Jack The Ripper's Identity Revealed

Jack The Ripper's Identity Revealed

LONDON, October 5/PRNewswire/ --

- Two Further Victims Also Linked to Jack the Ripper -

- With Photo

Historian and author, Mei Trow has uncovered a compelling new suspect in the greatest criminal mystery of all time: the identity of Jack the Ripper. Using modern police forensic techniques, including psychological and geographical profiling, Trow has named Robert Mann, a Whitechapel morgue attendant as the killer. His theory, the result of two years intensive research, is explored exclusively in one-off documentary, JACK THE RIPPER: KILLER REVEALED, airing on Discovery Channel, Sunday 11th October, 9.00pm and in the accompanying book, 'Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer', published by Pen & Sword.

The beginnings of Trow's new theory began in 1988 with an FBI examination of the Ripper case, which had worked up a comprehensive criminal personality profile using standard agency procedures, and to Trow, Mann fitted this profile perfectly. The salient points which emerged were that the killer was:

          - A white male from the lower social classes     - Probably from a broken home     - Had a menial job such as a butcher, mortuary or medical       examiner's assistant, hospital attendant     - Because of prolonged periods without human interaction, was       socially inept  

Mei Trow who has spent 20 years investigating the Whitechapel area said, "I wanted to go beyond the myth of a caped man with a top hat and knife, and get to the reality, and the reality is simply that Jack was an ordinary man."

Trow makes another startling conjecture, that the Ripper killed another two women. He believes Martha Tabram - found with 39 stab wounds to her body in Gunthorpe Street, was the first of Jack's victims, and Alice Mackenzie, brutally murdered eight months after the confirmed five killings, was his last. The two women, along with Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman, would have been delivered to the Whitechapel mortuary in which Robert Mann worked. Did he pore over their bodies with the same macabre fascination?

After the killing of Polly Nichols, Jack's first victim, Mann unlocked the mortuary for the police so they could examine the body and as such, was called as a witness in her inquest to help establish the cause of death. Most damningly, he undressed Polly's body with his assistant, despite being under strict instructions from Inspector Spratling to not touch the body, and Trow suspects that this was an opportunity to admire his handiwork. The Coroner in his summation of Robert Mann's testimony concluded that, 'It appears the mortuary-keeper is subject to fits, and neither his memory nor statements are reliable.' Was it this unreliability that allowed him to drop off the Police's radar?

A local of impoverished Whitechapel, Mann was from an extremely deprived background, his father having been absent for much of his upbringing. In addition, he tasted the ultimate Victorian humiliation of being an inmate in the workhouse, which all citizens regarded as a hellish place to where the lowest strata of society were relegated.

Professor Laurence Alison, Forensic Psychologist at Liverpool University, who features in the documentary, concludes that, "In terms of psychological profiling, Robert Mann is the one of the most credible suspects from recent years and the closest we may ever get to a plausible psychological explanation for these most infamous of Victorian murders."

JACK THE RIPPER: KILLER REVEALED is produced for Discovery Channel by Atlantic Productions. Elizabeth McIntyre is executive producer for Discovery Channel.

Note to Editors:

A picture accompanying this release is available through the PA Photowire. It can be downloaded from http://www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or viewed at http://www.mediapoint.press.net or http://www.prnewswire.co.uk.

Source: Discovery Channel

Contact: Kate Buddle, kate_buddle@discovery-europe.com, +44-(0)7717-787-395

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Profile: International Entertainment