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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