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Tour Duration 1 hr 45 mins. Announcements Tours will resume as normal from the 12th of April? The Jack the Ripper Casebook. Police Investigation. Jack the Ripper Suspects. Jack the Ripper Theories. The current was then turned off for a few seconds before a second shock of 1, volts was administered at and held till Irvine and John Wilson Gibbs, who had held the watch timing the length at which the voltage was applied, examined the body and pronounced Feigenbaum dead at It was reported in at least one newspaper 2 that the two then invited the other physicians, who were there to observe the execution, to come forward and examine the body in order to obtain a consensual medical opinion that the prisoner was indeed dead, this after what was considered some horrifically botched executions using the still fairly new method of electrocution.
To satisfy this punctilious minority the current was supposed to have been turned on again at for a space of three seconds at full voltage. After this, Carl Feigenbaum was pronounced well and truly dead.
The Advertiser knew that it was on to a good thing and sent a press release out on the wire hyping the coming interview. This announcement caused a brief sensation which was reported in newspapers all over North America. However, as the world moved on to other concerns, the story quickly died and was largely forgotten.
Who was Carl Feigenbaum? Why did his own lawyer believe his client to be a vicious serial killer? What evidence has convinced Marriott that he has found the truth behind the greatest murder mystery of all time? Carl Ferdinand Feigenbaum. This revealing admission by Vernon M.
Why he changed it to Feigenbaum is unclear although he appears to have had numerous aliases and seems to have changed his name frequently 5. His admission form to Sing Sing Prison describes him as 54 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches in height, pounds in weight with a medium complexion, dark brown hair thin on top , small grey deep set eyes, a high and heavily arched forehead and a large red nose with pimples.
He was born around the year , possibly in Karlsruhe , Southern Germany , near the French border 7. This was, at least, one of his claims. Feigenbaum also said that he had two sisters, one a widow — Magdalena Strohband, and a brother living in Germany. He would later state that he had a brother named John, who may or may not have been the brother in Germany , who was living in Brooklyn , New York. He may or may not have been married, telling different people different things at different times, and he may or may not have had children.
He was a sailor for some unknown part of his life, perhaps all of it. Whether this was the date when Feigenbaum started his new life in America or not is unclear.
Officially, however, it seems that Feigenbaum was thought to have come to the U. In addition, as there seems to be no record of Feigenbaum, or Zahn, having landed legally in the United States , it is likely that he simply walked off his ship in the U. Juliana Hoffman on the 1 st of September, , is unclear.
While under arrest he said that he was a gardener, and claimed that this had been his job back in Germany , although this does not appear to be true. Hoffman that he had just lost his job as a gardener on Long Island but had found a job as a florist in New York , although this was a lie. He appears, however, to have worked in this field on an itinerant basis as he traveled around the United States.
Hoffman in the early morning of Saturday, 1 September, The Murder of Mrs. Juliana Hoffman. Desperately poor, mother and son decided to earn a little extra money by renting out their back room, furnished, to a boarder and so a small sign which advertised this fact was placed in one of their two front windows. He would also be her last lodger. Hoffman trusted the out of work German gardener and allowed him to stay.
On the evening of Friday, 31 st of August, the Hoffmans and Feigenbaum were in the front room of the tiny apartment when Mrs. Hoffman left to go and buy some bread for supper. Before leaving she went to a closet to get a small change purse which she kept there and when she returned she replaced the purse in the unlocked closet. Hoffman sleeping on a lounge near one of the two front windows and her son on a couch at the foot of, and at right angles to, her bed.
Sometime soon after midnight Michael Hoffman was awakened by a scream. Looking over he saw his mother partly raised out of her bed while Feigenbaum stood over her with a long carving knife in his hand. The young boy first kicked at the intruder and then sprang from his bed and attacked Feigenbaum from behind. Feigenbaum, however, merely turned his attention towards the boy and came at him with the knife. Seeing that he was powerless against the armed lodger Hoffman was only able to escape probable death by climbing out a window and onto the cornice over the shop front.
From this dangerous perch he started screaming for help. With the boy out of the way, Feigenbaum returned to Mrs. Hoffman and stabbed her in the left side of her neck, then drew the knife forward to the right some six inches, severing her jugular vein. The murderer, meanwhile, fled back to his room. Opening the window he was able to climb onto the roof of a shed or outhouse and climb down to the yard where an alleyway led to the street. There was a pump inside the yard and Feigenbaum was able to stop and quickly wash his hands.
Faced with the excited crowd he attempted to run but was quickly captured. After a search, a bloody knife was found in the alleyway. Michael Hoffman, however, was very much alive and was able to positively identify the lodger as the man who killed his mother right in front of his eyes.
He also pointed out to the police that both the door to the closet where his mother kept her purse and the purse itself were open but that they were both closed when they had gone to bed.
