The Face of Jack the Ripper….. Yosser Hughes???

This story was all over the press yesterday, including the BBC and the Independent. It would seem that modern technology has at long last provided the first image of the face of Jack the Ripper, possibly the most notorious serial killer in history.

Jack the Ripper?

An e-fit has been compiled as part of an investigation into the serial killer who terrorised London in the autumn of 1888. In addition a geographical profiler has also pinpointed the street in which the killer is most likely to have lived.

Investigators believe the culprit, who mutilated his five female victims after strangling them, was almost certainly interviewed by police but was discounted because he looked too "ordinary" and unlike the man that detectives suspected was responsible for the savage attacks. Behavioural profilers have concluded that he was socially skilled, with superficial charm and an ability to blend into the crowd.

Investigators also believe the Ripper probably killed himself or was jailed for an unrelated offence, shortly after he had murdered the last of five women prostitutes. The historic reinvestigation for channel Five's Jack the Ripper: The First Serial Killer, to be tonight (21 November), is the latest development in a vast industry dedicated to solving Britain's greatest murder mystery.

As part of the new investigation John Grieve, a former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, compiled an image of the Ripper. Using statements from 13 people who claimed to have seen the man they suspect was the killer Mr Grieve had an e-fit drawn up. Descriptions that were contradictory were ignored and the image is based on a number of similar witness statements. The man who is believed to resemble the notorious murderer is aged between 25 and 35 and is 5ft5in to 5ft 7in tall. He has a large black moustache, close cropped black hair, a pinched face and square jaw.

The murderer, who terrorised residents in the Whitechapel area of east London, was never identified in a police inquiry that was vilified and closed in failure after four years. Mr Grieve believes that using modern investigative techniques the police would have caught the killer today. He also believes he has an explanation for what happened to the Ripper. "He could have killed himself - that is what has happened in cases in the past. But I think it is much more likely that he came to notice for some other crime and went into the prison system, or possibly into a hospital. There was such a burst of activity you would expect the attacks to flare up at a later date." Mr Grieve said if he was redoing the original investigation he would focus on house-to-house inquiries, using the new e-fit image, in the streets where the killer was thought to have lived.

The programme consulted Kim Rossmo, of the University of Texas, a pioneer of geographic profiling - a technique that uses previous crimes to calculate where a offender lives. Based on the locations of the killings and sightings, Dr Rossmo concluded that the Ripper was a resident of the square mile area in which he killed. He is most likely to have lived in Flower and Dean Street - where police in 1888 had conducted out door-to-door inquiries. In the year before the murders each of the victims had lived within 100 yards of the street.

Laura Richards, a behavioural analyst who heads Scotland Yard's homicide prevention unit, and who has studied the behaviour of offenders including the Cromwell Road killer, Fred West, and the Soham murderer Ian Huntley, believes officers were looking for the wrong kind of person. She said: "He's someone who's been overlooked by the virtue of the fact he's so ordinary and so mundane."

The programme also attempts to debunk several myths that have grown around the Ripper. There is no evidence he had any medical training, or that he was an "English gentleman" with a predilection for murder. He strangled his victims and then mutilated their dead bodies, probably for sexual gratification.

Many people have been put forward as suspects over the years, ranging from the plausible to the utterly preposterous.

The latter includes Prince Albert Victor (the Duke of Clarence) and/or Sir William Gull Physician to Queen Victoria, artist Walter Sickert (as proposed by Patricia Cornwell) and (and perhaps most ludicrously) Lewis Carroll.

LEWIS CARROLL?????????????????

Ten years ago Richard Wallace published a book called the Light Hearted Friend which proposed that Carroll (and his colleague Thomas Bayne) was th Ripper. The theory is based on a “discovery” that certain passages in Carroll’s works were anagrams. If the anagrams are decoded they become confessions of his murderous intent.
According to Wallace this passage from 'Nursery Alice':

'So she wondered away, through the wood, carrying the ugly little thing with her. And a great job it was to keep hold of it, it wriggled about so. But at last she found out that the proper way was to keep tight hold of itself foot and its right ear'.

turns it into:

'She wriggled about so! But at last Dodgson and Bayne found a way to keep hold of the fat little whore. I got a tight hold of her and slit her throat, left ear to right. It was tough, wet, disgusting, too. So weary of it, they threw up - jack the Ripper.'

The Casebook, the most authoritative Jack the Ripper resource online gives this theory the contempt it deserves by showing that the opening line of Winnie the Pooh 'Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now' can be turned into 'Stab red red women! CR is downing whores - AA'
Leaving aside ludicrous anagrams and idiotic Masonic conspiracy theories there are plenty of more mundane, suspects including:

Montague John Druitt who disappeared not long after the murder of Mary Kelly and whose body was found floating in the Thames on New Year’s Eve 188. The timing of his death and alleged "private information" led some investigators at the time to suggest he was the Ripper.. Others, including Inspector Abberline were doubtful.

George Chapman (Severin Klosowski), who had a murderous streak was hanged in 1903 poisoning three women. While a favoured suspect at the time it is very uncommon for a murderer to change their modus operandi.

John Pizer was the public's choice for fitting the Ripper's profile. The killer was believed to be a butcher or craftsman who had access to sharp blades and wore a leather apron. Pizer fitted the profile, including the fact that he was often seen wearing such an apron. He had convictions for stabbings and a known dislike for prostitutes. On the other hand he had a cast iron alibi for one of the murders

None of these appear to fit the bill. I would therefore like to propose a new suspect based on the e-fit above - Yosser Hughes from The Boys from the Blackstuff.

Jack the Ripper!

Okay he may be a fictitious character and the actor who played him was not born until nearly 60 years after the murders but he is no less plausible that Lewis Carroll or the Duke of Clarence!


JacktheRipper