case study jack the ripper

Jack the Ripper identified by DNA evidence, forensic scientists claim

Researchers say they have finally unmasked Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer who terrorized London in the late 1800s.

A forensic investigation published in Journal of Forensic Sciences  has identified the killer as Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and prime suspect at the time.

Kosminski was previously named as a suspect over 100 years ago and once again in a 2014 book by British businessman and Ripper researcher Russell Edwards. But the latest finding marks the first time that Edwards' DNA evidence has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, according to the magazine Science .

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“To our knowledge, this is the most advanced study to date regarding this case,” the study authors wrote .

Jack the Ripper is believed to have killed at least five women in the Whitechapel district of London between August and November of 1888. Researchers Jari Louhelainen and David Miller ran genetic tests on a silk shawl stained with blood and semen that investigators say was found next to the body of the killer’s fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, Science reported.

Researchers compared fragments of mitochondrial DNA — which the magazine noted is inherited from one’s mother — to samples from living relatives of Eddowes and Kosminski and found they matched those of Kosminski’s relative.

The study also includes an analysis of the killer’s appearance which suggests the killer had brown hair and brown eyes. which matches the only reliable witness statement, according to Science.

The study’s findings may not satisfy other Ripper experts who say the shawl may have been contaminated over the years. The shawl was given to Louhelainen by Edwards, a self-proclaimed “armchair detective” and author of "Naming Jack the Ripper," who bought it at an auction in 2007, according to the Guardian.

“I’ve got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case,” he told the newspaper in 2014. “I’ve spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was.”

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Profiling Jack the Ripper

The Jack the Ripper murders have secured themselves in the annals of criminal history as the greatest whodunit murder case in the world. The murders occurred in 1888, when policing techniques were in their infancy and forensic knowledge was practically non-existent. There was no signed confession and no official arrest, so proof of the Ripper’s identity has remained unknown for over 130 years.

Today, the Ripper is regarded as the ‘father’ of the modern day serial killer. It was the first recorded case of a serial killer in the UK and at the time caused a mass hysteria in the public imagination and in the numerous columns of newspapers. The entire city of London was under the Ripper’s shadow and the grim legacy is still lingering today around the back streets of Whitechapel. But what kind of man was he? What drove his murderous rampage?

Using modern criminal profiling and taking examples from other serial killers that have been studied over the last 100 years, it is possible to build an accurate profile of Jack the Ripper.

The Ripper did not kill for the purposes of torture, money or any financial gain. His method suggests he killed quickly and that the mutilation of the body was the key driving force behind the murder. He wasn’t sadistic in the sense that his infliction of pain was giving him pleasure. He would strangle his victims first into unconsciousness and then, when they lay on the ground, he performed his ritual of mutilation. This suggests a killer who wants to dominate his victim with power and sexual violence. His actions show a deep resentment towards his victim where he must destroy who they are.  In 1888, this kind of killer would have been alien to most police forces in the world.

In his book Hunting Human, Elliot Leyton illustrated how serial killing appears to be a social phenomenon. It was rare until about 1950, with one such killer emerging every decade. In the 1960s, six serial killers were identified. The 1970s saw the figure leap to just under 20 in the decade. In the 1980s, it had risen to a new serial killer every month - in the United States alone.

Since the 1980s, the study and research of serial killers has revealed that certain patterns of behaviour are recurrent and seem common to a certain percentage. It has been learned, for example, that they generally operate in an area well-known to them, where they feel safe. Therefore, it's highly probable that Jack the Ripper lived in the Whitechapel area, amongst his victims. The piece of Catherine Eddowes’ apron dropped in Goulston Street is an important clue in this respect.

The Ripper may also have been of respectable appearance and he possibly possessed a disarming charm like other serial killers, such as Ted Bundy or the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, both of whom were able to strike up conversations with their victims, putting them at ease and off guard.

Serial Killers are also able to connect with people’s emotions, using their intended victim’s personality against them. They focus on a person’s weakness and vulnerability, convincing them to do things they would otherwise avoid. They become persuasive and charming, carefully dismantling their intended victims’ cautious instincts. One such charming killer was Ted Bundy, who used tricks such as a sling to imply he had a broken arm and thus convince women to help him take heavy objects back to his car. Other times he would dress up as a policeman to gain his victims’ trust. Before he was finally executed in 1989, Bundy confessed to over 30 murders. Experts agree that Bundy’s good looks and manners would have been instrumental in his ability to capture a victim.

