Jack the Stripper (1 Viewer)

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Weeping Tom

Avant garde art & food critic extraordinaire
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Seventy years after "Jack the Ripper" murdered and disembowelled prostitutes in London's East end, a new generation of prostitutes learned to live with the ever-present fear of a lurking killer.
This "Jack" carried no knife, but he was every bit as lethal (claiming seven victims to the Ripper's five) and possessed of far greater longevity (operating over nearly six years, compared to the Ripper's 10 weeks). At the end of the case, both killers shared a common attribute: despite a wealth of theories and assertions, neither "Jack" was ever captured or identified.


17th June 1959, prostitute Elizabeth Figg, 21, was found floating in the Thames, dressed only in a slip, her death attributed to strangulation. As with many old unsolved cases there is a discrepancy, another report says They stumbled across the body of a woman, sat up against a small willow tree, her blue and white striped dress torn open to reveal her breasts and some scratches on her throat. She had been strangled.

8th November 1963, Four and a half years passed before discovery of the next victim, with the skeleton of 22 year old Gwyneth Rees unearthed during clearance of a river Thames-side rubbish dump. She was last seen getting into a van on 29th September 1963.
The cause of death was difficult to ascertain, and homicide investigators later tried to disconnect both murders from the "Stripper" series, but today the better evidence suggests that these were practice runs, the early crimes committed by a killer how had yet to hit his stride.


2nd February 1964, Thirty year old Hannah Tailford was the next to die, her naked corpse discovered in the Thames by boatman.. Her stockings were pulled down around her ankles, panties stuffed inside her mouth, but she had drowned, and the inquest produced an "open" verdict, refusing to rule out suicide, however improbable it seemed.

9th April 1964, 20 year old Irene Lockwood was found naked and dead in the Thames, floating 300 yards from the spot where Tailford was found. Another drowning victim, she was four months pregnant when she died. Suspect Kenneth Archibald confessed to the murder later that month, then recanted his statement, blaming depression. He was subsequently cleared at trial.

24th April 1964, Helen Barthelmy, age 20, was the first victim found away from the river, her naked boy was discovered near a sports field in Brentwood, four front teeth missing, with part of one logged in her throat. Traces of multicoloured spray paint on the body suggested that she had been kept for a while after death in a paint shop before she was dumped in the field.

14th July 1964, 30 year old Mary Fleming was discarded, nude and lifeless, on a dead-end London street. Witnesses glimpsed a van and its driver near the scene, but none could finally describe the man or vehicle with any certainty. Missing since 11th July, Fleming had apparently been suffocated or choked to death - as opposed to strangled - and her dentures were missing from the scene.

25th November 1964, Margaret McGowan, 21, had been missing a month when her nude corpse was found in Kensington. Police noted the familiar traces of paint on her skin, and one of her teeth had been forced from its socket in front.

16th February 1965, The last to die was 27 year old Bridget O'Hara, last seen alive on 11th January 1965, her body found hidden in some shrubbery on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton. Her front teeth were missing, and pathologists determined that she had died on her knees. The corpse was partially mummified, as if from prolonged storage in a cool, dry place.

Despite appeals to prostitutes for information on their "kinky" customers, police were groping in the dark. Inspector John Du Rose suggested that the last six victims had been literally choked to death by oral sex, removal of the teeth in four cases lending vague support to the hypothesis. A list of suspects had supposedly been narrowed down from 20 men to three when one of those committed suicide, gassing himself in his kitchen and leaving a cryptic note: "I cannot go on." It might mean anything - or nothing - but the murders ended with the nameless suspect's death, and so police seemed satisfied, although the case remains officially unsolved.

Who was the Stripper? Suspects range from a deceased prize fighter, Freddie Mills, who committed suicide in 1965, to an unnamed ex-policeman, but Du Rose favoured a private security guard on the Heron Trading Estate, his rounds including the paint shop where at least some of the victims were apparently stashed after death. The only "evidence" of guilt is the cessation of similar crimes after the suspect's suicide, but numerous serial killers have "retired" once they achieved a certain body count. The best that we can say for Scotland Yard's solution is that it is plausible…but unconfirmed.
Someone, possibly still alive may have a macabre set of teeth as an ornament, possibly still in the London area, do you know JACK THE STRIPPER ?


Stolen from:http://www.murderuk.com/serial_jack_the_stripper
 

PTSD Is My Life

The internal medal for the wars I still fight
Shame about the pronunciation of the River Thames, it is pronounced "Tems" as in the big muddy thing that flows through the English capital city of London.
 
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Hellwig

Banned
Is this man the REAL Jack The Stripper?
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Face of evil ... Harold Jones in 1921

By MARTIN PHILLIPS, Senior Feature Writer
Published: 14th April 2011

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THE evil, grinning face of one of Britain’s vilest serial killers was staring at police from their own identikit picture.

Jack The Stripper’s savage rampage claimed the lives of eight young women, horrifying the nation in the Swinging Sixties.
He targeted lone prostitutes, strangled them, stripped them naked then knocked their teeth out for souvenirs.
In spite of a massive police hunt the sadist behind the “Hammersmith Nude Murders” was never caught.
Now, nearly 50 years after the last killing, an amateur sleuth believes he has solved the case that top detectives could not crack.
Housebound grandad Neil Milkins has found evidence that not only names the likely killer but puts him at the scene of several of the crimes.

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Mugshot ... Harold in 1941
Too late for justice, he has traced one of Britain’s most notorious killers to an unmarked grave in Plot 13 of Hammersmith New Cemetery, west London — a grave to which he believes psychopath Harold Jones took the secrets of his murders.

