PLANET NERD

The file on Jack the Ripper has never been closed. Neither has the file on Jack the Stripper even though Scotland Yard is sure that it knows who killed six women in 1964 and early 1965 and left their naked bodies lying along the bank of river Thames.

The police found the first body under a pontoon at Hammersmith on 2 February 1964. The victim has been strangled and the remnants of her underwear had been shoved down her throat; she was small 5 foot 2 inches tall, and was naked, apart from her stockings.

The body was identified as being that of Hannah Tailford, who was 30 years old and lived with her boyfriend in the West Norwood district of London. She had three year old daughter and an eighteen month old son and was pregnant again. She was employed as a waitress and a cleaner and supplemented her meager wages by working as a prostitute on the streets of Bayswater. She had disappeared from her flat ten days before her body was found, although a couple had seen her on Charing Cross Road only two days before that. She had appeared depressed and suicidal and they had tried to cheer her up, they said.

Forensic expert concluded that she had been dead for just 24 hours when her corpse was found and believed that she may had been drowned in a bath or pond before she was dumped in the river. Tide tables showed that she must have been dropped in the Thames at Duke’s Meadows, in Chiswick, a popular spot with prostitutes and their clients the police discovered that Hannah had been a star turn at sex parties and that she had often attended kinky orgies in Mayfair and Kensington. A foreign diplomat known for his perverted tastes had been one of her clients, but he had been out of the country at the time disappearance.

This gave the police little to go on. Although they believed that Hannah had been attacked and sexually assaulted they could not even prove that she had been murdered. The inquest into her death recorded an open verdict.
On 8 April 1964 the naked body of the 26 year old Irene Lockwood was found among the tangled weeds and branches on the river bank at Duke’s Meadow. Irene was a pretty, young redhead who, like Hannah, had also worked on the streets of Bayswater and Notting Hill and had attended kinky parties, too both girls had solicited cab drives late at night and both had been pregnant when they died.
It was impossible to determine how either Hannah or Linda had died, although marks on the back of Irene’s head indicated that she could have been attacked from behind. Like Hannah, the police believed that Linda had been killed elsewhere and then brought to Duke’s Meadow. The police also suspected that both girls had been mixed up in a blackmail racket. They had found an address book and photographic equipment in Hannah’s flat, while Irene flatmate, Vicki Pender had once been beaten up after trying to knowledge. The most striking similarity between the two killings, however was that the victims were found naked; there was no sign of their clothes, which were never discovered.

On 24 April 1964 another naked female corpse was found, this time in alleyway of Swyncombe  Avenue in nearby Brendtford, Middlesex. The victim, the 22 year old Helen Barthelemy, had been strangled, probably from behind. Strangely enough, three of  her front teeth had been extracted after her death. It was also established that she had been stripped of her clothes post mortem; fresh tyre marksin the alley furthermore indicated that she had been killed elsewhere and then dumped there.

The newspaper soon picked up on the story of the three similar killings, and because the victims’ nudity was the most sensational aspect the tabloids dubbed their murderer ‘Jack the Stripper’.

Kenneth Archibald, a 24 year old caretaker confessed to the murder of Irene Lockwood. He said that they met in a pub on the night of the murder then quarreled over money just near Barnes Bridge. He placed his hands around her throat after losing his temper. He strangled her to death. He then took off her clothes and burned them and her dead body was rolled into the river.

Archibald said that he knew nothing about the murders of Hannah Tailford Helen Barthelemy or Gwynneth Rees, however. Although he was changed with the murder of Irene Lockwood, when he appeared in the Old Bailey he retracted his confession, and as there was no other evidence against him the jury acquitted him.  

The forensic scientists paid special attention to Helen Barthelemy ‘s body, which had not been buried, like that of Gymnneth Rees, and had not come into contact with water. It was however, filthy, as if it had been stored somewhere dirty before being dumped. A minute examination of the corpse’s skin showed that it was covered from head to toe in tiny flecks of paint and it was therefore concluded that Helen’s naked body had been kept near a spray painting shop.

On 14 July 1964 another body was found. At around 5:30 am a man was driving to work down Acton Lane had to brake hard in order to miss a van that was speeding out of a cul-de-sac, outside a garage, they found the naked body of Mary Flemming.

The murdered girl had again been a prostitute who had worked in the Bayswater area. As with Helen Barthelemy, her clothes had been removed after her death and there were many tiny little flecks of paint all over her body. It furthermore appeared that before being dumped her body had been kept for approximately three days after her killing. Mary had been warned of the dangers of continuing to work the streets which Jack the Stripper was prowling and had taken to carrying a knife in her handbag. It had done her no good, however, for she had been attacked from behind, like the stripper’s other victims. No trace of her handbag, knife, or clothes were ever found.

