“SHE stood right there… just by that lamp post,” market trader Hassan explains as he points at a deserted spot just metres from his stall.
Almost two decades have passed since Xiao Mei Guo was lured to her death – but she is still fondly remembered by pals at Whitechapel Market.
Xiao worked alongside several other Chinese women as a DVD seller at the bustling market.
But on one fateful day in August 2007, she was tricked by ruthless killer Derek Brown, who falsely promised to buy dozens of DVDs from her.
CCTV footage showed Brown walking with his unsuspecting victim near Whitechapel Tube station, before going on to murder her.
Following a thorough search of his flat, cops believe he dismembered and disposed of her body – which to this day has never been found.
Read more on Jack the Ripper
Brown, dubbed a copycat Jack the Ripper for prowling the same area as the notorious serial killer, went on to kill Bonnie Barrett a month later.
In October 2008, the previously convicted rapist, then 47, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years for murdering the two young mums.
Last week, Brown died behind bars at HMP Wakefield at the age of 64 after reportedly becoming unwell.
As news of his death reached market traders in Whitechapel, they paid tribute to “quiet” Xiao, who is still dearly missed in the area.
Hassan Darwish, who has worked on his stall for 24 years, explained she had become “part of the family” during her time there.
The 56-year-old told The Sun: “Those girls, they’d come in every day. She (Xiao) used to stand right there, by that lamp post.
“She was very polite, very quiet. Not like the other girls shouting ‘DVD, DVD!’. She just stood there and never bothered anyone.
“They would often leave their bags at my stall and we would look out for each other, bring in coffees… We were like family here.
“I remember her face. I remember her standing there. She was part of this place. We all miss her.”
Comparisons to Jack the Ripper have not only sprung from the location of Brown’s crimes, but also his cruel methods.
Hassan claims Brown had falsely promised to buy dozens of DVDs from Xiao, who innocently trusted her killer.
He continued: “She trusted him. He told her, ‘Come with me, I’ll buy a big quantity,’ but he had other plans.
“He fooled her. He told her he was going to buy DVDs, but he killed her. It was evil.”
The group of Chinese sellers at the market slowly vanished after Xiao’s murder.
Some of the girls moved across the country, while others returned to China to escape the horrifying memory.
Recalling the days after her disappearance, Hassan told how they all believed she had “run away”.
He added: “When she vanished, it was a shock. We all thought, maybe she ran away, or maybe she met someone.
“Days later, the police came with her picture and said they had found her blood. All the girls were crying.
“We never thought murder. It was shocking, no one could believe it.”
Hassan explained Xiao used to work at the market alongside her husband Jin Hua Guo, but he stopped shortly after her death.
He added: “He was also very quiet. They were always together. He carried her bag while she worked. After she died, he just disappeared.
“He came back after she disappeared and said, ‘I lost my wife’. We didn’t know what to say.”
Her devastated partner was last seen selling DVDs in nearby Brick Lane a few years ago.
In a witness statement at Brown’s trial, Mr Guo said could not bring himself to tell his two sons about the death of their mother.
He told the court: “I have no courage to tell them that their mother was murdered and dismembered and will never be found.
“We want her body so my children and I can say goodbye. This man has deprived me of that to conceal his own guilt.”
The prosecution at his trial said he targeted the pair as they were “soft targets”.
Brown’s second victim, Bonnie Barrett, was a prostitute and crack cocaine addict.
He denied murdering the women but admitted paying both for sex before their disappearances in 2007.
Mark Lindon, 65, another mainstay of Whitechapel Market, recalled reading about the killings at the time.
The trader, who has been on the same patch since 1977, explained the DVD sellers were well known across the market.
He told The Sun: “There was absolutely loads of Chinese girls selling DVDs.
“They used to walk around with their bags. Loads and loads of them.
“I remember someone saying to me, one of the girls has gone missing.
“Soon after, we found out she had been killed. But at the time we had no idea. It was such a big story. I do remember.
“I came here in 1977. Yeah, yeah. It gets worse. Whitechapel always gets worse. Yeah, it used to be a different area then.”
The bodies of the two women were never recovered, despite 800 hours of police searches and a major hunt of the Thames by divers.
But DNA evidence – including traces of blood – found at Brown’s Rotherhithe flat sealed his fate.
The search also uncovered a receipt for a bow saw, heavy duty gloves, rubble sacks and cleaning materials.
