Ripper Case File to Be Unveiled

With possible note from killer that he'll soon return 'to work'
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 9, 2008 9:15 AM CDT
Ripper Case File to Be Unveiled
This 1909 police photo show Joseph Silver, one of some 170 people who have been named at one time or another as Jack the Ripper. A South African historian claims in his book "The Fox and The Flies" that Silver, a feared international criminal who terrorized women in Johannesburg, was the Ripper. (AP...   (Associated Press)

For the first time in over a century the actual police file for London's notorious "Jack the Ripper" case will go on public display, the Guardian reports. The cache even contains a note that may have been written by Jack himself: It warns detectives that he will soon "set to work again and I think that my next job will be to polish you off."

The documents "are absolutely amazing," said the curator of the upcoming exhibit at London's Museum in Docklands. "As a step-by-step account you get a real sense of what happened. The documents bring home the fact that these are real people and real events. They are very moving." Some 170 names have been floated as the Ripper, who killed and carved up 5 prostitutes in 1888. (More Jack the Ripper stories.)

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