Mary Jane Kelly - Theories

Theories

Extensive house-to-house enquiries and searches were conducted by police. On 10 November, Dr Bond wrote a report linking Kelly's murder with four previous ones—those of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes—and providing a likely profile of the murderer. On the same day, the government offered a pardon for "any accomplice, not being the person who contrived or actually committed the murder, who shall give such information and evidence as shall lead to the discovery and conviction of the murderer or murderers". Despite the offer, and a massive police investigation, no-one was ever charged or tried for the murders. No similar murder was committed for the next six months, as a result of which the police investigation was gradually wound down. Kelly is generally considered to be the Ripper's final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprit's death, imprisonment, institutionalisation, or emigration.

The mutilation of Kelly's corpse was the most savage of the Whitechapel murders, probably because the murderer had more time to commit his atrocities in a private room rather than in the street. Her state of undress, and some folded clothes on a chair, have led to suggestions that she undressed herself before lying down on the bed, which would indicate that she was killed by someone she knew, by someone she believed to be a client, or when she was asleep, or insensible from drink.

Abberline questioned Kelly's boyfriend, Joe Barnett, for four hours after her murder, and his clothes were examined for bloodstains, but he was then released without charge. A century after the murder, authors Paul Harrison and Bruce Paley proposed he killed Kelly in a jealous rage, or because she scorned him, and suggested that he committed the other murders to scare Kelly off the streets and out of prostitution. Other authors suggest Barnett killed Kelly only, and mutilated her body to make it look like a Ripper murder. Abberline's investigation appears to have exonerated him. Other acquaintances of Kelly's put forward as her murderer include her landlord John McCarthy and her former boyfriend Joseph Fleming.

Writer Mark Daniel proposed that Kelly's murderer was a religious maniac, who killed Kelly as part of a ritual sacrifice, and that the fire in the grate was not to provide light but was used to make a burnt offering. William Stewart proposed in 1939 that Kelly was killed by a deranged midwife, dubbed "Jill the Ripper", whom Kelly had engaged to perform an abortion. According to Stewart, the murderess burnt her own clothes in the grate because they were bloodstained and made her escape wearing Kelly's clothes. This, he suggested, was why Mrs Maxwell had claimed to see Kelly the morning after the murder—she had seen the killer dressed in Kelly's clothes instead. However, the medical reports, which were not available when Stewart constructed his theory, make no mention of a pregnancy, and the theory is entirely based on speculation.

A small minority of modern authors consider it possible that Kelly was not a victim of the same killer as the other Whitechapel murders. At an assumed age of around 25, she was younger than the other canonical victims, all of whom were in their 40s. The mutilations inflicted on her were far more extensive than those on other victims, but she was also the only one killed in the privacy of a room instead of outdoors. Her murder was separated by five weeks from the previous killings.

There was a delay in the police entering her room after Bowyer had reported the murder. Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had issued an instruction that if there was another murder, nobody was to disturb the scene until he arrived to take charge of the investigation. Warren, however, had resigned as Commissioner the previous night; not knowing this, the police waited until about 12.45—two hours after Bowyer's discovery—before entering the room when Warren's resignation was reported to them. As widely published in the newspapers at the time, Warren had been considering using bloodhounds to try to track the killer and did not want anyone disturbing the scene of any Ripper crime until dogs could be brought in.