Relative of former Jack the Ripper investigator claims to know who the real serial killer is

Jun 23, 2023

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A relative of a former investigator of the Jack the Ripper case claims she knows the real murderer is.

Sarah Bax Horton, who is a relative to an officer who conducted the original investigation, claims a man named Hyam Hyams is the real mysterious serial killer who went on a spree in London in 1888.

Horton, a former police volunteer, said her detective work has led her Hyams, who lived in the area at the same time as the murderer, and that he was a cigar worker, therefore, would give him the knowledge of how to use a knife, the Telegraph reported.

In addition, Hyams had a dark past littered with alcoholism, epilepsy, and paranoia. He was also arrested after he attacked his wife and his mother with “a chopper,” the Telegraph said.

But what really convinced Horton that Hyams was the real serial killer was his medical records, which gave “distinctive physical characteristics.”

Jack the Ripper victims had described him has having a weird gait and a stiff arm and Hyams’ medical record showed the then-35-year-old had recorded an injury in his left arm that left him unable to “bend or extend” the limb and that he wasn’t able to straighten his knees, leading to foot dragging.

His injuries also coincided with Jack the Ripper’s killings, showing he declined mentally and physically around the time the murders were happening.

“That escalation path matched the increasing violence of the murders,” Horton told the Telegraph. “He was particularly violent after his severe epileptic fits, which explains the periodicity of the murders.

“In the files, it said what the eyewitnesses said – that he had a peculiar gait. He was weak at the knees and wasn’t fully extending his legs. When he walked, he had a kind of shuffling gait, which was probably a side-effect of some brain damage as a result of his epilepsy.”

Hyams was also a similar height to the killer’s description and had a similar build, Horton said.

She also said the murders stopped around the same time that Hyams was deemed a “wandering lunatic” by police and was incarcerated in the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in North London in 1889.

This isn’t the first time Hyams had been on the list of potential killers, but Horton said he was overlooked because he had misidentified.

“When I was trying to identify the correct Hyam Hyams, I found about five,” she said. “It took quite a lot of work to identify his correct biographical data.”

She said he was “never before been fully explored as a Ripper suspect” because the asylum made patient files confidential until 2013 and 2015, she told the Telegraph.

What drew the retired civil servant to the case was finding out her great-great-grandfather, Harry Garret, had been with the Metropolitans Police at the Leman Street station in 1888, where the investigation into Ripper was taking place.