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Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion : Constance Kent as JTR?
Author: Alexandria Calet Thursday, 19 April 2001 - 09:58 am | |
Forgive me if this topic has come up before (I am new to the casebook, but have searched fairly thoroughly without finding a mention.) I have been researching the Rode murder of 1860 (the Constance Kent case) and its consequences, and someone told me that they had been told long ago (lots of hearsay in all these things!) that Constance Kent had disappeared after her release from prison in 1885, and that she had in fact become JTR! Sounds unlikely on the face of it, but it is presumably based on the fact that the Rode killer used a knife or a razor, or both, an unusual choice of weapon for a female killer. It does seem that Constance did indeed disappear completely after her release at the age of 41. The theory seems spoiled by her lack of apparent motive, the likelihood that she was in any event not the perpetrator even of the murder to which she had confessed (and therefore not the knife-wielder), and her lack of any knowledge of the East End. She could of course have gained this local knowledge between 1885 and 1888. Does anyone out there have any information about her subsequent career which would give the lie to this rather strange idea of Constance the Ripper?
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Author: Martin Fido Thursday, 19 April 2001 - 11:38 am | |
Constance changed her name, went to Australia and became a nurse. On her hundredth birthday she received the usual formal congratulatory telegram from George VI, and is believed to be the only recipient ever who had been convicted of murder. Martin Fido
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