By this time Scotland Yard had interviewed 8,000 people and taken 4,000 statements, but it was still no nearer to finding the culprit. Plainclothes policemen now blanketed the area in which the murdered girls had worked, but despite their presence the body of the 21 year old Margaret McGowan was found lying on some rough ground in Kensington on 25 November 1964. Margaret had been a prostitute and an associate of the society pimp Dr. Stephen Ward. Her naked body had lain on the open ground for at least a week when it was found, but before that the forensic scientists believed that it had been stored somewhere else. She had been strangled and her skin was also covered in tiny flecks of paint. The hallmarks of Jack Stripper were unmistakable.

On the evening on which she had gone missing Margaret and a friend had been in the Warwick Castle, a pub on the Portobello Road, where they had talked about the murders.  Margaret had then met a client and she and her friend had gone their separate ways. Her friend gave a good enough description of Margaret’s client for the police to issue of identikit picture of the man, but no one answering the description was ever identified. The police also noticed that Margaret’s jewelry was missing, but a check on all the local pawn shops drew a blank.

Although Christmas and New Year passed uneventfully, on 16 February 1965 the naked body of 28 year old Bridie O’Hara was found lying in the bracken behind a depot in Action.  In common with the stripper previous victim she was also short 5 feet 2 inches tall and worked as prostitute. Along with her engagement and wedding rings her clothes were nowhere to found. The corpse was furthermore covered with minute flecks of paint. This time, however, there was new clue one of her hand was mummified, which meant that it had been kept near a source of heat, which had dried out the flesh.

Scotland Yard now threw all of its resources into the case and ordered every business premises within an area of 24 square miles to be searched for samples of paint that matched the flecks on the victims’ bodies. The police also worked out that all of the Stripper’s victims had been picked-up between 11 pm to 1 am, their bodies being disposed of between 5 and 6am. They concluded that the murderer was therefore a night worker, probably a night watchman who guarded premises near a spray painting shop. In addition, they speculated that he was a man of about 40 who had a highly charged libido and curious sexual taste.
The police now dismissed a theory that he had been put forward earlier, which held that the culprit was on a crusade against prostitution. They instead believed that because he could not satisfy his bizarre sexually requirements at home he turned to the prostitute who would do anything for money. The detectives felt sure that the man went into a frenzy during orgasm, which resulted in the women’s deaths. He could not help himself, they guessed, and had thus learned to accept that murder was the price that he had to pay for his sexual satisfaction.
This was not much to go on, but the police nevertheless held regular press conferences at which they stated that a list of suspects had been drawn up which they were working their way through. The killer would soon be behind bars, they promised. In fact, although the police had no such list and were not nearly as confident as they pretended, they felt that this strategy was the best way in which to keep putting pressure on the culprit.
The murders coincided with a ten-week cycle, and the police were determined to prevent the next one. They therefore threw a cordon around 20 square miles area of central London and recorded every vehicle that entered or left it at night. Anyone who was found to have moved in or out of the zone on more than three occasions was traced, the police then visiting their homes under the pretext of investigating a traffic accident the suspect was then interviewed out of his family’s earshot.
Weeks of searching at last paid off when a perfect match was made between the paint flecks on the victims’ bodies and paint found under a covered transformer at the rear of the spray-painting shop in the Heron Factory Estate in Action. Every car that entering or leaving the estate was then logged and all 7,000 people leaving the vicinity were interviewed. At specially convened press conferences the police announced that the number of their suspects was being whittled down to three, then two, and finally one. Once again, these statements were not true, but it is likely that the strategy behind the press conferences worked.
In March 1967 a quiet, family man who live in south London killed himself, leaving a suicide note that said that he could not stand the strain any longer’. At the time the police took little notice of the man’s death. By June 1965 however they had concluded that Jack the Stripper had not struck again the ten week cycle had been broken and because they wanted to know why he had stopped killing they began investigating the suicides that occurred since the murder of Bridie O’Hara in January 1965. They discovered that this particular suicide victim had worked at a security firm at night. Despite an intensive search of his house and intensive interviewed with members of his family no evidence linking him directly to the murders was ever found. Nevertheless, the killings seemed to have stopped and from the circumstantial evidence alone the police were convinced that the man had been Jack the Stripper.
By July 1965 the murder inquiry had been scaled down, to wound up in the following year. In 1970 Scotland Yard announced that the south London suicide had been Jack the Stripper. It never named him, however, and, indeed, the file on the Jack the Stripper case remains officially open.            

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