An Investigator Says She's Finally Solved the Identity of Jack the Ripper

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• The identity of Jack the Ripper remains an unsolved mystery.

• Sarah Bax Horton, a relative of an officer on the original case, used medical records to, in an upcoming book, allege that the killer was a London cigar maker.

• Horton believes other facts contribute to the idea that Hyam Hyams was in fact Jack the Ripper.

The summer of 1888 was a harrowing time for those in East London’s Whitechapel area, as it was the period during which Jack the Ripper—potentially the world’s most famous serial killer—murdered at least six women. Police never found the person behind the pseudonym, but that hasn’t stopped others from searching for the murderer’s real identity.

Now, a former police volunteer and great-great-granddaughter of a policeman on the original case has a new theory—and a book to go with it—that offers up a new name for consideration: Hyam Hyams.

In the upcoming book One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper, author Sarah Bax Horton compares witness accounts of men seen with the murder victims to medical records and other evidence from 1888 to land on the man with two nearly identical names.

“For the first time in history, Jack the Ripper can be identified as Hyam Hyams using distinctive physical characteristics,” Horton tells The Telegraph.

But it isn’t just his physical description that led Horton to Hyams. She also used his violent history, location of his work and home, medical records, and even police interactions to fill in details. Tangentially, she also found that she herself was related to an original officer on the case during her Jack the Ripper research.

As Horton spells out, Hyams was a cigar maker living and working in the area. that profession is accustomed to using knives quite frequently, which was a focus of the investigation, due to the body mutilations and manner of death. He was also an epileptic and alcoholic who was well acquainted with stays in mental institutions. Hyams was 35 years old in the summer of 1888, and his height and weight fall in line with the accounts of men possibly seen with the victims.

Hyams was known to assault his wife and was arrested following an attack on both his wife and mother.

Horton scoured medical records of Hyams and found that he couldn’t extend his left arm. He also had issues that left him unable to straighten his knees, which led to an irregular gait.

“In the files, it said what the eyewitnesses said—that he had a peculiar gait,” Horton says. “He was weak at the knees and wasn’t fully extending his legs. When he walked, he had a kind of shuffling gait, which was probably a side-effect of some brain damage as a result of his epilepsy.”

Then comes the timing of everything. While additional murders took place in the area in the years following 1888, they were never conclusively linked back to the original summer-of-1888 investigation, leading some to believe that Jack the Ripper’s killing spree only lasted one summer. The end of that summer matches when Hyams was scooped up by police for his degrading mental state, and later moved to the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in North London.

Of course, now that we’re 130-plus years beyond the brutal summer, Horton’s theory will likely remain just that: another Jack the Ripper theory.

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