Jack the Ripper
Murder is an old idea in human society and we have witnessed thousands of murderers in history yet there is something very frightening about a murderer who disappeared without being detected at all. You can also concur with it that Jack the Ripper is one of the most unsettling unresolved crimes of all time. I think this case can teach us that in some cases the force of evil works in a free environment and justice cannot do anything regardless of the number of resources we spend on resolving this case. I am saying that it means all our progress in forensic science and methods of investigation are just nothing when we fail to recognize the murderer that lived more than a hundred years past. I am saying so because this case brought me to the recollection of how humans arrogantly present their skill to solve problems and that they had miserably failed when it was most needed by the victims and their families.
Jack the Ripper worked in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888 in a time span of few months between August and November. Even in the olden days, serial killers were not perceived as a phenomenon and the police did not have a systematic method of catching such predators. I would assume that killers would instinctively be caught due to their own mistakes but in this case the Ripper killed at least 5 women and maybe dozens of women without leaving any evidence to trace them. The victims were all poor ladies employed as prostitutes in the unsanitary slums of East London where there was already violence. In addition, majority of those women were killed with the use of surgical mastery, implying that the murderer had medical knowledge and as such, it made investigators suspect doctors butchers or any other person who had medical training.
The killings created a state of complete riot in London and the newspapers were fueling the morbid curiosity of people on the gory details of the same. What is shocking may be that the murderer purportedly wrote letters to the police and the media boasting of his acts of murder and vowing to kill more people. I also believed that in my opinion the letters were authentic or hoaxes that showed to the world how the case turned out to be a spectacle and not a proper investigation. These were the journalists who valued sales of newspapers above the assistance in catching a murderer and their pretentiousness poisoned the whole case. The media instead of letting a tragedy be the actual truth made it entertainment. I was not aware of how devastating irresponsible journalism is until I read various cases where I came to learn that more than victims are benefited by media interference, criminals end up benefiting.
The culprits investigated by the police in the years ranged a wide spectrum of criminals and suspects such as Polish immigrants, local tradesmen in the area who failed medical students, even the high society members. During the old times the investigation was crippled by the prejudice of classes and xenophobia where the authorities were fast to accuse foreigners and the poor. I understood that bias is a blindstreet to investigators and wastes their time in chasing innocent individuals and letting the real criminal off the hook. Therefore, I made the conclusion that Jack the Ripper was probably a common-looking average individual that did not cause any suspicion in his everyday life. And so he would be walking through society undetected since the society anticipated a monster to appear monstrous when the evil is usually pretending to be normal.
The murders were abruptly stopped in November 1888 and there is no clear-cut explanation as to why so. According to some theories, the Ripper was killed in an institution or just left London to another place. It seems to me that the abrupt termination is nearly as inexplicable as the murders. However, simultaneously as modern forensic scientists have tried to crack the case through the DNA analysis of preserved body parts with one such contentious study indicating that the murderer was a Polish immigrant called Aaron Kosminski but numerous forensic scientists indicate that the evidence is inconclusive.
The saddest aspect of the phenomenon of Jack the Ripper is that the case was romanticized and commercialized. As you could see, Whitechapel now benefits off Ripper tourism by having walking tours museums and merchandise entirely focused on brutal murders. In some situations this is immensely disrespectful to the real women with names such as Mary Ann Nichols Annie Chapman Elizabeth Stride Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. They were the poor forgotten victims and whose humanity is being wiped away by our fascination of their killer. Unless we recall these women as individuals not only body counts the case but this counts it as ghoulish entertainment instead of a tragedy that should be remembered.
The enigma has spawned innumerable theories books documentaries and even the accuse the British royalty of involvement using imaginative conspiracy theories. I believe that it does indeed exasperate earnest investigators that speculation so wild so frequently has the effect of drowning analysis. In addition it demonstrates that unresolved cases serve as tabula rasa and others use it to paint whatever they wish to believe even when evidence and reason are used against them.
Therefore, it is most unlikely that the real identity of Jack the Ripper will be established now that it has taken many years. They did not understand that it was a real person murder, a woman murder and making it a thrilling guess that is a disgrace to the dead. I suppose some mysteries will always remain to us and the inability to always get closure is not bad in my mind.