Richard Walter and an Alleged 'Secret' Letter of 1888 at Scotland Yard

[Chris G.]

Hello all

Check it out!

"Richard Walter and an Alleged 'Secret' Letter of 1888 at Scotland Yard" (http://blog.casebook.org/chrisgeorge/2011/12/01/richard-walter-and-an-alleged-secret-letter-of-1888-at-scotland-yard/) on my Casebook blog, just posted. This follows up a report on the same matter in Ripperologist No. 123 where I quote an email I received from Walter following revelations he made at the Jack the Ripper conference at Drexel University in Philadelphia on October 28-29, 2011.

Best regards

Chris

[Chris G.]

I have just entered the chatroom at Casebook if anyone wants to chat with me about this matter.

Chris

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Yes, I would love to have a chat about it.. as I think I have something that may help- How do I get into the chat room, and if not or preferable, am on Skype

best wishes

Phil

[Chris G.]

It's here (http://forum.casebook.org/chat/flashchat.php), Phil. Or else get into it through the button in the middle at the top of the page on the Casebook Message Boards here (http://forum.casebook.org/).

All the best

Chris

[The Grave Maurice]

Evenin' all. I'm nearly halfway through Michael Capuzzo's The Murder Room which is about the Vidocq Society. Richard Walter was a founding member of that group and Capuzzo quotes Richard as saying that JtR's identity was quite obvious. I'll let you know if the statement is enlarged upon later in the book. If it is, I imagine that it's probably the same theory he put forward at Drexel.

[Chris G.]

Evenin' all. I'm nearly halfway through Michael Capuzzo's The Murder Room which is about the Vidocq Society. Richard Walter was a founding member of that group and Capuzzo quotes Richard as saying that JtR's identity was quite obvious. I'll let you know if the statement is enlarged upon later in the book. If it is, I imagine that it's probably the same theory he put forward at Drexel.

Thanks, Ken. Yes, please keep us posted. I would agree with your assessment that it sounds as if Mr. Walter is talking about the same theory he related to us at the Drexel conference.

Cheers

Chris http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3480259031_abf7f5973d_o.gif

[The Grave Maurice]

Seems we were right, Chris. At p. 253 Capuzzo says:Walter was chosen as the profiler on an eight-person forensic all-star squad, including Los Angeles coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, investigating Jack the Ripper on the one hundredth anniversary of the murders. "It was quite easy. The murders show a clear learning curve not understood in 1888, and only Montague Druitt was capable of it.

"The Old Guard begged me not to make a fuss about it." He smiled. "Kill the mystery, and there goes all that tourism."

[Paul]

Seems we were right, Chris. At p. 253 Capuzzo says:Walter was chosen as the profiler on an eight-person forensic all-star squad, including Los Angeles coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, investigating Jack the Ripper on the one hundredth anniversary of the murders. "It was quite easy. The murders show a clear learning curve not understood in 1888, and only Montague Druitt was capable of it.

"The Old Guard begged me not to make a fuss about it." He smiled. "Kill the mystery, and there goes all that tourism."


It's curious that this project culminated in the 2-hour Peter Ustinov-hosted TV programme broadcast on 26 October 1988. In an article published in the American Journal of Medical Pathology the organiser, William Eckert, wrote that his group - which at this stage apparently did not include Richard Walter, but one assumes that much of his profiling was included (although they also by now had John Douglas on board) - consulted for four days. They concluded that of the five suspects, which included Druitt, they considered, the most likely was Kosminski. That is also the conclusion I was told by the programme makers that the panel had reached before the programme was broadcast.

John Douglas has since said in The Cases That Haunt Us that subsequent to the programme being broadcast he learned about David Cohen and had revised that conclusion.

Martin Fido, who appeared on the programme and had been interviewed at some length by the programme makers during their research and who had previously been consulted by Eckert, recalls that at the rehearsals he advocated David Cohen as the probable Ripper but that the producers insisted that he name Kosminski as that was the only form of the Polish Jew theory they had prepared.

As we say in the A to Z, Martin Fido also recalls that following the programme, Eckert wrote privately to Martin that in his opinion Cohen remained the most likely of the so-far named candidates. It is curious, therefore, that in his 1989 Journal article that Eckert didn't stick to his guns and say he thought Cohen was the better suspect. Curious, too, that John Douglas says he knew nothing of Cohen until some time after the programme, from which one can only assume that Cohen wasn't discussed at all during the four days of "intimate consultations".

Now we have it from the mouth of Richard Walter that as part of Eckert's team it was obvious to him that Jack the Ripper was Montague Druitt.

One can't help but wonder what was going on at that TV programme as it's fast becoming questionable whether any of those who participated actually agreed with the programme's conclusion!

And what "old guard" of c.1988 pleaded with Richard Walter not to name Druitt and spoil the walking tour business?

(By the way, Chris, I don't suppose you addressed Mr Walter as "Rich" by any chance?

[Howard Brown]

Dear Paul:

An illuminating post, sir....thanks very much for the information.
I, for one, did not know Mr. Walter was involved with the Secret Identity program.

