LONDON (AFP) - Jack the Ripper, who murdered and mutilated a series of young women in 19th century London, is one of Britain's most infamous criminals, closely associated with the capital's fog-bound back streets.
But in fact the killer -- who was never caught -- might have been a sailor who interspersed his London murders with crimes in other countries, a report said on Tuesday.
The theory, detailed in the Guardian newspaper, is the product of research by retired British detective Trevor Marriott, who attempted to use modern police methods to solve the crimes.
His conclusions, published in a book called "Jack the Ripper: the 21st Century Investigation", challenge the long-held assumption that the murderer was a skilled surgeon as some of the women were disemboweled.
Marriott also says that the location of the killings between 1888 and 1891, in Whitechapel, east London, near the city's then-thriving docks, suggest the murderer may have been a merchant seaman.
The author believes he has even identified the ship Jack the Ripper arrived on, a cargo vessel called the Sylph which docked in London in July 1888, just before the first murder.
It later left for the Caribbean, tying the sailor to a murder in Nicaragua which Marriott believes bears the hallmarks of the same man, in that a prostitute's throat was cut and her body mutilated.
Another crime, in Germany, is also linked to Jack the Ripper by the book.
"The detectives at the time took a very blinkered approach," Marriott was quoted as saying by the paper.
1 comment:
I['ve subscribed to this belief for a long time. Especially when one considers that the dress of some of the suspicious people in areas where murders occurred, the idea of neckerchieves, round billed caps and such do suggest that the murderer might well have been a seaman. And, of course, any sailor worth his salt (no pun intended) has a knife and/or knows the use of one.
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