The Ripper murders were a series of murders that occured in Whitechapel District in the East End of London (MPS). The murders were attributed to an unidentified serial killer widely known as Jack the Ripper. Canonically, the murders consist of brutal attacks against at least five women (Cook). These murders were committed against women that resided in Whitechapel distract which was notoriously known for its poverty and socially disadvantaged. The sheer brutality of the murders and the sensationalized media surrounding the cases brought unparalleled attention to London’s impoverished population. And yet, the killer was never caught and there has been an air of mystery surrounding the murders ever since. The killer’s particularly unsettling modus
The existence of a single type of weapon that inflicted the wounds and nature of the murders point to a single suspect that acted alone. Many suspects were able to be ruled out for at least some or all of the murders due to alibis. However, one man did not have solid alibis for any of the murders: Charles Allen Lechmere or also known as Charles Cross. This makes him an interesting person to entertain as a possible suspect if you believe that the five murders were done by the same hand. The first ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols, just so happened to be discovered by Lechmere as he was heading to work (Casebook). Criminologist Doctor Gareth Norris of Aberystwyth University in the documentary, Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence, reported that Lechmere had lied about to police about finding the body. Furthermore, when Lechmere was prompted for his name in an inquest, he gave the name Charles Cross instead of his actual name (Holmgren and Norris). The paths that Lechmere took to and from work accompanied with his familiarity with the Whitechapel area fit into the pattern of the murders. The lack of alibi and the ability for the suspect to have been at all the murders is what many of the other suspects lack. While Lechmere cannot be definitively pointed to as Jack the Ripper, the evidence, albeit circumstantial, does paint him as an excellent suspect due to him having the ability to present at all murder
The first suspect is Edward “Bennie” Bedwell. Bedwell was a local dishwasher who was questioned at a local motel for three days (Sigona). What supported Bedwell as a suspect is that he actually confessed to the murder (Sigona). There were multiple problems with Bedwell’s confession, however. The first problem with his confession is, “Bedwell couldn’t read or write, so it would be nearly impossible for him to understand what he was confessing to” (Sigona). The second problem with his confession is “After a time, everyone realized Bedwell’s story didn’t add up. There were inconsistencies, including the fact that Bedwell said he was with the girls for a month before they died” (Sigona). Finally, the main problem with his confession is that the girls were dead within four hours of leaving home (Sigona). The other suspect in the case of the murder of Barbara and Patricia Grimes is Max Fleig. Max Fleig was a young man in his teens when the Grimes sisters were murdered (MacGowan). Max offered to take a lie detector test, which he failed (MacGowan). The reason Fleig was released even after failing the test is “The police began to focus on him as a prime suspect until they were told that it was illegal to polygraph someone underage. The police released him, many of the authorities thinking he was their man” (MacGowan). Another example that supports Fleig as a suspect is that he was imprisoned later in his life
Investigating Why the Police Were Unable to Catch Jack the Ripper I believe the most important reason why Jack the Ripper was so hard to catch was because of the lack of evidence. In those days they did not have as advanced technology as we have today for instance, we have forensics where we can tell from a strand of hair who that hair belongs to. In those days they were only just learning the significance of footprints to catching a villain. Another part to this is that Jack the Ripper was so random towards who he killed the police could not find a link between the murders except that they were all prostitutes, which did not really help, although prostitute murders were not terribly uncommon. The press coverage to the case didn’t help much as they had forced the police to investigate ‘Leather Apron’ and this wasted a significant amount of the police time which, if spent properly, may have allowed them to uncover more information needed to catch the Ripper.
‘James Bulger’ aged two years, was taken from his mother whilst she was shopping by two ten year olds named ‘Venables and Thompson’. James was diagnosed with horrific injuries and lead to his death. The two ten years had abducted, tortured and murdered James. The investigation indicated a brutal murder suggesting James had been struck by thirty blows to the skull causing deep bruising and the skull had been damaged with an iron bar and a brick. The investigation showed ‘Venables and Thompson’ had stripped James from the waist using ugly impropriety endows had also been inflicted on James. Both these boys had shown a form of a typical behaviour.
Jack Laidlaw is a universe apart from other examples of detectives, he examines the more intriguing issues of how and why people can commit the reprehensible crime of murder and the harrowing aftermath of crime and violence. Jack Laidlaw can deeply understand people more than anyone could ever imagine. Jack Laidlaw is an odd sort of detective, and this is an odd sort of novel. He lives and works in the gloomy, cheerless heart of urban Glasgow; and he keeps the works of "Camus"," Unamuno" and "Kierkegaard"in his top desk drawer, "where other detectives would normally rather keep their secret stashes of liquor." Unlike many other detectives with uppity tastes in literature, no one congratulates him for this or encourages him in any way; the whole world tells him that However, he persists in trying to understand crimes as well as solve them: “You want to live as if the rest of the world was just a necessary evil and that you have to be a monster to be a criminal,it's not true, it's all in peoples concealed heads. That may be a nuisance to you.
February 12th, 1993, a two-year-old boy goes missing in a busy shopping centre. Two days later his mutilated body was discovered by police on railway tracks. The people responsible for his murder were two males, aged just 10 years old. James Bulger’s murder was a watershed event in terms of criminal law, the justice system and the media. The media coverage was intense and went against the normal protocols on the reporting of juvenile crime. The pressure exerted by the media was also felt by politicians to answer questions on how this crime could happen and what they were going to do so it never happened again.
