern”, key victim, Mary Kelly’s lover?

Kol C - 20 September 2008 07:13 PM

Read the Roslyn Hoax thread to understand the deeper truths behind the case. . .

Assuming that you can bring along with you a rocket-propelled grappling hook and rope, to deal with all the massive jumps to various conclusions that you can’t otherwise manage on your own.

Accipiter - 20 September 2008 09:35 PM

Kol C - 20 September 2008 07:13 PM

Read the Roslyn Hoax thread to understand the deeper truths behind the case. . .

Assuming that you can bring along with you a rocket-propelled grappling hook and rope, to deal with all the massive jumps to various conclusions that you can’t otherwise manage on your own.

Leaps of logic? What leaps of logic?
-Mary Kelly having a kid? Not when her boyfriend, her neighbour and the sister-in-law of her landlord/pimp were reported as saying she had one.

-The Vesica Pisces? That’s not a leap of logic. THIS is a leap of logic:
(overlaying the unicurcal hexagram of Aleister Crowley on the map of the murders!)

How does one distinguish “intelligent speculation” from any other kind of guessing in the absence of evidence?

JoeDaJuggler - 24 September 2008 10:16 PM

How does one distinguish “intelligent speculation” from any other kind of guessing in the absence of evidence?

For intelligent speculation you need a bit of education (preferably in a non-related field) and be able to look very serious and sensere.

An simple example of poor, ethnocentric speculation is a profiler profiling the Ripper as someone unmarried.
That’s bad thinking because profiling is largely based on known American killers and we’re talking about a different era and a different country. Even Jack the Ripper could stay married in the Victorian era.
Proper speculation, in the absence of “CSI”, is that he could very well be married. In other words, the profilers who said he couldn’t be married are wrong and the writer of the “hoax” Jack the Ripper diary which presents a married Ripper could have got it right about the married part.