Did Jack the Ripper carry a Khukuri?

Atomic Zero

Atomic Zero

Joined
Oct 11, 2001
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I'm watching ABC's Primetime right now, and in the lead-in, they showed a recreation of every knife fanatic's nightmare, Jack the Ripper.

Anyway, in that recreation they showed ol' Jack's glinting knife as he stalked the backstreets of London. By the looks of it -- forward slant, sort of a "reverse taper." And by the way he carried it, it looked like the edge was in the crook, unlike a scimitar -- the knife he's wielding looks a lot like a Ghorka Khukuri. I'm not real "knife savvy," but it would be interesting to see if any of you edumacated folks saw this.

Did Nepali kamis visit Old Towne London and present Mr. Ripper with a genuine khuk? It would almost be funny if it wasn't so sick.

From Hell,
Atomic Zero
 
Lot's of speculation over the last century about the murder weapons, not to mention the motives and identity of the killer(s?). I'm sure the producers of Primetime used the nastiest looking item they could find for the segment, historical accuracy be damned.
 
I watched that too!Cornwell had an interesting theory. I believe her, actually. That watermark sold me (for those who didn't see the show, there was half a watermark discovered on a Ripper letter. The other half of the paper with the watermark was found in the letters of a painter - forget his name already - who was around at the time. The guy lived until 1940!!

Anyway, they show Cornwell handling a khukuri... maybe she thinks that's what he used, too. We'll never know.
 
If I'm not mistaken, Jack the Ripper used very sharp, precise cutting tools to eviscerate his victims. He wasn't a hacker, I believe, but more of a surgeon.

Odd piece of trivia: Sometimes policemen photographed the eyes of Jack the Ripper's victims because they believed the corneas recorded the murderer's image.

I wonder how long it took them to find out.
 
I believe her too, but those features are often one-sided. But the evidence they posed sure as hell seemed accurate. After that "Moon landing was a hoax!" deal though, even higher-brow fare like Primetime is suspect.

That watermark and his paintings sure were creepy, though. I think the most interesting stuff was the background of the suspect. A sexually handcuffed serial killer? The hell you say!

I doubt the killer would've used something as cumbersome as a 7-inch or larger blade, much less a khukuri-shaped blade, but those gruesome gashes don't seem like they could've come from a scalpel or other precision tool. My guess is that he had a smaller blade and knew the proper "motions" and areas to cut. They showed some pictures and these weren't slices, the wounds were the size of barn doors. Ick, I don't think I'll ever have the stomach for gore if prime time TV makes me nauseous...

From Hell,
Atomic Zero
 
Oh, Komondor, I never heard that before. Very interesting. I love stuff like that. You ever wonder how some of the things we do today would seem idiotic to people 100 years from now?
 
Ive actually heard that he may have used something like a cane knife. With a long thin blade. Perhaps he had a scalpel or something of the like for the more "precise" cuts.

Zack
 
I thought Cornwell made an excellent point about him - that everyone knows the name "Jack the Ripper", and even romanticize it to some extent, but the majority of us know nothing about the victims, or just HOW brutal the killings were... the last victim, especially. It is truly frightening what a person can do to another person if they have the time, the will, and the stomach. I hope it IS this guy, so the whole thing can be put to rest.
 
Yeah, that last victim was stomach-turning. The first four victims still looked like PEOPLE, but the last one...ugh. I hope it's this guy too so the whole thing can be put to rest. The story's been so mystified, it's sometimes a surprise to hear that these were real people. What he did to those women was pure evil.

Whatever knife he used, it seemed like it had a lot of belly and it probably had some girth to it.

