Hammersmith nude murders
[7] Figg was found dead at 5:10 am on 17 June 1959 by police officers[10] on routine patrol in Duke's Meadows, Chiswick, on the north bank of the River Thames.
[18][19][20] Extensive searches of the area – including the river bed – failed to find Figg's underwear, black stiletto shoes, or white handbag.
[16][21][22] The proprietor at The Ship public house, on the opposite side of the river to where Figg was found, said that on the night of the murder he and his wife had seen a car's headlights as it parked in that area at 12:05 a.m.
[17] The body of Welsh-born Gwynneth Rees was found on 8 November 1963 at the Barnes Borough Council household refuse disposal site on Townmead Road, Mortlake.
[27] Tailford was found dead on 2 February 1964[31] on the Thames foreshore below Linden House – the clubhouse of the London Corinthian Sailing Club – west of Hammersmith Bridge.
[53] In the spring of 1965, the investigation into the murders encountered a major breakthrough when a sample of paint which perfectly matched that recovered from several victims' bodies was found beneath a concealed transformer at the rear of a building on the Heron Factory Estate in Acton.
[54] According to the writer Anthony Summers, Hannah Tailford and Frances Brown, the Stripper's third and seventh victims, were peripherally connected to the 1963 Profumo affair.
[57] On 27 April 1964, Kenneth Archibald, a 57-year-old caretaker at the Holland Park Lawn Tennis Club, walked into Notting Hill police station and voluntarily confessed to the killing of Irene Lockwood.
[61] Ireland had apparently been identified as a suspect shortly after Bridget O'Hara's murder, when flecks of industrial paint were traced to the Heron Trading Estate, where he had worked as a security guard.
[6] Shortly after this connection was made, Ireland committed suicide[6] by carbon monoxide poisoning, leaving a note for his wife that read: "I can't stick it any longer", and finished, "To save you and the police looking for me I'll be in the garage".
[62] Crime author Neil Milkins said the killings stopped after Ireland's death and the police task force set up to catch the killer was reduced and finally disbanded.
Milkins, who wrote the book Who Was Jack the Stripper?, was an investigative consultant for the BBC documentary Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer.
"On the morning that Ireland’s body was found, he had been due to appear before Acton Magistrates Court to face a charge of failing to stop his car after being involved in a road traffic accident," said Milkins.
"Did Ireland commit suicide to save facing Acton magistrates over a trifling motoring charge or did John Du Rose push him over the edge with his press statements?"
[63] In 2001, reformed gangster Jimmy Tippett Jr. claimed that, during research for his book about London's gangland, he had uncovered information suggesting that British light heavyweight boxing champion Freddie Mills was responsible for the murders.
[citation needed] In their book The Survivor (2002), Jimmy Evans and Martin Short allege the culprit was Superintendent Tommy Butler of the Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad.
[6] While researching Jones for his book Every Mother's Nightmare,[6] Milkins had traced the murderer's movements: "[H]e turned up in Fulham in the late 1940s calling himself Harry Stevens, and stayed at that address in Hestercombe Avenue until 1962, at which point he disappeared again.
I came across the Jack the Stripper case on the internet and realised that in the same three years Jones' whereabouts remained unknown – 1962 to 1965 – a number of prostitutes had been murdered in the same west London area.
[70] The murders have been the subject of several television documentaries: The crime novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square (1969), written by Arthur La Bern, is loosely based on the case.
