Jack the Ripper, A Case Still Open: The Latest Investigations

The First Victims of Jack the Ripper

In January 2022, Christopher Stevens wrote an in-depth piece for the DailyMail. He reported that late on a Saturday night in December 1888, a woman knocked on the door of the undertaker in Poplar, East London, crying out that she had something to tell Mr. Chivers. Thomas Chivers was the coroner's officer in the East End, known for his kindness and patience, as well as his long experience with the city's most brutal crimes. His job was to inspect every corpse in every unexplained death and provide evidence during the inquest. Two days earlier, Mr. Chivers had examined the body of a 29-year-old prostitute known as Drunken Lizzie, noting a detail that the police had missed: her death was not caused by alcohol; it was a murder. The death of Drunken Lizzie, whose real name was Rose Mylett, was linked to the serial killer who plagued the East End: Jack the Ripper.

The woman who knocked on Mr. Chivers's door did not go to the police because she herself was a prostitute and feared arrest. The author of the DailyMail article reports that this coroner was his three-times-great-grandfather, and his maternal grandmother recalled meeting him quite often as a child in the 1920s. Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, 42, is believed to have been Jack the Ripper's first confirmed victim on August 31, 1888. The author of the article wonders if his great-great-great-grandfather—who examined some 60,000 bodies during his career—ever guessed the identity of the true Jack the Ripper.

The Modus Operandi

The total number of Jack the Ripper's victims remains unknown, but five women are now confirmed: in addition to Mary Nichols, there are Mary Jane Kelly, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes. All were massacred in complete darkness, usually in the early hours of the morning, and all had something in common: they were all prostitutes, they all had their throats slashed, they suffered mutilations to their bodies, and some had organs removed before death. The murder of the young Rose Mylett, along with those of Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unknown woman, might be attributed to other violent acts by Jack the Ripper that also occurred in the Whitechapel district.

A Possible Identity: Frederick Deeming

Also in the DailyMail—in the Australian edition—journalist Garry Linnell reports that Frederick Deeming—an English-born Australian murderer—could have been Jack the Ripper. Deeming had spent decades wandering between continents, preying on the innocent and the gullible before being caught and hanged by Australian authorities in May 1892, following the discovery of his second wife's decomposing body. By that point, suspicions were already strong that Deeming was also the culprit behind the Jack the Ripper murders. In 1892, the New York Times also reported on its front page: "The conviction is gaining ground—in official quarters—that the murders of which Deeming is now known to be the author... are of the same type as those committed in Whitechapel," the district where Jack the Ripper operated.

Deeming was initially excluded from the list of suspects for the London killer because he was mistakenly believed to be in prison—or in South Africa—at the time of the murders. However, the case for his involvement has been strengthened by several revelations in recent years, including a 2012 claim by a forensic expert and former Scotland Yard detective, Robin Napper, that Deeming was most likely the Ripper.

Among the similarities that led to a renewed interest in Deeming's potential role in the Whitechapel serial murders was a pathological hatred for prostitutes, a symptom of someone suffering from neuro-syphilis. Deeming himself told doctors in the days before his trial that he had contracted syphilis from a prostitute and had gone looking for her on at least four occasions with the aim of revenge. "He seems to have turned his life into a tragedy," the doctors concluded in an article for the prestigious British Medical Journal. "Some of the Whitechapel murders become immediately possible as acts of vengeance."

One of Jack the Ripper's victims was Catherine Eddowes, a 46-year-old woman whose mutilated body was discovered in the early hours of September 30, 1888. A witness described seeing her at 1:35 AM, shortly before her death, talking with "a man with a light mustache." Regarding Deeming, a young seamstress identified him as a man with a prominent light mustache whom she knew as "Lawson," who courted her in London at the time of the Ripper murders and who showed an obsessive interest in the details of Eddowes's murder.

