British terrestrial TV channel, Channel 5, last night aired a new series called “The Missing Evidence” in which in its premier episode claimed to have unravelled the identity of Whitechapels infamous “Jack the Ripper”, the uncaught serial killer known to have murdered at least five prostitutes in the fall of 1888.
Car Men were the lifeblood of Victorian london, responsible for the delivery of goods to and from stores and market stalls.
The show follows Swedish journalist Christer Holmgren, whom claims the identity of “Jack the Ripper” was one Charles Allen Lechmere, known to the Whitechapel Police at that time as Charles Allen Cross, one of the two local “Car Man” witnesses whom discovered the body of the first “canonical” victim, Mary Anne Nichols. Cross was a Car Man for the Pitchfords delivery service, responsible for delivering freshly slaughtered livestock to the butchers of Whitechapel.
The show goes on to elaborate that Cross gave the police false testimony and a false name, after the second witness, fellow “Car Man” Robert Paul claimed to have seen Cross alone with the dead victim in a newspaper interview shortly before the inquest into the murder. Compellingly, the show claims that PC John Neil whom happened across the body shortl afterward, noticed a pool of blood, despite many ripperologists, professional and amateur, knowing that Neil and fellow PC John Thain commented on the lack of blood at the scene until they moved the body after it was exmained by Dr. Henry Llewellyn.
Bucks Row where Mary Anne Nichols body was discovered at 3:40 a.m. on Friday 31 August 1888.
Unfortunately the shows interesting premise soon starts to fall apart after the aforementioned faux pas, with the inclusion of Martha Tabram as one of the Rippers victims, despite that her body was found stabbed 39 times, suggesting a crime of passion as opposed to the methodical, premeditated murders of the “canonical five” victims that followed. Frankly the “evidence” supporting Cross as the Ripper is interesting at best, weak at its worse, but it is far from compelling, or even definitive – Jack the Ripper, Cross/Lechmere was not!
It is good that the murder cases attributed to “Jack the Ripper” are still being investigated, and thankfully without the needless Royal, Government and Alien conspiracies, but it is misleading when every new suspect is claimed with such certainty, when the “evidence” supporting their claim is either incorrect or misrepresented.
Until the next suspect...
