The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

JACK THE STRIPPER by John du Rose

In the 1960s, an unknown murderer preyed on prostitutes operating in West London. A massive police search was launched for the man who became known as Jack the Stripper, because his victims were always naked. The only evidence the police had were some flecks of paint found on the bodies. Who was the Stripper? As with the Victorian Ripper, conspiracy theorists have offered up a series of increasingly improbable suggestions. Their suspects range from the prize fighter Freddie Mills, who committed suicide in 1965, to Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, who investigated the Great Train Robbery in 1963. More than a year after the killings began, a 45-year-old security guard was identified, who owned a van, and patrolled near a paint workshop where paint was found to match that on the bodies. But before he could be questioned, the security guard committed suicide. His name remains a secret in order to protect his family. This man was the favoured suspect of John du Rose (b. 1911) who led the investigation into the murders. Du Rose began his police career pounding the beat in London’s West End, and became Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, a post that earned him the accolade of Britain’s top detective. He featured the case in his memoirs, published after his retirement in 1970. Alfred Hitchcock is believed to have loosely based his thriller Frenzy on these gruesome events.

Although the murders of the London nudes ceased in 1965, the story of the man who became known as Jack the Stripper is certain to have as prominent a place in the annals of crime as that of Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler.

Justice caught up with the Boston Strangler. A hundred writers have, since 1888, speculated on the identity of Jack the Ripper who murdered seven prostitutes in three months in London’s East End.

I know the identity of Jack the Stripper-but he cheated me of an arrest by committing suicide.

He killed the following six women: Hannah Tailford, aged thirty; Irene Lockwood, twenty-five; Helen Barthelemy, twenty-two; Mary Fleming, thirty; Margaret McGowan, twenty and Bridie O’Hara, twenty-eight. All of these prostitutes were operating in West London and there were other significant similarities. None was taller than five feet two inches and they all died within the span of a year, between January 1964 and January 1965. In every instance the bodies were found within a few miles of the centre of London.

The now notorious case of the nudes began on 2 February 1964-when Hannah Tailford’s body was discovered on the foreshore of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. She was naked except for her stockings, which were round her ankles. Her panties had been stuffed into her mouth.

Hannah had last been seen when she left home at Thurlby Road, West Norwood, on 24 January 1964. The flame-coloured blouse, black skirt, court shoes, black cardigan and dark blue coat and hat she was then wearing had disappeared. So, too, had her handbag containing a diary, embossed on the cover with a small silver bird, in which it was probable that she wrote the names and addresses of her men friends.

Hannah, small and slim, had come to London from Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, and, like a lot of street girls, used a number of different names, calling herself variously Anne Taylor, Teresa Bell, Anne Lynch and Hannah Lynch. She had lived for some time with a man named Walter Lynch and they had a daughter called Linda who was about three years old.

Lynch was convinced that Hannah had been murdered. So was I.

Detective Inspector Frank Ridge, head of the Thames Police CID, who was in charge of this investigation, followed up a number of possible leads, but they came to nothing.

There were indications that Hannah had attended “kinky” parties arranged by a foreign diplomat, who employed an agent to recruit women willing to take part in perverted sexual practices. These affairs were supposed to have been held in plush houses in Mayfair and Kensington.

There was also a theory that she might have been killed by someone she was blackmailing, because in an apartment she rented for prostitution officers found cameras, photographic lighting equipment and an address book. She had evidently taken compromising pictures of her clients with the idea of getting extra money from them.

Detective Chief Inspector Ben Devonald questioned 700 people during the enquiries into Hannah’s death, but found nothing of real value. She had been convicted three times for soliciting, specialising in “car clients”, and it was known that she was always willing to take off all her clothes.

About a hundred bodies are taken from the Thames every year. Many people are accidentally drowned, others commit suicide and a few are murdered. The circumstances of Hannah Tailford’s death could have indicated either suicide or murder. It is not unknown for suicides to undress, and push a gag in their own mouths to prevent themselves screaming for help at the last minute if their nerve breaks. Dr Donald Teare, the famous pathologist, found some bruising over her jaw, which could have resulted either from blows or from a fall. In the circumstances the only possible verdict the Coroner, Mr Gavin Thurston, could return at the Hammersmith inquest was an open one.