During the Jack the Ripper murders, women would be very wary of who they approached or were left alone with, no matter how desperate they were to earn money. Possessing a superficial charm or respectable appearance, the Ripper would have put his victims off guard.

It is highly likely, from what we have seen in other similar cases, that he had already made several attacks on women in this area before the first murder and that these had gone unreported or if they were, they were simply not linked to the Ripper crimes by police.

Likely, the killer would have waited for his unknowing victim to make the first move. As ladies of the night, it was in their nature to approach potential clients, making them the ideal prey for Whitechapel’s predator. As the Ripper’s victim readies herself to appease what she believes to be just another client, events suddenly take a turn for the worse as his hands form a vice grip around her throat without so much of a window of opportunity to cry for help. Those final seconds of consciousness filled with fear, confusion and the realisation that her time had come to an abrupt end; owned forevermore by the anonymous killer. Once passed out and on the ground, a cut to the throat is the end of the slaughter, but only the beginning of the mutilation.

The Ripper focussed his initial attack mostly on the genital region of the body. Although he did not have sex with his victims, the attack does have strong sexual suggestions. It’s possible the killer was impotent or, ironically, feared women. His act of de-sexing his victims would mean he was removing their ability to scare him. This could have stemmed from an inner desire to seek revenge on a dominant female figure in his life, possibly a mother who tortured him mentally, physically or sexually in his youth. As he grew older his mother would represent all women, who he would despise. It’s possible she too may have been a prostitute.

To shock and cause ultimate distress to anyone who uncovered his victim’s body, the killer gave in to his uncontrollable urge to mutilate. Each body was found in a worse state than the last as the Ripper’s arrogance grew, with him wanting to toy with the victim’s friends and family and the Metropolitan Police. The Ripper was presented with the opportunity to live out his sick fantasies on Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth and final canonical victim, when she met her bloody end indoors. The privacy afforded London’s most wanted enough time to mutilate the body to the point that it would be difficult to identify the body.

By 1988, the first ever profile of Jack the Ripper was conducted in America by FBI profilers John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood. Taking the original police reports and medical evidence, they compiled a list of 11 character traits jack the Ripper would have had:

1. The Ripper would be a White Male

2. Between 25 and 35 years old

3. Lived locally to the Whitechapel / Spitalfields area

4. A loner, who was more than likely unmarried

5. As a child he would have had an absent father and a dominant mother figure

6. A mental or physical disability or deformity, which made him feel different from others

7. A solitary job, which kept him away from social encounters

8. Seen as quiet and timid to those who knew him, he would be perceived as a little odd

10. Beneath the surface would lie a deep and resentful aggression, which would explode during bouts of low self-esteem

11. He would not feel guilt or remorse for his crimes and in a way, considered them justified

Special Agent Douglas wrote:

“We would look for someone below or above average in height and/or weight. May have problems with speech, a scarred complexion, physical illness, or injury.

We would not expect this type of offender to be married. If he was married in the past, it would have been to someone older than himself and the marriage would have been for a short duration. He is not adept in meeting people socially and the major extent of his heterosexual relationships would be with prostitutes.

This offender does not look out of the ordinary. However, the clothing he wears at the time of the assaults is not his everyday dress. He wants to project to unsuspecting female prostitutes that he has money.

He comes from a family where he was raised by a domineering mother and a weak, passive father. In all likelihood, his mother drank heavily and enjoyed the company of many men. As a result, he failed to receive consistent care and contact with stable adult role models. This could have resulted in the would-be serial killer having an introverted nature, lashing out violently as a result of his frustration.

As well as being an introvert, the killer would likely be regarded as a shy and retiring loner who would also take great care over his appearance.

He drinks in the local pubs and after a few spirits, he becomes more relaxed and finds it easier to engage in conversation. After he leaves the pub, he would stroll throughout the Whitechapel neighbourhood with lowered inhibitions. He lives or works in the Whitechapel area.

After each killing, he would return to a safe area where he could wash the blood from his hands and get rid of soiled clothing.”

Mutilation killers like Jack the Ripper would rarely stop unless they came close to being caught or were perhaps arrested and locked away for another unrelated crime. It’s possible that his identity became known to his close family and, instead of turning him over to the police, they had him committed in one of the many asylums, where he spent the rest of his life.

