London (UPI)
Scotland Yard is checking out a report which may result in closing out the docket on Jack the Ripper after 70 years, according to the London newspaper Reynold News.
Jack the Ripper was one of the most infamous murderers of all time. He brutally murdered six women in London's gaslit streets in the 1880's.
He was never caught and never identified.
The Sunday Reynolds News said Sunday that retired blacksmith, George Henry Edwards, 82, told Scotland Yard that Jack the Ripper was his cousin Frank, now dead.
It quoted Edwards as saying he kept silent until now because "otherwise I might have been done in too."
According to the newspaper, Edwards told Scotland Yard of a night in 1888 when a woman was murdered in London's East End, one of the series killings which terrorized London.
A few hours later, according to Edwards, his cousins Frank arrived at the Edwards home. Frank, an accountant, carried an attache case in which were a razor and a bloodstained collar.
The newspaper quoted Edwards as saying Frank wore a bowler hat, goldrim spectacles and had a black moustache. A newspaper report of that murder said a policeman spotted a man wearing a bowler hat, goldrim glasses and with a moustache waling away from the murder scene.
Reynolds News said Edwards told Scotland Yard Frank was always saying he hated women. He said Frank picked quarrels easily, mainly over women.
Mrs. Bertha Parkhurst, 75, another of Frank's cousins, was quoted as saying of him: "Women in his opinion were just no good. I have a vague memory he was supposed to have murdered a woman in London, but I can't remember the details."
