Jack the Ripper 'may have been mortuary attendant'

A new theory has emerged about the idenity of Jack the Ripper - the serial killer who stalked London's East End in the 1880s.

Pinning down the identity of Britain's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, has occupied the minds of historians and conspiracy theorists alike for decades.

A Russian con-artist, a Polish barber, an Irish-American quack and even the eldest son of Edward VII have all been accused of being the man who, for one summer in 1888, brought terror to the heart of the East End before disappearing without a trace.

Now, the historian Mei Trow claims to have uncovered another potential suspect, one who fits a modern forensic profile of the killer but has, until now, been overlooked by "Ripperologists".

Mr Trow believes that the mortuary attendant Robert Mann, who lived in the area where the killings took place and had a good knowledge of anatomy, would have been regarded as a prime suspect had modern profiling techniques been available to baffled police officers at the time.

Using a profile of the Ripper drawn up by the FBI in 1988 to mark the centenary of the killings, Mr Trow began looking for a local suspect who hailed from Whitechapel's lower social classes, was the victim of a broken home, and had worked as a butcher, a mortuary worker or a medical examiner's assistant.

He also used modern geographical profiling techniques that can pinpoint where a suspect might live depending on the nature and location of the killings.

While trawling through newspaper cuttings of the inquests into the first two Ripper slayings Mr Trow stumbled across the testimony of Mann, a former workhouse child who by the time of the slayings was in his fifties and working in a mortuary, where he had learnt to wield knives in a surgical manner.

When Polly Nichols, the Ripper's first confirmed kill, was found dead, her body was taken to a nearby mortuary on what was then Eagle Place. Mann opened the mortuary up and, according to the inquest, undressed the body despite being under instructions not touch Nichols.

The Ripper's second victim, Annie Chapman, was also taken to Mann's morgue, which lay within walking distance of all the murders.

The inquest judge described Mann as an unreliable witness, stating: "It appears the mortuary-keeper is subject to fits, and neither his memory nor statements are reliable."

But this seemingly inept man, Mr Trow believes, may have been seeking to murder people locally so that he could later admire his handiwork.

"The most chilling prospect is that Robert Mann is selecting the people he does, in the places he does, because he knows that they will come back to his mortuary," says Mr Trow.

Mr Trow's use of modern techniques to highlight likely suspects has drawn some academic support. Professor Laurence Alison, a forensic psychologist at Liverpool University, believes a working-class local suspect like Mann is the closest psychological fit, rather than the traditional image of an upper-class killer stalking the streets of London in a cape and top hat.

"In terms of psychological profiling, Robert Mann is 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," he said.

- INDEPENDENT