Coming in July. If you haven't watched the documentary about H.H. Holmes on Netflix, I highly recommend it before this series starts on the History Channel.
AMERICAN RIPPER
- Thread starter Dana Jean
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....jayzus!!!....what a one time living/breathing incarnation of evil......
Ooh, thanks for the heads up. Dana, have you read The Devil in the White City? Excellent read about Holmes.
The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America
No haven't read that, but have seen the doc. I'll add this to my TBR list, thanks!
I have read about this guy,but not this book,thank you danie will put it on the to be purchased list..very scary how easy this guy manipulated and murdered his victims..why is there no feature movie about him?
This started tonight. I have it recorded. If anyone watches, I would like to hear your thoughts on the show and if you think it shows promise to be an interesting series.
I watched the first two episodes. The Holmes story is fascinating but the focus of this show is apparently to prove that he was Jack the Ripper. That is preposterous. Jack the Ripper was a sexual sadist who targeted women. He left his victims in the street. A classic disorganized killer as the FBI characterizes serial killers. Holmes murdered men and women mostly for profit. He took great pains to dispose of the bodies to extent of constructing an entire building designed to allow him to commit crimes and get rid of the bodies. A classic organized killer. There is no apparent evidence that he was even in London during the time of the Ripper murders. The guy on the show who is his ancestor apparently desperately wants Holmes to be the Ripper which is a bit creepy in itself. The Jack the Ripper angle is clearly ratings driven and detracts from what otherwise might be an interesting show if they had kept the focus on investigating Holmes' crimes in Chicago. This show reminds me of the recent Amelia Earhart show where they claimed to have found a photo of her in the custody of the Japanese. You couldn't recongize your own mother in that photo. They had no clue when it was taken. They made no effort to check the log of the ship they believed had picked up or any of the logical things to prove this. Yet they stated the evidence was conclusive. Afterward someone discovered the photo had been taken a couple years before this event and it couldn't have been her.
Playing devils advocate here.
There is possible evidence Holmes was in London during that time. There is a gap in his very huge AMerican paper trail of lawsuits and property scams up until a certain point, and then it stops. This is the time the ripper murders started up.
Also, a ship's log during that time has an H. Holmes as a passenger. Can't prove or disprove it is him, wondering if they will come up with more to corroborate that.
The fact that he is an organized killer in America -- well, he has his killing castle. He can take his time. He can pick his victims. While in London, he doesn't have access to his private castle, but his urges wouldn't just go away. Yes, Holmes killed for profit of body parts, but he enjoyed it also. It was a need. His need didn't go away in London. And there were body parts taken from the women in London, when he wasn't interrupted. And being so out in the open, he slashed quickly and fled. Except for Mary Ann Nichols, where he had a lot of time to mutilate the body.
Not saying he is the ripper, but it is interesting the parallels.
I don't see anything so far that is very compelling to link Holmes to the Ripper murders. The fact that someone named "H. Holmes" traveled to England on a ship, for example, is not persuasive that this person was H.H. Holmes. There were thousands of such passengers at the relevant time. Holmes was not an uncommon name. It would be expected that this name would appear. And why would Holmes go all the way to London to go on this murder spree? Most serial killers stick to territory that they are familiar with. It doesn't make much sense and there is no real evidence to demonstrate that Holmes was in London at the time. There is a lot of grasping at straws and trying to use that information to shoehorn Holmes in as the Ripper while completely ignoring any evidence to the contrary. The most recent episode relied on the "Dear Boss" letter to demonstrate that the killer was American. There is considerable debate as to whether this letter was even from Jack or was the product of a hoax by some clever reporter. And the "science" used to conclude it was written by an American was somewhat dubious. There is even debate on when the Ripper murders began and ended. This show assumes that the Ripper murders began and ended with those mentioned as though that is an established fact to fit their desired timeframe. It is not. A whole lot about the Ripper murders is conjecture. Very little is known for sure. There may very well have been murders that began before those noted on the show which would place this event outside the possible timeframe for Holmes.
Absolutely, as I said, I was playing devil's advocate.
