Who was Jack the Ripper?

Question

Literally, who was he?

Answer 1

Suspects
In 1894, Sir Melville Macnaghten, then Chief Constable, wrote a confidential report in which he names the three top suspects. Although some information concerning the suspect he believed most likely to have been the murderer had been available before the turn of the century, the name of that suspect was not made public until 1959. Macnaghten's suspect was M.J. Druitt, a barrister turned teacher who committed suicide in December 1888. Unfortunately for Macnaghten who wrote his memoranda from memory, the details he ascribes to Druitt are wrong. According to the Chief Constable, Druitt was a doctor, 41 years of age, and committed suicide immediately after the Kelly murder. In actuality Druitt was 31, not a doctor, and killed himself nearly a month after the last official murder. No other police officer supported Macnaghten's allegations, and one in fact, stated that the theory was inadequate and that the suicide was circumstantial evidence at best that the drowned doctor was the Ripper. While it is still possible that he was the Ripper, correct information gathered about Druitt so far makes him seem an unlikely candidate.

In 1903, Frederick Abberline, a retired crack detective who had been in charge of the Ripper investigation at the ground level stated that he thought that multiple wife poisoner Severin Klosowski, alias George Chapman, might be Jack the Ripper. As with Macnaghten, no other officer has concurred with his opinion and modern criminal profiling science tends to reject Klosowski as a serious candidate.

The name of Macnaghten's second suspect was confirmed as Aaron Kosminiski in the early 1980s when a researcher came upon Donald Swanson's personal copy of Robert Anderson's book of memoirs. Both Swanson and Anderson were officers who participated in the Ripper investigation; indeed, they were the ones given the responsibility of being in charge of the case. Anderson had written in his memoirs that appeared for the first time in 1910 that the police knew who the Ripper was. According to Anderson the Ripper was a Polish Jew who was put away in an insane asylum after the crimes, and then died soon after. Swanson had made some notes in his copy of the book concerning Anderson's suspect, and wrote that the suspect's name was Kosminski. At first it seemed that the case had been solved, but research has found a number of problems with the theory. No other officer supports' Anderson's allegation, and Swanson's notes seem to question his superior's claims rather than support them. Aaron Kosminski was a real person and was placed in an insane asylum. His records show him to be a docile and harmless lunatic that heard voices in his head and would only eat food from the gutter. The dates of his incarceration are wrong, and he did not die soon after his committal but lived on until 1919. Some researchers have tried to explain the problems by saying that the name Kosminski' was confused with another insane Polish Jew, who really was dangerous.

The search continues. The third Macnaghten suspect, Michael Ostrog, has been investigated and there is nothing to indicate that he was nothing more than a demented con man.

Dr. Francis Tumblety, the latest serious suspect, only became known to students of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1993. A collector of crime memorabilia obtained a cache of letters belonging to a crime journalist named G.R. Sims. Among the letters was one from John Littlechild, who had been in charge of the Secret Department in Scotland Yard at the time of the murders. Dated 1913, Littlechild writes to Sims: "I never heard of a Dr. D. (which many assume is a reference to Druitt as Macnaghten thought Druitt was a doctor and Sims was a confident of the Chief Constable), in connection with the Whitechapel Murders but amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T . . . He was an American quack named Tumblety . . . " A book by the collector who found the letter goes to great lengths in trying to prove that Tumblety is the final solution for the mystery. Unfortunately, he fails to do so. There is no doubt that Tumblety was a legitimate suspect and that when he fled to America, Scotland Yard detectives came over to investigate him further. It is unlikely that Scotland Yard continued to view him as a serious suspect. James Monro, who succeeded Warren and was in overall command of the Secret department before becoming Commissioner, thought that the Alice McKenzie murder of July 1889 was the work of the Ripper. He stated in 1890 that he did not know who the Whitechapel murderer was but that he was working on his own theory.

Answer 2

Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London in the latter half of 1888. The name is taken from a letter to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer, published at the time of the killings.

The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, conspiracy theory and folklore. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed Ripperologists — the term used within the field for the authors, historians and amateur detectives who study the case — to accuse a wide variety of individuals of being the Ripper. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer due to the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police in their attempts to capture the Ripper, sometimes missing the murderer at his crime scenes by mere minutes.

Victims were women earning income as casual prostitutes. Typical Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Some believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them. The removal of internal organs from some victims has led to the proposal that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge or skill. Though many diverse theories have been advanced, the world may never know the true identity of Jack the Ripper.

Answer 3

Many possible solutions have been proposed, however, none of them are particularly appealing. It is clear that the three police departments involved in the investigation participated in some sort of cover-up and from the cessation of active investigation after December of 1888, were aware that the killer was no longer a threat.

I have written a 200 page paper on the Ripper, with research corroborated by a team at the Quantico FBI academy. While I cannot provide an actual name (and it's quite unlikely one could be found at this point), we can say the following about him:
+ he was a member of the upper class
+ he worked at London Hospital Whitechappel
+ he was a medical professional
+ he was left handed
+ he was formally educated
+ he had either been to America, or had close association with Americans
+ he was known and trusted by several of his victims
+ he was a freemason, or knowledgeable about freemason mythos
+ he was capable of stopping the heart of his victims in less than 60 seconds.
+ he killed his victims before ritual mutilations were performed.

Examination of the autopsy photos indicates lack of oxygen to the brain as a probable method of murder, however, the victims did not show signs of strangulation nor did the Ripper always have time to strangle his victims. All the victims have small, crescent-shaped bruises on their throats, directly over the carotid artery, with the exception of Mary Kelly, whose body was too severely mutilated to provide evidence. It is possible the Ripper may have either cut off the flow of blood to the brain of his victim, or injected them with a drug, killing them rapidly.

Witness statements place a man of the following description at or near the scene of several killings or in the company of the victims shortly before their murder:
+ between 5 foot 5 inches to 5 foot 8 inches in height
+ slight build
+ pale complexion
+ short black hair
+ neatly trimmed moustache
+ well dressed
+ soft hands
+ no eyelashes

It should be noted that during the night of the double murder a man matching this description and an accomplice in brown sack suit and deerhunter hat were seen to attack Elizabeth Stride, who was found dead less than an hour later. Therefore we should consider it likely that the ripper did not act alone.

More than that would be hard to say, unless you could find a man matching that description in the employment records for London Hospital at the time. Unfortunately, those records were destroyed by German bombs during WWII, making this a dead-end investigation.

Answer 4

To this day, the identity of Jack the Ripper is unknown. Many theories exist that try to identify him, but there is a lack of evidence to single out one person from the list of suspects.

Answer 5

Patricia Cornwall in "Case Closed" tries to show that Jack the Ripper was Walter Sickert, a minor English artist. Pretty convincing.

Answer 6

Jack the Ripper replaced right into a serial killer who murdered prostitutes in an impoverished area of england. To immediately he remains nameless, although there are various theories as to his identity.

Answer 7

He was a serial killer and click below and you should learn all you need to know. Have a great day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper

Answer 8

An unknown serial killer

Answer 9

women rapper