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Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 220
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 3:42 pm: | 
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Hi Martin Fido
Do you recall Jack The Ripper Revealed, and if so can you let me know what year it came out and whether you were happy with the final broadcast after the editing process and all.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 124
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 5:55 pm: |
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Can you give me a little more detail, Gary? I've seen a number of JtR docs, and contributed to a few. But exact titles certainly won't stick in my mind, and I haven't the faintest idea whether you are referring to something I've seen or something I've missed.
All the best,
Martin F. |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 222
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 6:07 pm: |
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No Martin, this was one you were In in a very prominent way. It shows you leading a group around on a Ripper Walk while discussing the murders. At the end the discussion centers on Kosminski/Cohen. I just happened to find it as I am planning on putting all my JTR VHS tapes together on a DVD.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 126
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 6:39 pm: |
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The only one in which I led a group of walkers was a BBC programme made in 1988 or 89 or thereabouts. It was unsatisfactory in many ways. I had to collude with the producers in talking at sites that were not the real ones (though they were often not visible enough for this to matter). The walks which gave the history account were separate from the main thrust of the programme, which was given over to Christopher Frayling, Professor of Popular Culture (or some such Mickey Mouse imitation of an academic discipline) who was touting the silly suggestion that ALL the attempts to identify the Ripper, from 1888 to 1988, rested on some sort of misplaced social or cultural prejudice. He was backed up by (among others) Judith Walkowitz, who offered the marvellous moment of idiotica academica, "In 1888, London was subject to a socio-geographical divide." By which she meant there was an East End and a West End - or, in American idiom, a right side and a wrong side of the tracks. Cor! Who would have thought such a crisis was lying behind the murders in slumland!
I did persuade the producer that he couldn't end with the imbecilic remark "So there really was no Jack the Ripper at all." Though Frayling seemed obtuse about it, the producer realized that it was true that somebody committed these murders, and it is pretty certain that several of them were by the same hand, and that unknown killer existed and has traditionally been known as Jack the Ripper.
In the Daily Mail Philip French said that the Beeb should have handed the whole programme over to me, though he gave me quite undeserved praise for arriving at exactly the right place at exactly the right time, when in fact the whole walk was faked over two nights - just a series of shots at prearranged places with a group of acting students pretending to be tourists. But I agreed with French that Frayling's material was pompous, uninformative and ill-informed garbage of the type which understandably brings out the term "pseudo-intellectual" in Philistines.
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 224
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 7:18 pm: |
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Hi Martin
Can you see now why I asked you what you thought about the production and whether or not you were satisfied with the result?
"So there really was no Jack The Ripper at all"
I've no doubt somebody on these boards will agree.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 128
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 6:33 am: |
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If they can believe that, they should be compelled to spend the rest of their lives in Judith Walkowitz's company.
All the best,
Martin F |
John Osterholm
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 7:18 pm: |
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Hi Martin
Good to 'talk' to you! Today, I played back the documentary made in 1988 hosted by Peter Ustinov where there were a group of experts discussing the case. At the end there was a vote by viewers gimmick and then the conclusion by the experts that Kosminski was JTR. Any comments? |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 228
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 8:09 pm: |
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Hi Martin and John.
As Martin indicates JTR Revealed can be painful to watch. Where on earth did they find these talking heads.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 140
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 11, 2003 - 8:00 am: |
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Hi Gary!
Yes indeed!
This is the programme (discussed on another board), which invited a panel of experts to base their conclusion on the evidence supplied by virtually everybody who had ever written a book on the Ripper, and the FBI profile drawn up by John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood. At the time it was made, there was a dry run before the final filming, and Don Rumbelow and I, appearing before cameras in the old Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, could listen to what was being said live in California from a speaker on the floor that looked like a biscuit tin. In the dry run, Bill Eckert, founder and head of the Milton Halperin Institute of Forensic Studies, who had proposed the programme in the first place, cast his vote firmly for David Cohen, only to be told he couldn't do this, as Cohen was not on the list of suspects before the panel. In fact, Cosgrove-Muerer, the production company, had telephoned me a few days earlier to say they had built sets and exhibit material that called the Polish Jew Kosminsky, and they didn't feel they had time or space to go into the Cohen corollary. And as I thought it important that the public know about the Polish Jew theory in general, and not my additional spin on it back in 1988, I didn't object, though I thought it regrettable.
But I was extremely surprised when John Douglas and Mark Olshaker's book "The Cases that Haunt Us" was written three years ago to learn that Douglas and Hazelwood had never been told ANYTHING at all about the Cohen evidence, and that having now seen it, Douglas felt that it answered the many problems he had seen in the Kosminski solution, so that were he now asked for an opinion on the Ripper's identity he would now say "David Cohen, or someone very like him" and not "Kosminsky, or someone very like him".
From which one may conclude that if the rest of the panel had known what only Bill Eckert knew - the case against David Cohen - they would all probably have come to the same conclusion, and we should now talk about the serious David Cohen theory rather than the Kosminsky theory which, as far as I know, has never had a really serious scholarly proponent, even Paul Begg saying no more than that he should be seen as a more serious historical contender than David Cohen until he has been completely disproved (Paul's grounds being that Kosminski's is the name given by Macnaghten and Swanson)- though this piece of historical methodology doesn't commit Paul to believing that Kosminsky was the Ripper.
On this basis, if a new edition of the A-Z ever appears, the dismissive statement about Cohen (which I drafted to the effect that no authority has ever agreed with me) will be removed, and it will instead be noted that the Cohen theory has the impressive support of the late Dr Bill Eckert, and John Douglas, former head of the FBI's Criminal Identification Analysis program.
With all good wishes,
Martin F |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 141
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 11, 2003 - 8:02 am: |
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Hi John and Gary!
Apologies for addressing an answer to John to Gary.
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 230
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2003 - 5:24 pm: |
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Hi Martin
I am out of town and wondered if I had asked a question I didn't remeber when my son mentioned your reply. My son is posting this for me.
All The Best
Gary (Thanks to Trevor Weatherhead)
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 143
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2003 - 8:30 am: |
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Hi Gary!
See the previous post where I apologize to you and John for addressing my answer to his question to you.
All the best,
Martin |
Kris Law
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 9:41 am: |
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Hello Mr. Fido,
I was wondering what your opinion of Tumblety is, as he was discovered after your suspect of Cohen was put forward? |
Kourtneigh Foster
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2004 - 10:58 am: |
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Good day! I am attempting to locate the documentary which featured Patricia Cornwell. It is based on her book, Portrait of a Killer, If you know anything about this video, please post information so that I may relay it to the head of my department. Thanks in advance for any efforts made. |
Brian Baker
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, November 17, 2005 - 12:01 pm: |
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Hello to everyone I'm a little new to Jack the Ripper and I cautiously ask if anyone can provide me with any DVD documentary shows on the subject |
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