Olean Democrat
New York, U.S.A.
28 April 1896
JACK THE RIPPER DEAD
Was Electrocuted Yesterday In Sing Sing
FEIGENBAUM ONLY AN ALIAS
New York, April 28.
The Advertiser today publishes the following:
"I believe that Carl Feigenbaum, whom you have just seen put to death in the electric chair, can easily be connected with the Jack the Ripper murders in White Chapel, London."
Feigenbaum was killed yesterday in Sing Sing prison and this statement was made by his counsel, William S Lawton.
Before speaking the lawyer explained that revealed the secret of the dead because he felt it to be his duty to science and to law. Lawyer Lawton then began the recital of a story on which, he said, he based his belief that Feigenbaum had been guilty of perhaps a dozen butcheries.
"One night I stayed with him for over two hours," he said, "and he told me that for years he had been the victim of a malady, a disease that periodically preyed upon him, and which forced him in spite of himself to satisfy the incarnate love he had for woman by murdering and mutilating her.
"I was so startled that for the moment I did not know what to do. Then the Jack the Ripper butcheries occurred to me, and I began to search Feigenbaums's record.
"I learned that he was in Wisconsin at the time the country was startled by the news of the murder and mutilation of several women there. Then I communicated with London and discovered that Feigenbaum was also there when so many fallen women fell victims to the knife of some mysterious assassin.
"I questioned Feigenbaum closely and found that he could converse with intelligence on surgery and dissection, but when I asked if he knew anything about these subjects he would feign an ignorance that was unnatural."
Other points advanced by Lawyer Lawton were, first, that the knife with which he killed Mrs. Hoffman was found to have on it old blood stains. Again, Feigenbaum was known to have used many aliases, but only in different towns. As a matter of fact, his real name is Karl Zahn, and he would never explain who he changed it.
"The man was a devil," concluded Mr. Lawton. "His motive for crime was his frightful desire for mutilation."
