Clarence Simm
On the 20 June 1989 an article appeared in the Weekly World News in which widow Betty Simm, claimed that her late husband Clarence, had made a deathbed confession to her in 1951. He had told her that as a teenager he had killed 14 prostitutes, to free them from a life of sin. Betty had met her husband in London in 1905. She took a lie detector test to substantiate her story and was told there was less than half of one per cent chance she was lying. The lie detector test however does not prove if her husband was telling the truth. Neither do we know which murders he referred to. If he committed any murders at all, it is unlikely to have been the Whithechapel murders. To arrive at his figure of fourteen victims you would have to include not only the Torso Murders, but the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith, who before she died clearly stated that she was attacked by at least three men. And also that of Rose Mylett, whom the police believed was not even murdered, but in fact had choked to death while drunk. Not a single eyewitness reported seeing a teenage Jack the Ripper.
