If in 1888 they had the technology we have today, would Jack the Ripper have been caught?

Answer 1

well maybe but you must realize that jack the ripper would be that much smarter too and would have a better chance to avoid capture

Answer 2

it's possible but not as likely as some seem to think...
his m.o. was such that the likelyhood of finding a DNA sample that could be matched is doubtful.
fingerprinting might have been helpful except... there were only, if i recall correctly, a couple of different things that might have had his prints on it... one was a knife left behind, but it was a most unusual night for jack, one with two murders, and experts can't be sure that they were both jack's work, which means the knife may not have been used by jack at all. at one point, he sent a half kidney to the cops (or was it a reporter?), i believe, as a sort of joke, saying he ate the other half. if he did indeed send it himself, which is likely, the packaging might have had his prints on it. and the other possibility is the ripper letters, and the vote is still out on whether the three most likely to be genuinely written by jack were actually written by him or not. there may have been prints on any or all of these, but they might not have belonged to or been used by jack at all, and a copycat or a innocent man with a sick sense of humor might have been hanged.
jack seemed to be pretty good at planning his crimes, and i'm sure if the technology had been there, he would have taken care to not leave traces that could be used against him.
having said that, the police had some good suspects and might have had a lucky break. if one of the victims had managed to scratch jack, or if some of his hair was found on the victims, it probably would have been fairly easy to look for a match in the suspects. then again, maybe the real jack was never a suspect at all...

Answer 3

With the technology we have today, we haven't caught Bin Laden yet. Who knows whether Jack the Ripper would have been caught in 1888?

Answer 4

Possibly, although it's likely that advancements in policing and forensic techniques, rather than technology would have been more useful.

Certainly technology and forensics could have answered some questions: who wrote the letters and how (although likely they weren't from Jack) was he left handed or not (a continuing debate).

The supposedly was a bloody thumb print left at the scene of the last killy (Kelly)--a useful clue today that was meaningless at the time.

Unfortunately, serial killers are still hard to catch, even today--especially one like the Ripper who operated for such a short period and with so few victims.

Answer 5

If in 1888 the British government was as full of crap as it is now, the murders would never have been reported. We would have been told that the girls died of drug overdoses. Probably the only reason the murders weren't covered up then is that DNA identification technology didn't yet exist. (Important fact - most researchers have determined that the Ripper was a physician to the Royal family, hence the need for the coverup.)

Answer 6

I think that it is highly likely he would have been caught with our modern technology. In 1888 they only chance of solving this particular crime would have been to catch him in the act or if he confessed. As silly as it sounds, technology was so limited in this field during the late nineteenth century, that even if he had turned up at the scene of the crime still covered in the blood of the victim, scientists and doctors would have been unable to match the blood on him to the victim's. A difference could be detected between human and animal blood but that was about all.

If you want to know more about this subject I can recommend Donald Rumbelow's books and writings.

Answer 7

Try reading: Portrait Of A Killer: Jack The Ripper -- Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell. It's a great true-crime novel about Cornwell's journey for the truth about the Ripper crimes.

Answer 8

Maybe, but look at the FBI's 10 most wanted list and see how easy or difficult it is to capture someone. Jack the Ripper would have the same technological advances. Police Scanners, Interent chat rooms, etc

Answer 9

most likely jack the ripper was too clever to be registered in the gov't records,so all of the tech today wouldn't matter much because the gov't wouldn't have his fingerprints on file nor his dna samples to link him to the crime.i don't even believe that he had a birth certificate."jack the ripper" is only a nickname.we don't even know if "jack" is really a male or female.it could've been an angry prostitute in disguise as a male murderer,who sought vengeance against other prostitutes for badmouthing her because she was hideous.hence,she lost business & was shunned by the people of her town.

Answer 10

Hmm...I dunno. Even Science can be "dooped" if you are smart enough. I suppose if it were 1888, and saying science and technology are the same as 2006, then perhaps Jack the Ripper would have been a "smart criminal". This is of course if his killings were planned versus crimes of passion.

Answer 11

Notwithstanding wild theories, most scholars agree that Jack the Ripper most likely did not know his victims, a key fact when we consider whether he could have been caught using today's forensics. But Jack did/was many things that might lead a modern detective to find him.

The FBI profiling unit actually did a posthumous profiling of Jack, and whether you take stock in it or not, they labeled the killer as "disorganized." This means he was impulsive, did little to cover
his tracks (one victim was killed minutes before sunrise!) and changed his methods as he became increasingly destructive. Further, Jack got right up to his victims, disemboweled them up close, and left huge amounts of evidence. Trust me, if you don't want to get caught committing savage acts, don't use a knife, don't slit a throat, etc.There's the graffito which my have had evidence, and the other left items (however as always there is contorversy as to which of these belonged to Jack.) Jack may have sent Catherine Eddowes's kidney to George Lusk, the vigilance committee head.

Let's remember what police and others do these days at a crime scene. It's sealed off (unless you're the Ramseys or something) and in addition to fingerprints, DNA, fiber analysis, they do blood splatter tests. They use extremely sophisticated methods when doing autopsies. At the least, CID would have known a huge amount about the crimes that they did not in 1888. But the big problem is: would they be able to match the information with that of the killer?

I don't know about England, but I assume it is similar to the United States in that criminals have at least their fingerprints stored. Let's look at the suspects. Contemporary and prime suspects include the quack doctor Francis Tumblety, (arrested for multiple things, most recently in England for sodomy and gross acts of indecency) and Aaron Kosminski (insane, committed petty crimes, would have been in databases). While gentleman suspects such as Montague John Druitt might not have been in criminal databases, in this day of virtually zero privacy, who knows? Plus, most experts believe that Jack was a poor, probably Jewish, resident of the slums of the East End. This kind of person (not because of his religion, but rather his economic plight) would be included in police records.

I believe that had police done their job under today's circumstances, Martha Tabram or Polly Nichols (there is debate as to who was the first JTR victim) would be his last, provided the killer's vitals were in police records. Jack might certainly have changed his methods under these circumstances, but his interest was not merely murder but extreme misogyny and a need to sexually control. Were he to have left semen behind, this of course would also have helped police.

Under today's standards, Jack was incredibly stupid in almost everything he did. From his standpoint, killing Mary Kelly in her home with huge amounts of blood and other materials helpful to forensic science was an invitation to be caught, under 2006 standards. But of course he had an 1888 mentality (or was completely insane), when there was virtually no such thing as direct evidence past having an eyewitness. Police were talking about such nonsense as scraping off the corneas of the victims to see if they have an imprint of the killer!

Jack's crimes, from the standpoint of getting caught, were clearly "successful" in 1888. Today, serial killers such as BTK and Ted Bundy have to be a little more careful, and even they were caught. What Jack had most going for him in this department was that he did not know the victim. Much of criminal investigation still relates to interviewing family and friends. This is a big reason why many serial killers aren't caught. But killing women of the same profession living in the same slum using a method that leaves behind huge amounts of forensic evidence while knowing that your fingerprints and possibly DNA are stored with the police? Not a good idea. I think under these conditions we wouldn't be talking about JTR because there would be no "whodunit?" He would have been hanged.