Guys like him give knives a bad name ;)
 
The details I remember are:

he used a scalpel and other surgical instruments
he was educated enough to remove certain organs and place them around the body
he would empty the contents of the victim's purse and put them around the body
he would also lure them somewhere where he could attack them. He didn't slash or hack, but he just got them alone and started cutting
he left messages for police

I also read that he was some sort of royalty like duke. I think the name attached was Edward.


just my .02
 
Cornwell made a decent enough argument based entirely on circumstantial evidence. She has the funds and the notoriety to bring her conclusions to an international audience, as the book she will no doubt publish will do. But no matter how many logical conclusions she draws from the coincidences she has uncovered the fact remains that the only “hard” evidence she presented was the two pieces of paper with the matching watermarks. So one has to assume that the Ripper Letter was indeed genuine, and that the paper used was uncommon enough that only one other letter the accused wrote on it has survived.

I would hardly find this compelling enough to accept the fact that one of my family members was a notorious murderer and madman. I’ve no doubt the her publishers will see fit to present her work as fact and not speculation, and they will both reap profits from destroying the name and reputation of a man long dead.
 
Yeah, that would suck.

TV can make anything look authentic, especially any evidence that has the least bit of credibility to it. If I was defending Mr. Sickert, probably the only thing I'd have trouble with would be the similarity in handwriting. I don't think a case based on the evidence she dug up would go far in court.

But, it sure made for an interesting show. And considering what she had to work with, it's pretty compelling. The fact that she spent 4 million of her own money (a fact that can also be disputed) says to me that her motives weren't entirely for profit. Besides, if the final result of her search is inconclusive, she'd look like a dumbass. And authors who are dumbasses don't make money. Well, most of the time...

The reason why I hope it's this guy is two fold: 1) I'm not related to him. 2) If what she presents is enough, hopefully it will get someone to try to get indisputable evidence whether he was the killer or not.

This is interesting. I'm glad someone else took an interest in this dead horse...
 
It is interesting, but your points on motive and profit on her part are worth considering. She is an author worth a reported $100 million, so she understands that she can reap a profit from her investigation through publishing her results. Since she has invested her own money into the venture she would be motivated to have a solid conclusion that would be publishable (and otherwise exploitable for profit). At what point in her financial involvement did she start to follow her “hot lead” of the artist as suspect and increase her monetary input, thus motivating her further to find a solution to this mystery?

I also disagree with some of her self-promotional statements in the segment. She basically stated that she was the first investigator to take a scientific, forensic approach to solving the case, and that five generations of Scotland Yard Detectives were too caught up in the horror of the crime and vast amount of public attention paid to it to do a proper job. Perhaps the British Government didn’t think that investing the millions of Pounds it took to gather the totally inconclusive evidence the DNA experts found for her was worth spending. Cornwell did, and her gamble didn’t pay off. So she presents her speculation as evidence to as wide an audience as possible to insure a profit from her eventual book, and To Hell with whomever she might slander.
 
I agree that making money off of this whole thing is part of her goal, otherwise she wouldn't be telling the world on prime time TV that she knew who the killer is.

But I think she's smart enough to realize that if she's gonna come out now and say this, she'd better have something to back up such an incredulous statement. While the bulk of her evidence is definitely circumstantial, it is curious how everything fits. As I said before, TV can make anything authentic, but even with a grain of salt the evidence is pretty shocking.

Here's something I'm guilty of:
In a different light, if Sickert was my ancestor, there's no WAY this stuff would even bother me. There are too many holes, too many logical counter-arguments to her evidence to take seriously. But, as a casual observer, I'm more inclined to take her at her word. For her, there's too much at stake; for myself, there's a compassionate urgency to have something this horrible solved, Sickert's reputation be damned.

It's a calloused approach, but something that's not completely without merit.
 
I did not see the special, however most of the very little true evidence left from the murders indicates that he was a doctor. Most experts also agree that he was a doctor. They have even gone as far as to say that the most likely suspect was a physician to the Royal Family (don't recal the name). While the attacks themselves were very brutal, the manner in which they were done was not. The cuts were very precise and measured. The victims were not hacked or butchered, but were surgically disassembled.

Most likely weapons were sugical tools such as scalpels, bone saws ect.

I personally would question the validity of a study where the researcher stands to profits from the "findings".
 
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