Jack the Ripper

What Really Happened?

De: Gary J. Rose

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The Murders, the Manhunt, and the Mystery That Never Died

In the autumn of 1888, fear settled over the narrow streets of London’s Whitechapel district.

Women were being murdered.

Police searched lodging houses, questioned suspects, followed witnesses, examined letters, and walked dark streets night after night. Newspapers competed for the most frightening headlines. Rumors spread faster than evidence. Then a letter arrived signed with a name that would become one of the most infamous in criminal history:

Jack the Ripper.

But was the letter actually written by the killer?

More than a century later, we still do not know.

In Jack the Ripper: What Really Happened?, author Gary J. Rose, Ph.D. takes readers inside Victorian Whitechapel during one of history’s most notorious unsolved murder investigations. Through fictional young Londoners Thomas and Eleanor Hale and Metropolitan Police Constable William Mercer, readers experience the fear and uncertainty of 1888 while the documented history unfolds around them.

The book follows the murders of the women now commonly known as the canonical five—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—while also examining the larger Whitechapel murder investigation and the possibility that other victims may, or may not, have been connected.

Who was Jack the Ripper?

Was he a doctor or surgeon?

A butcher?

A foreign immigrant?

A mentally ill man later confined to an asylum?

Did Scotland Yard actually identify him but lack the evidence to prosecute?

Did he write the famous “Dear Boss” letter that gave him his name?

Did he send the disturbing “From Hell” letter and the human kidney enclosed with it?

And why did the murders suddenly stop?

Using the FACT / DISPUTED / LEGEND / UNKNOWN approach of the I Witness History (Short) series, the book separates the surviving historical evidence from more than a century of speculation.

Readers will examine major suspects including Aaron Kosminski, Montague John Druitt, Francis Tumblety, and George Chapman, along with later theories involving royal conspiracies, medical professionals, mysterious gentlemen, and claims that modern DNA testing has finally solved the case.

Some theories are fascinating.

Some are possible.

Some have become legend.

None has conclusively proved the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Along the way, readers will discover what life was really like in Whitechapel, how Victorian police investigated murder without fingerprints, DNA, radios, security cameras, or modern forensic laboratories, and how newspapers may have helped transform an unidentified murderer into the frightening character history remembers today.

Most importantly, this is not only the story of Jack the Ripper.

It is the story of the women whose names were nearly swallowed by his legend.

The murderer became famous. The victims became evidence.

More than 130 years later, the mystery remains.

Perhaps the greatest question is no longer simply:

Who was Jack the Ripper?

It is:

What can the evidence actually prove?