Who was Jack the Stripper?

New leads in 60s serial killer riddle

25, Helen Barthelemy, 22, Mary Fleming, 30, Frances Brown, 21, and Bridget O’hara, 27 – Jones was already a convicted double child killer. When he was 15, Jones murdered Freda Burnell, eight, in Abertillery, Monmouthshire, but was acquitted due to lack of physical evidence.

Just 17 days later, he murdered 11-year-old Florence Little, hiding her body in his parents’ attic, and confessed to murdering Freda after his second trial. He escaped hanging due to his age and was instead got 20 years’ jail.

After his release from Wandsworth Prison in 1941, he joined the Merchant Navy. Then, according to Prof Wilson in documentary

Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, Jones changed his name to Harold Stevens and moved to Fulham, near Shepherd’s Bush – putting him in the area when the murders took place in 1964 and 1965. Prof Wilson also found a link between Jones and an industrial estate where police think bodies were kept before being dumped. There is also evidence he worked as a panel beater, giving him access to paint found on four victims. And like Jack the Stripper, Prof Wilson presents evidence of Jones storing his victims’ bodies and having sadistic tendencies. “These women were sadistically murdered and because of that sadism – which had a sexual overtone – they lost their lives,” he said. “Sadism doesn’t dissipate over time, sadism always finds some way of expressing itself in terms of the killer’s life and lifestyle. There is an uncanny mirroring of these early murders in the 1920s and how aspects are reappearing in those murders in the 1960s.”

■ Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is on BBC4 at 9pm tonight and available on BBC iplayer now.

Frances Brown Irene Lockwood Helene Barthelemy Hannah Tailford Bridget O’hara Mary Fleming

GRISLY RIDDLE Police examining crime scenes in 1960s

SICKENING Story on spree