The Munster News and Limerick and Clare Advocate
Limerick, Ireland
Saturday, 1st December 1888

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS

The arrest at Mile End last night is regarded as of no importance. The police are making investigations, but the aid of detectives has been requested, and the prisoner's discharge is imminent.

THE LONDON HORRORS

The appointment of MR MONROE to take charge of the London Police instead of Sir C WARREN, has revived the discussion of the Whitechapel murders. The new Chief Commissioner began his work by attending at the Whitechapel Station, and investigating the detectives work. It is anticipated that the "fiend" will now put himself in evidence to show the new "Boss" what he can do. A fresh "theory" is under discussion as to whether the "Ripper" is not a Russian named NICOLAI VASSILYOFF, who sixteen years ago was committed to a Paris Asylum after he had shown a mania for murdering unfortunate women, and succeeded in terribly butchering a number of them. Shortly before the Whitechapel murders he was discharged from the French asylum "cured;" he has not since been heard of, and the "theory" is that he may be the assassin and that he is still possessed of the idea - that "unfortunates can only atone for their sins and obtain redemption by being put to death," which he had when in the Asylum, and circumstances seem to favour the idea. But since the seven fearful tragedies, a wild, terrible desire for taking life, seems to be possessing numbers of persons in England, and many shocking tragedies have occurred within the past week even. Strange to say, the murders have had little or no effect on the fallen class from whom the Whitechapel savage has taken so many victims. They are as numerous as ever in the locality, and they crowd the thoroughfares they usually frequent, as if there was no such bloodthirsty devil to be feared as the one who is now engaging the attention of over 1000 special detectives, and many hundreds of amateur ones as well.

THE EAST END MURDERS
EXTRAORDINARY STORY

VIENNA, NOV 27 - The Russian newspaper "Novosti" makes a startling revelation. According to a Muscovite contemporary, the "Whitechapel murderer" is a Russian. The "Novosti" give the following particulars:

He was born at Tiraspol in South Russia in 1847, and graduated at the Odessa University. After 1879 he became a fanatical Anarchist, and emigrated to Paris, where he went out of his mind. His monomania was that fallen women could only be redeemed and go to heaven if they were murdered. This led him to perpetrate a number of murders in Paris. The Paris police arrested him, but on discovering that he was a lunatic they shut him up in an asylum. That was sixteen years ago. He was kept there until a short time prior to the first murder in Whitechapel, when he was released as cured. He went to London, and there lodged with different compatriot refugees until the first woman was assassinated in Whitechapel, since which time his friends have not seen him.