True face of Jack the Ripper 'unveiled' after police make astonishing discovery

The now-ancient case to crack the code of Jack the Ripper's identity has taken a step forward, with the most unexpected twist.

Potentially, the face of the now-ancient and still-anonymous serial killer has been exposed.

The unidentified murderer killed at least five women in London's East End in 1888 - known as the 'canonical five' amongst amateur Ripperologists who remain working on the case in their own time to this day. These women were Elizabeth Stride, Mary Jane Kelly, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes.

The killer was never caught, and their identity remains a mystery - but we may now know what they looked like thanks to a facial composite, involving someone who worked on the original Ripper case at the time.

The Metropolitan Police's chief inspector, Frederick Abberline, held the only facial composite of the suspected killer - and when taken off the Ripper case, he decided to chisel that face into a cane.

The facial composite and Abberlines' cane became lost to time, before the cane resurfaced in the archives of the College of Policing headquarters in the West Midlands:

This could be the true face of Jack The RipperCollege of Policing

Creepy, isn't it?

"Finding this cane was an exciting moment for us," said Antony Cash, Content Creator at the College of Policing.

"Jack the Ripper is one of the biggest and most infamous murder cases in our history and his crimes were significant in paving the way for modern policing and forensics as it caused police to begin experimenting with and developing new techniques as they attempted to try and solve these murders, such as crime scene preservation, profiling and photography."

The cane has given a new direction to the amateur sleuths still studying the case, including a descendent of Abberline's colleague, Harry Garrett.

Sarah Bax Horton used medical records and witness descriptions to finally work out the identity of the killer, and points the finger at one Hyam Hyams.

Whoever it was, the Ripper grew to fame due to the vicious nature of 'his' killings, as well as the creepy letters 'he' apparently left for Scotland Yard detectives, which hit newspapers to cause hysteria in Victorian London. Sadly, this cemented 'Jack's' status as a legend, and took attention away from his many victims.

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