Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (39 page)

If one looks closely at the names in the memorandum there is something about them all that stands out, that is where they all were in 1894 when Macnaghten wrote his memorandum. We know Montague Druitt was dead so mentioning his name would have no repercussions. Cutbush was in a lunatic asylum and Ostrog was on remand in prison awaiting trial for an offence of theft to which he was later convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. That being said none of them would have been in a position to answer their accuser should the details from the memorandum have ever been made public. Furthermore, Macnaghten should have known that Ostrog was in prison in France at the time because a letter to the Home Office later confirmed that he had in fact been in prison in France at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

Further appeal research also uncovered a wealth of additional material which I felt would add even more weight to the appeal, some this came courtesy of the CIA and related to details and names of informants used by the Russian Secret Service during the same time period to which the ledgers and register referred to.

The name of the Russian Secret Service was called the Okhrana and during the period of time we are specifically concerned with they had offices and a major spy network, which was run from Paris. In 1919 the Americans seized all the Russian files and shipped them back to the USA where they remained unopened until 1957. It was then they were opened, translated and some of the information made public. Amongst this information made public were the unredacted names and details of informants both male and female used by the Okhrana in Europe. All of this was published in the form of a dissertation written by a female who was referred to as Rita T. Kronenbitter, which was obviously a pseudonym. This dissertation is freely available to download from the CIA website. Also contained in these records were the names of two retired Scotland Yard detectives named as Michael Thorpe and Francis Powell who worked for the Okhrana as secret agents during this time.

Another country’s secret service history would also prove invaluable, this was East Germany’s Stasi, which was formed much later in 1950 and operated from Berlin and was fully operational up until 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the East and the West were unified.

A complete history of the formation of the Stasi right through to its demise is freely available to download on the Internet in the form of a comprehensive article on the Wikipedia website. This article also gives the full details of persons who were alleged to have been informants for the Stasi. There is no evidence to show any of them or any of their relatives came to harm as a result of their names being published in the public domain.

In addition the decision notice from the Butterworth hearing made mention of the fact that Butterworth, had he been called to give evidence would have made mention of examples of other secret service operations which would have revealed the names and details of informants from other countries. Butterworth later confirmed to me that these would have been the Okhrana records from Paris and Moscow in addition to records from the Paris Prefecture of Police. The aforementioned examples clearly show that other countries have disclosed the details of informants and spies, which are now freely available in the public domain.

Another argument the police would be seeking to rely on as part of their case would be the need to not only protect the identity of informants but also any living family members or relatives.

Simon Wood my co-researcher set about an exercise with a view to seeing if it were possible to even trace any living family members or relatives of informants mentioned in the register and ledgers which were already known via Clutterbuck. In his thesis, he himself had singled out the details of five different cases involving specifically named informants. Each of the five cases was different to the next. After a long and protracted research exercise Simon established that it was impossible to identify and trace any modern-day family members or living relatives of any of these informants.

Whilst preparing my appeal I looked again at a National Archives file from the Metropolitan Police numbered MEPO 38. I had way back in 2008 submitted a number of requests to access the files still held by Special Branch and which had not yet been made public, all of which covered the time period relating to the Whitechapel murders and I believed may contain further unreleased information on the murders.

I then submitted a new Freedom of Information request to the Metropolitan Police to be given free and unrestricted access to the unpublished files contained in MEPO 38 in unredacted form. I would have bet my house on a refusal notice being forthcoming in respect of this request.

Sure enough as expected the refusal notice was served on me. My request was described as being vexatious, which I have to say I took exception to. It was suggested that the request was a deliberate attempt to disrupt the forthcoming appeal proceedings and that I was deliberately harassing the Metropolitan Police as well as being a disruptive burden. There were no other specific reasons given for the refusal other than the reference to the earlier request I made in 2008 which was met with a collective refusal notice.

So it was now a case of having to conform to protocol yet again. The next step was for me to yet again lodge and appeal notice with the Metropolitan Police Public Access Office. However, again I knew they would uphold the decision. As I have stated previously it seems a ridiculous situation where one part of the police service is asked to review a decision made by another.

As I had predicted my appeal was rejected. I then set out on what I knew would be another lengthy appeal process which I knew ultimately might result in a second Information Tribunal hearing before a judge. However, in the interim period the police reviewed their decision in relation to the files contained in MEPO 38 and stated that there were no files on the Whitechapel murders contained within MEPO 38. I was not totally happy with their answer having regard to the fact that I had now identified six separate unnamed files still contained in MEPO 38, which could have been from the relevant time period all of which had not been made public.

In view of this I then submitted a Freedom of Information request to view those six specific files should they cover the relevant time period. The Metropolitan Police finally replied stating that the unnamed files referred to did not cover the period of time relative to all the Whitechapel murders.

Having regard to my pending tribunal hearing on February 4th 2011 an initial directions hearing took place in relation to my original appeal regarding the register and ledgers and the date for the full hearing was set for May 10th 2011 and was scheduled to last three days. At the directions hearing I asked the police if they were prepared to accept Clutterbuck’s full written assessment and evaluation of the register and ledgers in relation to the number of informants names actually contained within the register and ledgers as being correct.