Hannah Tailford was just another West London streetwalker and nobody could then have anticipated that her death would prove to be the first of six killings which would receive more sustained publicity in one year than any other series of crimes in London’s history. It really got going two months after the Tailford affair when a second nude woman was found dead on the Thames foreshore at Dukes Meadows, Chiswick, about 300 yards upstream from the spot where Tailford’s body had been discovered.

She was identified as Irene Lockwood, a five-foot blonde who had lived in Denbigh Road, W.13. She was pregnant and her naked body bore a tattoo on the right arm, “John in Memory”. The ocelot coat, check dress and black underwear she was believed to have been wearing had disappeared.

This girl, who had come to London from Lincolnshire, called herself Sandra Russell at the twelve pounds ten shillings a week flat at which she entertained her clients.

Detective Superintendent (later Commander, and now retired) Frank Davies, who was in charge of this investigation, established a murder headquarters at Shepherd’s Bush Police station. He quickly found that Irene Lockwood had been friendly with another good-time girl, Vicki Pender, who had also been murdered a year previously.

Both Vicki and Irene were known to have taken “purple hearts” and to have been involved in “blue film” rackets. Vicki used to lure rich men to nude parties where pictures were taken and she had been beaten up several times because she tried to blackmail some of the men shown in the photographs.

The two girls were well known in clubs in the Soho and Euston area and both were car prostitutes. On 21 March 1963, red-haired, twenty-three-year-old Vicki, whose real name was Veronica Walsh, was found battered and strangled in her two-room flat at Adolphus Road, Finsbury Park, N.4. Former paratrooper Colin Welt Fisher, who lived with his wife and two children at Leverstock Green, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, was found guilty of her murder and jailed for life.

When first interviewed by the police, Fisher told them that on the night Vicki was killed he was at an hotel with Irene Lockwood, but at his trial at the Old Bailey in July, 1963, the jury heard about a weekend “bender” he had shared with Vicki. He was said to have bought reefer cigarettes before he met the girl in the Nucleus Club in Monmouth Street, Soho. They both took purple hearts and spent the night together at her flat, where her body was found four days later.

Frank Davies was one of the Yard’s shrewdest detectives. Prematurely bald and with a small moustache, he is a man who bristles with energy when he handles a major investigation. Because of his exceptional ability, he is today the head of the Yard’s Flying Squad. At first, and for a very good reason, he suspected that Irene Lockwood, if she was working the same photographic blackmail racket as Vicki, might have been murdered by one of her victims-or that the men behind the racket, who employed a number of prostitutes, might have killed her because she tried to poach private fees for herself, instead of being content with the “wages” they offered.

But enquiries into her death took a new turn when, out of the blue, a man named Kenneth Archibald confessed to her murder.

The fifty-four-year-old bachelor caretaker of a tennis club in Addison Road, Kensington, W.14, Archibald had appeared at Marlborough Street Court on 27 April 1964, in connection with the alleged theft of a hearing aid. The case was adjourned and Archibald went drinking with friends.

He told them: “It is more serious than you think. You do not know how serious it is.” He then went to Notting Hill police station and told a detective that he had killed Irene Lockwood and pushed her body into the river.

After fifty-six days in jail and a six-day trial, he was found not guilty and set free. He told reporters: “I should never have had all that beer, then I would not have shot my mouth off in such a ridiculous way. I just kept talking, thinking up the story as I went along, and by amazing coincidence, certain details fitted in with what the police knew. I was confused and depressed, although I shall never really know why I said I did it. I have been very silly.”

We had no reason to believe that Archibald had anything to do with the murder, but he had to be charged and a jury had to decide the case because he had repeated his false confession twice before eventually retracting it.