Neil, 58, was researching the infamous murders in 1921 of two girls aged eight and 11 in his Welsh home town of Abertillery when he stumbled upon a grisly discovery.
While probing the sick character of the victims’ convicted killer, he found links between the children’s deaths and the seemingly unrelated string of London murders attributed to Jack The Stripper 40 years later.
Harold Jones, aged just 15 in 1921, had given his reason for bludgeoning and strangling the two Abertillery girls simply as “a desire to kill”.
Labelled a dangerous psychopath, he remained in jail until 1941 when, against the strong advice of the governor and the prison psychiatrist, the 35-year-old was freed on parole.
He immediately changed his name and vanished from the area.

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Child victims ... Harold was convicted of Freda Burnell and, right, Florence Little's murders

Neil, a tree surgeon confined to home with a spinal injury, spent three years tracing Jones’s movements and came up with a string of “uncanny coincidences” that put him at the heart of the Stripper slayings 70 years after Jack The Ripper butchered prostitutes in the East End.
He explained: “Jones briefly resurfaced in Fulham, west London, under the assumed name of Harry Stevens, then disappeared again in 1962 at the same time as strangled bodies of girls began appearing in the area.”

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Investigation ... Det Supt William Marchant of Scotland Yard holds up identikit photo of Jack The Stripper in Dec 1964
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Although the murders of street girls Elizabeth Figg, in 1959 and Gwynneth Rees, in 1963, have since been attributed to The Stripper, his first confirmed victim was Hannah Tailford, 30.
Fished from the Thames at Hammersmith in February, 1964, she was naked, her panties having been stuffed down her throat.
In April that year in nearby Chiswick the naked body of Irene Lockwood, 26, was hauled from the river then Helene Barthelemy, 22, from Blackpool, was found in an alley at Brentford, her body flecked with spray paint.

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Victims ... street girls Elizabeth Figg and Gwynneth Rees

In July, 30-year-old Scot Mary Fleming was found on a garage forecourt, her nude body bizarrely arranged with her legs crossed. His next West London victim, Edinburgh girl Frances Brown, also known as Margaret McGowan, 21, was found in November with the familiar traces of paint on her skin.
She was last seen by fellow prostitute Kim Taylor, who told police her friend had climbed into a Ford Zephyr or Zodiac with a man she described well enough for police to draw up an identikit picture.
Last to die was 27-year-old Irish-born Bridget O’Hara, who was found in February 1965 on an industrial estate at Acton.
Her corpse was partially mummified, as if it had been stored for some time in a warm place. The Stripper’s reign of terror ceased around the time of the suicide of a police suspect, a security guard on the industrial estate named Mungo Ireland.

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Found in the Thames ... Hannah Tailford and Irene Lockwood

He gassed himself in March 1965, leaving a note saying: “I cannot stand the strain any longer.”
It seemed to be a confession. But detectives had no idea that an already-convicted murderer lived in the area.
Neil said yesterday: “The Stripper case should now be reinvestigated. I am convinced the killer was not Mungo Ireland but Harold Jones.
“When I first came across details of the Stripper crimes on the internet the hairs on my neck stood up. There were just too many coincidences for Jones not to be connected.
“I discovered that Jones had also been working as a caretaker and as a sheet metal worker and would have used industrial paint spray.

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Murdered ... Helene Barthelemy and Mary Fleming

“It’s true that Mungo Ireland lived close by but Jones lived only two streets away from him.”
In 1959, five years before Hannah’s murder, Jones, calling himself Harry Stevens, had lived only two streets away from her.
Neil said: “He later moved to Hammersmith under another assumed name and into digs — just two streets away from both the seventh and eighth victims, Frances and Bridget.
“The Hammersmith killer is believed to have stored at least the last four victims for some time. Jones had also stored the bodies of his child victims to await disposal.”
Jones took trophies from the Welsh schoolgirls in the form of handkerchiefs. In the case of the London prostitutes, the killer removed some of their teeth after death, says Neil.

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Killed ... Frances Brown and Bridget O'Hara

Yet none of the victims had been sexually assaulted, which, says Neil, ties in with a report on Jones by a prison medical officer that suggested acts of cruelty and killing gave him all the sexual gratification he needed.
Neil, a father of five, continued on the links he has found: “The last dead girl, Bridget, went missing on January 11, 1965 — Harold Jones’s 58th birthday.
“It still sends a chill up my spine to think that she could have been his one last birthday present to himself. Jones was an evil psychopath. He destroyed lives back in 1921 and, having spoken to children of his later murder victims, he’s affecting people right to this very day.”
Yesterday Neil’s theory gained support from crime experts.
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David Wilson, a professor of criminology, said: “He has shed new light on the Hammersmith murders.
“I think he may have hit on something here.
“We know that a serial killer — Harold Jones — was living in the streets around the Jack The Stripper murders and, in my experience, there is no such thing as ‘coincidence’ when dealing with serial killers.
“So, for me, there is quite compelling evidence.”
Pathologist Professor Bernard Knight, CBE, who worked on the Fred and Rose West case, said: “The geographical coincidences he has unearthed relating to the movements of Harold Jones are startling.”
TV host and crime author Fred Dinenage will present Neil’s investigation of the case in a documentary, The Welsh Child Killer, in the Murder Casebook series on the Crime & Investigation channel on May 29.
The amateur detective’s book, Who Was Jack The Stripper? will be published on April 18.
Harold Jones, who finally married and had a daughter, died of bone cancer in Hammersmith in 1971.
If he had lived a year longer he would have seen the release of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Frenzy, a film that was based loosely on the Jack The Stripper slayings.



Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3527136/.html#ixzz2CubF9nxt
 
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