Jack the Ripper Suspect – James Kelly

Kelly was first identified as a suspect by Terence Sharkey in his 1987 book “Jack the Ripper. 100 Years of Investigation” and documented in Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper, by Jim Tully, in 1997.

James Kelly murdered his wife in 1883 by stabbing her in the neck. Deemed a lunatic, he was confined to the Broadmoor Asylum, from which he later escaped in early 1888, using a key he made himself. After the last Ripper murder in London in November 1888, the police searched for Kelly at what had been his residence prior his wife’s murder, but they could not find him.

In 1927, almost forty years after his escape, he unexpectedly turned himself in to officials at the Broadmoor Asylum. He died two years later, presumably of natural causes.

Retired NYPD cold-case detective Ed Norris examined the Jack the Ripper case for a Discovery Channel program called “Jack the Ripper in America.” In it, Norris claims that James Kelly was not only Jack the Ripper’s real identity, he was also responsible for multiple murders in cities around the United States.

Norris highlights a few features of the Kelly story to support his theory. Kelly worked as a furniture upholsterer, a job that requires handiness with a knife. He also claimed to have resided in the United States and left behind a journal that spoke of his strong disapproval of the immorality of prostitutes and of his having been on the “warpath” during his time as a fugitive.

Norris argues Kelly was in New York at the time of a Ripper-like murder of a prostitute named Carrie Brown. Norris also claims that Kelly was in several other cities where brutal murders of prostitutes occurred, though details are scarce.

Conclusion: It is highly unlikely that James Kelly was Jack the Ripper.