The Lockwood affair, naturally enough, revived the enquiries into the circumstances of Hannah Tailford’s death and these were being pursued when the next murder occurred. This time the victim was Helen Barthelemy who, like the others, was completely unclothed when she was found lying in a narrow driveway at the rear of houses off Swincombe Avenue, Brentford, only a mile or so from the scenes of the earlier murders. Detective Superintendent Bill Baldock led the investigation. The discovery was made by a young man named Christopher Parnell as he was on his way to work early one morning.

In this case Detective Superintendent Maurice Osborne, an experienced murder investigator with so many successes that he had been appointed to the Yard’s Murder Squad, collaborated in the inquiries, collating and coordinating the previous investigations.

Helen Barthelemy, a petite brunette who lived in Talbot Road, N.W.10., had the doubtful distinction of being the first nude among the victims to be found away from the river and this happened on 24 March 1964 – only sixteen days after the discovery of Irene Lockwood’s body. Four of her teeth were missing and a broken piece of one was found lodged in her throat but, strangely enough, there was no indication that the teeth had been dislodged by a blow. Nevertheless, the condition was a factor of some kind as was the discovery of a dark ring round the victim’s waist which proved that her panties had been removed after death.

I suppose one might say that Helen, who was only twenty-two and convent-educated, had had a colourful career. She had left her home in Scotland when she was sixteen to join a circus and became a performer on the trapeze. Then for a time she had worked as a stripper on Blackpool’s Golden Mile and later as a café waitress.

Some people knew her as Teddie and she had used the surnames Thompson and Paul. She varied the colour of her Beatle-style hair, too. There were times when she was a brunette and other periods when she became a redhead. Like many prostitutes she was tattooed and had the words “Loving You” on her forearms.

She hadn’t been in London much longer than a year because in August, 1962, she had been convicted at Liverpool of luring a young man on to Blackpool sands to be robbed. She had met the man, a holiday-maker, and gone with him to the sandhills to make love-a pleasure which came to a speedy end when he was beaten up and robbed of his wallet containing twenty-two pounds, by three men who had been with Helen earlier in the evening. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, but the conviction was quashed on appeal.

In London she became a prostitute around Notting Hill and Shepherd’s Bush. Because of Helen’s association with coloured men-she lived in a house occupied by coloured families-the investigation took this factor into account. It could hardly have been ignored although the police recognized that, if the same person was responsible for the deaths of Tailford, Lockwood and Barthelemy, it was highly improbable that he could have been a close friend of all three.

The more closely detectives studied the details of the murders the more certain they became that the killer was a casual “pick-up.”

The target for the officers engaged in the “field” investigations-Detective Inspector Frank Ridge, Detective Superintendents Frank Davies and Maurice Osborne-were those men who used their cars for kerb-prowling and nightly checks were made on any driver in the area. Warnings were given to those girls who were known to be soliciting in Notting Hill and they were asked to cooperate with the police if only for their own sakes. Helen Barthelemy had, in fact, been specifically warned only a few days before she was killed. Many streetwalkers did, in fact, report encounters with “clients” in search of sex deviation and quite often the police were able to trace the men concerned.

So great was the Press and public interest in police activities that for the next three months no further killings took place. The enormous publicity, plus greater cautiousness on the part of the prostitutes, obviously persuaded the murderer to lie low.

In the meantime, at the end of April, the inquest on Helen Barthelemy was opened and adjourned. Her mother, Mrs Mary Thomson, of New Waltham, Grimsby, said that she had last seen her daughter about four years previously.

Then, on 14 July 1964, the Stripper claimed victim number four-Mary Fleming, of Lancaster Gardens, W.11. Her naked body was found in a sitting position at the entrance to the garage of a private house in Berrymead Road, a cul-de-sac, in Chiswick, W4. She, too, had teeth missing, although in her case it was a denture. There was no sign of the clothing she was thought to have been wearing-a woollen two-piece suit, black padded bra, red suspender belt, lace G-string panties and white shoes.