Police at the time of the murders believed Brown sought “notoriety” for the killings.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Kandiah reckoned officers might have snared Brown in the middle of a murder spree.
He said: “If he kept killing prostitutes from the Whitechapel area, then that link (with Jack the Ripper) would be made.
“If this was a spree, it seems likely that we stopped him at number two.”
At the beginning of the year, a researcher claimed he found a 100 per cent DNA match with the original Jack the Ripper and his suspect.
Who was Jack the Ripper?
SERIAL KILLER Jack the Ripper caused mass hysteria like no murderer had done before.
The story was kept alive for generations after no one was ever caught for killing working women in the East End of London.
Jack the Ripper was the pen name that signed off on a chilling letter alleged to be from the killer printed in London newspapers at the height of his terror.
Five women — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — are widely held to have been victims of the Ripper, although later murders were attributed to him.
All were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable around the Whitechapel area between August and November 1888.
Their bodies were mutilated, many of them being disembowelled.
Chapman’s uterus was taken, Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney removed and her face mutilated, while Kelly’s body was completely destroyed and her face hacked away.
Such was the fear at the time that the streets of London emptied after nightfall, leaving the once bustling Victorian capital deathly silent while the Ripper roamed the streets.
Jack the Ripper committed at least five murders in or near the Whitechapel district of London’s East End.
All of the victims were prostitutes and all of their corpses had been mutilated.
Scotland Yard was inundated with criminal investigations in rough East End leaving them overstretched and under-resourced.
Their lack of arrests and the continuing murder spree led to widespread criticism verging on derision of the police effort to catch the Ripper.
Volunteer citizens put themselves forward to try to help with the case and the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was formed.
Its members patrolled the streets looking for suspects and hired private detectives to bring the menace to an end.
Top of the list of suspects were local butchers and surgeons because of the brutality of the killings — the Ripper was clearly not averse to blood.
Even Queen Victoria was made aware of the harrowing killings and formed her own theories that the Ripper must be a butcher.
The fact that many killings took place on weekends or public holidays also suggested the killer was a regular worker who lived nearby.
While investigations proved fruitless at the time, “ripperologists” are still trawling through evidence to find the true identity of the killer.
The number of named suspects reaches over one hundred.
Among them is cotton merchant James Maybrick who died a year after the last of the Ripper murders.
A diary allegedly belonging to him detailed the murders but its authenticity is disputed.
Thomas Cutbush, a violent criminal, is also among the list of suspects.
He worked in Whitechapel at the time of the killings and allegedly harboured a hatred for prostitutes and a grim fascination with medicine and surgery.
Respected poet Francis Thompson is alleged to have carried out the murders because he wrote about killing people, had surgical experience and was known to be close to one prostitute in the Whitechapel area at the time.
The Ripper case was the first to cause a worldwide media frenzy, and fervent speculation continues to this day.
Indeed, in January 2018 the mystery seemed to have inched closer to being solved when an expert matched the handwriting of two letters claiming to be from the killer.
Hundreds of such letters were sent to police and media, and their origin has remained a mystery with many believing they were written by journalists in an attempt to boost circulation.
But a scientific study seemed to shed new light on the mystery, focusing on the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper appears for the first time, and the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard.
It found similar linguistic constructions in both letters, such as the phrasal verb ‘to keep back’, as well as similarities in the handwriting.
A recent theory which came to light in February 2018, is that the Ripper may have been a Dutch serial killer and sailor.
Crime historian Dr Jan Bondeson named Hendrik de Jong as a prime suspect.
De Jong murdered two wives in his homeland and is believed to have travelled to London regularly.
Another suspect to emerge is the American serial killer HH Holmes.
Lawyer Jeff Mudgett, is the great-great-great-grandson of Holmes, who murdered at least nine known victims.
Read more here.
Russell Edwards extracted DNA from a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the slayings.
Mr Edwards claimed the murderer was Aaron Kosminski, an emigre from Poland, who worked as a barber.
With the help of genealogists, Russell found a living relative of Kosminski who was happy to share her DNA for his to be tested against.
When they had a positive match, Russell realised he may have finally confirmed the murderer.
His bombshell finding led to descendants of victims to call for an inquest in the hopes of finding closure.
Karen Miller, 53, whose ancestor Catherine Eddowes was brutally murdered, says it is time for an inquest to name the killer.
She said: “We have got the proof, now we need this inquest to legally name the killer.
“It would mean a lot to me, to my family, to a lot of people to finally have this crime solved.”
