Identity of Thames torso murderer may finally have been uncovered
The identity of a forgotten Victorian serial killer believed to have killed up to five women may have finally been revealed after more than 130 years.
Just a year before Jack the Ripper rose to infamy in the capital, the so-called “Thames Torso Killer” had embarked on a string of murders of women, terrorizing the public and sparking a police investigation that had cooled due to lack of evidence.
Now, 139 years later, a team of investigators, including historian and presenter Lucy Worsley and historian and true crime writer Sarah Bax Horton, have re-investigated the string of murders for a new BBC program and found a potential name linked to the murders.
“The killer’s specialty was dismembering the bodies of his victims and scattering the body parts up and down the river,” says Worsley in the introduction to the first episode of the series. “He was never caught as he was dubbed the ‘Thames Torso Killer’.”
In 1887, London was the most populous city in the world thanks to growing industry, but it was riddled with poverty and crime. In May that year, a lighterman working on the river discovered a bag containing the “lower torso” of a woman’s body floating downstream at Rainham, east London.
On June 5, a woman’s buttocks wrapped in cloth were found floating in the water at Temple Pier in central London. A few days later the upper torso of a woman was found on the banks of Battersea, and then boys fishing in the Regent’s canal discovered a right arm. The same day, someone again found two severed legs in the canal. Police then searched the canal and found a left arm in the water. On July 16, two months after the first body part was discovered, a worker found a left thigh floating in the water at Camden Lock. Her body parts came together to form almost the entire body of a young woman; only the head and shoulders were missing.
The police launched an investigation, but with little to go on, they quickly came up empty.
In September 1888, more body parts began to turn up in the River Thames, before a torso was discovered in the basement of the Scotland Yard construction site, which was then to become the new headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.
“On the one hand, he’s cautious and methodical, and on the other hand, he takes these crazy risks,” Worseley tells viewers.
As press interest in the case grew, a journalist who brought his dog to a Scotland Yard construction site discovered something the police had missed: another leg in the construction site’s basement.
The following year, more body parts began to appear in and around the river at Battersea and Chelsea, ten dismembered pieces in total, some wrapped in cloth. As in the other two cases, the head was not found, but this time the woman was about 7 months pregnant. One of the body parts was discovered in the garden of Shelley House, where the son of author Mary Shelly lived in the 1818s. FrankensteinHe lived in that period.
A fourth victim was discovered in Whitechapel in September 1889, and a potential fifth murder more than a decade later in Vauxhall in 1902 was also linked to the Thames Torso Killer.
After following several potential leads, including the violent partner of one of the victims and another convicted murderer who poisoned three women, the trail seems to go cold until true crime author Bax Horton suggests another potential lead.
This is a man named James Crick, who owns his own paddle skis and has a history of violence against women.
Records show he attacked two women: Jessie Miller and Sarah Warburton. Although Miller was raped, severely injured, and threw herself into the River Thames, Crick claimed that she had consented, and his word prevailed over hers.
However, Warburton stated that Crick had threatened him and said: “If you speak out…I intend to deal with you as I have done with the other women in the Thames.”
After raping her, Warburton managed to escape by calling for help from a passing police boat. Crick was sentenced to 15 years in prison; It was significant that the murders on the river stopped while he was in prison.
124 years after the murder spree ended, Worseley and his team believe they have made major progress in their search for the killer.
“I think there’s a very compelling case that we’ve got the guy,” Worsley said.
Lucy Worsley: Victorian Murder Club airs on BBC2 and iPlayer on January 5 at 9pm