And while H. Holmes travelled to London might not have been him, it could have been him. You can't rule it out one way or the other. And the fact that there is a huge gap in his paper trail in America during the Ripper murders is also an interesting tidbit. Again, doesn't prove anything one way or another, but it is interesting.
If he went to London, my guess would be business for whatever reason -- they need to find the paper trail there as he was very big on leaving traces of himself in places through business paperwork. That would make their case a little more believable.
I got the impression that they were done with the London angle and they had nothing more to show Holmes presence there. They have demonstrated that someone named H. Holmes traveled to England during the relevant time, that the Dear Boss letters might have been written by an American, that there is some possibility that the Ripper had knowledge of human anatomy (although it is questionable that it needed to be to the level of a doctor as they suggest), that an American doctor was a suspect but nothing that specifically links this crime or even proves HH Holmes presence in London at the time. They tried to force some connection between the types of crimes committed by arguing there was an evolution of the killer's methods but these crimes appear to be so dissimilar as to defy having been commited by the same person. It is not a evolution of the methods but completely different psychological motivations for committing these crimes at work. The Ripper was a sexual sadist who targets only women and specifically prostitutes. He mutilates their bodies in such as to suggest hatred of women for sexually-related reasons and leaves them in plain sight. Holmes appears to be motivated by profit. Like any serial killer he was a psychopath with indifference to his victims but there is no indication that he hated women. Rather, he targets both men and women as the opportuntiy presented itself with none of the apparent psychological hatred of women that is obvious in the Ripper murders. If he was the same person who had committed the crimes in London, there would be no evolving out the psychological state that motivated the vicious murder and mutilation of women. It would have been apparent in his crimes in Chicago.
I still think he could have changed his modus operandi for the London killings. His urges would still be there and again, he did not have the privacy of his castle to do them in. The fact that only women were targeted in London doesn't mean Holmes couldn't have done it. Who knows how many people Ripper killed over a lifetime? And what sex they were? We don't know. either way. In London, the prostitutes were the easy target. So, why make his job any harder? Go for the easy target. Whereas Holmes had the privacy of his castle and could target anyone he wanted, man, woman, child.
Personally, I don't think Holmes is Jack the Ripper, but again, we can't say definitively he isn't. That's why there are a bazillion suspects for who Jack the Ripper was.
The premise of the show seems to be claiming that Holmes was Jack the Ripper. That is a bit different than showing that there is no possibility that he could have been Jack the Ripper. I agree, though, they have tried to conflate those two concepts (i.e. if you can't rule him out then that supports the notion he was Jack). Just about any male in London during 1888 can't be definitively ruled out as Jack the Ripper only because we don't know who he was and we never will. So it's theoretically possible it could be anyone including Holmes (and they never even proved Holmes was in London). I find the evidence extremely weak that it was Holmes. The evidence presented is also often one-sided and doesn't address well-known debates about Jack such as whether the Dear Boss letters were written by him and the possibility of other murders being attributed to him both before and after the timeframe discussed on this show which could eliminate Holmes. They state or assume these as facts when they are largely conjecture.
Reading through this thread has convinced me that if I want to look into H. H. Holmes I should stick with The Devil in the White City.
This is hype to sell a book--lol. Look at the end: the book comes out Sept. 4. This publisher is working overtime, but making sure to cover their a**: "MAY have been confirmed."
Yes, I saw that and the information for the book is supposedly from a diary that was found giving new evidence -- hopefully POLICE investigators are looking at it carefully, and not just some joe schmoes. I do think it would be a shame that we overlook the real guy because we are so jaded about all the fakes put forward. I would love this to be solved, but not really sure there is anyway to truly do that now. I think they have DNA'd sh*t to death, trying to make connections.This is hype to sell a book--lol. Look at the end: the book comes out Sept. 4. This publisher is working overtime, but making sure to cover their a**: "MAY have been confirmed."
I'll probably read it out of curiosity.
I might too! lol. I think Jack the Ripper is fascinating, and Springheel Jack even more so!
One of the better books on the subject that outlines the evidence from the primary sources is:
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden