The great-great-granddaughter of a British police officer who investigated the hunt for Jack the Ripper claims to have discovered the identity of the serial killer of prostitutes who swept through east London at the end of the XIXe century.
Over the years, dozens of people have been suspected, including members of the royal family and prime ministers.
In a book to be published next month, Sarah Bax Horton, descendant of a police officer at the heart of the investigation, designates Hyam Hyams, based on the description of witnesses.
In the Sunday Telegraphshe claims this is the first time Hyam Hyams, a cigar maker, epileptic and alcoholic who has had several stints in the asylum, has been named as Jack the Ripper.
Hyams was injured in an accident which worsened his condition and prevented him from working. According to the author’s thesis, relayed in the columns of the Sunday Telegraphhe regularly abused his wife and was arrested after attacking her, as well as his own mother, with a chopper.
Witnesses had described a man in his thirties, with a stiff arm and bent knees. The author discovered medical data indicating that Hyam Hyams, who was 35 years old in 1888, had suffered an injury that prevented him from “bending or extending” his left arm, and that he had a problem with his knees and suffered from a severe form of epilepsy, with regular seizures.
At least six women were killed in the Whithechapel district between August and November 1888.
Medical data collected from several infirmaries and asylums indicate that his physical and mental decline coincided with the period of the murders.
The author concludes that Hyams’ physical and mental decline, exacerbated by his alcoholism, led him to kill. The killings ceased in late 1888, around the time Hyams was picked up by police as a “wandering lunatic”.
He was incarcerated the following year at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in north London.
According to Telegram, authoritative Jack the Ripper author Paul Begg supports this thesis, which he calls “well-researched” and “well-written”. “If you want to get an idea of the kind of man Jack the Ripper could be, Hyam Hyams could be,” he said.
In 2014, an author-businessman, Russell Edwards, came to the conclusion that Jack the Ripper was Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who worked as a barber, and already considered one of the main suspects. His thesis, based on DNA, had been challenged.