Most serial killers are distinguished by their outward normality. Dennis Nilsen was a quiet civil servant. Peter Sutcliffe was apparently an industrious lorry driver. John Wayne Gacy was a successful building contractor and one-time Junior Chamber of Commerce “Man of the Year”. Ted Bundy, credited with the murder of as many as 40 young women, was handsome, charming and well educated.

In all probability, Jack the Ripper was like one of these people. Ordinary – but only on the surface.

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Has Jack the Ripper’s Identity Been Revealed?

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: August 19, 2019 | Original: September 9, 2014

In the early morning hours of September 30, 1888, police discovered the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes, her throat slit and left kidney removed, in London’s Mitre Square. Eddowes had been the second prostitute inside of an hour found murdered in that section of the city, and the slaying bore the grisly signatures of the serial killer who for weeks had been terrorizing London’s East End— Jack the Ripper .

As police from Scotland Yard completed their work, Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson reportedly made an odd request to take home a blood-splattered shawl—blue and dark brown with a pattern of Michaelmas daisies at either end—found at the crime scene as a gift for his seamstress wife. His superiors granted permission, but unsurprisingly, the present was not well received.

Simpson’s horrified wife stashed the seven-foot-long fabric found next to Jack the Ripper’s fourth victim in a box. It was never worn or washed as the search for one of the world’s most notorious killers grew colder and colder. The person responsible for killing at least five Londoners between August and November 1888 was never found, and authorities officially closed the file in 1892.

Who Was Jack the Ripper?

The slayings never faded from public consciousness, however. Legions of “Ripperologists” have developed their own theories over the decades, and the lineup of possible suspects has included the father of Winston Churchill , “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” author Lewis Carroll , and Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria and second in line to the British throne.

Some have even speculated that Jack the Ripper was in actuality Jill the Ripper, and female suspects include Mary Pearcey , who was executed in 1890 after butchering her lover’s wife and child with a carving knife in a similar manner to the notorious serial killer.

The Victorian-era shawl reportedly taken by Simpson passed from generation to generation of the policeman’s descendants until it was put up for auction in 2007 and purchased by Russell Edwards, an English businessman and self-confessed “armchair detective” who was fascinated by the coldest of cold cases. Although the silk fabric was frayed and aging, it still contained valuable DNA evidence since it was never washed.

Did DNA Analysis Find the Killer?

Now, after more than three years of scientific analysis, Russell says that Jack the Ripper’s true identity has been found interwoven in the ragged, 126-year-old shawl, and he fingers Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski as the serial killer in his book “Naming Jack the Ripper.”

Edwards enlisted forensic geneticist Dr. Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University in 2011 to study the shawl using a level of analysis that was only possible in the last decade. Louhelainen identified the dark splotches on the shawl as stains “consistent with arterial blood spatter caused by slashing.” He also discovered evidence of split body parts, consistent with a kidney removal, as well as the presence of seminal fluid.

Louhelainen found the mitochondrial DNA taken from the shawl matched that taken from Karen Miller, a direct descendant of Eddowes, as well as a female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, Matilda, who provided swabs of mitochondrial DNA from the inside of her mouth.

Police who worked the case at the time of the murders would not have been surprised to see Kosminski’s name linked to the crime. At the time of the murders, Kosminski was among the handful of primary suspects. The youngest of seven children, Kosminski was born in Klodawa, Poland, in 1865. After the death of his father, the family fled the pogroms flamed by Poland’s Russians rulers and immigrated to London’s Whitechapel section in 1881.

Likely a paranoid schizophrenic, Kosminski, whose occupation was listed as hairdresser, was admitted into an asylum in 1891 after attacking his sister with a knife. In the mid-1890s, a witness identified him as the person attacking one of the victims but refused to testify. Lacking any hard evidence, police never arrested Kosminski for the crimes. He remained institutionalized until his death in 1919 from gangrene.

Edwards has long theorized that the shawl was of too fine a quality to have been worn by a London prostitute and belonged to Jack the Ripper, not Eddowes. Using nuclear magnetic resonance, another Liverpool John Moores University scientist, Dr. Fyaz Ismail, determined that the fabric’s age predated the 1888 murders and was likely made near St. Petersburg , Russia. The region of Poland where Kosminski was born was under Russian control, and it would not have been unusual for Russian goods to have been traded there.

