Notorious Perpetrator: James Kelly??

The case of Jack the Ripper, which I'm sure we all know was a series of incredibly violent, brutal and gruesome murders primarily focused around Whitechapel in London during the late 1800's, has become to be known as the most famous unsolved murder case ever, yet at the same time It has also become by far the most researched murder case of all time. Solving it has been hailed the "holy grail" of detective work in fact...

James Kelly (20 April 1860-17 September 1929) was first identified as a suspect in Prisoner 1167: The madman who was jack the Ripper, by Jim Tully, in 1927. He was a well known figure, someone who was classified as "legally insane", and a proven violent man. Proven as in the months leading up to the Ripper murders he escaped from Broadmoor Asylum, where he spent his time after being classified insane, or more specifically as a Paranoid Schizophrenia, which was where he was being held for the very brutal murder of his first wife Sarah Brider. He later escaped in early 1888, using a key he fashioned himself. 

After the last Ripper murder in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been residence prior to his wife’s murder but they were not able to locate him. In 1927, almost 40 years after his escape, he unexpectedly turned himself back in to officials at the Broadmoor Asylum. He died two years later, presumably of natural causes.

A retired NYPD cold-case detective named Ed Norris examined the Jack the Ripper case for a Discovery Channel program called “Jack the Ripper in America”. In it, Norris claims that James Kelly was not the only Jack the Ripper’s real identity; he was also responsible for multiple murders in cities around the United States. Norris highlights a few features of the Kelly story to support his contention. He worked as a furniture upholsterer, a job that requires the handiness with a knife. He also claimed to have resided in the United States and left behind a journal that spoke of his string disapproval of the immorality of prostitutes and of his having been on the “warpath” during his time as a fugitive. Norris claims Kelly was in New York at the time of a Ripper-like murder of a prostitute named Carrie Brown, as well as in a number of cities while each experienced, according to Norris, one or two brutal murders of prostitutes while Kelly was there.

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