A SKULL believed to be that of Ned Kelly may in fact be a Jack the Ripper suspect. Forensic pathologist Professor David Ranson is heading to the UK to ask relatives of hanged English killer Frederick Bailey Deeming to give their DNA.
"A simple swab from the mouth of any person from the female line . . . will help us answer this fascinating piece of folklore," Professor Ranson said.
Deeming, who murdered women and children on opposite sides of the world, was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol in 1892.
Kelly was hanged there in 1880 after his capture during a shootout with police.
The bodies were buried close by each other in the prison yard.
They were later dug up and moved to Melbourne's Pentridge Prison only be to moved yet again when the prison was sold for a housing development. In 1978, the Kelly skull was stolen from a glass cabinet at the jail, now a museum run by the National Trust of Australia.
Last year, a WA farmer handed in a skull, saying it was the one stolen from the museum. He refused to explain how he came by the relic.
Professor Ranson is trying, on behalf of the Victoria coroner, to establish whether the skull is that of Kelly or Deeming. The problem is that not only is the skull a close match to the death mask of Kelly, but also resembles one of Deeming.
DNA testing on a Kelly descendant proved inconclusive.
Deeming murdered his wife Emily in Melbourne on Christmas Eve, 1891, cutting her throat and cementing her body under a fireplace. After her body was found, newspapers in Australia connected the killing to the Jack the Ripper murders in London.
UK police searched Deeming's old family home near Liverpool and found his first wife Marie James and their four children, aged from 18 months to nine years, under the kitchen floor, all with their throats cut.
Deeming was caught and arrested in March 1892 in Perth, WA. While in prison, he told inmates he was Jack The Ripper.
Source: The Daily Telegraph [December 31, 2010]