Murder is murder, or taking the life of another person. Repeatedly taking the life of other people is killing in a serial way. Serial killers are those individuals who repeatedly murder other people. There have been thousands of nameless serial killers, but none more famous than Jack the Ripper. The 1888 maliciousness of Jack the Ripper became one of the very first investigated, and most widely studied, serial murder cases, that established the protocols that are still used today to investigate these heinous crimes. The name Jack the Ripper has instilled fear in the public since 1888, and is a name that is synonymous with serial killing. Jack the Ripper set the bar by which all other serial killers are judged, studied, and
Jack the Ripper killed five women between the 31st of August 1888 and the 9th of November 1888. They were murdered in Whitechapel and Spitalfields in the East End areas of London, England. The killer was never caught and because of this there are hundreds on his personality and motives. No other killer in the British history rivaled that of the gruesome, mocking, utterly superior Jack the Ripper, a multiple murderer whose arrogance and boldness deified the entire police department of London and held in terror a great city for as long as he cared to roam its streets and slay at will.
To be the Zodiac Killer, this person had to be clever with his word. Everything he says is a puzzle on its own. Ciphers and an array of symbols hide his identity from the public. The main suspects were Lawrence Kane, Arthur Lee Allen, and Rick Marshall. Lawrence Kane was a prime suspect due to his nature of fitting as the descriptions of the Zodiac Killer. His height and weight resembled the Zodiac Killer very well, unlike the other suspects. Arthur Lee Allen was seen as the killer mainly because of odd nature of a person. He always seemed like he was near the killings when they occurred. He was also known to where a Zodiac watch and made many references to making bombs. The last suspect was Rick Marshall. He owned a typewriter like the Zodiac killer and he just so happened to live near one of the killings. These were the prime suspects for the
“Jack the Ripper,” was the name given to an unidentified serial killer in the White Chapel district of London in 1888. The name came from a letter left at the crime scene, written by someone claiming to be the killer. The letter was believed to be a joke and thought to be written by a reporter in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the investigation.
A sadistic temptress, the aid and probable prompt of an evil and cold blooded killer. Or a 'political prisoner being used as a scapegoat by politicians and the media'? This is a very sensitive subject and people often respond with fear and anxiety when we decide to examine things like the Moors murders. We are told that our curiosity is 'unhealthy', and that wanting to know,or openly debate about a matter which is 'naturally' closed, can only be the desire of a sick mind. We are encouraged to turn a blind eye and leave well alone.
In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, aged ten at the time, abused and murdered a two-year-old boy, James Bulger. There was media uproar about the case with the two boys being described as ‘evil’, ‘monsters’ and ‘freaks’ in the media (Franklin & Horwath 1998). There were many references to evil in the newspapers; with the telegraph stating that Thompson’s nickname was ‘Damien’ (from The Omen) and declaring that Venables birth date was Friday the 13th. The majority of society was united in the belief that these two boys were the epitome of evil and it was the media that nurtured this belief. ‘Newspaper reports were unequivocal in their denunciations of Thompson and Venables as inherently evil, prompted perhaps initially by Justice Morland’s description of the murder as an act of unparalleled ev...
In the words of Miss Ida B. Wells: The student of American sociology will find the year of 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. She is depicting a period of time in American history stained with the blood of hundreds of free African American men, women and children. These people were unjustly slaughtered through the practice of lynching within the South. Wells was an investigative journalist and was involved in exploring, reporting, publishing literature on, and eventually campaigning against the tragedy that became lynching. Through initial research she became aware of these atrocities occurring as spectacle within an alarmingly large, and even more notably, segregated, population of the United States. She dedicated over a decade to her cause, publishing three pamphlets in eight years, while also traveling to England twice to gain support for her anti-lynching campaign. In reading her work, one may get the feeling that Wells really was a master of her craft. She became aware of an extremely barbaric aspect of society, and she utilized every asset available to her in order to expose the facts surrounding the half-truths and whole lies established to justify this inhumane act. She diligently gathered the truth and compiled her writing very carefully. Using reliable statistics employed to document the atrocious number of these occurrences and actual accounts of individual events used to precisely convey the gruesome details of the crimes, she put forth exceptionally convincing arguments an...
The Frontline documentary, The Confessions (2010), tells the story of the Norfolk Four; four innocent men who were ultimately convicted of the rape and murder of Michelle Bosko. As horrendous and appalling as Michelle Bosko’s murder was, that was not the most shocking point of the film. More astonishing is the fact that four innocent men were convicted of the crime with the help false confessions obtained by the police investigating the case. This despite the fact that police and prosecutors had physical evidence and testimony from the real murderer that pointed to the innocence of the Norfolk four.
“It’s difficult to believe a human being would inflict so much pain and… so much brutality towards another human being,” said Detective Daniel Villars. In the documentary, “The Confession Tapes: 8th and H”, emphasizes on how a false confession tape ruined the lives of five innocent teenagers. Catherine Fuller was the victim of the brutal assault and murder that occurred at the alley of 8th and h street. The documentary argues that the suspects of the murder were teenage boys that were classified as “wolfpack” by the media. Some of them were questioned without their parent’s knowledge, and were all questioned for hours and hours without any break. There were found guilty for the crimes and sentenced 35 years to-life for a murder they didn't
In recent years, the subject of crime has become an increasingly important theme of political, academic, and public debate. In particular, the media today is more focused on victims than it has ever been before. Through media representations of the ‘ideal victim’, this essay will subsequently show how the media are able to construct and re-affirm pre-existing traditional ideologies within the public realm. In effect, this assignment will critically assess the concept of an ‘ideal victim’ and show how the media have used this when describing crime.