Was Freddie Mills the Killer Known as Jack the Stripper?
Freddie Mills (77-18-6, 55 KOs) defeated Gus Lesnevich for the world light heavyweight crown in 1948. He lost the title to Joey Maxim in 1950. But it’s what he did (or may have done) between his retirement from the ring following his loss to Maxim, and his mysterious death 15 years later, that makes Mills so very interesting.
Mills owned a nightclub and had mob connections — he was friendly with the notorious Kray brothers, Ronnie and Reggie. But his business venture failed, and he found himself in serious financial difficulty. Moreover, he was heavily in debt to a crime syndicate, and feared for his life. In July 1965, Mills was found in his car, shot in the head. He died soon thereafter. A rifle had been beside him, and a coroner’s inquest determined that the former champ had died by his own hand.
Maybe. He was no doubt depressed because of his financial situation and his fear of mob retaliation. But, assuming the correctness of the suicide verdict, might there have been another reason? Was he afraid the police were about to arrest him for being London’s most vicious killer of prostitutes since the infamous Jack the Ripper of almost a century before?
In 1964 and 1965, an unknown killer murdered at least six prostitutes in the London area. Because the bodies were nude, the murderer was dubbed “Jack the Stripper”. Frustrated in their investigation, Scotland Yard made false and public statements that the suspect list had been narrowed to 20 men…then 10…then three. The murders ceased, but not the investigation.
The favorite suspect of the policeman in charge of the case committed suicide for no clear reason. He left a note, saying: “I can’t stick it any longer. To save you and the police looking for me I’ll be in the garage.” Suspicious, to be sure, and yet there’s reason to believe that this man, Mungo Ireland, had an airtight alibi for at least one of the murders.
Another suspect was Harold Jones, who’d been convicted when a 15-year-old for murdering two young girls in 1921. Though sentenced to life, he was released after 20 years, and was therefore “available” to murder London prostitutes in the 1960s. But evidence linking Jones to the latter-day crimes? There was none. And even some policemen were under suspicion. But, again, evidence was lacking.
A few years ago, London gangster Jimmy Tippet (son of a pro boxer of the same name) claimed to have heard from several crime figures and prizefighters that Mills, in the days leading up to his death, had asked his friends in the underworld to provide him with a weapon because, according to Tippet, Mills “feared the police were closing in on him for the murders and decided to take his own life rather than face trial.”
In fairness to the former champ, it should be noted that the policeman in charge of investigating his apparent suicide didn’t believe Mills was Jack the Stripper.
Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film Frenzy (1972) was based on the Stripper killings. Other than that, the case has been largely forgotten. As has, I suppose, Mills himself — unlike fellow countryman and pugilist, middleweight champ Randy Turpin, who killed himself in 1966.
Mills should be remembered though — but as “Fearless Freddie”, a one-time world champion, not as “Jack the Stripper”, a suspect in a series of grisly murders.
