Posted on 05/15/2011 7:15:40 PM PDT by naturalman1975
The Met Police is fighting a legal battle to keep files detailing the investigation into the notorious Jack the Ripper case secret - to maintain confidentiality for Victorian 'supergrasses'.
The documents are said to include four new suspects for the serial killings which terrorised Whitechapel in 1888 and have become one of the world's most infamous unsolved cases.
The historic ledgers have 36,000 entries detailing police interaction with informants between 1888 to 1912.
However, Scotland Yard reportedly believes disclosing the names could hinder recruiting and gathering information from modern informants, affecting terrorism investigations - and even lead to the Victorians' relatives being attacked.
Author and former police officer, Trevor Marriott, has tried for three years to see uncensored versions of the documents.
He has previously applied under the Freedom of Information Act and, when that was refused, he appealed to the Information Commissioner, which also rejected his attempt.
He has now appealed to the Information Tribunal, which is expected to release its decision later this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
So, you think maybe the rumors that it was a nobleman/royal are true then?
Where was Bush at the time?
1888 was the year that my grandmother was born, She would be 123 now.
It certainly wasn’t a Royal - there is basically conclusive proof that the one who was accused in the 1970s (Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence) was elsewhere at the time of the five murders that are regarded as the definite work of the Ripper - hundreds of witnesses would have had to deliberately lie to cover up his movements, 75 years before he was even accused.
But there might be something in the files that would be embarassing to somebody’s reputation, I suppose.
They don’t want to upset the restive Muslim population in London with news that they suspect as an ROP’er
Same year my grandfather was born. He died when I was five.
Makes sense. The only harm by releasing information today would be to an institution. The royal family is Britain's number one institution.
Interestingly, with over 200 suspects generally accepted by the Ripperology community, I don’t think any of them are Moslem...
Patricia Cornwell wrote, Portrait of a Killer: Jack The Ripper Case Closed, almost ten years ago.
It seems that it is not. So much for accusing Walter Sickert, a famous artist.
Anyone have any information?
A couple more White Chapel connections, John (correctly Joseph) Merrick, the Elephant Man was a contemporary of Jack the Ripper. Also, Bram Stocker, author of “Dracula”, who owned a music hall at the time of the Ripper murders. I’ve often thought those murders could have had a subconscious influence on Stoker.
Bizarre. Most of the grandchildren of the informants are likely dead by now. Sounds like someone very important needs protecting.
You know that episode of Star Trek, where Jack the Ripper jumps from body to body and is hundreds of years old?
Yeah, whoever is inhabiting the body of Obama, he could be hundreds of years old.
Cornwell’s position is given no credence by most people who have studied the crime.
There are over 200 named suspects some of whom are far more credible than others. Sickett really isn’t among the likely ones in my view.
I think it was more likely somebody rather unimportant and unremarkable - one of the rather boring suspects who were just madmen living in the squalor of the East End, who did nothing else in their life of any note, except kill some prostitutes. But those aren’t the exciting stories.
It might not be royalty that is implicated. It could very well be Scotland Yard.
Maybe they had the guy dead to right, but their screwups set him free.
My guess is all the evidence was there, it is just that the police bungled the job badly and the killer skipped out.
Yes, and they have done so - and identified a most likely location. And there are a number of suspects who lived in that area.
But this was an East End slum full of dosshouses where dozens of people were living in single houses renting a bed for 4 pence a night - the general vicinity identified would have had thousands of people living in it.
I was lucky, my grandmother who lived with us died when I was 11. I fondly remember her telling me about her father hitching up the team to take the buggy to church on Sundays and about her older brothers death at age 17 fom “drinking bad well water.” She clearly remembered him laid out in a coffin her family parlor. He died in 1897.
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