Serial Killer #4: Jack the Ripper

Today I decided to use a different source to do my blog post! I use a podcast called ‘Crime Countdown’ by Parcast with hosts Ash and Alaina. I know I usually do the lesser-known serial killers, but I listened to this episode recently and thought it would be fun to switch things up a bit. So in this episode, “Jack the Ripper Theories,” they break down the top ten theories to who Jack the Ripper could have been. Their identity was never found, but there is a lot of speculation of who they were.

To give some background, Jack the Ripper was a serial killer in 1889 in London who stabbed and killed five women. They were alive one day, and in the morning, they were found stabbed to death. Their organs were removed, and the cuts that were made are what made this case stand out to a lot of people.

10. Thomas Cutbush is our first suspect. Investigations have found that he was not the Ripper. But his life is what makes him a good suspect. First, he was said to have read many medical books, and he wandered the streets at night and came home dirty (with what?) He was also held in an asylum which revealed he had violent tendencies. A theory says he became violent because he got syphilis which may have come from a sex worker leading him to kill them. There was no record of him with this disease. He escaped the asylum and stabbed one woman, and tried stabbing another. Still, people think he was trying to copy another serial killer that roamed the streets in the 1700s because he stabbed people but never actually murdered anyone. He was also younger than the eyewitnesses reported seeing.

9. Price Albert (Eddy) Victor is our second suspect. He was the black sheep of his family regarding his sexuality and how smart he was. A report came out in 1970 by a criminologist who supposedly got price Eddy’s notes which said that he contracted syphilis at a party that made him insane and drove him to murder. The article says the royal family knew he was the killer but didn’t do anything about it. They ended up having him locked up in a private hospital but could escape killing the last Ripper victim. But, this criminologist report is flawed because nothing can be proven. Also, the person writing about price Eddy died two years before Eddy did, so that he couldn’t have written about his death. But in the report, his death is talked about. There is another theory that his tutor, James, was the RIpper because they were secretly together, and this was James’ way of acting out.

8. Lewis Carol is the next suspect. The author of Alice and Wonderland. It is believed that Carol was using anagrams in his writings starting at age twelve when he wrote home about the sexual assault he was experiencing in his all-boys school. In his nursery book about Alice and Wonderland, he wrote more anagrams confessing to the murders. He also owned medical books and lived close to where the murders took place. Also, two of the victims had their noses mutilated, which could stab his mother, who had a big nose.

7. Vincent Van Gogh is the next suspect. Yes, the artists. Shortly after he arrived in Londen, body parts were found in a river. This murder is not linked to Jack the Ripper, but if Van Gogh did kill this person, it would suggest that he could have been Jack. He s only truly a suspect because of a whole bunch of coincidences. Starting with his age, Van Gogh would fit the profile of being 35. Second, his handwriting, the Ripper wrote letters to the police, and Van Gogh’s handwriting matched that of the letters. Next to his painting, some people believe the face of Mary Kelly (a victim) is painted into his image “Iris’s” it’s said that the face looked like Kelly’s when she died, including having a missing nose. When Van Gogh disappeared after cutting his ear off, the most significant gap of letters was sent to the police. A counterpoint to this theory is that Van Gogh was already living in the south of France when Jack the Ripper started killing.

6. Lord Randolph Churchill is our next suspect. This theory links back to our suspect at number nine, Price Eddy. It says that he was a part of a club that protected the thrown. While in this group, he met a girl, Annie, who was Catholic, and they had an illegitimate son, two big no-nos for royals. Here is where Churchill comes into play. He hired Mary Kelly to work where the girl worked to make it look like she would go in and replace Annie, but what they did was stage a kidnapping and give Annie a labotomy. This made her lose her memory of being with Eddy or having a baby. Meanwhile, Kelly bragged to her friends about knowing the royal family and told them the gossip; This led to her and her friends blackmailing Eddy and Annie. Eddy’s parents, the Freemasons, apparently drove around town to find everyone who knew something about Eddy and Annie and killed them. These five victims were all attributed to Jack the Ripper. The leader of this group was Lord Randolph Churchill.