[The Grave Maurice]

And what "old guard" of c.1988 pleaded with Richard Walter not to name Druitt and spoil the walking tour business?
From a comment just a bit earlier in the book, it appears that Walter is referring to the senior officers at the Met. In describing a lecture that Walter gave to members of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, Capuzzo writes (p. 221):Looking out across the sea of faces, he saw the narrowed eyes of "the enemies of my ideas" --- the Old Guard, old men trapped in the orthodox nineteenth-century procedural method of murder investigation. Walter was a heretic.... They were horrified by him. He was peddling "a cross between New Age folderol and witchcraft."

[Paul]

From a comment just a bit earlier in the book, it appears that Walter is referring to the senior officers at the Met. In describing a lecture that Walter gave to members of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, Capuzzo writes (p. 221):Looking out across the sea of faces, he saw the narrowed eyes of "the enemies of my ideas" --- the Old Guard, old men trapped in the orthodox nineteenth-century procedural method of murder investigation. Walter was a heretic.... They were horrified by him. He was peddling "a cross between New Age folderol and witchcraft."


Thanks G.M.
The "Old Guard" of that context is hardly likely to have given a toss about London tourism and the impact Walter's identification of the Ripper would have had on walking tours, so if it is the same Old Guard as is claimed pleaded with him not to spill the beans about Druitt, it sounds like so much hot air. IMHO.

[Paul]

Dear Paul:

An illuminating post, sir....thanks very much for the information.
I, for one, did not know Mr. Walter was involved with the Secret Identity program.

Howard,
The Trenton, New Jersey, Evening Times, 21 February 1988, is one newspaper I have in which there is a report of Eckert's project and in which Richard Walter is mentioned as being the profiler chosen to look at the fifteen suspects they'd selected. It would seem that Walter wasn't involved
by the time the TV programme was made. I don't know what contribution Walter made to the final profile Eckert's team worked to, assuming he made any contribution at all, but the credit for that seems always to have gone to John Douglas.

[Howard Brown]

Dear Paul:

Here is that newspaper article you referred to :


http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/Winter-Spring%202012/22188.jpg

[Paul]

That's the fella.
Paul

[Howard Brown]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-08-05-capuzzo05_ST_N.htm

USA TODAY
Carol Memmott



Few people know about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving contingent that helps local law enforcement agencies crack cold cases. Michael Capuzzo profiles the society in his new book, The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases (Gotham, $26, on sale Tuesday). Capuzzo spoke with USA TODAY
Q: What is the Vidocq Society?
A: The group, founded in 1990, is made up of the world's great detectives and forensic specialists. They meet once a month over lunch in a Victorian dining room in Philadelphia to examine cold case murders. They spend years, pro bono, bringing killers to justice in cases where the cops just can't figure it out.
Q: Who are they?
A: They come from 19 states, 12 different countries. They include a captain in the Egyptian army, agents from Scotland Yard (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Scotland+Yard) and INTERPOL, FBI (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Government+Bodies/Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation) agents, CIA agents, private eyes, a county sheriff from California. They have a range of specialties, from Mob busters to tax experts to chemists to poison experts and experts on terrorism. I think of it as CSI to the 10th power, except real.
Q: Who is it named for?
A. Eugene Francois Vidocq, the legendary father of forensic science in Napoleonic Paris. He pioneered the roots of the FBI and Scotland Yard and other investigative bureaus as well as private detective agencies and the detective novel.
Q: Does he have another claim to fame?
A: He was friends with Victor Hugo (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Victor+Hugo), who used him as the model for the two main characters in Les Misérables: Javert, the relentless detective, and Jean Valjean, who was imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family.
Q: Tell me about the Vidocq Society's most famous members, starting with Frank Bender.
A: Bender is the foremost forensic sculptor. He's almost an idiot savant kind of guy who was able to put a half-dozen most-wanted criminals behind bars — including mass murderer John List, who was on the run for 18 years — based on these psychic visions he has and then applies to his facial reconstructions.
Q: And Richard Walter?
A: Walter is the living Sherlock Holmes. He even looks and sounds like him. He's brooding and analytical. He's considered by some to be the world's foremost authority on the world's darkest evil. He's consulted with Scotland Yard and the Hong Kong police on major cases.
Q: What about William Fleischer, the group's founder?
A: He was a federal agent for many years and then a private eye. When he was in his 40s and was looking to do something more significant with his life than bust drug smugglers for the first George Bush, he found Bender and Walter, these two amazing geniuses who represent two different sides of human nature, and all three of them together is an amalgam of the great American detective.
Q: What's one of the biggest cases they cracked?
A: The Texas case of Leisha Hamilton and the killing of Scott Dunn in 1991 is pretty iconic. The society spent six years, and Richard spent 6,000 pro bono hours, tracking down Hamilton and convincing the cops that this slight, attractive woman could be a psychopathic killer.
Q: Is there a case they haven't cracked?
A: The greatest heartache is the case of the "Boy in the Box," who was found brutally murdered in a field outside Philadelphia in 1957. A half-century later, a couple of cops who were on the scene are now retired but still working it. They are part of the Vidocq Society. After 50 years, they haven't given up.
Q: What drives the society's members to work these cases?
A: They share a deep sense of outrage at the world gone mad because of the skyrocketing crime rates and murder rates and have a passion to set it right.