James Kelly (murderer)

James Kelly
Undated photograph of Kelly
Born(1860-04-20)20 April 1860
Preston, Lancashire, England
Died17 September 1929(1929-09-17) (aged 69)
Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire, England[1]
OccupationUpholsterer
SpouseSarah Brider
Conviction(s)Murder
Criminal penaltyDeath by hanging; commuted to indefinite confinement in a psychiatric hospital

James Kelly (20 April 1860, in Preston, Lancashire – 17 September 1929, in Berkshire) was an English upholsterer and convicted murderer. Kelly had been confined to Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in 1883 for the murder of his wife, Sarah Brider. In January 1888, he managed to escape from Broadmoor and was entirely unaccounted for until his voluntary return to the hospital almost 40 years later in 1927. Due to his escape having been a few months before the unsolved murders in Whitechapel, Kelly is one of many suspected of being Jack the Ripper. He was first identified as a suspect in Terence Sharkey's Jack the Ripper: 100 Years of Investigation (1987),[2] with his case described in more detail in the book Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper (1997), written by Jim Tully.[3] In 2010, Discovery Channel broadcast a documentary called Jack the Ripper in America, in which retired NYPD cold case detective Ed Norris investigates the case. Norris claims that James Kelly is not only Jack the Ripper's true identity, but that he is also responsible for a number of 'Ripper-like' murders in the United States.[4]

  1. ^ Penzler, Otto (2016). The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 97. ISBN 9781101971147.
  2. ^ Sharkey, Terence (1987). Jack the Ripper: 100 Years of Investigation. Ward Lock. ISBN 9780706365962.
  3. ^ Tully, James (1997). Prisoner 1167: The madman who was Jack the Ripper. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 9780786704040.
  4. ^ Jack the Ripper in America (2010). Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.