5. Walter Sickert is our next suspect. In 2002, a book framed him and had forensic evidence. He was an influential artist in Great Brittin. One of the paintings was called “Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom.” This theory again involved Lord Eddy. Sickert was a part of the Freemasons that ran around town, killing the women who were going to murder the women who would ruin Eddy’s life. They found Sickert’s mDNA matched that from the letters sent from Jack the Ripper. His childhood led him to hate women. His wife divorced him for cheating and having a child with someone else. Also, no one knows if the letters from Jack the Ripper are authentic, so finding DNA on them might not be from THE Jack the Ripper. Also, Sickert was likely in France at the time of the murders.

4. “Jill the Ripper” is the next suspect. An investigator on the case pointed out that the killer could be a woman and everyone was too focused on it being a man than a woman killer could be walking freely. A woman told the inspector that they saw Mary Kelly on the morning of her murder at 8 a.m., but it was said that Kelly died at 3 or 4 that morning. The witness also said she saw a person wearing a shaw that she knew Kelly wore. The theory is that the killer took Kelly’s shaw and put on her clothes. This theory suggests that it could have been a midwife who would explain how the killer knew so much about anatomy, and also, they wouldn’t seem out of place walking around at any hour of the night. Also, they wouldn’t look suspicious walking around covered in blood. In 1939, a book suggested Jill the Ripper could have been an abortionist that was sold out by another woman and then put in prison. When she got released, she was out for revenge and killed other women.

3. Carl Fagenbomb is our next suspect. In 1894 Carl was put to death for killing his landlady. The night of the murder, her son found Carl trying to cut his mother’s throat after hearing screaming. Carl stabbed the woman and fled. His lawyer said when he was arrested he said that he struggled with the desire to kill women. His lawyer then asked him about the Jack the Ripper murders, and he said, “The Lord was responsible for my acts and that to him I confess.” This led his lawyer to believe that he was Jack the Ripper. In 2011 a documentary was released and dug into the theory about Carl and found that Carl might have been the killer. Carl was a Sailor and was docked in London, known for Sailors going to the “red light district.” It was also found that it is possible that the same person did not kill all five victims, and there are multiple Jack the Rippers, so Carl is one of many Jack the Rippers.

2. Montague John Druitt is our next suspect. His own family agreed that he could be the killer. He was the son of a physician. After high school, he went to a boarding school in the south of London and was fired right around Mary Kelly; the final body was found dead. The following month Druitt’s body was found in the river, and it was found that he died a couple of weeks after Mary Kelly. The reason he took his life has been debated, but theories are he was the Ripper, was struggling with his sexuality, or losing his job. He had a good social standing, so he could have easily found a new job, which rules out that idea. The counterpoint to this theory is that although some of his physical features looked like what witnesses described, his whereabouts don’t line up. He was more of a suspect because his family was convinced he was.

1. H. H. Holmes is our top victim. He was a serial killer in Chicago. It is possible that before he was in Chicago, he was Jack the Ripper in London. Construction on his Murder house in Chicago was being built around the Ripper killings. When the Ripper was active, there was no paper trail of Holmes in Chicago. Some people said that he always left a paper trail in Chicago, so going around the killings in London could mean he traveled there. There was an H. Holmes listed on a ship’s passenger log not long after Mary Kelly was killed, sailing from London to America. The M.O.’s also match up. H.H. Holmes was very methodical with his murders; Jack the Ripper is not given credit for how organized he had to be; police had to be at certain checkpoints at specific times, meaning Jack the Ripper had to plan out when he would kill these women and remove their organs. The great-great-grandson of Holmes inherited H. H. Holmes’s diary. One of them says that he was in London at the Ripper murders, but he was there with “an apprentance.” It is possible that the London Killings were his “practice” for his killings in Chicago.

My favorite possible killer would be H. H. Holmes or Jill the Ripper.