Saucy Jack's secrets safe...

[Gob]

SCOTLAND Yard is fighting an extraordinary legal battle to withhold 123-year-old secret files that experts believe could finally provide the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Four thick ledgers compiled by Special Branch officers have been kept under lock and key since the Whitechapel murders in 1888.

Trevor Marriott, a Ripper investigator and former murder squad detective, has spent three years attempting to obtain uncensored versions of the documents.

But he has been repeatedly refused because the ledgers contain the identities of police informants - and the Metropolitan Police insist that revealing the information could compromise the gathering of information from ''supergrasses'' and other modern-day informants.

Last week, Mr Marriott took Scotland Yard to a tribunal in a last-ditch attempt to see the journals - containing 36,000 entries - which he believes contain evidence that could finally unmask the world's most famous serial killer.

The legal case has cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds and has even involved a senior Scotland Yard officer giving evidence anonymously from behind a screen.

The ledgers provide details of the police's dealings with thousands of informants from 1888 to 1912.

A sample of about 40 pages from the Scotland Yard ledgers was released to last week's tribunal, but with the names of informants and other key details blacked out.

Mr Marriott says the files contain the names of at least four new suspects, as well as other pieces of evidence.

He said: ''I believe this to be the very last chance that we may have to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

''To have any possibility of getting near the truth about those horrific crimes, we must see what these ledgers contain. It may be that within them we will find the final piece of the jigsaw that would unlock this mystery and lead to the identity of the killer, or killers, albeit 123 years too late.''

Jack the Ripper killed at least five women between August and November 1888 in the slums of Whitechapel, east London, but experts have claimed other murders may have been committed by the killer. The case remains one of the world's great unsolved mysteries. The tribunal decision is expected later this year



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/london-poli ... z1MU6Kfa6F

[Scooter]

Yeah, I'm sure that revealing the identities of informants who have been dead 70-100 years ago is going to discourage all sorts of potential informants from coming forward today.

If I were a conspiracy-minded guy, I would wonder what potential suspect of the time they are still trying to protect, because if they were it would mean that revealing his identity would still have repercussions today. The only suspect that comes to mind for whom that would be true is the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of George V whose name was also associated (whether truthfully or not) with the Cleveland Street Scandal. Even if he had been decisively eliminated as a suspect (he had alibis for a number of the murders), to have police files confirm that he was under investigation (which might also make mention of the Cleveland Street Scandal) would be incredibly embarrassing for the Royal Family even today.

I can't think of any other rational reason for refusing to hand over the files, but I suspect it's just a case of police being police and fighting their hardest to release only what they are absolutely forced to.

[loCAtek]

You have no Freedom of Information Act, or its equivalent there?

[Lord Jim]

I've long had an amateur sleuth's interest in this case....

I find the evidence regarding this particular suspect very compelling:

James Kelly (20 April 1860 – 17 September 1929) was first identified as a suspect in Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper, by Jim Tully, in 1997.[84]

James Kelly (no known relation to the Ripper victim Mary Kelly) murdered his wife in 1883 by stabbing her in the neck. Deemed insane, he was committed to the Broadmoor Asylum, from which he later escaped in early 1888, using a key he fashioned himself. After the last Ripper murder in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been his residence prior his wife's murder, but they were not able to locate him. In 1927, almost forty years after his escape, he unexpectedly turned himself back in to officials at the Broadmoor Asylum. He died two years later, presumably of natural causes.

A retired NYPD cold-case detective named Ed Norris examined the Jack the Ripper case for a Discovery Channel program called "Jack the Ripper in America." In it, Norris claims that James Kelly was not only Jack the Ripper's real identity, he was also responsible for multiple murders in cities around the United States. Norris highlights a few features of the Kelly story to support his contention. He worked as a furniture upholsterer, a job that requires handiness with a knife. He also left behind a journal that spoke of his strong disapproval of the immorality of prostitutes and of his having been on the "warpath" during his time as a fugitive. Norris claims Kelly was in New York at the time of a Ripper-like murder of a prostitute named Carrie Brown as well as in a number of cities while each experienced, according to Norris, one or two brutal murders of prostitutes while Kelly was there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_suspects

I saw the Discovery Channel documentary referenced, and Norris did an excellent job of pairing up evidence of Kelly's travels in the US with newspaper accounts of a whole string of Ripper type killings across the US.....

On top of that, as an upholsterer, he would have the skill with a knife required to carry out the killings; (as well as a skill that he could use to make money while moving from place to place) and he escaped from Broadmoor a few months before the Ripper murders began, which means he had opportunity to commit them.

He was also known to have consorted with prostitutes in Whitechapel and Spitalfields prior to killing his wife, (whom he said he murdered because she had infected him with syphilis)

[Gob]

Part of me likes the idea that his identity will always be open to speculation. It's nice to have mystery in our lives.

[The Hen]

No, No, No, No, No!

A mystery is nice if you are trying to work out if the blonde in the next cubicle is natural or not.

A mystery is not nice when you are speculating on a violent serial killer. Even ones from a century ago.

[Long Run]

Part of me likes the idea that his identity will always be open to speculation. It's nice to have mystery in our lives.

Redjac!

http://www.startrek.com/database_articl ... n-the-fold

[Sean]

Now that's stuck in my head...

Saucy Jack, you're a naughty one
Saucy Jack, you're a haughty one