The Escape of Jack the Ripper
The Truth About the Cover-up and His Flight from Justice
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“I doubt that anyone else will be able to offer a more comprehensive portrait of this Ripper suspect than these authors have done.”—DR. KATHERINE RAMSLAND, Psychology Today
A MYSTERY SOLVED
In 1888, five gruesome murders shocked the civilized public. A bloodthirsty killer was on the loose in the slums of London. The world was on the lookout for Jack the Ripper.
Scotland Yard never found their man—or so they said publicly. The police knew the killer’s identity but concealed it to save the ruling class from embarrassment.
The Escape of Jack the Ripper, the true story behind the Whitechapel murders, reveals how British elites manipulated the public to protect one of their own. Through meticulous research, including documents disclosed here for the first time, Jonathan Hainsworth and Christine Ward-Agius have uncovered the killer’s identity.
In The Escape of Jack the Ripper, you’ll learn:
How a fit of madness transformed a reputable gentleman into a savage murderer
That the killer was caught literally red-handed but talked his way out of police custody
About the decades-long cover-up by the press and the police to protect a well-to-do family’s reputation
About the harrowing social conditions in which the murders took place and why the killer may have been a frustrated reformer
How the social privileges enjoyed by the ruling class led to a miscarriage of justice
A thoroughly researched and gripping tale, The Escape of Jack the Ripper solves the great Whitechapel murder mystery once and for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hainsworth (Jack the Ripper—Case Solved, 1891) and Ward-Agius overpromise and underdeliver in yet another volume announcing "the truth" about Jack the Ripper, who they argue was London solicitor Montague John Druitt. In 1965's When London Walked in Terror, Tom Cullen identified Druitt as a suspect, based on notes from Sir Melville Macnaghten, an assistant chief constable of the CID, who was not on the force at the time of the murders. Macnaghten had listed three people he deemed possible Rippers, including Druitt, who was believed to have taken his own life in December 1888. The authors, who simply assume Druitt's guilt, theorize that Druitt's family knew he was the Ripper and had him confined to an asylum in France to spare the family name before assenting to his release and return to England. The paucity of their evidence, which amounts to little more than Macnaghten's inaccurate notes and Druitt's apparent suicide following the last murder considered an actual Ripper killing, is demonstrated by their noting as significant a photo of Druitt in front of "a chalk scrawl on the wall," because the Ripper may have left a message in chalk on a wall. This adds nothing new to a case that continues to tantalize armchair sleuths.
