Using the strange excuse of compromising terror investigations, London’s metro police refuse to release a list of informants in the unsolved case of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper murders occurred in 1888 in Whitechapel, a run-down section of London now populated mostly by Bengalis.
Scotland Yard has refused the request of a retired detective who thinks the time has come to open the file. The Ripper murders, also called the Whitechapel Murders, are likely the most famous unsolved crimes in history. Suspects includes everyone from a world-famous author to a German painter to a relative of Queen Victoria.
The case is now before the country’s Information Tribunal, which settles disputes involving Britain’s Freedom of Information Act. It will decide whether to release the information.
Detective: Release the Files
Homicide detective and Ripper expert Trevor Marriott (pictured above) wants the Yard to release what London’s Telegraph calls "four thick ledgers" containing 36,000 entries that might well reveal the identity of the murderer, at least according to Marriott.
The Telegraph reports, "The ledgers provide details of the police’s dealings with thousands of informants from 1888 to 1912, including some who provided information during the original Ripper investigation."
Detective Marriott says the files "contain the names of at least four new suspects, as well as other pieces of evidence."
To have any possibility of getting near the truth about those horrific crimes we must see what these ledgers contain.
It may be that within them we find the final piece of the jigsaw that would unlock this mystery and lead to the identity of the killer, or killers, albeit 123 years too late.
The files may provide the "very last chance" to solve the murders, Marriott told the Telegraph.
Marriot declared to the Sunday Mirror that the files "should be made public at once. They are some of the most interesting records on the case I’ve come across. Some of the informants died more than 100 years ago, so to censor the documents is absurd."
Marriott, who wrote a book on the subject suggesting the killer was a German executed in New York for murdering a woman there, requested the files three years ago. The Information Commissioner turned him down, which led to his appeal to the Information Tribunal.
Yard Says No
Not according to the Yard. Police believe releasing the names of the informants, even 123 years after the murders, will discourage others from coming forward about the crime and could even jeopardize terror investigations.
During the Information Tribunal’s three-day hearing, one detective offered testimony from behind a screen to hide his identity, the Telegraph reported. The paper identified him as "Detective Inspector D."
“The interpretation on the street will be that the police have revealed the identity of informants,” said "D."
“Confidence in the system is maintaining the safety of informants, regardless of age.”
The detective told the tribunal that the identity of informants must still be kept secret even though the crimes occurred more than a century ago because their descendants could be the targets of criminals.
“Look at one of the world’s best-known informants, Judas Iscariot. If someone could draw a bloodline from Judas Iscariot to a present day person then that person would face a risk, although I know that seems an extreme example,” the officer said.
Another top detective told the Tribunal that an informant’s name may never released, the Telegraph reported:
Another senior officer, Detective Superintendent Julian McKinney, told the tribunal that releasing names would make police officers less capable of preventing terrorist attacks and organised crime, and make informants vulnerable to attack.
Det Supt McKinney said: “Regardless of the time, regardless of whether they are dead, they should never be disclosed.
“They come to us only when they have the confidence in our system that their identity will not be disclosed.”
The Ripper
Speculation about the Ripper’s identity includes Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, the Duke of Clarence, one of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. Another suspect, this one fingered by American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell after a $6-million investigation, is German painter Walter Sickert. Ripperologists say Cornwell is dead wrong and that she smeared the name of an innocent man.
Other suspects include Francis Tumblety, a homosexual arrested for perversion, and Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland. One theory involves a royal conspiracy.
Marriott’s suspect is German merchant seaman Carl Feigenbaum. He died in Sing Sing prison’s electric chair in New York after receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church.
