Posted on Monday, April 18, 2005 - 9:36 am:

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The solution - finally and beyond doubt - to Britain's most notorious unsolved crimes - the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.



* The person identified as the killer of five women in London East End in 1888 has never before been named a suspect in more than a hundred years of intense speculation.
* The co-author of the book is the great-great-nephew of the killer, who discovered extraordinary evidence while researching his illustrious ancestor. He did not set out to find Jack the Ripper, and did not want to believe that his great-great-uncle could have been responsible. But the evidence is incontrovertible.
* The killer was a very eminent man in his field, and naming him will cause huge shockwaves in the places where he is still venerated.
* No one has ever been able to find any evidence linking any of the suspects to the victims. This book puts forward clear evidence connecting the killer to three of the five victims, and circumstantial evidence connecting him to the other two.
* Patricia Cornwell's international bestseller PORTRAIT OF A KILLER may have established that artist Walter Sickert wrote incriminating letters, but all other authorities (including the police) have always believed that the letters were a hoax and were not written by the killer.
* The authors prove that their suspect was in Whitechapel at the same time as the crimes were committed, and had the knowledge and skills which the nature of the murders required.
* For the first time, the book presents a consistent and plausible explanation for every aspect of the case, meeting all the key criteria of method, motive and opportunity. It also explains why the murders stopped as suddenly as they started.
* The authors have even discovered what they believe to be the murder weapon. Further forensic testing may be able to establish this beyond any reasonable doubt.

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Ripperologists - students of the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel in 1888 - will be interested to know that a new candidate for his identity has emerged today.

A whole-page feature / book review in the Daily Mail reports that an eminent Welsh surgeon, Sir John Williams, who was a founder of the National Library of Wales, has joined the lengthy list of suspects (over 20 at the last count). Sceptics will no doubt scoff, but what is interesting is that the book has been written by one of Sir John's own descendants - or, in fact, colateral descendants, since the author's grandmother was the surgeon's great-great-niece.

The author, Tony Williams, believes he has actually handled the surgical knife with which his ancestor committed the murders and, somewhat ironically, it is in the National Library of Wales which was left some of Sir John's personal possessions. Sir John Williams was obstetrician to Queen Victoria's youngest daughter and President of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and was made a baronet. However, his wife Lizzie was unable to have children (they married in 1872) and the author says it was his ancestor's obsession with her lack of fertility that made him commit the murders as part of his research into the reasons for it and why he mutilated the women so horribly.

Williams also claims to have uncovered a diary for 1888 and other evidence that indicates Sir John knew the women as patients when he worked in the East End of London and that he was there on the dates the murders took place. Further, he claims Sir John may have had an intimate relationship with the final victim, Mary Kelly, when she lived in Cardiff before moving to London and becoming a prostitute.

Well, it's as good a theory as most of the others, especially Prince Eddy the Duke of Clarence, Sir William Gull, Queen Victoria's personal surgeon, Walter Sickert, the artist, and James Maybrick who was poisoned by his wife. Sir John Williams died in 1926.

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