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Serial killer jack the ripper
Jack the Ripper and why he was never caught
Jack the Ripper and why he was never caught
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Jack the Ripper Terror of London
Jack the Ripper is infamous for his serial killings during the late 1800’s of London. Jack the Rippers legacy lives on today shrouded in folklore and mystery. We will look at the facts surrounding the macabre murders and examine evidence provided by the victims, the press, and police. To first understand the case of Jack the Ripper, you have to know about a very different time period, the year 1888 in London. In the late 1800s, London's East End was a place that was viewed by English citizens as the place for outcasts and immigrants. London was seen as a dreamland to the immigrants, one where skilled Irish, Jews, and Russians, came to start a new life and start businesses. However the harsh reality was that
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The first murder took place on August 31, 1888. The victim was Polly Nichols, a 42-year-old alcoholic. The Ripper cut her throat from ear to ear left to right, back to the vertebrae, and sliced open her abdomen from pelvis to stomach but no organs were removed. The autopsy found she sustained stab wounds to the vagina. The next killing took place on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Annie Chapman was 45 years of age, an alcoholic. She was found with her neck cut twice very deep almost as, in an attempt at deception. Her abdomen was cut open up to the breastbone and her small intestines placed on her right shoulder. Parts of her vagina and bladder had been removed and put over her left shoulder. On Sunday, September 30, 1988, Jack the Ripper committed a high risk double murder. The Ripper first attacked Elizabeth Stride in a courtyard. Stride was a 45-year-old alcoholic. The Ripper had cut her throat, severing the windpipe. The mutilation was very minimal compared to his previous victims and it is believed he was interrupted by a carriage entering the courtyard. Within the hour a second body was discovered in the City of London. Catherine Eddowes, 43 years, was, like her fellow victims, an alcoholic with a broken …show more content…
Many letters were received by the police claiming to be the killer. Most of these we fake and just attempts a getting attention. However one letter made the killer infamous. The Dear Boss letter mailed to the Central New Agency mentioned sending ears to the police and the letter was dated before the double murder in which Jack the Ripper tried to cut off Catherine Eddowes ear. The letter latter read “My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don’t mind me giving the trade name.” The letter was latter published in an attempt to get somebody to recognize the killer’s handwriting. The amount of hours spent investigating hundreds of letters sent to the police ended up hampering the investigation which was already short on man power. As the investigation went on with no new suspects the press wore down the integrity of the Scotland Yard with public outcry for not producing results. This further decreased the moral for the
On May 21, 1980, Katherine Reitz Brow was stabbed over 30 times in her Ayer, Massachusetts home. There were bloodstains throughout the house and her purse, some jewelry and an envelope where she had been known to keep cash was missing. Investigators found hair, blood ladened fingerprints on the toaster and the kitchen faucet which was left running. A bloody paring knife which was perceived to be the murder weapon was found in the waste basket. Mr. Water’s became a suspect because he lived next to the victim with his girlfriend, Brenda Marsh. He also worked at a local diner that Ms. Brow frequented and employee’s revealed that she had been known to keep large amounts of cash in her home.
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.
How the Police Tried to Catch Jack the Ripper In the 1880s, the police were very different from the police of today. Their main propose was crime prevention and their methods their methods were very primitive Source F is a police leaflet, which was published after the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Kate Eddowes; it was written to aid the police in their investigation it was also written in a factual tone, it suggests that the police were appealing for any information regarding suspicious characters. Because of the timing of this leaflet shows the desperation faced by the police but for because of the many defects reasons the leaflet was not successful: The first being that they did not offer any description of the murderer at all, 'person to whom suspicion was attached'. The second being that they still assumed that the person was living in Whitechapel, when there was a large amount of evidence suggested that the murderer wasn't from Whitechapel (the fact that the murders were all done on the weekends or on Friday nights, which suggests that he had a job and came into Whitechapel to murder).
Most statements from witnesses claimed that, the 'Ripper' suspect must have been a white male, average or below average height, between 20-40 years old, did not dress as a labourer or homeless person and was right handed. They also felt he had accommodation in the East End of London, possible medical connections, may have been a foreigner, and also have a regular job as the murders took place at the weekend. Because this description did not single out anyone, it made it more difficult to arrest anyone as the evidence was very weak. Jack the Ripper was a clever man, as we can see from his Modus Operandi, as he managed to choose different locations for his murders, yet they were all very close to both public and police scrutiny. Even though they were supposed to be keeping a close observation over Jack the Rippers movements, they were too complex for them and the Whitechapel area was so vast.
