THE Jack the Ripper mystery that has kept the world enthralled since the killer first struck on the streets of Victorian London has been blown apart on the 125th anniversary of the grisly crimes by a former murder squad detective.
He was just dreamed up by a drunken journalist called Thomas Bulling who wrote a forged letter to Scotland Yard in 1888 pretending to be âJackâ so he could obtain a scoop.
More than 300 books and dozens of films and TV programmes have named in excess of 100 different men, often on the flimsiest of evidence, as the serial murderer who slashed the throats of five women who he then disembowelled, bringing terror to the gas lit streets of Whitechapel.
The suspects have included everyone from Queen Victoriaâs grandson the Duke of Clarence to Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll.
Some even said a Sioux Indian warrior called Black Elk, who toured Britain with Buffalo Billâs Wild West Show in the 1880s, was the guilty man. Others believed child charity campaigner Dr Barnardo was âJackâ.
But Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective with Bedfordshire police, has spent 11 years carrying out a detailed cold-case review of the killings, he has trawled Scotland Yardâs files and used modern-day police techniques backed up with state of the art forensic analysis.
âThe facts of this case have been totally distorted over the years,â said Mr Marriott. âThe general public have been completely misled by any number of authors and publishers.
âJack is supposed to be responsible for five victims, but there were other similar murders before and after the ones attributed to him, both in this country and abroad in America and Germany.â
Jack terrorised Victorian London
Feigenbaum was a crew member on ships that regularly docked near Whitechapel. He was executed in New York in 1896 after being caught by US police fleeing the scene of a Ripper-style murder there.
âThe reality is there was just a series of unsolved murders and they would have sunk into oblivion many years ago, but for a reporter called Thomas Bulling,â said Mr Marriott.
Bulling was a drunken journalist with many police contacts at Scotland Yard, who in 1888 was working for the London-based Central News Agency. He was paid to supply crime stories for newspapers.
âPolice got a letter that Bulling had written about the murders which he signed âJack the Ripperâ,â said Mr Marriott.
âIt was the most ingenious piece of journalism that has kept this mystery alive for 125 years. Even now any modern-day serial killer is called a âRipperâ. âYou have to ask yourself if âJackâ is an urban myth. Around 80 per cent of the books about him have a picture of a chap on the front stalking the streets of London in a long black cape and a top hat.
âThey were the clothes of an upper class, wealthy man. But back in 1888 Â if someone dressed like that had actually walked around Whitechapel in the dead of night they wouldnât have lasted five minutes.
âIt wasnât just one of the most crime-riddled areas of London, it was one of the worst areas in the country. Itâs a false image that has been created by the likes of Hollywood film makers.
âNew facts have come to light, weâve now disproved the claim that the killer removed organs from the victims at the scenes of the murders, the organs were removed later once they were in a mortuary.
âThere just isnât a Jack The Ripper as such.â
But the interest in the Ripper murders is still so strong that just this month the East London Advertiser, the newspaper that covers the Whitechapel area published a 12-page souvenir pull out to mark the 125th anniversary of the crimes.
Meanwhile Trevor Marriott is mid-way through a 36-date theatre tour of the UK with his one man show called âJack The Ripper A 21st Century Investigationâ in which he reveals the research he has done and the forensic evidence that he says finally reveals the real story about the killings.
