Britt Jones
In all of recent history, there is one unsolved case which has brought so many experts to their knees... but that might all change soon.
Whether you know of the story or not, the Whitechapel murders are still notorious to this day due to the gruesome ways in which the women targeted were killed.
However, the assailant - Jack the Ripper - was never found, which led to countless suspects over the last hundred years.
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Jack the Ripper has never been discovered, nor has anyone ever known what he looked like.
But now, we might have a good idea thanks to a facial composite.
Thanks to detective Frederick Abberline who had been working on the case at the time, who also became obsessed with the case, we now know what Jack the Ripper looked like.
As the detective had the only known facial composite, he decided to chisel that face into a walking stick... and it’s pretty weird looking.
However, no matter how consumed by the investigation he was, Abberline was ultimately taken off the case after failing to catch the suspect.
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The cane was discovered again after staff went searching through an archive collection at the College of Policing headquarters in Ryton, West Midlands.
Though it’s been a very long time since the murders in 1888, so how did anyone get their hands on the cane?
Apparently, it had been stored at the Police College in Bramshill, Hampshire, and was assumed to have been lost in 2015 when the institution closed down.
However, a spokesperson for the institution has confirmed that two members of staff found the cane and now it has been safely placed on display as a reminder to new recruits about the advancements of policing.
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As reported by JOE, the college’s content creator Antony Cash went on to say: “Finding this cane was an exciting moment for us.
“Jack the Ripper is one of the biggest and most infamous murder cases in our history and his crimes were significant in paving the way for modern policing and forensics as it caused police to begin experimenting with and developing new techniques as they attempted to try and solve these murders, such as crime scene preservation, profiling and photography.
“This walking cane is such a fascinating artefact which represents such a historically significant time in policing.
“It’s amazing that we can put it out on display here in Ryton, alongside the original newspaper cuttings, so that our officers can see first-hand how far we’ve advanced in policing since then.”
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I mean, we can’t catch the Ripper now, but it’s interesting to have some idea of what he looked like.