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.
The people out at the time of the murder would have been tramps and drunk, not reliable witnesses. The East End streets were maze-like. and easy to escape from. These were a few of the problems the police encountered. The snare Jack the Ripper was extremely clever to be able to evade the police.
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
Mary Ann “Polly'; Nichols, aged 42, was the first of the Ripper victims, according to dedicated Ripperologists. Her body was found on Buck’s Row by a patrolling constable at 3:15 a.m. on August 31st 1888. The ripper had slashed her throat twice, and her abdomen had been savagely cut exposing the intestines. Her vaginal area had also been mutilated. The woman approximately five feet two inches tall with brown graying hair, brown eyes, and several missing teeth. Mary Ann Nichols had a drinking problem and spent most of her life making her earnings as a prostitute. She was a sad, destitute woman, but one that most people liked and pitied.
Jack The Ripper 1. From looking at the newspaper article on source A, I can determine the following information regarding the murder of Polly Nichols. Firstly, I can ascertain that it was the second of the Whitechapel murders. I can draw this conclusion from the first few words 'the two murders which have so startled London'.
“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.
Though many have been named, only a few have good cases. However, Michael Ostrog fits the bill well. He was a certified physician and was known to be insane. Along with Druitt, he was also placed on the top three list. In late November of 1888, he received his final, but not first, jail sentence (Cohen 6). Another suspect who wasn’t listed by Macnaghten, James Maybrick, wasn’t considered until a very detailed 63 page diary turned up, signed “Jack the Ripper.” He was poisoned by his wife in 1889, but before he died, he told her that he was indeed The Ripper. His wife says that the tales were simply meant to scare her, but there were details Maybrick mentioned that none other than The Ripper would know; each of them checking out as true. The most exclusive detail being that there would be no more killings, and there weren’t. On October 9th, 1888, a newspaper in Liverpool was released stating that the next attack would be in Dublin. This message was quickly refuted saying it was a hoax and that Jack would be in New York at the time. This message was signed Jack the Ripper Diego Laurenz. In Spanish, Diego means James and the name Laurenz might have been used because it sounds similar to Flauence, the name of Maybrick’s wife (Rubinstein 5-8). The many suspects named only make it harder for ripperologists, but the tale lives through them. With new technology and information being released,
Jack The Ripper Jack the Ripper, as he was rightly called, was an infamous murderer in London, England in 1888, almost one hundred years ago. Jack the Ripper is by no stretch of the imagination the first serial killer ever, but the first to do so in a largely populated area, although it seemed he had no malice for other people. Although the number of kills under the belt of Jack the Ripper is unofficial, it is estimated to be around four to seven women, all prostitutes within the area. He also had no accomplice’s or accessories to the crime. Another fact was that Jack the Ripper escaped scott-free, with no charges.
Edward Pierce, the criminal mastermind behind the robbery, never revealed his exact motive for committing “the crime of the century.” Trapped in an era of stifling moral standards and harsh class distinctions, Pierce committed The Great Train Robbery in defiance of the oppressive social conventions propagated by The Crown. Although 19th century Britain was a world economic power, ruled over history’s most extensive empire, and had the best quality of life, millions of people lived lives of squalor in overcrowded, dangerous slums. Some higher-class Victorians blamed these deplorable conditions for the ongoing crime epidemic in Britain while others simply attributed intellectual and social inferiority to
In the San Francisco Bay area, as well as in the rest of California, the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s was a time of terror and fear. What started out as a seemingly random, but brutal murder on the night of October 30th, 1966, turned out to be the start of a series of horrific murders that would span 2,500 suspects, 56 possible victims, and over 400 miles. On the calm, cool night of December 20th, 1968, a young seventeen year-old named David Arthur Faraday was getting ready to take a young sixteen year-old named Betty Lou Jensen on her first date.
Britain’s appetite for ravenous cheap fiction allowed Sherlock Holmes to entertain the young and educated scene with little cash. While being published by The Strand Magazine, where he gained most of his popularity, was sold for six sixpence (2.5 modern pence). Holmes was a luxury that was affordable luxury – even for poverty stricken teenager. A year after Sherlock Holmes was published in 1887, a man nicknamed the “Leather Apron”, better known as the “Jack the Ripper” killed five or six women in the East End in London around the White Chapel