The cold, cold case of Jack the Ripper

It's been called the world's most famous cold case, a source of endless fascination and speculation ever since the first mutilated victim was found in a bloody heap 123 years ago on the gas-lighted streets of East London.

So why is Scotland Yard suppressing information that some crime buffs think could offer fresh leads on the identity of Britain's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper?

That's the question baffling Trevor Marriott, a retired homicide detective who's been waging a solitary legal battle to force "the Yard" to release uncensored versions of information recorded in thick Victorian ledgers that are gathering dust in an official archive.

The volumes contain tens of thousands of tidbits on the Yard's dealings with the public and police informants in the years that followed the Ripper's grisly two-month killing rampage in 1888. The shadowy figure is alleged to have slain five women in London's seamy Whitechapel district, slitting their throats and, in some cases, eviscerating them with almost surgical precision....