JACK the Ripper’s identity may have been revealed by a £240 note on eBay – giving hope of finally solving Britain’s most famous cold case.
A letter found in an old book in Australia talks about Aaron Kosminski, one of the prime suspects in the east London murders.
The 14-line letter from 1889 appears to claim Kosminski had attacked a woman with scissors less than a year after the killings.
Reverend William Patrick Dott said Kosminski had ran screaming at a woman named Mary in the East End.
Dott added: “It’s a wonder he hasn’t hung for what he did to those poor girls.”
The letter also mentions a “Tilly”, who could be Kosminski’s sister Matila.
Dott was a priest at All Hallows church in Barking, east London when he wrote the letter.
It comes as mementos from a police officer who worked on the infamous case are being sold by his great grandson for £10,000.
Inspector Joseph Henry Helson was at the Metropolitan Police when the serial killer murdered five women in Whitechapel in 1888.
He kept hold of two photos of an early suspect, Michael Ostrog, and an image of the first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, in the mortuary.
Bradford man Tim Atkinson, 58, bought Dott’s letter about Kosminski on eBay after it was reportedly found in an old book.
The book is said to have been auctioned off by the University of Melbourne’s theology department.
Tim asked a scientist at the University of Liverpool to examine the note for him.
The boffin used a light-sensitive gadget to check the authenticity of the note.
He said the handwriting and fountain ink were correct for the period and the paper had not been altered.
The paper was found to be original – and had not been artificially aged.
Tim told the Mirror: “I saw it on eBay and thought I’d take a punt on it and now I’ve got it authenticated and it came back as positive.
“It’s the most important letter to come to light. It proves Kosminski was around and could be the murderer.
He added: “It could be worth up to £125,000 but I’m not a money man.”
Kosminski was a Polish immigrant who lived with his two brothers and his sister on Greenfield Street in Whitechapel.
He was said to have worked as a hospital orderly before appearing in Whitechapel around seven years before the Ripper murders in 1888.
Kosminski was sectioned a number of times for suspected schizophrenia but was not said to have displayed violent tendencies.
He was one of three men suspected of being Jack the Ripper by detectives at the time.
The case’s top officer Detective Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson always thought Kosminski was the prime suspect.
SERIAL KILLER Jack the Ripper caused mass hysteria like no murderer had done before.
The story was kept alive for generations after no one was ever caught for killing working women in the East End of London.
Jack the Ripper was the pen name that signed off on a chilling letter alleged to be from the killer printed in London newspapers at the height of his terror.
Five women — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — are widely held to have been victims of the Ripper, although later murders were attributed to him.
All were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable around the Whitechapel area between August and November 1888.
Their bodies were mutilated, many of them being disembowelled.
Chapman’s uterus was taken, Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney removed and her face mutilated, while Kelly’s body was completely destroyed and her face hacked away.
Such was the fear at the time that the streets of London emptied after nightfall, leaving the once bustling Victorian capital deathly silent while the Ripper roamed the streets.
Jack the Ripper committed at least five murders in or near the Whitechapel district of London’s East End.
All of the victims were prostitutes and all of their corpses had been mutilated.
Scotland Yard was inundated with criminal investigations in rough East End leaving them overstretched and under-resourced.
Their lack of arrests and the continuing murder spree led to widespread criticism verging on derision of the police effort to catch the Ripper.
Volunteer citizens put themselves forward to try to help with the case and the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was formed.
Its members patrolled the streets looking for suspects and hired private detectives to bring the menace to an end.
Top of the list of suspects were local butchers and surgeons because of the brutality of the killings — the Ripper was clearly not averse to blood.
Even Queen Victoria was made aware of the harrowing killings and formed her own theories that the Ripper must be a butcher.
The fact that many killings took place on weekends or public holidays also suggested the killer was a regular worker who lived nearby.
While investigations proved fruitless at the time, “ripperologists” are still trawling through evidence to find the true identity of the killer.
The number of named suspects reaches over one hundred.
Among them is cotton merchant James Maybrick who died a year after the last of the Ripper murders.
A diary allegedly belonging to him detailed the murders but its authenticity is disputed.
Thomas Cutbush, a violent criminal, is also among the list of suspects.
He worked in Whitechapel at the time of the killings and allegedly harboured a hatred for prostitutes and a grim fascination with medicine and surgery.
Respected poet Francis Thompson is alleged to have carried out the murders because he wrote about killing people, had surgical experience and was known to be close to one prostitute in the Whitechapel area at the time.
The Ripper case was the first to cause a worldwide media frenzy, and fervent speculation continues to this day.
Indeed, in January 2018 the mystery seemed to have inched closer to being solved when an expert matched the handwriting of two letters claiming to be from the killer.
Hundreds of such letters were sent to police and media, and their origin has remained a mystery with many believing they were written by journalists in an attempt to boost circulation.
But a scientific study seemed to shed new light on the mystery, focusing on the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper appears for the first time, and the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard.
It found similar linguistic constructions in both letters, such as the phrasal verb ‘to keep back’, as well as similarities in the handwriting.
A recent theory which came to light in February 2018, is that the Ripper may have been a Dutch serial killer and sailor.
Crime historian Dr Jan Bondeson named Hendrik de Jong as a prime suspect.
De Jong murdered two wives in his homeland and is believed to have travelled to London regularly.
Another suspect to emerge is the American serial killer HH Holmes.
Lawyer Jeff Mudgett, is the great-great-great-grandson of Holmes, who murdered at least nine known victims.
Read more here.
