19. The Jack the Ripper case defies parameters
Over 132 years after the terrorizing of Whitechapel in 1888, the range of the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper remains in dispute. Did the Ripper murder just five, as Macnaghten postulated in 1894, or only three, as others contend? Were the murders preceding the canonical five, of Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly also perpetrated by Jack the Ripper? How about the several murders which occurred in and around Whitechapel following those five? Did the killer flee to America, or Canada, or Australia, or to parts unknown to continue his gruesome spree? When did Jack the Ripper stop killing and why? For over a century these and other questions have continued to remain unanswered, though some claim to have definitively answered them, contrary to the known facts. Jack the Ripper not only can’t be caught, he also continues to defy definition.
The motives for the killings remain equally elusive. The original investigators dismissed the killings of being sexually motivated, though some later disputed them. Modern criminal profiling points to several of the contemporaneous suspects as likely the killer, indicating there was at least more than one Ripper. DNA evidence points “conclusively” to two suspects, leading to the same conclusion. They too, are disputed by DNA scientists and forensic experts. Disputes over the number of victims, locations of killings, police mishandling of evidence, missing evidence, and other discrepancies continue to feed speculation. It does not provide the knowledge of who Jack the Ripper really was. It’s unlikely it ever will.