Chief’s handwritten notes name Jack the Ripper suspect

HANDWRITTEN notes in which the police officer who led the hunt for Jack the Ripper names the man he believes is the killer went on public display yesterday.

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson names Polish barber Aaron Kosminski as the chief suspect in the hunt for the notorious Victorian serial killer.

The book holds fascinating details of one of the most notorious serial killer cases in British criminal history.

The annotations in the margins of the assistant commissioner’s memoir create a remarkable artefact for historians and crime buffs.

Swanson wrote in the book that once the suspect knew he had been identified, no other similar murders took place in London.

The book will become one of the most treasured possessions of New Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum.

Other artefacts include items from cases involving 1960s East End gangsters the Kray twins, serial killer Dennis Nilsen and The Great Train Robbery.

Swanson had made his handwritten notes in a book called The Lighter Side of my Official Life, the memoirs of Dr Robert Anderson, who was Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioner at the time of the Ripper investigation.

Swanson made his personal notes in the margin, naming Kosminski and explaining why he believed him to be the killer who stalked east London back in 1888, claiming the lives of at least five women.

Kosminski came to the attention of police after threatening his sister with a knife. Although he was soon identified as a possible suspect in the Ripper investigation, he was insane so detectives could not interview him.

Instead he was taken to the Metropolitan Police convalescent home in Brighton where he was put through an identity parade. The only alleged witness to any of the Ripper murders picked him out.

The witness was said to have been Jewish, like Kosminski, and refused to testify against a fellow Jew for a crime for which, if he had been found guilty, he could have been executed.

The book, which was passed to Swanson’s daughter and then his nephew, was formally presented to the Metropolitan Police by the officer’s relatives, including his great-grandson Nevill Swanson.

The presentation marks the re-launch of the crime museum, the oldest museum of its kind in the world.

Swanson’s notes do not solve the case conclusively.

Kosminski was named as a suspect in a famous memorandum by Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville MacNaghten, written back in 1894.

Sir Melville also named Michael Ostrog and the barrister Montague John Druitt as possible suspects.

Asked if his great-grandfather would have been disappointed that the Ripper was never caught and held to account for his crimes, Nevill Swanson said: “I think he would have thought he had done his detecting job very well and reached the proper conclusions. I just do not know what his thoughts would have been about what happened afterwards.”

Kosminski ended up in a workhouse in Stepney, east London, and then an asylum in Colney Hatch. He died in 1919.

As there is no surviving forensic evidence from the case, it is impossible for detectives to prove the identity of Jack The Ripper.

But Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Lovelock said Swanson’s evidence, which is known as “the Swanson Marginalia”, carried considerable weight. Mr Lovelock said he could not explain why Kosminski’s name had never been made public at the time of the Ripper murders.

Mr Swanson’s notes read: “After the suspect had been identified at the seaside home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified.

“On suspect’s return to his brother’s house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day and night.

“In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards — Kosminski was the suspect — DSS.”