Jack the Ripper used surgical dissection knives to mutilate many of his victims and seemed to enjoy the resulting publicity. Shortly after his arrival from England, Frederick Deeming asked a Melbourne jeweler to clean a pair of blood-stained surgical dissection knives. He hinted on several occasions that he held a secret in his past that would shock the nation. He told a fellow prisoner in the Hull dungeons in 1889—"when I get out of here I'll let this world know something they know little about... I'll make people sick."

Whitechapel, the Setting and Circumstances of the Crimes

In Whitechapel, life unfolded in misery, and Jack the Ripper's victims were "fireflies in the darkness" for the killer's insane mind. Whether the murderer was a doctor, a surgical apprentice, a barber, or a dockworker, Jack the Ripper unleashed a homicidal madness that still leaves many doubts and an unfinished investigation today. Modern forensic science was not available to investigate the darkness in men's souls, and the serial killer prowled at night, searching for lonely women who were themselves looking for clients and keeping their distance from law enforcement officers. This was an optimal circumstance for a malicious individual; the darkness and misery did the rest, with the police never managing to catch one of the most elusive serial killers in the history of crime in the act.

The Theories, from Alan Moore to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Among the authors who formulated theories about Jack the Ripper's identity, two have garnered interest.

In a graphic novel titled "From Hell", Alan Moore hypothesizes the serial killer's identity as the Queen's physician, Sir William Gull, who allegedly acted to avenge Prince Albert, who was dying of syphilis. This theory was likely adapted from circumstances that emerged in the 1970s when Dr. Thomas Stowell published an article claiming to have come into possession of documents concerning Dr. Gull's patients. One patient, in particular, attracted his attention, identified in the papers as patient "S," and Stowell believed this person could have been Jack the Ripper. Some conjecture also involved Prince Albert himself, suggesting he could be identified as the so-called patient "S," who, like him, suffered from syphilis. Patient "S" was also described as the grandson of a Victorian matriarch and heir to great wealth. But this was merely conjecture; nothing certain was ever stated, and Stowell himself denied any correspondence between patient "S" and the Prince.

Another respected author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the famous Sherlock Holmes, suggested the hypothesis that the killer could be a woman, the only one among all the "fireflies" who could pass unnoticed on the nights of Whitechapel. And a woman was indeed suspected of the murders: Mary Pearcey, who was executed for attacking the mistress of the man she loved and killing the woman's child.

The Letters of Jack the Ripper

On October 16, 1888, George Lusk, chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in London, received a parcel marked "From Hell" containing a portion of an organ and a challenge. It appeared to be sent by Jack the Ripper, but many letters were signed by the alleged killer, and only a few seemed genuinely sent by the murderer. No conclusive clues ever emerged from the letters.

The Current Theory of Russell Edwards

Recently, Russell Edwards, a British entrepreneur and writer, formulated a theory regarding the true identity of Jack the Ripper using DNA evidence to identify Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski as the infamous serial killer. Russell Edwards managed to purchase at auction the shawl of Catherine Eddowes, murdered on September 30, 1888, which contained traces of blood and seminal fluid. Russell subsequently involved biochemist Jari Louhelainen, who extracted mitochondrial DNA from the stains on the shawl and reportedly compared it with DNA freely provided by living descendants of the victim and those of the suspect. The analysis reportedly showed a match, leading to the theory that Aaron Kosminski murdered Catherine Eddowes and was therefore the notorious Jack.

The scientific community, however, has criticized the theory put forward by Russell Edwards and Jari Louhelainen, asserting that the contamination of the fabric from which the samples were extracted does not allow for reliable analysis. Furthermore, it has been criticized that mitochondrial DNA is not a unique identifier, unlike nuclear DNA, as many people can share it, making it more suitable for excluding rather than certainly identifying a suspect.

The mystery surrounding the true identity of Jack the Ripper appears to be far from resolved.

An exhibition on the investigations related to the Jack the Ripper case was inaugurated in 2015 at the Museum located on Cable Street, London.