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Jack the Ripper's Final Victim Is Being Exhumed

Will DNA evidence finally identify the world's most mythologized serial killer?
Whitechapel. Image: Wiki

The usually accepted tally of Jack the Ripper victims stands at five, though it's been argued it could be as high as 11 or more. It's also been argued that Jack the Ripper doesn't exist as a singular serial killer at all, and is instead a media contrivance advanced by 1880s journalists with a new-found taste for celebrity. With hundreds of novels, poems, TV shows, and movies centered around the killer, one couldn't be faulted for assuming that JtR was never anything but a fictional trope. History is weird like that.

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There are, however, a number of people highly dedicated to uncovering the real-world killer responsible for incredibly brutal real-world deaths. One of them is Dr Wynne Weston-Davies, a surgeon and author of The Real Mary Kelly, an investigation into the life and death of JtR's final victim, who also happens to be Weston-Davies' great-aunt. In it, he identifies the killer as a one Francis Spurzheim Craig, a down on his luck East End courts reporter. The killings, according to Weston-Davies, were all centered around Mary Kelly, Craig's ex-wife and the final victim. The Ripper letters, a set of three dispatches (among many more fakes) sent to the local press by the purported killer, were intended only to camouflage himself as the real killer.

Weston-Davies notes that the purported killer Craig wound up committing suicide by slitting his own throat, a method remarkably similar to the Ripper's murder MO.

Mary Kelly crime scene. Image: London police

This would all probably be absorbed into the collected JtR lore, fictional or otherwise, but Weston-Davies has convinced the Ministry of Justice to allow an exhumation of Mary Kelly's remains, according to the Telegraph. "I've already obtained an indication from the Ministry of Justice that they are minded to issue an exhumation licence," he told the paper. "There's a bit more red tape to complete but I believe that exhuming her body will solve the Ripper mystery once and for all. I will proceed with the exhumation depending on the reaction to the book."

"If someone can show me clear evidence that Mary Kelly was not Elizabeth then of course there will be little point in proceeding," Weston-Davies added. "But otherwise I'm hoping we can go ahead and attempt to get the DNA evidence that will prove my theory once and for all."

The DNA collected from Mary Kelly's bones and teeth will be compared against Weston-Davies DNA. If they match, then it would indicate that the victim's true identity was Elizabeth Weston Davies, who was married to Francis Craig, who Wynne Weston-Davies thinks is the killer. Though I'm not sure how much of an evidentiary slam dunk that really is.