Robbery thus seemed to be the obvious motive. The tramp gardener was arrested and taken to the First Avenue Station House and locked in a cell. Also present was Michael Hoffman who attempted to grab the prisoner by the throat but was prevented from doing so by the quick actions of the court officers. When asked to plead Feigenbaum, in a firm tone of voice, declared that he was not guilty of the murder. His defence was childishly simple: he did not commit the murder, he said, because his friend, one Jacob Weibel, had.
He claimed that he had met Weibel when he was tramping through the countryside and the two of them had quickly become friends and travelled together. He knew that Mrs. He claimed that Weibel would slip into the room to sleep at night and would be gone by morning. Weibel must have been the murderer and had attacked the Hoffmans while he, Feigenbaum had slept. What had happened to this man? What were you doing in the alley after the murder? I was just going to look for Weibel. No one was convinced by this convenient argument and Feigenbaum was remanded without bail for examination on Monday 3 rd of September.
Carl Feigenbaum eventually went to trial on the 26 th of October, , in front of Recorder Frederick Smyth, the same judge in charge of the Ameer Ben Ali trial in He was defended by two lawyers: Lawton and Hugh O. Davis and Stephen J. He stubbornly, even insanely, stuck to the story that he was innocent and that Jacob Weibel had murdered Mrs.
Against this futile defence was the evidence that the murder weapon appeared to have belonged to him and that blood was seen on one of his hands when he was being booked at First Avenue. He was also shown to be a thief and con artist with many aliases but whose real name appeared to be Zahn. All of this evidence was secondary, however, to the testimony of Michael Hoffman who identified Feigenbaum as the man who murdered his mother.
In what was almost the definition of an open and shut case Feigenbaum was found guilty and sentenced to death. Lawton and Pentecost, however, kept up a desperate fight for the life of their client. The lawyers first motioned for a new trial during their clients sentencing hearing but it was denied by Recorder Smyth. Next they applied at the Appellate Court for a retrial but the appellate court judge felt that there were no grounds for an appeal. They then tried to have his death sentence commuted by reason of insanity.
Eventually the lawyers efforts were rewarded when on the 5 th of March, , the Governor appointed the noted alienist, Dr. Carlos F. On the 19 th of March Macdonald finished his report and declared Carl Feigenbaum to be sane.
With all legal options exhausted Feigenbaum was executed on the 27 th of April, , the 19 th man to sit in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. William S.
Lawton described himself as the only man Feigenbaum would trust and he based his theory, he said, on a confession that his client made to him one night. This passion manifests itself in a desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way. At such times I am unable to control myself.
Mulling over the confession, however, led him to wonder about the Jack the Ripper murders in London and any possible connection with his client. He then claimed that he communicated with London and was able to verify that Feigenbaum was there during the Whitechapel murders. Lawton also offered additional proof of his theory, stating that Feigenbaum put on an act which made him seem simple-minded and even imbecilic. How foolish of me to trust a stranger. He was also, so the lawyer claimed, able to converse knowledgably on such topics as surgery and dissection.
Feigenbaum would lapse into silence, however, if he was asked directly whether he had any practical understanding of these subjects. Lawton also believed that the murder of Mrs. In the end Lawton summed up his ex-client with theses words:. The motive for the crime was his frightful desire for mutilation. Marriott first investigated, then rejected, eleven of the more famous Ripper candidates. Marriott also mentions the newspaper article which appeared in the New York Sun , on the 6 th of February, , which reported a series of Ripper-like murders in Managua , the capitol of Nicaragua , in Central America.
These could be explained by the Ripper being a merchant seaman who simply changed lines and now sailed from Europe to the Americas. Marriott turned his attentions to all ships that were in dock during the dates of the murders and then, for reasons that are not very clear, he zeroed in on a group of small German merchant vessels from Bremen and Hamburg.
He found that ships of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line , which sailed out of Bremen , were in port during all the dates covered by the Whitechapel murders and that one, the Reiher , was in port on five of the eight dates. Ships from Hamburg were in port during all but one of the dates, that of the murder of Francis Coles on the 13 th of February, He also found a Ripper-like murder that had occurred in Flensburg , a German port city close to the Danish border, in October, Marriott states that ships from Bremen docked here as well.
Unfortunately, what with the passage of time and problems caused by incomplete records, Marriott could not identify and name a plausible suspect and so his book ended with a question mark. However, the type of man Marriott suspected was clear. He was a German merchant seaman who was probably unmarried and free of obligations who sailed from the German port of Bremen , and possibly Hamburg , and who may have been arrested for some other crime and either transported or was sentenced to a long prison term.
Carl Feigenbaum, Marriott was soon to learn, is a perfect fit for this unidentified suspect. He goes beyond Lawton , however, when, instead of just saying that Feigenbaum travelled around Europe and the US , he adds a list of Ripper-like murders that occurred throughout Europe and the United States at a time when Feigenbaum was still living in Germany and sailing between Europe and North America on ships from Bremen :.
October,
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