“I’ve spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was,” Edwards told London’s Independent newspaper. “Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now—we have unmasked him.”

‘Ripperologists’ Weigh In

Many Ripperologists, however, are not so certain. The report has generated plenty of skeptics, some of whom have noted that the laboratory analysis has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and that Louhelainen was only able to test mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mothers to children and offers much less of a unique identifier than nuclear DNA. Many people can share similar mitochondrial DNA signatures.

Other critics refute the notion that Simpson was even at the crime scene the night of the Eddowes murder and note that the shawl may have been contaminated over the decades since it has been held by many members of the Eddowes family.

In addition, this is not the first time that DNA evidence has supposedly cracked the case. American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell asserted that DNA samples found on the taunting letters sent by Jack the Ripper to Scotland Yard matched those of post-Impressionist painter Walter Sickert.

And a 2006 study by Australian scientist Ian Findlay extracted DNA from the saliva on the letters and determined that it was likely that the sender was a woman. So even with the latest news, it’s unlikely the debate on Jack the Ripper’s identity will suddenly abate.

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• The Whitechapel murders were investigated by two police forces.
• The majority of the crimes fell within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police.
• However, Mitre Square, where Catherine Eddowes was murdered, is in the City of London, so it was the City of London Police who investigated her murder.
• Contrary to what is often claimed, relations between both forces were cordial!
• Site Author and Publisher Richard Jones
• Richard Jones

THE POLICE INVESTIGATION

THE MEN WHO TRIED TO CATCH THE RIPPER

There were two main police forces involved in the hunt to catch Jack the Ripper - the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police.

Since the murders of Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Mary Kelly, took place in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, their murder sites came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police and it was they who investigated these four murders.

Catherine Eddowes, who was murdered on 30th September 1888, was killed in Mitre Square, which is in the City of London. As a consequence her killing came under the jurisdiction of the City of London Police and was duly investigated by the officers of this particular force.

This section on the police investigation of the murders provides information about the most important officers connected with the case and looks at both how the police handled their investigation and how their handling of it was perceived by the press and general public.

THE POLICE OFFICERS ON THE CASE

SIR CHARLES WARREN METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER

Sir Charles Warren was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner based at Scotland Yard. Although he is often portrayed as being an incompetent Colonel Blimp like figure, he was in fact a very able officer.

SIR ROBERT ANDERSON ASSISTANT POLICE COMMISSIONER

Sir Robert Anderson was the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and was in charge of the detective department. He was later emphatic that the ripper had, in fact, been caught.

JAMES MONRO ASSISTANT POLICE COMMISSIONER

James Monro was the Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner up until August 31st 1888 when he resigned his position as a result of a personality clash with Sir Charles Warren. He later took over from Warren as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

MAJOR HENRY SMITH ACTING CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER

The murder of Catherine Eddowes, Jack the Ripper's fourth victim, took place in the City of London which has its own police force. In 1888 the Acting City Police Commissioner was Major Henry Smith.

ALFRED FOSTER SUPERINTENDENT CITY POLICE

Superintendent Alfred Lawrence Foster, of the City of London Police, was one of the officers who investigated the Mitre Square Murder of Catherine Eddowes.

DONALD SWANSON CHIEF INSPECTOR

In September 1888 Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson was given overall command of the investigation. His job was to read and assess all the information that was being gathered by the police on the ground. He had an unrivalled knowledge of the case.

SUPERINTENDENT THOMAS ARNOLD HEAD OF H DIVISION

Superintendent Thomas Arnold was the head of H Division, Whitechapel, at the time of the Jack the Ripper atrocities, albeit he was away on leave during the earlier murders of Martha Tabram and Annie Chapman. He returned just prior to the murder of Elizabeth Stride, on 30th September, 1888.

EDMUND REID HEAD OF H DIVISION C.I.D.

Inspector Edmund Reid was the head of the H Division detectives who investigated the Jack the Ripper murders in the area where they occurred. He was a very able officer and was referred to by one contemporary as "one of the most remarkable men of the century."

JOSEPH HENRY HELSON HEAD OF J DIVISION C.I.D.

