Mary Jane Kelly's remains are 'unlikely to ever be found'
Mary Jane Kelly was the final victim of Jack The Ripper who viciously slaughtered five prostitutes between August and November 1888.
Reports suggest that crime writer Patricia Cornwell had commissioned experts at the University of Leicester to locate the remains of Mark Kelly in Leytonstone Cemetery.
Unfortunately, the experts have said that an operation on this scale would take too long and cost too much.
Part of the issue is that Mark Kelly's remains could be in a common grave. Permission to excavate remains would require permission from the next of kin for each of the remains.
Lead researcher geneticist Dr Turi King said:
"To complete any exhumation application to the Ministry of Justice, a compelling case for the exhumation as well as detailed information on the location and state of the grave would be required, not only for the exhumation of Kelly's remains, but also to determine if any other remains might be disturbed in the process. "However, the precise location of her grave is unknown and, not only that, it rapidly became clear that as such, the remains of a number of other individuals would have to be disturbed and that her remains are highly likely to have been dug through when the communal grave site she was buried in was reused in the 1940s, making accurate identification of any of her remains highly problematic if not impossible."
The project to investigate the possibility of locating Kelly's remains followed a claim by Wynne Weston-Davies that Kelly was actually great aunt, Elizabeth Weston Davies.
In 2015, Mary Jane Kelly’s identity was thrown into question when surgeon Wynne Weston-Davies published a book claiming Kelly was actually his great aunt, Elizabeth Weston Davies. Surgeon Wynne Weston-Davies recently released a book to support his claims.
