Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect

390 Pages·2011·21.79 MB·English

by  Robert House

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Coming to London
1: “Fear God and the King”
2: 1881: The Storm Breaks
3: The Victorian East End
4: Jewish Tailors in the East End
Part Two: 1888
5: The Murders Begin
6: Martha Tabram
7: Polly Nichols
8: The Police
9: Annie Chapman
10: Elizabeth Stride
11: Kate Eddowes
12: Lonesome October
13: The Batty Street “Lodger”
14: Mary Kelly
15: The Curtain Falls
16: An Encore? The Murder of Frances Coles
Part Three: Aaron Kozminski
17: Downward Spiral
18: Anderson’s Suspect
19: Macnaghten and Swanson
20: A Few Possible Leads
21: The Identification, the Witness, and the Informant
Part Four: A Modern Perspective
22: Not Guilty?
23: A Modern Take on Serial Killers
Modern Advances in Criminology
The FBI’s Profile of Jack the Ripper
A Motivational Model
24: Geographic Profiling
25: Schizophrenia and Violence
26: Murder Will Out
Notes
Introduction
1. “Fear God and the King”
2. 1881: The Storm Breaks
3. The Victorian East End
4. Jewish Tailors in the East End
5. The Murders Begin
6. Martha Tabram
7. Polly Nichols
8. The Police
9. Annie Chapman
10. Elizabeth Stride
11. Kate Eddowes
12. Lonesome October
13. The Batty Street “Lodger”
14. Mary Kelly
15. The Curtain Falls
16. An Encore? The Murder of Frances Coles
17. Downward Spiral
18. Anderson’s Suspect
19. Macnaghten and Swanson
20. A Few Possible Leads
21. The Identification, the Witness, and the Informant
22. Not Guilty?
23. A Modern Take on Serial Killers
24. Geographic Profiling
25. Schizophrenia and Violence
26. Murder Will Out
Photo Credits
Index

Copyright © 2011 by Robert House. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Foreword
by Roy Hazelwood
Jack the Ripper. The name itself speaks of serial murder, mutilation, and fear.
Even though his identity remains shrouded in mystery, he is, without question,
the most infamous serial killer in the history of the world. It has always been
interesting to me that Jack’s fame persists in spite of the fact that by today’s
violent crime standards, he would not rate more than a passing interest by the
media. After all, there were only five or six or seven victims.
I first became intimately familiar with the case in 1988 when John Douglas
and I were invited to prepare a profile of the unidentified serial killer known as
Jack the Ripper. We were asked to present our findings on a television special,
before a live audience, marking the one hundredth anniversary of the Ripper’s
crimes. This program was on a major network and was hosted by the noted actor
Peter Ustinov. We were provided with police and autopsy reports, background
information on each of five Ripper victims, maps depicting the crime locations,
and articles and book chapters written about the killings.
We prepared the profile and traveled to Hollywood to rehearse for the show.
We met with the other guests who were to appear on the program: a noted
forensic pathologist, the curator of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum, and a female
jurist from London. John and I shocked our new colleagues when we quickly
told them that it was our opinion that Jack the Ripper was a paranoid
schizophrenic and that his criminal successes could be attributed more to luck
than to skill and intelligence.
We were surprised to learn that the program’s producers had identified five
suspects from the 1888 case. Included in the group was a schoolteacher who had
committed suicide, a surgeon for the royal family, a prince, and a mentally
disturbed person named Aaron Kozminski. John and I studied what was known
about the suspects, compared our profile to the group of suspects, and
determined that Kozminski most closely matched our profile. We then informed
our colleagues that if Kozminski wasn’t the Ripper, then it was someone just like
him.
Over the intervening years, I have been made aware of a number of other men
who were forcefully put forth as the Ripper. I have not, however, been convinced
that any of those men were as likely to be responsible for the murders as
Kozminski was.
Over those same years, I have often longed for more information on