Unsolved Files: Jack the Ripper — Shadows in Whitechapel

on the morning of 09/30/1888 a police constable found a message scrawled in chalk on a wall in goldston street just minutes from a fresh murder scene the police commissioner ordered it washed away before it could be photographed that single act of erasing evidence tells you everything about this case that the file on db cooper never could last week you and i looked at a man who vanished from the world this week we're staring into the file of a ghost who was never really there to begin with this is the whitechapel file

the one they call jack the ripper it begins in the filth and gaslight of london's east end august 31 mary anne nichols found with her throat cut twice deep abdominal wounds the papers call it a shocking murder they have no idea what's coming eight days later annie chapman same horrific throat injuries but this time something is missing the uterus surgically removed the killer is escalating he's taking souvenirs the police are lost they have no forensics no fingerprinting no way to analyze blood they're walking the streets interviewing witnesses who saw nothing in a neighborhood where no one trusts them and then the letters start arriving the first one sent to a news agency begins dear boss it's taunting arrogant

and it's signed with a name that will echo for more than a century jack the ripper then comes the double event september 30 the night of the erased graffiti first elizabeth stride her throat is cut but the killer is interrupted he's furious less than an hour later he finds catherine eddowes he doesn't make the same mistake he mutilates her body removes her left kidney and part of her uterus this time he sends a piece of that kidney to the head of the whitechapel vigilance committee the note with it starts with one phrase from hell so who was he this is where the file turns into a library of speculation the police had their favorites there

was montague druitt a barrister who was found drowned in the thames a month after the last murder a convenient suspect too convenient there was erin kosminski a polish immigrant and hairdresser who lived in the heart of whitechapel he had a history of mental illness and a documented hatred of women he's the one many modern investigators favor but the evidence is circumstantial at best and then there's george chapman another immigrant who was later convicted and hanged for poisoning three of his wives an investigator at the time said you have got jack the ripper at last but poison is a world away from a knife in a dark alley what does it all add up to a ghost a phantom created by social misery police incompetence and a killer who understood something profound about terror he wasn't just a murderer he was a performance artist of death the surgical skill suggests a doctor or a butcher the boldness suggests a man who could walk away from a crime scene

blood on his hands and simply disappear into the crowd he knew the alleys he knew the schedules he knew no one would look twice at a man with a woman in the dark corners of whitechapel the real horror of the file isn't the violence it's the empty pages that follow the investigation just stops the last canonical victim mary jane kelly was murdered indoors on november 9 it was the most gruesome scene of all and then nothing the letter stopped the killing stopped the shadow simply withdrew you don't solve a case like this you just close the file the name jack the ripper was a fiction a brand name for terror that sold newspapers but the

man himself was real he ate he slept he worked and he walked among his victims until the day he died taking his secrets with him some mysteries don't have a final chapter they just have a final victim