Could this man have been hiding in plain sight?
Adding yet another twist to the Jack The Ripper tale, a TV documentary reveals that the infamous serial killer may have given evidence at the inquest of his first victim.
Charles Allen Lechmere was the first person on the scene of Mary Ann Nichol’s murder in Whitechapel on August 31, 1988.
Mysteriously, he lied about his identity to the police, telling them that his name was Cross and that he had only been alongside her body for a matter of minutes.
However, researchers now believe he would have been with her for longer – long enough to have committed the murder.
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The documentary, on Channel 5 on Monday night, is produced by David McNab – who has researched the killings for more than 20 years.
He told the Sunday Express: ‘The man who committed these crimes would have been a local. He would have been able to blend into the background and walk the streets without being detected.’
‘Lechmere was discovered standing over the body, but bizarrely no one seemed to think that this was an important fact’.
‘I am totally convinced that we have found Jack the Ripper’.
Researchers also discovered that the other murders took place either on Lechmere’s route to work – as a meat delivery worker – or near his mother’s house.
Barrister James Scobie QC believes that this evidence would have been sufficient to warrant a court case.
He added: ‘He is somebody who seems to be acting in a way that is suspicious, which a jury would not like. When the coincidences mount up against a defendant, it becomes one coincidence too many’.
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