Scots-born Mary Fleming was married in 1953, but had left her husband James Fleming, of Blake Street, Barrow-in-Furness, during his period of service in the army in Germany in 1955. At the time of her death she was living in one room with her two young children and, apart from the money she earned by soliciting, received National Assistance.

Her body was discovered at 5 a.m., by Mr George Heard, a City banker’s chauffeur, who lived directly opposite the spot. Detectives learned of a strange incident that had occurred earlier that morning when some painters, working throughout the night at business premises at the rear of Chiswick High Road, had heard the doors of a vehicle being slammed after it had reversed. They had seen a man standing at the side of the vehicle. When he realised he was being watched, he got in the car and hurriedly drove away. Unfortunately the men were looking through open frosted windows and only saw the shadowy figure of the driver. They could not see the number of the car but said that it was an estate vehicle or a small van.

About ten minutes later similar noises were heard in the quiet cul-de-sac and two hours later the body was found.

Despite the somewhat vague details we had been given of the vehicle, a full-scale effort was made to trace its driver. Many curious incidents came to light, to be sure, but our suspect was not among the numerous men we interviewed.

A vital clue, however, was uncovered by the Metropolitan Police Forensic Laboratory and passed on to Superintendent Osborne.

It had been noticed that the bodies of the last two victims, Barthelemy and Fleming-both found in London Streets-bore minute dust particles, which, under microscopic examination, were shown to contain even smaller particles of paint. The laboratory staff devoted a lot of time to this clue and found that a constant pattern of colours showed up in the paint. This pattern was found to fit in with the general picture of the colours of motor cars being currently produced by certain manufacturers and it became clear that these two bodies had been in or near premises in which cars were spray-painted during repairs. But where were the premises?

We had a double headache. We had to find a killer and we had to ensure, as far as was humanly possible, that nobody else fell victim to him. But such were the difficulties that had existed from the very beginning that the tempo of the investigation, involving countless enquiries, could not be quickened enough to prevent the deaths of yet two more women.

Already the manpower engaged on these murders was affecting the work of the Metropolitan Police, and particularly the CID. Sir Ranulph Bacon, the Assistant Commissioner for Crime, had allocated a far larger number of men and women to the investigation than is customary in a murder enquiry.

On 2 November 1964, the adjourned inquests on Helen Bathelemy and Mary Fleming were held jointly and the jury often men returned verdicts in each case of murder by a person or persons unknown. The West Middlesex Coroner, Mr Harold Broadbridge, commented that the cases were “strangely similar” but, so far as was known at that time, unconnected.

Detective Superintendent Bill Marchant (today Commander of No. 3 District Metropolitan Police) joined Superintendent Osborne and they were still investigating Mary Fleming’s death three months later when the fifth woman died.

She was Margaret McGowan who, like the others, was a prostitute from the Notting Hill area. She was actually soliciting in the company of another prostitute when last seen alive on 23 October 1964. A month later her nude body, somewhat decomposed, was found in a shallow grave of wood, foliage and debris in a car park at Hornton Street, Kensington, W.8. She was easily identified by her tattoo marks-three floral designs and the words “Helen, Mum and Dad”-on her left arm. One tooth was missing.

There was no sign of the clothes she had been wearing-a furtrimmed green suit, blue blouse, blue and white check slip, blue bra, black and pink panties and black suède shoes.

This slight, dark-haired girl had come to London from Glasgow. She was the mother of three illegitimate children, and lived in Shepherd’s Bush. She used a number of aliases and it was under the names of Frances Brown that she had given evidence at the vice trial of society osteopath Stephen Ward, who committed suicide on the last morning of the ten-day hearing in 1963. At the trial she said that Ward had sketched her on one of the two visits she had made to his flat.

Every person connected with the Stephen Ward scandal was traced and questioned by the police, but all inquiries proved fruitless.

