Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation

x, 310 pages. Illustrations. Trevor Marriott was, a retired homicide detective working to unmask the identity of Jack the Ripper. He waged a solitary legal battle to force Scotland Yard to release uncensored versions of information recorded in thick Victorian ledgers that are gathering dust in an official archive. The volumes contain tens of thousands of tidbits on the Yard's dealings with the public and police informants in the years after the Ripper's grisly two-month killing rampage in 1888. The shadowy figure is alleged to have slain five women in London's seamy Whitechapel district, slitting their throats and, in some cases, eviscerating them with almost surgical precision. But the Metropolitan Police Service, as Scotland Yard is formally known, has staunchly refused to publish the documents in unexpurgated form, without names blacked out. In a surreal tribunal hearing in May, during which a senior officer gave evidence from behind an opaque screen and cited Judas Iscariot to support his point, the agency argued that laying everything bare would violate its confidentiality pledge to informants, even those long dead, and undermine recruitment of collaborators in the present-day fight against terrorism and organized crime. Naming names might even put the snitches' descendants at risk of revenge by the grudge-bearing heirs of those who were informed on, officials said. The three-person tribunal agreed. In this work Marriott suggests there were 9 victims of Jack the Ripper. He also addresses at least 11 persons who might have been Jack the Ripper. There have been countless attempts to solve the brutal murders committed over 100 years ago by Jack the Ripper, but this most famous of British criminal cases finally benefits from a clear, professional eye to analyze the evidence with all the benefits of modern investigative techniques. Former murder squad detective Trevor Marriott considers a mystery that has enthralled millions. Casting aside the rumors, fantasies, and urban legends which have haunted this case for so long, he produces some startling results: while it has long been accepted that Jack the Ripper killed only five women, Marriott believes there were up to nine victims. Most astonishingly of all, a previously unconsidered suspect who also committed murders in America and Germany has been firmly put in the frame. All previous theories are refuted in what may possibly be the final word on the Ripper murders.…