Jack the Stripper

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Jack the Stripper was the nickname given to an unknown serial killer responsible for what came to be known as the London "nude murders" between 1964 and 1965 (also known as the "Hammersmith murders" or "Hammersmith nudes" case).

His victimology was similar to Jack the Ripper's. He murdered six — possibly eight — prostitutes, whose nude bodies were discovered in around London or dumped in the River Thames. The victim count is ambiguous becasue two of the murders attributed to him did not fit his modus operandi.

His confirmed victims, prostitutes Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helene Barthelemy, Mary Flemming, Margaret McGowan, and Bridget "Bridie" O'Hara, were all found in similar conditions. They were killed by asphyxiation, having been choked to death during forced fellatio. They were also found naked, except for their stockings. Their bodies had been stored near intense heat, and there were flecks of paint on four of the corpses.

The two uncertain cases, prostitutes Elizabeth Figg and Gwyneth Rees, were manually strangled, but both were found naked except for their stockings with their knickers lodged in their throats. The sexual deviances of the crimes led many to believe that Jack the Stripper was guilty of these two murders, as well.

There is some speculation that Chief Superintendent John Du Rose of Scotland Yard, the detective put in charge of the case, was responsible for stopping the murders. After interviewing almost 7,000 suspects, he held a news conference, falsely announcing that the police had narrowed the suspect pool down to 20 men. After a short time, he announced that the suspect pool contained only 10 members, and then three. The Stripper killed nobody after the initial news conference.

According to the writer Anthony Summers, two of his victims — Hannah Tailford and Frances Brown, the Stripper's third and seventh victims — were peripherally connected to the 1963 Profumo Affair. Also, some victims were known to engage in an underground party and pornographic movie scene; several writers have postulated that the victims might have known each other, and that the killer may be connected to this scene as well.

Like the Jack the Ripper killings, the Stripper's reign of terror seemed to cease on its own, and there were few solid clues for police to investigate. Though his identity remains unknown, crime writer Donald Rumbelow notes that the killer could have been a young man who committed suicide in south London. This main suspect, who was also a favourite suspect of Chief Superintendent Du Rose was a security guard on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton whose rounds included a paint shop where one of the bodies was thought to have been hidden after the crime. Though there was never any hard evidence to link him to the crimes, his family found his suicide inexplicable, and his suicide note cryptically said only that he was "unable to take the strain any longer".

It is also possible this unnamed suspect's suicide was used as a way for the real murderer to disappear. With the prime suspect dead and an end to the murders, it made sense to presume the dead man was the killer and that the police would stop their search.

A recent book also named British light heavyweight boxing champion Freddie Mills as the killer, although this has not been substantiated.

The Alfred Hitchcock movie Frenzy is loosely based on the case. [1].

1 References
2 Trivia
3 External links
4 Sources

[edit] References

Murder Was My Business by John Du Rose (Mayflower Books, St Albans 1973) is the autobiography of the cop who investigated the nude murders, and includes chapters on many of his famous cases.
Found Naked and Dead by Brian McConnell, (New English Library, London 1974) is solely about the nude murders, and follows the Du Rose line on the suspect.
The Survivor by Jimmy Evans and Martin Short (Mainstream, Edinburgh 2001) is the ghosted gangland memoirs of Jimmy Evans, who claims that top cop Tommy Butler was Jack the Stripper. The case isn’t proved.
A new book with a new suspect has just been published. Jack of Jumps by David Seabrook (Granta May 2006) does not name the suspect but states that he is an easily identifiable disgraced cop. The suspect is named in a review of the book by Stewart Home entitled Put Up or Shut Up: David Seabrook at the Last Chance Saloon. In his review, Home strongly disagrees with Seabrook's conclusion.[2]

[edit] Trivia

Macabre recorded a song titled Jack the Stripper contained on the Murder Metal album, as a hidden track.
Nekromantix psychobilly song Jack the Stripper is also about the murderer.
Black Sabbath has a short instrumental called Jack the Stripper before the song Fairies Wear Boots.
Luke Haines recorded a song called Freddie Mills is Dead which mentions Mills's alleged link to this case.