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Solving the Puzzle of Jack the Ripper

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The One Who Got Away: Solving the Puzzle of Jack the Ripper In August 1888, the dwellers of London’s East End arose from sleep to find their lives a little darker than before. Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute, had been viciously murdered, nearly decapitated by two cuts to the throat, her abdomen displaying multiple cuts (Begg 46). Over the next three years, ten other women would be murdered in the Whitechapel area. While there is no definitive proof linking these murders to one killer, analysis reveals that six of them display similarly rare crime characteristics: mutilation of genitalia, prostitute victims, and posing of bodies (Keppel, et al. 18-9). Five are commonly attributed to Jack the Ripper (1-2). Though they may not have been …show more content…

A third theory identifies Francis Tumblety, an Irish American quack doctor, as Jack the Ripper. Tumblety lived in London when the murders were committed (“Jack”). Morley states that he was a strong suspect and under police watch because a shirt covered with blood was found in his home. British author Stewart Evans recounts: “He was arrested after the Miller’s Court murder, at which time, of course, the murders ceased. He escaped from England in early December 1888 and got back to America and was never arrested by Scotland Yard, despite the fact that they sent a team of detectives to America to try and catch him” (“Jack”). Morley describes Tumblety as a homosexual whose “feelings towards women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme.” According to Morley, Tumblety gave “an all male dinner party, lecturing his guests on the evils of women, and proudly displayed his extensive collection of female body parts, which he kept in glass jars.” Further adding to his qualifications as the killer, Evans asserts that “Tumblety used many aliases” (“Jack”), a quality suitable to a killer who would give himself a name. Like Evans, others have found it too coincidental for the murders to have ceased right after Tumblety’s arrest for homosexual acts and his subsequent escape to America. Abrahamsen offers a twist in considering the identity of Jack the Ripper by asking how one man can take enough time to strangle and mutilate

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