The infamous serial killer’s face was allegedly carved into a Scotland Yard detective’s cane.
The suspected face of notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper has finally been revealed after police made a chilling discovery while trawling through old archives.
While the true identity of the infamous murderer has never been discovered, the only known facial composite of the killer has now been shared.
Among dozens of artefacts, the face was found etched into the handle of a wooden walking stick, which was owned by the police officer who spent years attempting to catch him.
Scotland Yard Detective Frederick Abberline was removed from the case in 1889 after failing to find Jack the Ripper, who terrorised the streets of London’s East End.The chilling image is the only reported facial composite of the killer, whose identity remains a mystery more than a century later.
For years, the wooden cane artefact had been stored at the Police College in Bramshill, Hampshire, UK and was feared lost when the institution was shut down in 2015.
It was rediscovered by staff searching through memorabilia at the College of Policing’s headquarters in Ryton, West Midlands.
Now Jack the Ripper’s face has gone on display to highlight advancements in police technology to recruits.
A College of Policing spokesperson said two staff unearthed it when trawling through artefacts placed into storage after Bramshill’s closure.
“Finding this cane was an exciting moment for us,” the college’s content creator Antony Cash said.
“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.
Now, an impression of Jack the Ripper's face has been found chiselled into the wooden walking stick of the detective who was investigating him.
Detective Frederick Abberline became consumed by the case and had the only known facial composite of Jack The Ripper etched onto his walking cane.
But he was taken off the case after failing to catch the murderer.
The cane was discovered again after staff went searching through an archive collection at the College of Policing headquarters in Ryton, West Midlands.
For years the cane had been stored at the Police College in Bramshill, Hampshire, and was feared lost when the institution was shut in 2015.
The story of Jack the Ripper has become one of the most infamous mysteries in British history, and the murderer is often described as the first modern serial killer.
His brutal, and seemingly motiveless killing spree has led, over the decades, to more than 200 names being put in the frame - including celebrity suspects such as Lewis Carroll, Prince Albert Victor and Sir John Williams, obstetrician to the royal family.
Despite a large-scale investigation the Ripper was never caught. Frederick Abberline worked for Scotland Yard at the time and was removed from the case in 1889 because he couldn’t find the man responsible.
However, his walking stick bears the only facial composite of the killer carved into the handle.
OK, it might be a fairly fanciful imagining of what Jack the Ripper could have looked like, but it’s still a seriously cool piece of history.
We still aren’t sure exactly who committed the murders, though there are a few suspects that have been identified over the years.
As for the cane itself, that was stored at the Police College in Bramshill, Hampshire, for many years, though it had thought that the cane might have been lost when the school was closed in 2015.
A spokesperson for the institution said two members of staff turned the cane up whilst searching through the stuff left over after Bramshill closed.
It has now been placed on display in order to act as a reminder to recruits about how far policing has come since those dark days.
The killer also sent messages to police taunting them, as well as grisly pieces of the victims including part of a kidney.
Suspects in the Ripper murders have ranged from famous names such as Prince Albert and Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, to less well-known people like Montague John Druitt, Aaron Kosminski, and doctor Francis Tumblety.
We’ll probably never know who it actually was, so this cane is the closest we may ever be to seeing the true face of the monster that terrorised Victorian London.
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