Welsh surgeon Sir John Williams always was the chief suspect in the notorious Jack the Ripper murders. Sir John was the surgeon to Queen Victoria and lived in London at the time of the slayings. He fled the capital after the murders and later founded the National Library for Wales in Aberystwyth.
Sir John's great-great-great-great nephew has now published a book, featuring pictures of a knife that the nephew believes is the murder weapon.
Scotland Yard always knew that the person who carried out the killings was a medical expert, possibly even a surgeon. The bodies were cut with surgical precision by someone who had intimate knowledge of anatomy. Sir John Williams was an accomplished surgeon and routinely performed abortions on women.
Dr Thomas Bond, a pathologist who examined the body of Mary Kelly, said the ripper had used the same six inch knife in all the murders. He said it would have been at least six inches long, very sharp, pointed at the top and about an inch in width - a surgeon's knife.
When rummaging through Sir John's papers that have been passed down in the family but apparently never examined by authorities, Sir John's great-great-great-great nephew found a knife that is an exact match to Dr Thomas Bond's description.
You can read more, and view pictures of the knife in question, on The Daily Mail web site at http://goo.gl/I4Mkk
You can also read a biography, written earlier, of Sir John Williams at http://www.casebook.org/suspects/dr-john-williams.html
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