The Jack the Ripper Suspect Charles Allen Letchmere
Suspects popular with Jack the Ripper tour guides
It’s unlikely that any of the scores of Jack the Ripper walks offered in London will have time to mention the Jack the Ripper suspect known as Charles Cross, also known as Charles Allen Letchmere.
More colourful suspects are generally preferred. The royal connection ensures that Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Duke of Clarence, Prince Albert Victor, will make an appearance as a possible candidate for Jack the Ripper.
Naturally, because of the 2001 film From Hell starring Johnny Depp, Queen Victoria’s personal physician, Sir William Gull, will also be mentioned.
The film is based on the exciting theory put forward by Stephen Knight in his 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.
Stephen Knight’s idea is that all of these gruesome Whitechapel murders were carried out as part of a royal conspiracy to hush up the fact that Prince Albert Victor had fathered an illegitimate baby.
The theory was considered such an exciting solution to the Jack the Ripper mystery that in the late 1980s, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell took it and ran with it in their graphic novel called From Hell.
They took their title from the first words in a letter sent to the leader of the Whitechapel Vigilante Committee, George Lusk. The letter was accompanied by what was said to be a human kidney; the writer claimed to have eaten the other half.
Thomas Harris’s psychopath, Hannibal Lecter, also had a taste for human organs, though he preferred the liver.
From Hell was such a good title, and the theory so colourful that it just needed Johnny Depp to fill the shoes of Inspector Frederick Abberline, and the producers had a reasonably successful film on their hands.
Suspects popular on Jack the Ripper walks
And the colourful theory means that most Jack the Ripper tour guides will include it in their walk.
The Jewish boot-maker, John Pizer, AKA Leather Apron.
Another Polish Jew, Aaron Kosminski, is popular thanks to the headline-grabbing claims of DNA evidence in the 2014 book Naming Jack the Ripper by Russell Edwards.
The barrister, Montague John Druitt, George Chapman, AKA Severin Klosowski and, of course, a masonic conspiracy might get mentioned.
There is one problem with all of those possible serial killers.
None of them can be shown to have been at any of the Jack the Ripper murder sites at the time the crime was committed, whereas we know Charles Allen Letchmere, AKA Charles Allen Cross, was at the murder site where Polly Nichols was brutally slaughtered.
Derek Osborne, writing in the true crime mystery magazine Ripperana in July 2001, first suggested that the man who was discovered standing at the scene of the crime in Buck’s Row on August 31st 1888, should be considered a serious contender for the role of Jack the Ripper.
“Charles Cross is a serious suspect for the Whitechapel murders”.
Then, in 2005, Michael Connor wrote an article on casebook.org that began, “Charles Cross is a serious suspect for the Whitechapel murders”.
In 2012, the Daily Telegraph reported: “Jack the Ripper experts believe the real identity of the Whitechapel serial killer is Charles Cross, the cartman who ‘found’ the body of Polly Nichols.”
Then, in 2014, a Channel 5 documentary, Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence, appeared. Swedish journalist Christer Holmgren and criminologist Gareth Norris claim they have finally solved the greatest mystery in the world of true crime.
In the documentary, they claim that the unknown serial killer known to the world as Jack the Ripper was Charles Allen Letchmere.
They set the scene, explaining, “In the autumn of 1888, the East End of London lived in terror. A killer stalked the streets, horribly mutilating prostitutes. He was never caught, and the legend of Jack the Ripper was born. His identity has remained a mystery ever since, but by piecing together the missing evidence, we can at last reveal his name.”
They say that their investigation showed that this ruthless killer appeared in official reports but never became a suspect. They say that Charles Allen Letchmere was caught red-handed but talked his way past the police.
After 30 years of researching this case, Christer Holmgren says:
“As a journalist, you do try to look at the facts, and you do try to build yourself a framework, and you quickly realise it is a complete labyrinth. It involves hundreds and thousands of people. It involves a couple of hundred suspects. But one always has the feeling that somewhere in it, there will be that grain of sand that could provide a solution.”
Christer Holmgren says that most killers of this sort are men who can melt into the background. He believes the killer was not a royal prince or a doctor but just an ordinary working man.
Jack the Ripper would have been an unremarkable local man.
Criminologist Dr Gareth Norris agrees. His profile of the killer shows that the killer would have been an unremarkable local man.
Criminologists now have a clearer understanding of the kind of men who become serial killers. Their violent urges develop in childhood, but they often suppress them until they erupt in their adult years.
This kind of person will have had a troubled background, and the fantasies they have take time to develop. Dr Gareth Norris believes the killer was in their mid to late 30s or even early 40s.
And in the records of the police, Gareth Norris says there is a man who fits this profile. But that man escaped suspicion. Christer Holmgren says:
“At the inquest into the Polly Nicholls murder, the coroner said it was nothing less than astonishing that the killer had managed to escape given the circumstances.”
Polly Nicholls was killed on Buck’s Row. Fifteen minutes before Polly was murdered, a policeman passed the spot where she was murdered, and Buck’s Row was clear. Two other policemen patrolled Buck's Row's east and west end every half hour. None of these police officers saw anything. It seemed impossible for the killer to escape.
But there was somebody who should have been a suspect.
On the first day of the inquest, the police reported that at 3:45 in the morning, Police Constable John Neil discovered the body of a woman in Buck’s Row.