Inspector Joseph Henry Helson was the head of the J Division detectives who investigated the murder of Mary Nichols, which took place in their jurisdiction on August 31st, 1888.

FREDERICK ABBERLINE LEAD DETECTIVE

The previous year (1887), Inspector Frederick George Abberline had been promoted out of the district where the murders occurred. However, his unrivalled knowledge of the area and its criminal underworld meant that he was sent back in September 1888 to take charge of the on the ground investigation into the murders.

INSPECTOR HENRY MOORE LEAD INVESTIGATOR FROM 1889

Inspector Henry Moore was one of the officers who was sent from Scotland Yard to supplement the East End detective force who were investigating the Whitechapel murders in September, 1888.

SERGEANT WILLIAM THICK INVESTIGATING OFFICER

Sergeant William Thick - whose name was also spelt as Thicke in many press accounts and police reports on the murders - spent the large part of his police career in the East End of London, working for the Metropolitan Police's H-Division.

MELVILLE MACNAGHTEN CHIEF CONSTABLE OF SCOTLAND YARD

Although not involved in the investigation in the autumn of 18888, Macnaghten would later become one of the most important officers involved with the case. Indeed it was he who made the emphatic statement that Jack the Ripper had "five victims and five victims only."

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Jack the Ripper

• ❖ The victims were all prostitutes.
• ❖ They were all killed by having their throats cut.
• ❖ They suffered varying degrees of mutilation.
• ❖ Elizabeth Stride was murdered on the night of 30th September, 1888.
• ❖ She was killed on the same night as the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes.
• ❖ Her throat was cut but police believed the killer was disturbed before she could be mutilated.
• ❖ The body of Polly Nichols was found in Bucks' Row.
• ❖ Annie Chapman was found in George's Yard, just off Hanbury Street.
• ❖ Elizabeth Stride was found in Dutfield's Yard.
• ❖ Catherine Eddowes was discovered in Mitre Square in Aldgate. This was the only murder which came under the jurisdiction of the City Police , rather than Whitechapel .
• ❖ Mary Kelly was found in her rented room in Miller's Court.
• ❖ Post mortems and coroners' reports.
• ❖ Witness statements.
• ❖ Observations and sketches.
• ❖ Photography.
• ❖ Public information.
• ❖ Identity parades.
• ❖ Searches.
• ❖ Lures.
• ❖ The police followed up information from coroners' reports and autopsies.
• ❖ After Annie Chapman's murder, the coroner believed the killer had 'considerable anatomical knowledge and skill'.
• ❖ The police followed up by questioning doctors, surgeons, butchers and slaughterhouse workers.
• ❖ 50 extra constables were sent to H Division, partly to help investigate the crime and partly to maintain law and order in a time of panic.
• ❖ The number of plain-clothes policemen had increased from 6 to 20 by October 1888.
• ❖ A bloody piece of Catherine Eddowes' apron was found under a graffito that read: "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing". Sir Charles Warren had this graffito removed because of fears about anti-Semitic reprisals.
• ❖ Over 300 letters were written to newspapers and the police from people claiming to be the Ripper. Although seen as hoaxes, some people believe a few may have genuinely been written by the killer.
• ❖ One of the letters was sent to George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee during the Ripper murders, along with half a kidney. The letter claimed the organ was from Catherine Eddowes' body.
• ❖ Fingerprinting wasn't in common use until the 1890s.
• ❖ They were unable to analyse blood.
• ❖ They considered using bloodhounds, and Sir Charles Warren did summon a pair of trained bloodhounds to be used at the crime scene. However, the police did not make use of them.
• ❖ Although the formula for using body temperature to determine time of death had been developed in the 1860s, the victims' body temperatures were not scientifically measured.
• ❖ Identity sketches were developed by Bertillon, but weren't put into common use until the 1890s.
• ❖ The media coverage.
• ❖ The crossover between H Division and the City of London police .
• ❖ The lack of forensic evidence.
• ❖ The response of the public.
• ❖ The Vigilance Committee.
• ❖ They might add details to make their stories more interesting, basing a lot of their reporting on guesswork, rumours and untrustworthy interviews. Some of them added every murder in the area to the Ripper's tally.
• ❖ They criticised the police heavily.
• ❖ They printed a lot of anti-Semitic accusations, such as making sketches of suspects look stereotypically Jewish. Sir Charles Warren ordered the graffiti near the Catherine Eddowes crime scene to be washed off due to the resulting tension.
• ❖ They created a lot of uncertainty and misinformation, and stirred up tension.
• ❖ They created a lot of false leads the police then had to follow up, wasting time.
• ❖ They accused a man called Harold Pizer, or 'Leather Apron', of the murders, despite the fact he had an alibi.
• ❖ Over 300 hoax letters were written by people pretending to be the killer. This gave the police more leads to follow up, which took time.
• ❖ Witness statements were contradictory and unreliable.
• ❖ The possibility of anti-Semitic reprisals meant the police erased graffiti found near Catherine Eddowes' apron, which may have been a clue to the identify of the killer.
• ❖ The work of vigilantes, such as the Vigilance Committee, caused problems for the police during their investigations.
• ❖ They were a group of businessmen and traders from Whitechapel who were frustrated by the lack of police success and were annoyed about the lack of rewards offered for information, so they started their own reward system.
• ❖ They patrolled the streets with burning planks and made a lot of noise to deter the killer.
• ❖ The leader of the Vigilance Committee, George Lusk, was sent the 'From Hell' letter, along with half a kidney.

