Carl Feigenbaum
Carl Feigenbaum, alias Anton Zahn, was executed by electric chair at Sing Sing prison on 1 September 1894, for the murder of Juliana Hoffman. The murder occurred at 542 East Sixth Street, New York. Mrs Hoffman's son, Michael, was awoken by the sound of screaming, and on venturing to investigate, found Fiegenbaum, who had recently taken a room there, attempting to cut his mothers throat. Fiegenbaum lunged at the boy, knife in hand, but Michael fled through an open window. Fiegenbaum stabbed Mrs Hoffman, before fleeing out of the rear window, throwing the knife away as he fled, he was arrested later that night. Fiegenbaum told his lawyer, 'I have for years suffered from a singular disease which induces an all absorbing passion, this passion manifests itself in a desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way, I am unable to control myself'. The lawyer, William Sanford Lawton, on hearing this, at once thought of the Whitechapel murders, and suspected that his client may be Jack the Ripper. The lawyer put forward the question of the Whitechapel murders to Fiegenbaum, who's reply was that, 'The lord was responsible for my acts, and that to him only could I confess'. The lawyer drew enough from this to convince himself that the prisoner was not only Jack the Ripper, the man who had murdered twelve ? women in London, but was also the man who had murdered an elderly prostitute, Carrie Brown, nicknamed Old Shakespeare, in New York on 24 April 1891. Unfortunately, very little is actually known about Fiegenbaum, he was said to have been German and about 53/54 years old. There is no evidence that he was in London at the time of the Whitechapel murders, nor that he was suspected at the time.
