Charles van Onselen, a distinguished and highly-regarded South African historian has stumbled on what he claims is the identity of Jack the Ripper, reports The Associated Press. So who was he? His name is Joseph Silver, and he also terrorized women as the "King of the Pimps" in Johannesburg, claims van Onselen, author of "The Fox and the Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath," a book that took him three decades to research.
Interestingly, van Onselen started out writing about the horrific crimes Silver committed in South Africa, but during his exhaustive investigation, he stumbled upon the idea that Silver was also Victorian England's Jack the Ripper--a fact that doesn't even appear in his book until the final chapter. "In terms of a template for this person, in terms of age, personality, mental illness, pattern for rest of life, this is the best fit there has ever been," van Onselen told AP.
What is the evidence that Joseph Silver was Jack the Ripper?
- Silver fits the psychological profile of Jack the Ripper, namely a psychopath with a deep hatred of women.
- He had hate-filled and violent relationships with women his entire life.
- Silver lived in the East London neighborhood of Whitechapel, where the murders took place. What is the proof that he lived in Whitechapel at the time of the murders? His daughter was born there in 1888.
- Silver worked as a pimp and keeper of a brothel, so he would have been familiar with the Whitechapel prostitutes.
- He wrote daring letters to Johannesburg newspapers, using an array of disdainful aliases. Jack the Ripper did the same thing in London, mocking police with his brazen letters to newspaper editors.
Not everyone is so sure about this. Experts, dubbed "Ripperologists" have their doubts that Silver was Jack the Ripper since van Onselen's case is largely based on circumstantial evidence. To which van Onselen retorted to AP, "How many coincidences do you want to mount up in your mind simultaneously until you start saying this is a real possibility?"
So what happened to Joseph Silver? He 1898, 10 years after the Whitechapel murders, he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa after a stay in Sing Sing prison. He traveled widely throughout Africa, the Americas and Europe and was finally executed as a spy in Poland in 1918.
--From the Editors at Netscape