Margaret McGowan had been in the company of a girl called Kim Taylor for twenty-four hours before she disappeared, and had drunk about nineteen whiskies before they went out soliciting together in Portobello Road. She and Kim were picked up by two men in separate cars and it was arranged that all four should meet at Chiswick Green, but Kim and her male partner lost the other car in the Bayswater Road and Margaret was not seen alive again.

On the basis of Kim’s descriptions we produced identikit pictures of both men and these were published in the newspapers with an appeal for the men to come forward. Neither did so. The man who drove off with McGowan was probably not responsible for her death, but the secrecy under which most men in these circumstances must shelter usually prevents them from making any contact with the police.

The unflagging efforts of Bill Marchant and the rest of his team were now whipped into frenzied activity. Things had reached such a pitch that not only were the prostitutes and their ponces extremely disturbed, but the public was beginning to ask if everything possible was being done to stop the slaughter.

Finally, nearly a year after Hannah Tailford disappeared, the last victim of the Stripper, Bridget (Bridie) O’Hara vanished from her usual haunts and her home in Agate Road, W.6.

On 11 January 1965, she visited the Shepherd’s Bush Hotel and was recognized by several men who spoke to her during the evening until the public house closed at 11 p.m. What happened to her then is not clear, but it is certain that she died not very long afterwards and that her body was kept in some place until about 16 February, when it was found behind a small workshop alongside a very busy factory estate railway line. The discovery was made by Mr Ernest Beauchamp, working at the Heron Trading Estate, who saw two feet protruding from the undergrowth behind a shed on the estate. At first he thought it was a tailor’s dummy, but soon realised that the feet were human.

Within minutes of him reporting, Detective Superintendent William Baldock and Detective Inspector Crabb, of T Division, which covers that area, were on the spot.

I was driving to St. Mary’s Bay for a holiday with my wife when I heard the news flash on my car radio. Five hours later a uniformed sergeant from Dymchurch police station knocked on the door of my bungalow to tell me I was wanted in London to lead the murder hunt.

The Assistant Commissioner wanted me to take over murder headquarters at Shepherd’s Bush and lead the senior officers there-Detective Inspector Frank Ridge, Detective Superintendent Frank Davies, Detective Superintendent Bill Marchant and Detective Superintendent Bill Baldock.

This type of summons was nothing new. When I was a superintendent serving with the Murder Squad I had become accustomed to being called from my bed at a moment’s notice, prepared to go anywhere in the world. On this occasion I was furious because my holiday was long overdue and my wife, particularly, had been looking forward to a break. But I had no choice. I returned to London-and started work during the early hours of the morning.

Like the Stripper’s other victims, Bridie O’Hara died from asphyxia and suffocation and had lost some of her teeth. She was married to a man called Michael O’Hara and one of the identifying features on the body was a tattoo with the name “Mick” in a heart on her arm. Her clothing, of course, had disappeared.

Born in Dublin, she was one of a family of thirteen, several of whom attended the inquest at Ealing in March, 1965, to hear the verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown. Her mother, fifty-two-year-old Mrs Mary Moore, who flew to London from Dublin as soon as she heard of her daughter’s death, broke down when she went to the flat in Agate Road. I don’t know how much she knew of her daughter’s life in London, but she kept asking: “How could this have happened to her?” She described Bridie as “the most beautiful of all my family and a really kind, good girl”.

A curious feature of this murder was the remarkably preserved state of the body. It had been kept in some kind of storage and was partly mummified. There were clear indications that the body had been dumped and had not long lain in the grass.

Subsequently a witness came forward to testify that suspicious noises had been heard on the site in the early hours of 12 February. Once again forensic experts found dust and paint spray marks similar to those previously discovered.

It was assumed from the manner in which all these girls had died that their killer was a man of some strength and virility. He certainly wasn’t satisfied with normal intercourse and in every instance the victims had slight marks on the neck apparently made by fingernails, either by the murderer, or by the victim in an attempt at self-defence. Some had injuries and very slight bruising as though pressure had been directed in the region of the nose and mouth.