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Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper was one of the most infamous serial killer in 19th century. His identity was never found and there are many mysteries about his murders which have never been explained.

However the serial killer Jack the Ripper was never caught, evidences of his crimes were lost, and possible witnesses were never questioned. But why police had managed to conduct this investigation so badly? In this paper I would like give an answer to this question and explain why the police were unable to catch Jack the Ripper. Crime rate at this period time was high and was increasing even though police forces like the City police and Metropolitan police were established. Therefore it was more likely for them to catch Jack the Ripper because of the strong and powerful forces they had, but this was not the case, the murders of Jack the Ripper still lies a mystery. The main reason for this was instead both the forces working together; they were competitive towards one another.

We Will Write a Custom Case Study Specifically For You For Only $13.90/page!

Therefore there was a lack of communication and any evidence or information found to do with the Jack the Ripper were never shared or passed. As both of these forces wanted the glory and honor to themselves. Jack the Ripper was known for brutal and heartless attack, his serial murders shocked, captured and attract so much of the public attention, Jack the Ripper was described to be a demented being, which was skillful and was anomatical knowledge (Knight, p.17 ). His victims were poor prostitute who he would use as excuse to get in the corners and then attack them.

Jack the Ripper was very clever and aware of his surroundings; he carried out attack at specific time and places where he knew he would not be disturbed. This made the job of the police force even more impossible because there was never actual eyewitness to the killing. Therefore when the police did go out looking for the most possible suspect, it was difficult to pinpoint on one individual without not hard-core evidence. However, through the case dozens of theories on the Ripper’s identity have been formulated over the years and some have been weaker than others. The first such theory is that the killer was Thomas Cutbush. Cutbush was arrested in 1891 for stabbing two young women’s buttocks in public.

He was proclaimed Jack the Ripper by the Sun in a “spectacular article” (Begg, p. 68). This theory was quickly dismissed by Sir Melville Mcnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable at Scotland Yard and future head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), who claimed that there were at least another three men, “any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders” (Knight, p.276). George Chapman was another popular suspect at the time. A Polish “barber-surgeon” (Begg, p.

72) who immigrated to england sometime in 1888, Chapman was later convicted of poisoning at least 3 of his wives and hanged in 1903. Chapman is considered a serious suspects because of his psychological profile was that of a killer, he possessed the needed anatomical knowledge, being a barber-surgeon and he was a resident of Whitechapel at the time of the murders. But, his known modus operandis is very different, and the switch from brutal mutilations to slow poisoning is the “most frequent objection” (Begg, p. 73) to him being the killer. But the strongest and most respected theory originates from Sir Melville Mcnaghten’s notes. After exonerating Cutbush as the killer, Mcnaghten lists three main suspects.

Michael Ostrog, who Mcnaghten describes as a “mad Russian doctor and… unquestionably a homicidal manic.” (Knight, 369) was a Russian Jew who had been recently dismissed from a Lunatic Asylum.

Being a doctor automatically proves that he had the anatomical knowledge and the surgical skill to commit the murders. But Ostrog never did anything remotely as violent as the Whitechapel murders, and there is no real strong motive to support the accusation other than his insanity. …

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