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Stephen Knight was an English journalist and author. He is best known for the books Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution and The Brotherhood.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution suggested that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy between Freemasons and the British Royal Family, a claim which is not accepted by historians. Nevertheless, the book became a bestseller, and was the inspiration for several works of fiction, among them the 1978 film Murder by Decree by Bob Clark and the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.
The Brotherhood was published at a time when Freemasonry was coming under increasing scrutiny in the United Kingdom. Knight's last book before his death was The Killing of Justice Godfrey, exploring the death of Edmund Berry Godfrey in 1678, which had caused widespread anti-Catholic sentiment in England.
In 1983 he became a religious follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and, as a part of this interest, took the name Swami Puja Debal. He began to experience epileptic seizures in 1977, and in 1980 and was discovered to have a brain tumour while taking part in a documentary for TV programme Horizon. The tumour was removed, but returned in 1984. Knight died in 1985 at the age of 33.
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