One thing is quite certain, the girls died extremely quickly and another certainty is that some time or other they had all suffered from venereal disease. It would have been easy to assume that the man we were hunting was a man carrying out a personal vendetta against prostitutes because he had caught the disease. That was never my view. Early in the inquiry I became convinced that the killer was a man in his forties with extremely strong sexual urges which, perhaps because of his age, were not easily satisfied normally. It was probably this physical difficulty that took him away from his wife and into the twilight world of the prostitutes.

He knew that these women set no limits to the sexual acts in which they would allow their clients to indulge. In obtaining satisfaction he became utterly frenzied and at the moment of his orgasm, the girls died. In his encounter with Hannah Tailford, he might not have realized that she was dead and for this reason pushed the gag into her mouth. With the other victims he knew that the girls had died and made no attempt to gag them. What he did was to dispose of their clothing to avoid identification.

One could postulate a theory that had this man been caught after the death of the first prostitute, and the circumstances of the sexual act had been revealed in court, the jury might have brought in a verdict of manslaughter or even accidental death. But when he continued to indulge in his particular perversion, well knowing that the girl concerned would die, then he must have recognized that he was fulfilling himself as a murderer.

In investigating kerb-crawlers we had to exercise the utmost caution and, usually, interviews were arranged over business telephones and the suspects questioned at various police stations.

On the rare occasions our detectives were compelled to visit the actual homes of these men, they were often astonished to find themselves confronted by extremely attractive and sometimes beautiful wives living in sumptuous circumstances. In one such instance the officers told the wife that they were checking on a hit-and-run accident and asked to see her car. Great tact and discretion had to be used, otherwise hundreds of marriages might well have foundered as the result of our activities.

In an effort to trap the killer, policewomen were dressed up as flash prostitutes whose job it was to walk the streets of Notting Hill after dark. They did their job so effectively that any one of them would have as many as a dozen cars lined up with drivers waiting to make a bid for their favours. It was a dangerous mission for these girls, despite the plain clothes officers posing as ponces near at hand, and they were subjected to some pretty unpleasant experiences, but nobody asked to be taken off this duty. Each girl was equipped with a small tape recorder, the microphone being concealed in their cuffs or scarves, so that a recording of the conversation was available.

Until then few of them had realized what odd demands men could make upon women. One “client” wanted to watch a woman as she took a bath and was willing to pay a fiver for the privilege. Another was anxious to undress while a nude woman in high-heeled shoes paraded before him. Flagellation, beating the girl or being beaten by her, was another mode of sexual excitement frequently asked for and there were others interested in witnessing love-making between two women.

Yet another prime target of the investigation was to discover the paint-spraying site where, undoubtedly, some of the bodies had lain for varying periods before being dumped. It was decided to start a big sweep of the territory from the Paddington end of this huge West London area. Three squads, each of twelve men under a detective sergeant, were formed to search three different sectors, working across twenty-four square miles running parallel with the Thames.

It was a terribly frustrating task because house after house emptied as the occupants went off to work each day, and often it meant going back to the same place again and again. Some people were away on holiday or business or for other reasons. It was the same with business premises. Some were closed and the occupants and employees had to be found.

I wanted to know about every male in every building in this area and details of the car he owned or used. I wanted to know if he sprayed his own car, or sprayed cars for friends, or even if he owned a spray gun. I asked for particulars of every small business where spray guns were used and I wanted samples of the pattern of spray that was left at the scene of the spraying.

It was necessary for samples to be taken from inside the bodies and boots of all cars so that comparisons could be made with samples taken from the bodies of the girls. Many times patterns of paint similar to those found on the girls were uncovered, but in every instance except one there was some difference either in the dust content or colouring. However, each one had to be thoroughly examined and an enormous amount of time was spent on this aspect of the inquiry.

In addition to the 200-strong CID murder force under my command, I had received maximum cooperation from senior uniformed officers and was able to supplement the squad of detectives with about a hundred men and women from the uniformed branch. When I suggested to Sir John Waldron that I needed even more help and asked if he would allow the 300-strong Special Patrol Group he had recently formed to move in, he agreed at once.

