Jack the Ripper

*TRIGGER WARNING* Mention of the gruesome murders of Jack the Ripper

When talking about true crime and the gruesome horrors that come with it, using the word “favourite” to describe the story that fascinates me the most doesn’t seem right; but for lack of a better word, my favourite true crime story is that of Jack the Ripper. I have been fascinated by the details of Jack the Ripper since I was a little girl. (I was a weird child, don’t judge)

Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer in the Whitechapel district of London England for three months in 1888. However, there is speculation that he operated all the way to 1891. In the media Jack the Ripper also had two other names; “Whitechapel Murderer”, and “Leather Apron”.

Jack’s victims were all female prostitutes from the east end of London.

He had slit their throats and then once they were dead he would mutilate their bodies, mostly in the abdominal region. On three out of five of his victims, he removed some of their internal organs. This led investigators to believe he had knowledge of human anatomy and possibly some surgical knowledge.

In October 1888 the media received a letter from a man who took responsibility for all the murders, in that letter he also gave himself the name “Jack the Ripper”. However, some people do believe that the letter was a hoax and was created by the media to get more people interested in the murders. The only problem with this conspiracy is that the letter given to the media came with half of a human kidney which the letter explained it was taken from one of the victims. So if the letter was indeed a hoax, where did a reporter get half of a human kidney?

Evidence of where and when the murders took place they knew that Jack must have lived close to where the murders had taken place and that he has regular employment. However many people did believe that he was an upper-classman such as a doctor (since it appeared that he had surgical knowledge); because of some people thinking that Jack was a doctor is caused many people to be scared of people in the medical field and they would no longer go to the doctors.

There were three main suspects in the case, unfortunately, their names were never released but their professions were. One suspect was a member of the British royal family, another was an artist, and the last was a physician. All of the evidence against these individuals was circumstantial.

However, the case of Jack the Ripper does not stop there. On March 18th, 2019, 128 years after the Jack the Ripper case went cold new information surfaced that made the little girl in me (the one that was obsessed with Jack the Ripper) very happy. That information was that of a new study that was able to use DNA to identify who Jack the Ripper really was.

His name? Aaron Kominski. Aaron at the time was a 23-year-old barber who was of Polish descent. He was living in London at the time for work, he was in the same area as all of the victims, the only thing is that as far as it is known to us now, he didn’t have a motive.

Which leads to my fascination with serial killers. Why? Why do they do it? How? How can they take the life of a human being and see no wrong? The story of Jack the ripper will always stick with me, because Jack the Ripper it opened a whole world of other serial killers and true crime. Thanks to that obsession lead me to go into behavioural science so I can learn all about the why’s and how’s of the serial killer's mind.