A murder hunt that spans 3 centuries: the true face of Jack the Ripper

"After more than 130 years of horrific killing intent, who is the serial killer is still confusing, and the hidden truth is quietly waiting for the day to be seen again"

the name Jack the Ripper , Speaking of it, we will not feel unfamiliar.

, as the most notorious murderers in the world, from August 7th to November 9th, 1888, he specially selected women’s abdomens and cut them open. Pulling out his intestines, smashing his face, and brutally killing five prostitutes one after another, but the true identity has been confusing and confusing for nearly a hundred years, and it has shrouded people's hearts like a shadow.

Published on September 21, 1889 in "Puck" magazine, painted by the famous cartoonist Tom Merley, the description can not identify the murderer of the Whitechapel murder.

This serial homicide lasted for three months and affected the world for 130 years. It is not only a major event in the world's criminal investigation history, but also an important source of IP for many novels, movies, and TV dramas in 130 years. There is still no conclusive conclusion.

"Puck" magazine published a cartoon on September 29, 1888: "The Ignored Avengers

crime history female _p3span 8 month 1888

The corpse was found in the White Chapel in the Eastern District. The deceased was a middle-aged prostitute Martha Tabljan, with 39 knives in her body, nine of which went through her throat.At 3:45 a.m. on August 31 of the same year, another prostitute, Mary Ann Nicholas, was found dead in the Tunhuo district near the Whitechapel. She was 43 years old. Not only was her face bruised, part of her incisor teeth fell off, and her neck was cut twice. But the cruelest thing was that the abdomen was cut open, the intestines were dragged out, and the baby girl in the abdomen was severely stabbed by a sharp blade.

Eight days later, an old coachman living at 29 Hanbury Street found a woman's body in the rear fence of his cheap rental apartment. The dead was 47-year-old prostitute Anne Cha Pullman. Like the previous deceased, she had her throat slit and a cesarean section. The intestines were thrown onto her right shoulder, and part of the uterus and abdomen were cut away by the murderer.

At one o'clock in the morning on September 30, 1888, a coachman found the body of Elizabeth Stade near his home. Different from the first two victims, the 44-year-old Swedish prostitute died of excessive blood loss from the left carotid artery, although she had her throat cut, but she did not receive a caesarean section. When a large number of police rushed to the mortuary of Elizabeth Steid, at about 1.45 in the morning, the then 46-year-old prostitute Katharine Adols was found lying dead in the Bishop's Square. In addition to the same cut and laparotomy, the intestines were thrown to the right chest, and part of her uterus and kidneys were also taken away.

On November 8, 1888, a 25-year-old young prostitute named Mary Jane Kelly died in bed: she was naked, her neck was strangled, and her chest and abdomen were covered. Cut open, the ears, nose and breasts of the face were also cut off.

The above five homicides are also generally recognized cases committed by Jack the Ripper. Due to the close proximity of the methods and the high overlap of the victims’ occupations, the police finally realized that these cases may be,The same serial killer continues to kill for the same criminal motive.

The locations of these cases were concentrated near the Whitechapel in the East End of London. It was a well-known immigration distribution center at the time. Tens of thousands of immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe settled here. Due to the meager income of has long become a hotbed of poverty and crime, and homeless gangsters and soliciting prostitutes live on the streets.

Jack the Ripper became a world-famous mystery for 130 years, not only because of the extremely brutal methods in these crimes, the scene was terrible, but also because Jack the Ripper was continuing the case. , Another letter after another openly challenging the police also quietly arrived.

For example, on September 27, the day before the death of the two girls on the 30th, the local news agency in London received a handwritten letter claiming to be a serial murderer and mocking the police. The letter was signed on September 25. Two details of the letter caused an uproar. The first is that the murderer mentioned in the letter that "in the future, he will cut off the ears of ladies and give them to the police." This point appeared in the Edworth murder case five days later. The second is that the murderer called himself "Jack the Ripper" in the signature. Since then, this series of murders have been dubbed "Jack the Ripper".

The third message sent by the suspected murderer: "From Hell"

Although these handwritten letters have been retained to this day,However, because these possible murderers’ letters were exposed to the media prematurely, as a result, there were imitators similar to the letters at that time. This directly caused people in later generations to be unable to even judge which letters are true and which are imitated. Which ones are pranks.

The common characteristics of these murders show that Jack the Ripper is an extremely cruel killer, has a special hatred of prostitutes, and is likely to have been trained in human anatomy . But because these victims had the same occupation and similar scene of the murder, there was a serious lack of overlap among people. Moreover, there were a large number of prostitutes like , London East End, and the management was extremely chaotic. Therefore, the police were quite involved in investigating the murderer. The sense of finding a needle in a haystack. Because there was still widespread anti-Semitism and anti-Eastern European immigrants in London at that time, the first batch of skeptics believed that Jack the Ripper might be a religious fanatic Jew, or a crazy Eastern European immigrant. With more details of the murder, especially the murderer’s act of dissecting the deceased’s abdomen and taking away the organs in many cases, more and more people are beginning to realize that the murderer may have received medical, especially anatomical training.

