My project is to finish the research and writing of a definitive True Crime book entitled 'Various Matters Forensic: The Thames Torso Murders', which is already well-advanced. The book has taken 15 years to research and write, because I was caring for my elderly mother full-time for 13 years until her death last March...
I am a 60-year-old former Commercial Photographer, artist and actor, born in Sydney (Australia). Under my 'nom de plume' S. Gouriet Ryan (or Stephen Gouriet Ryan) I am a published writer of (amongst other things) SCHOLARLY True Crime ARTICLES, which, thanks to the world-wide reach of the internet, have gleaned for me, if I may say so, a reputation for the excellence of my work. Two of my articles on the Whitechapel Murders (a.k.a. the so-called 'Jack the Ripper' Murders), 'Mary Kelly's Heart: A Very Curious Item' and its follow-up 'Another Look At Mary Kelly's Heart', which appeared in the distinguished British professional journal 'The Criminologist' in 1997 and 1998, alongside articles by the Lord Chief Justice of Britain and other distinguished medico-legal experts, broke new ground on the Ripper Cases, because I showed in the first one, by close reasoning of the true facts, that one or more pages are missing from the extant post-mortem report on Ripper victim Mary Kelly, written by Home Office forensic expert Dr. Thomas Bond (something which no-one else had picked up on following its anonymous return to Scotland Yard in 1988), then, in the follow-up article, proved my cogent argument beyond any peradventure of doubt by FINDING some of the information missing from the end of the report in a long-overlooked American forensic textbook published only a few years after the murders, information which derived from an impeccable source, and which is highly pertinent to any understanding of the perpetrator's motives. As a result my relevations on this score are now widely accepted by other experts, and my work on the cases is praised in a number of reference books on them. I thereby also re-discovered the published TEXTS of the long-lost forensic reports on another mysterious, unsolved series of murders which were contemporaneous with the Ripper Murders, namely the so-called Thames Torso Murders, and it is on these crimes that I expatiate in my book, which I intend to be definitive on the subject. Before this re-discovery by me, only one of the four forensic reports in the known series of murders by the Thames Torso Murderer could be consulted at the National Archives in Kew, for the very good reason that only that one report survives there, and I have uncovered an earlier case which I argue bids fair to have been by the same hand. Only two books have ever been written on this subject matter, and they were very inferior efforts because, in the one case, it was written well before my re-discovery of the forensic information in 1998, and in the other, although published in 2011, it was written by someone who, as it happened, had no knowledge of the breakthrough re-discovered forensic material whatsoever.

Because of this huge windfall of long-lost forensic material, I have been able to restore the truth about the cases in question, draw hard and fast conclusions from these true facts, establish the murderer's motivations and methods, examine the ramifications of these conclusions, and even make a very strong case indeed against a particular individual (hitherto unknown) as the perpetrator, after composing a Situational Profile using the established forensic facts and commonsense reasoning from them. During research, one individual who matched the profile stood out, and the more I looked into his background the more I found which strongly implicated him.

My work treats the Whitechapel Murders and the Thames Torso Murders as the genuine subjects of criminological study that they should be, not just worthy only of endless, erroneous re-hashes, half-baked theorising, and the usual purely sensationalist treatment that they have so often been accorded in the past. In addition to making for stimulating reading for True Crime afficionardos (of which there are very many around the world), my work, and in particular my book, also serves a highly useful purpose in providing criminologists and forensic experts with GENUINE information and detailed analysis on these hitherto mysterious cases, so that they can be further studied and increase the professional understanding of modern cases similar to the ones in my book. In the past, famous F.B.I. forensic profilers who have written books have drawn erroneous conclusions on the Ripper Murders precisely because they have relied on completely false information, and in the absence of the genuine information which I re-discovered. So, too, with British forensic profilers, such as Professor David Canter, who, in his books on profiling, has drawn wrong conclusions on the Ripper Murders through relying on entrenched wrong information, and through ignorance of the long-lost, genuine forensic facts. And in the case of the Thames Torso Murders, no study has been made of them by any forensic or criminological professionals, as they have remained a complete mystery until now.

My book contains copious Notes and citations, all meticulously researched, so that the reader can verify for himself or herself where I have found my facts and on what I have based my conclusions, thus involving him or her in the process of investigating the cases, by following along closely, and I don't talk down to my readers or simplify complex facets of the study, but accord them the respect of expecting them to make the effort to understand.

The attached mock-up I, as an artist by birth, did for the projected cover of my book, although it is in the lap of the gods whether it will ever be used for the purpose (publishers being what they are).

Here is the first paragraph of the first chapter of my book:

'On October 2nd, 1888, at the height of the 'Jack the Ripper' reign of terror, the dismembered, headless torso of a woman was found in a vault on the building-site of the new Metropolitan Police headquarters project in Whitehall, London. This murder victim, it was accepted by the contemporary police officials, as it has been by later commentators, was not in fact yet another victim of the Ripper, but was, rather, the second in a series of four dismemberment cases which occurred in the London area in the period 1887 to 1889, all perpetrated, the evidence clearly seemed to suggest, by the one individual. In other words, there was (at the least) one other individual of a like mind to 'Jack the Ripper' at large and at work in the city contemporaneously with him (but beginning before he did), and who, like him, was never brought to justice, but simply, for whatever reason, ceased to kill.'

The only potential risk is that I will not find a True Crime literary agent, but that risk is actually minimal, because I have a ready audience thanks to my work published on the internet, a reputation for excellence already established, and a very well-researched and well-written work which is nearly finished and is the best thing that I have done. There is a HUGE market for True Crime books world-wide, and specialist publishers are in constant need of material to meet the demand.
The challenge is to raise the money to get to London, to thoroughly scour the relevant archives for any further useful material, and to bring the finishing of the book to fruition, i.e. to the published stage.