Hartlepool Jack the Ripper author appears on new Prime Video documentary

Now evidence gathered by a Hartlepool author and true crime fan has put a less well known suspect in the frame.

Tracy I’Anson puts forward a compelling case for Jacob Levy, a Whitechapel butcher, being responsible for the brutal murders of at least five women in 1888.

After much research and uncovering new information, she and her father, Neil I’Anson, published Jacob the Ripper during lockdown.

It led to Tracy being approached to make the case for Levy being the killer in a new documentary titled The Trial of Jack the Ripper, which has recently been added to streaming service Prime Video.

In it she appears alongside two other ripper experts who put forward the case for two established suspects, Aaron Kosminski and Francis Tumblety, before a “jury” of 12 independent people.

Tracy and her father’s fascination with Jack the Ripper began a number of years ago.

"It just became a puzzle that you want to solve,” she said.

"Jacob Levy was a known suspect at the time but he was just a name that people found. He died in an asylum of syphilis in 1891.

"We took that research further.”

As well as living in the “epicentre” of where the murders took place, Tracy and Neil, with help from the wider ripper community, trawled records and newspaper archives to uncover compelling new evidence pointing to Jacob.

They discovered that one of the last people to have seen ripper victim Catherine Eddowes – and probably the killer himself – was a cousin of Levy’s who was reluctant to talk to the police.

A bloody piece of apron was also found outside a house that Jacob had ties to.

Tracy, 45, who works at Hartlepool’s Camerons Brewery, said: "Every question that we asked ourselves we could answer. Almost every aspect of the case, he can be linked to in some way.”

Tracy concedes the evidence against Jacob is circumstantial.

”We never say he was Jack the Ripper because you can’t prove it today. Too much time has gone,” she said.

But Levy was the suspect voted most likely by the panel in the Prime Video documentary.

Tracy said: "The result was quite a surprise. I was definitely the underdog.”