I agree. Most folk interested in the case dispose of Kosminski as a harmless imbecile. I think it indicates even the police had no idea.
A couple of decades ago there was a panel of “experts” on a Ripper TV special who all agreed that it was Kosminski. That didn’t make sense to me as there was ample evidence presented during the program which cast doubt on him. The whacked physician who fled England for NYC after the murders sounds more plausible to me.
Can we move on to other secrets?
Trouble is, as with most suspects, it is difficult to tie Tumbleton into any crime scenes.
There were warnings about the Market going sour before 9/11.
I know, because I read em on MSNBC, & saw em on CNN. That’s why I shifted my 401K money into bonds/fixed rates, just before then. I saved most of the dough my tiny 401K earned in the Tech Bubble. 
And since airline stocks are volitile anyway, any investor would have thought about selling right around then.
The only thing it proves is that Wall Street wasn’t happy about Bush in office, & that the Bubble was bursting before the Towers were hit.
Did Lizzie Borden really take an ax and give her parents all those whacks?
I know the Ripper mystery isn’t what the OP had in mind, since everyone involved would be dead, but this is a link to casebook.org , which is a very informative site. They have just about any theory ever imagined, the pros, cons and other information pertaining to each one. An interesting read.
I am also curious about the mystery of Oak Island. If its just a hoax, that’s cool but what a great deal of effort to pull it off!
I agree with JFK and Area 51, but what about Roswell? Was it just a weather balloon?
The mystery of how the Church of $cientology became tax exempt is one that should answerable.
Are there still enough people around to know the truth about the Black Dahlia murder?
I have more questions, but I’m drawing a blank! Nuts!
What happened to the Roanoke Colony and what is the meaning of “Croatan”?
The remaining riddles of Cahokia.
Re: Jack the Ripper; a good case has been made on more than one occasion for Walter Richard Sickert being the guilty party.
The origin/purpose of the OLD STONE FORT here in Tennessee is a largely uninvestigated mystery.
We know that it’s pre-Colombian, & that local Indians always denied a connection.
It may be ceremonial. Nobody ever lived inside the walls. That’s all we know.
Are we talking about secrets or mysteries? There is a difference, albeit subtle.
If we’re allowed to include mysteries, you guys missed some pretty big ones:
Who built Stonhenge, how, and what was its purpose?
What and where is the Holy Grail?
What was the purpose of the Antikythera Mechanism?
What was the fourth thing I was going to mention? :rolleyes:
Pie.
You were going to mention “Pie”.
What kind of Pie?
Aaaaah! That is the Mystery!
Remember the OP: We’re supposed to limit this to secrets, not mysteries; and to secrets which might be known by some living persons somewhere.
Right. Although I’m not opposed to secrets that have a good chance of having been written down, say, or are otherwise discoverable. My off-the-cuff analysis is that Jack the Ripper has passed into the realm of mystery, for example, because I doubt any new evidence is going to turn up and nail down a definitive solution. That’s why I ruled out the Mary Celeste – unless I’m mistaken, there’s no way anyone knows or is going to prove what happened there.
Not that I have any real clout, but if anyone’s nominating something that might be more properly thought of as a mystery, an explanation of why it’s solvable would be interesting.
Put another way, we’re looking for secrets which somebody somewhere, for whatever reason, might be keeping. Not something like the purpose of the old stone fort in Tennessee – where everyone who knows the answer is dead, and everyone living who has any interest is interested only in discovering the truth.
Take it from someone who has read a lot on both subjects: Lizzie Borden? Guilty as charged. Lee Oswald? Guilty as charged.
Now that we’ve those two mysteries out of the way, back to secrets.
I think it’s impossible to say with currently available information. I do think it’s possible that the information may come out at some point, as a number of files and documents were removed as keep-sakes by police officials at the time, and some of those find there way back now and then. We also have a lot more people looking into various records, finding old newspaper accounts, and compiling them all together in a way that may be able to give better perspective on the whole case than what the police of the time, who were overworked and inexperienced with serial killers, had.
Not exactly. They were given a small choice of some really bad suspects to vote on and declared Kosminski the most likely of that bunch. Looking at that list (Prince Eddy? come on…), I would have to agree with them on that, but still don’t think Kosminski is all that likely. A lot more info has recently been discovered on “Dr.” Tumblety, and many of the things that were used to try to argue for him being the killer are simply wrong, and his case was always fairly weak anyway. The only police official who ever named him as a suspect wasn’t even on the Ripper case, did so because Tumblety was gay (and “a sexual deviant,” etc.), and got some major facts wrong (like not even knowing the guy had escaped to NYC and thinking maybe he had committed suicide, when he was in US papers with quite high visibility for years afterwards).
You mean a series of extremely bad arguments. The guy was in another country at the time of the murders, for crying out loud, and that’s just for starters. Search for Sickert here, at Wikipedia, or Casebook.org to see how soundly that idea has been thrashed.
What’s the other word that ends in -gry?
Seriously, I remember reading many years ago about a set of prophecies that some schoolgirls came up with (relating to “our lady of Fatima”, or something like that?) that were sealed and sent to the vatican, and wouldn’t be revealed for 75 years.
A Straight Dope classic from 1981: What happened to the secret message of Fatima?
Poundstone solved that one, too. 