But it was after the murder of Kelly that Jack the Ripper seemed to disappear suddenly. No more murders with similar characteristics have appeared. It was not until 1892, four years later, that the London police announced that they had stopped investigating the serial murder of Jack the Ripper, and neither the murderer nor the murder reappeared.

list of suspects

Although Jack the Ripper has attracted the attention of the world, so far,There is no clear evidence that the murderers were specific people. On the contrary, with the passage of time, the number of researchers has increased, and more and more suspects have been identified by everyone, and their identities have spread across all walks of life in London at that time. On the contrary, they are traditionally considered the most suspected suspects. After the information was released, the innocence was gradually paid off.

Matagu John Dolittle (1857.8.15-1888.12.1) teacher, is also a famous athlete and lawyer. His body was found floating on the Thames on December 31, 1888. Since the time of his disappearance and death was not far from the fifth homicide, and the homicide no longer occurred after his death, many investigators at the time believed that he was The ripper.

Aaron Kosmiski (1866.2.13-1919.9.9), a member of the Jewish community in London. In the 1880s, he fled from Poland to England with his family to escape the persecution of Jews by Tsarist Russia. He was listed by the police as one of the three key suspects, and an eyewitness also identified him as the murderer. However, the police did not have enough evidence to charge Kosminsky. After he was sent to a mental hospital because of a serious mental problem, the police removed him from surveillance. He eventually died in a mental hospital at the age of 53.

Aaron Kosmsky

Lizzie Williams, wife of the British Royal Doctor John Williams, was mentioned in the book "Jack the Ripper: Woman's Hand" Think of it as Jack the Ripper. The book believes that all of the five murdered prostitutes had improper relationships with the British royal doctor John Williams. The last victim, Mary Kelly, has maintained an improper relationship with Williams for a long time. Because Lizzie was barren, Williams had almost been thrown into the cold palace. Therefore, in a state of extreme anger and insanity, she dug up the uterus of three victims and regarded it as a cruel punishment for the victims.

Lizzie Williams

Sir John William (1840-1926) Queen Victoria 's friend,The accused doctor knew all the victims, killed them and mutilated them in order to conduct research on infertility.

is considered to be " the ripper Jack" there are about 200 suspects, however, none of these suspicions have found indisputable evidence. Various speculations have been emerging, and even the British royal family and Prime Minister Churchill family have become suspects. In 1929, it was speculated that Jack the Ripper was a doctor who lost his son. He died because of his son contracting an illness from a prostitute, starting a crazy revenge against the prostitute. In 1959, some people even put forward the theory with bigger brains, thinking that it all originated from the international political conspiracy of Tsarist Russia against Britain at that time, and its purpose was to put pressure on London by creating terrorist incidents, causing the situation in London to get out of control.

Portrait of the suspect

A cloud of truth and falsehood

The British National Archives still preserved many threatening letters to the police in the 19th century that the British National Archives have written to the police. However, these threatening letters have also been confirmed by later scholars that all these provocative letters came from newspaper reporter Frederick Best! In order to create a sensational effect, the British gossip media "Star", which was just established at that time, reported without facts that the successive terrorist murders were all caused by a "Ripper" named Jack. The little-known "Star" sold out for a while, and even the newspaper's reporter Frederick Best became popular. It was precisely because the public mistook the rumors of "Jack the Ripper" at the time that the real murderers were able to escape the severe punishment of the law.

Although more than a hundred years have passed since the case, the world’s attention to the case is increasing.The study of the past and the follow-up continues to come out of the old.

In 2007, a shawl from the scene of the murder of prostitute Catherine Edos appeared at auction. The seller is said to be one of his ancestors who was one of the police officers investigating the case. A well-known forensic doctor by criminologists The DNA samples were obtained by "vacuum suction" and it was determined that the blood on the shawl belonged to the victim Edos. Based on the traces of semen remaining on the shawl, through investigation, they found Aaron Kosminsky (he was also in 1888). One of the key targets suspected by the police in the Jack the Ripper case was that he was imprisoned in a mental hospital for mental illness in 1891 and died there later.) A female offspring of his sister, the comparison showed that the DNA was completely consistent.

However, this DNA is ubiquitous in 90% of European descent, and it is difficult to prove that it is the murderer.

There are still divergent opinions about the truth. 130 years have passed, and the fog on Jack the Ripper has not been lifted. Both the victim and the world are waiting for the day when the truth is revealed.