Police in Britain believe recently acquired historical documents could point to the identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious murderer active in London's Whitechapel district in 1888.
In documents handed over to Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson who led the Ripper investigation at the time had Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew known to have an extreme hatred of women as a major suspect.
Richard Jones author of 'Uncovering Jack the Ripper' believes senior police officers at the time definitely knew the identity of Jack the Ripper and
What Scotland Yard are now doing are giving credence to the name that the two most senior detectives thought it was.
Historian, Professor William J Fishman says
There was a lot of anti-Semitism at the time and the police did not want to expand it and therefore they kept an even keel on Kosminski.
This may have been the reason why Aaron Kosminski was never named as the prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper investigation at the time. In 1891 Kosminski was sent to an insane asylum where he died in 1919.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 13 July 2006. The reporter is Martina Fitzgerald.