I still felt that I wanted to try to make my case even stronger and set about trying to track down Lindsay Clutterbuck. I felt that if I could enlist his help and try to persuade him to talk to me in detail, he would provide me with a statement which I could use in support of my appeal and in addition throw much more light on just where he found the register and the ledgers in addition to other issues which would later come to light prior to the actual hearing and during the hearing itself.

I did manage to track him down to Cambridge where he works as a research leader for RAND (Europe) a division of the RAND Corporation. We had a telephone conversation where I went to great lengths to try to persuade him to answer some of my many questions. He declined to answer any questions, nor would he agree to give me any form of written statement. He felt it wrong for him to give evidence against his former employers and didn’t want to be the subject of any publicity in respect to his current work and his current employers. I can see his argument and although bitterly disappointed I had to respect his wishes.

However, in a short space of time things would change yet again. The day after speaking to Clutterbuck I received a reply from the police solicitor Mr. Blay. He stated that the police would not accept the Clutterbuck thesis as an accurate assessment of the ledgers and register, because the ledgers were apparently used by Clutterbuck for his own purposes without authority. In view of this reply I requested them to do their own full assessment of the register and the ledgers and to provide that prior to the commencement of the hearing together with any statements to support this.

Now I suspected the police were clutching at straws and attempting to muddy the waters. After all there had been no mention of the authority issue regarding Clutterbuck at the previous Butterworth hearing, or in any correspondence I had with the police over the past three years.

If this were correct then why had they not taken steps to have the thesis removed from the public domain, or asked Clutterbuck to edit it, and why wasn’t Clutterbuck then prosecuted for misconduct in a public office or even an internal police disciplinary offence both of which if found guilty he could have faced the sack. The simple answer was I believe they simply weren’t concerned. Because following the publication of the thesis and Ms. Lowde’s Internet revelations they were still prepared to allow free and unrestricted access, as Butterworth was clearly given permission subject to him signing the undertaking up until 2008.

I again contacted Clutterbuck and made him aware of what the police were now suggesting and that they were intending to use that in an open public tribunal hearing. He denied the accusation outright, and was most concerned that his reputation and integrity had been called in to doubt. I suggested that he may now wish to reconsider his decision with regards to now assisting me by providing a statement. After sending him a full overview of the whole case since 2008, he failed to respond.

Now I had a specific date set for the appeal hearing I began the long process of collating all of my evidence I had gathered and which I was intending to use, and putting it all together as a file. Having gone through the statements I was seeking to rely on and various paper exhibits I believed I had a very strong case in support of my appeal and was quietly confident of winning the day. However, I knew there was a long way to go and there would be many twists and turns in this appeal before it finally came to be heard in May. My own “evidence in chief” statement would total 44 pages in length and I had amassed 21 document exhibits.

CHAPTER TWELVE

INFORMANTS

As previously stated the Special Branch policy is not to release the details and identity of informants at any time whether they go back 125 years or whether it be in more recent times. However, the viability of the “no names” policy is already coming under question in the courts. In February 1998, the Secret Intelligence Service also known as MI6 was forced by the high court to identify a businessman who had worked for them over the last 20 years and who had provided information to them over that lengthy period of time. MI5 have also in the past eleven years released files to The National Archives, which contain the names of informants/agents who were active during World War II.

I would also argue that as well as trying to protect the names of informants the police also have a duty and are under an obligation to any living relatives of the victims who I believe still have a right to know of any information which may lead to the identity of the killer responsible for taking the lives of their relatives over 125 years previous.

As the informants issue was an important factor I knew that not all informants are suitable to be authorised as informants under the new legislation. The police now have to satisfy themselves that the informants will be of value under the informant programme. Once authorized, the informant then has to fill in a ten-page document, and is then given a pseudonym. All of this is then linked to which officer deals with their information and at which station the officer is based. Informants are “asked” to give their “proper name and address and also family member’s names”. This is in case at any stage in the future the police have to take steps to protect the informant and his family.

Each form in relation to each separate informant is numbered so the authorities can keep track of the flow of information and how much that particular informant has been paid. The details are then entered on a computer system, which the police will say is only accessible to a handful of officers.

The informant is then officially known as a source and allocated a police handler, but not always the officer who has introduced the informant to the system. Other officers are also likely to be directly involved with that informant.

One problem with the new system is that informers or prospective informers are reluctant to deal with officers they do not know or trust for obvious reasons. This sometimes in itself will deter that informant from being registered as an informant simply because they will not talk to just anyone especially if they don’t know them.

Most informants are already aware of the potential danger and the serious consequences arising from informing on other criminals, and if this does happen it is something the police cannot compensate for.

It is the responsibility of the police to reiterate these dangers, in addition to making would-be informants aware of the police policy on disclosure of informant details. But in practice this seldom happens. The reason it doesn’t happen is simple; if the police were to say we cannot guarantee your name will ever be disclosed, or you are likely to get seriously injured or killed and family members are likely to come to harm if the persons informed upon find out, they would never recruit anyone. So the full ramifications of a person becoming an informant are never fully detailed. It is an issue, which the police would no doubt contest.

Under the new system, the handler and his informant will sometimes have next to no contact. This is in total contrast to how it used to be whereby informants and police would regularly meet on a social basis for the purposes of handing over information.