Jack the Ripper is often called the world’s most notorious unidentified killer, but he was not the first modern serial killer on the streets of London.
Before him was another murderer who hunted from the River Thames – one, arguably, more sadistic and mercurial.
The Thames Torso Killer has always lurked in the Ripper’s shadow, despite the fact he murdered and dismembered at least four people over two years.
He started to kill in 1887, over a year before the Ripper, and his last murder was in 1889, almost ten months after the death of Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s last victim.
In Arm of Eve, Sarah Bax Horton conducts her own investigation and uses modern criminal profiling to come up with her own suspect – a known criminal as familiar with the Thames as with the back of his own hand.
Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders by Sarah Bax Horton is published on 31 October, 2024.
Sarah has written about her investigations and the background to the killings in An epidemic of murder in late Victorian London.
There’s more historical writing in our round-up of over 190 books coming out this year.