The very next day, a newspaper article stated that police constable John Neil was not the first to arrive at the scene of the crime.
A man on his way to work called Robert Paul claimed that he had come across the body and that another man was standing over the body at the time.
This came as a shock to the police. They had known nothing about these men.
Christer Holmgren goes on to say that the day after the newspaper article, a man appeared at the inquest and gave his name as Charles Allen Cross, and he confirmed that he was the first person to find the body. He said he worked as a delivery man and lived at 22 Doveton Street, Bethnal Green.
When Christer Holmgren checked the official records, they showed nobody named Charles Allen Cross lived at that address.
Was Charles Cross Jack the Ripper?
In the documentary, Dr Andy Griffiths, a former Detective Superintendent with Sussex Police whose murder squad solved 97% of its cases while he was in charge, believes that if the murder of Polly Nicholls were being investigated today, Charles Cross would come under intense scrutiny.
Charles Allen Cross and Robert Paul met Police Constable Jonas Mizen minutes after they had left Polly Nicholls’s body.
Police Constable Mizen said that Cross told him that a woman was lying in Buck’s Row, and there was a policeman with the body.
Christer seizes on this.
Cross knew there was no policeman there when he and Robert Paul left the body. Christer says, “It seems he was lying.”
Christer believes that was because if Cross had not said there was a policeman already at the scene, then PC Mizen would have taken Cross back to the crime scene; there was a risk. But because PC Mizen believed that Cross was passing on a message from another police officer, Police Constable Mizen let him go on his way.
It is worth taking a moment to think about Christer Holmgren’s analysis at this point. Let me first say that this isn’t in any way meant to undermine his case against Cross being the murderer of Polly Nichols.
I agree with ex-superintendent Andy Griffiths when he says in the documentary:
“You couldn’t prosecute anybody else without eliminating him first.”
“Certainly, in the modern age, you couldn’t prosecute anybody else without eliminating him first because, obviously, you’ve got someone who’s been with the body very close to the point of death.”
I want to point out how Christer’s desire to prove his case gives him a blinkered vision. He looks at every piece of evidence as a way to build his case. He says in the documentary:
“Whatever I find out about this man will confirm his guilt. It will not clear him.”
So when he learns that Police Constable Mizen said that Cross told him that a woman was lying in Buck’s Row and there was a policeman with the body, Christer Holmgren immediately jumped to the conclusion that Cross was lying. He ignores the fact that PC Mizen could have been lying.
The Daily Telegraph at the time reported that at the inquest:
“Police-constable Mizen said that at a quarter to four o'clock on Friday morning, he was at the crossing, Hanbury-street, Baker's-row when a Carman who passed in company with another man informed him that he was wanted by a policeman in Buck's-row, where a woman was lying. When he arrived there, Constable Neil sent him for the ambulance. At that time, nobody but Neil was with the body.”
However, at the inquest, Charles Allen Cross was questioned about what PC Mizen had said.
“Replying to the coroner, the witness denied having seen Police-constable Neil in Buck's Row. There was nobody there when he and the other man left. In his opinion, the deceased looked as if she had been outraged and gone off in a swoon, but he had no idea that there were any serious injuries.
The Coroner: Did the other man tell you who he was?
Witness: No, sir; he merely said that he would have fetched a policeman, only he was behind time. I was behind time myself.
A Juryman: Did you tell Constable Mizen that another constable wanted him in Buck's-row?
Witness: No, because I did not see a policeman in Buck’s-row.
And this is what Robert Paul told a reporter. The article was published the day after the first day of the inquest in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, 2nd September 1888.
PC Mizen “continued calling the people up.”
“I was obliged to be punctual at my work, so I went on and told the other man I would send the first policeman I saw. I saw one in Church-row, just at the top of Buck's-row, who was going round calling people up, and I told him what I had seen and asked him to come, but he did not say whether he should come or not. He continued calling the people up, which I thought was a great shame after I had told him the woman was dead.”
PC Mizen was knocking on doors and windows to wake people up who paid him for being their alarm clock.
Both Charles Cross and Robert Paul reported that Mizen went on knocking up after they told him of the woman lying in Buck’s Row.
So Mizen had a better reason than Cross to lie. Given the seriousness of the case, it would be difficult to explain why he hadn’t at least taken the names and addresses of the two men and then why he didn’t go immediately to Buck’s Row.
We know that the police only learned about these two men because Robert Paul told a reporter about discovering the body, and it appeared in the newspaper on the second day of the inquest. That means that Police Constable Mizen kept quiet about these two men for two days.
Why hadn’t Police Constable Mizen reported meeting Charles Cross and Robert Paul?
Charles Allen Cross and Robert Paul met PC Jonas Mizen before four in the morning of Friday, the 31st of August, but Mizen did not share this vital information throughout the rest of Friday and all of Saturday and into Sunday.
It was only when every other member of the Metropolitan Police Force, along with the rest of the country, read about the two men in the Sunday newspaper that PC Mizen’s fellow officers learned of their existence. Why hadn’t Police Constable Mizen reported meeting Charles Cross and Robert Paul?
This doesn’t lessen the case against Charles Allen Cross, but it must make us wary of those investigators who allow their enthusiasm for the case to affect their view of evidence.
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