JILL THE RIPPER
Britain's Greatest murder has been unsolved for more than 100 will DNA tests now prove that the frenzied killer was a WOMAN?
THE case of Jack the Ripper, the killer who terrorised Victorian Britain, remains the greatest murder mystery of all time.
For more than a century top detectives have tried and failed to identify the brute who slaughtered five women.
The chief suspects - including a member of the Royal Family, a famous author, a doctor and an artist - were all men.
But new scientific tests reveal the astonishing fact that the killer may have been a woman.
Powerful DNA profiling techniques were used to examine 118-year-old letters sent by the killer. And the evidence they revealed suggests that Jack the Ripper may, in fact, have been Jill.
Professor Ian Findlay, a Scot based in Brisbane, Australia, pioneered the breakthrough.
He explains: "Our technology is leaps ahead of anything police have, because where conventional techniques need between 200 and 500 human cells to gain a profile ours only needs one.
"In the case of the Ripper, we tested the technology on real letters and obtained profiles from those letters. From what we could tell, it's very possible the Ripper could be female."
The Ripper's killing spree took place between August and November 1888 in the dark, foggy alleyways of Whitechapel in London's East End.
The time became known as the Autumn of Terror, after which the murders stopped as suddenly as was found with her liver between her feet and another with her innards piled up on a bedside table beside her.
Mary Ann Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were in their 40s, but Mary Jane Kelly was just 25.
Scotland Yard was baited with 600 taunting letters claiming to be from the murderer.
Many were dismissed as hoaxes, but one, sent to Dr Openshaw and postmarked October 29 1888, contained specific details only the killer could have known about the removal of a victim's kidney.
PROF Findlay took swabs from the saliva under the seal and stamp of the envelope, as well as bloodstains on the letter, to glean a DNA "fingerprint".
Stewart Evans, a crime historian who has written five books on Jack the Ripper, says: "The letters that Ian looked at are the ones that we feel are worth looking at - the ones that are most likely to contain DNA, the ones that may possibly have come from the killer.
"Scotland Yard kept them under lock and key until 1961, when they handed them over. So we can be assured that they have not been altered."
Prof Walker, chief scientific officer at the Gribbles Molecular Science forensic lab in Victoria, Australia, was able to gain a partial DNA profile from the small and poorly preserved sample.
And although it is not enough to identify an individual beyond reasonable doubt, the results contained a shocking revelation.
The professor says: "This is the most sophisticated DNA fingerprinting they began. Five women, all prostitutes, were killed and butchered. One technique in the world, but the sample doesn't give us enough evidence to pinpoint the killer. However, there is an interesting twist because we do know this sample is likely to be a female sample."
One man, Frederick Abberline, always believed the Ripper could have been female. He led the original murder investigation and suggested that because a witness insisted she had seen victim Mary Kelly after her death, the killer might have escaped into the night wearing her dress and a maroon-coloured shawl.
His boss doubted that a woman could be capable of such atrocious crimes - but with all London's police force looking for a male murderer, a female killer could have walked the streets of White chapel with far less fear of capture.
If Jack was indeed Jill, what woman could have behaved with such chilling brutality? The chief suspect is Mary Pearcey. Born in 1866, she was brought up by her mother and elder sister after her father, Thomas Wheeler, was convicted of murder and executed.
In 1890, two years after the Ripper killings, she was convicted of murdering her lover's wife and their baby daughter - a crime that was to send her to the scaffold.
The double murder bore striking similarities to the Ripper killings. All the victims had their throats cut. Each was killed in private and dumped in a public place.
The question whether Mary would have had the physical strength to carry out the murders was answered by Sir Melville Macnaghten, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
HE wrote of her: "I have never seen a woman of stronger physique... her nerves were as iron cast as her body."
Mary, said to have "lovely russet hair and fine blue eyes", never worked and suffered from recurring periods of depression. She was a heavy drinker and spent most of her time in the company of wealthy men.
Then she fell in love with furniture remover Frank Hogg - but he was already married to a younger woman called Phoebe and had a young daughter.
On October 24 Phoebe called at Mary's house in Kentish Town, North London, after being invited for tea. At 4pm neighbours heard screaming and the sickening sounds of violence.
That evening Phoebe's corpse was found on a heap of rubbish at Hamp-stead, North London. Her face was wrapped in a cardigan, her skull had been crushed and her head was nearly severed from her body.
A black pram was found a mile away, its mattress soaked in blood.
Phoebe's 18-month-old baby was found dead, apparently smothered, in Finchley.
Witnesses said they had seen Mary pushing the pram around the streets after dark. And when police searched her home they found blood splattered on walls, ceilings, a skirt, an apron, a fire poker and a carving knife.
Mary insisted she had been merely killing mice. And while her house was being searched by police she sat at her piano, playing popular tunes.
When she was arrested and charged, she was found to be wearing Phoebe Hogg's wedding ring.
She constantly protested her innocence throughout the trial at the Old Bailey, but was convicted and hanged, aged 24, on December 23 1890.
Stewart Evans, a retired police officer, points out that there is still no hard evidence to suggest that Mary was Jill the Ripper.
He says: "The problem is that, no matter how progressive DNA foren-sics becomes, we can only work with the samples of evidence found in 1888.
"And the best piece of evidence, a blood-stained apron found near the bodies of one of the victims, hasn't survived."
But after 118 years and countless theories about the Ripper's identity, DNA technology still holds out the best hope of cracking the most baffling case in the annals of crime.
With London's police force hunting a man, a woman could pass unnoticed .
(got all of this from other forum)