I wanted the whole of West London to be flooded with policemen-and it was.

Finally, and strangely enough at the remotest end of the search area, we came up with the paint pattern we were seeking. This was found a short distance from where Bridie O’Hara’s body had probably lain for two weeks before being moved. It appeared to have been hidden at the site of a transformer at the rear of a factory on the Heron Factory Estate, Acton, W.4. It faced a paint spray shop! All the globules of paint matched and the substances that made up the dust on Bridie’s body were in the right proportions. When the area was tested it was found that the spray pattern became fainter as one moved further from this spot and eventually disappeared after a few hundred yards, so it was clear that the bodies on which the pattern was shown had been kept within close range of this particular paint shop.

There were various chimneys on the Heron Factory Estate and samples taken from a spot close to the transformer clearly pinpointed the place where O’Hara’s body must have been for some time. The smoke and debris from the various chimneys produced a pattern identical to that found on the dead girl.

It transpired eventually that the paint shop was purely incidental to the killing. It did not lead us to the killer, although he must have had some association with the factory estate. Over 7,000 people on the estate were questioned because the dumping of the body pointed to the killer possessing a very special knowledge of the small area. Although it was technically private property, strangers could cross the estate. Our inquiries showed that the killer must have had legitimate access. Knowing this, we posted police officers there day and night to observe and note the index numbers of cars entering and leaving.

There were, though, many complications. This particular estate had developed piecemeal over the years, so that during the period of the murders some buildings had been pulled down and others had taken their place.

By a strange coincidence, Christie, the Rillington Place mass murderer, had been employed on the estate at one time.

We held press conferences twice daily and at one of them we got a girl who resembled Bridie O’Hara to pose and walk in clothes similar to those she was known to have been wearing when last seen alive. We hoped someone who might have seen her would come forward with information.

Countless inquiries of all kinds were made. A 50,000 word report was prepared and a vast number of statements taken even at a late stage. In spite of all this, the killer remained unidentified, but I was now conscious that we were at last closing in on the man I was sure I would eventually arrest.

We decided that there was one way in which we could reach him. We could “talk” to him via the radio, press and television in the hope that we would harass him into making a blunder. It is inconceivable that anybody who commits a serious crime can avoid reading or listening about what the police are doing to effect an arrest. He had to be told that the murders had got to stop and that the entire strength of the Metropolitan Police had been mobilised to ensure his capture. I organized the release of a small but steady stream of hints that we were getting close to him.

In this war of nerves important clues were leaked in day-to-day bulletins covering our activities in many areas. The original number of suspects was given at twenty but these were gradually scaled down until it was revealed that of the three that remained one was known to be the killer.

We could never forget the fact that no woman was safe until the killer was in our hands, but it was not to be and within a month of the murder of Bridie O’Hara the man I wanted to arrest took his own life. Without a shadow of doubt the weight of our investigation and the enquiries that we had made about him led to the killer committing suicide.

We had done all we possibly could but faced with his death no positive evidence was available to prove or disprove our belief that he was in fact the man we had been seeking. Because he was never arrested, or stood trial, he must be considered innocent and will therefore never be named.

Often, since this massive inquiry, I have tried to decide what I felt for this twisted-or inhuman-being.

Did I feel pity, sympathy, revulsion, hatred? Or did I possess a sense of vengeance? I discovered that I was unable to answer any of these questions. I knew then, as I know now, that I was just a detective dedicated to the hunting down of a killer.

The sightless eyes of the victims had asked me to provide the explanations for their deaths; as when I saw that young girl on the slab in the mortuary all those years ago. The fact that the victims were prostitutes did not make the crimes any less horrible. No one was entitled to rob even prostitutes of their lives.

Without doubt, the killer’s wife and relatives could have known nothing of the double life of the man who was normal by day and Jack the Stripper by night.

And their feelings count…