Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: A shadowy killer stalking women in the night.

Who savagely mutilated his victims

and left a bloody legacy

that shocked the world.

There have been many serial killers throughout history.

But perhaps none is more infamous than Jack the Ripper.

Yet, almost 140 years after terrorizing

the streets of London, the mystery still remains...

Who was Jack the Ripper?

How did he evade justice?

And why does he still fascinate us?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

Over the course of nine harrowing weeks,

the city was rocked by a series

of horrific murders...

...committed by an unknown killer.

The scene of these terrible crimes

was a neighborhood of London known as Whitechapel.

LYNN PICKNETT: This one smallish area at the East End of London,

Whitechapel, was a magnet

for not only the very poor people,

people who had menial jobs,

for example, but also the actually destitute.

The people who had reached the very

bottom rung of the ladder.

Who had nothing but the clothes they stood up in, often.

And, basically, you had

domestic violence, theft, and murder.

Whitechapel was an area where you had

a lot of homeless drifters.

You had what were known as the common lodging houses,

and this is where the drifters ended up.

It cost fourpence for a common lodging house.

You paid it to the keeper of the lodging house,

and then you could get your bed.

PICKNETT: Fourpence sounds like a very small amount of money.

But if you had nothing at all, it was quite something.

Society had very stringent rules about women earning

or having money, so many women turned to prostitution

as a way to make ends meet in those days.

Because there was literally nothing else for them to do.

MARK SAFARIK: If you look at Whitechapel in the late 1800s,

you have women who would not normally engage

in prostitution

sometimes hawking their bodies to make

any kind of money just to get, perhaps, a bed for the night.

So these would be high-risk victims.

Under the cover of darkness, going with people

they don't know

into dark remote areas of alleyways

becomes highly dangerous for them...

...very low risk for the offender.

It's a deadly combination for these women.

SHATNER: In the early morning hours

of August 31, 1888,

two delivery men were walking to work in Whitechapel,

when they made a gruesome discovery.

They found the body of 43-year-old Mary Ann Nichols

lying dead on the bloody pavement.

SETH KOVEN: Mary Ann Nichols had been married, had children.

But her marriage had fallen apart through alcoholism.

By the early 1880s, she had turned to sex work

in order to earn her living.

When Mary Ann Nichols' body was found,

um, at first, it looked like...

a simple murder.

Her skirts were up as though she was committing

an act of prostitution at the time she was killed.

That's not particularly unusual for London in its day.

However, when the body made its way

to the coroner, and further investigation was carried out,

they found that this was a murder and a mutilation.

And that raised some questions.

SHATNER: Just eight days

after the murder of Mary Ann Nichols,

on September 8, 1888,

the body of another woman, Annie Chapman,

was found lying in the courtyard

of a Whitechapel tenement.

ADAM WOOD: Annie Chapman had previously been married to, uh,

a man named John Chapman, but they separated

and then eventually she found that he had died.

She had tried selling items and taking

in crochet work, that sort of thing, to support herself,

but eventually she became more and more reliant

on casual prostitution to get her money for a nightly bed.

DONNELLY: When Annie Chapman's body was found,

there was no doubt

that a horrible mutilation had taken place.

And now it made police

begin to wonder whether these two

horrible acts, one week apart, in the same part of the city,

could well have been done by the same twisted individual.

NATE HENDLEY: This is a killer who hated women

and wanted to do maximum damage to them.

So it immediately gives off this sort of this cinematic image

of this sinister character in a black coat

going through the London fog,

walking on cobblestones at night.

SHATNER: The notion that a predator

was targeting sex workers in the Whitechapel district

set off a frenzy in the London newspapers.

DONNELLY: There were 158 daily newspapers

in London, and they were all in

competition for sales.

So when the press got ahold of this case of murderers,

it was exactly what they needed for the new

readership that they were trying to get.

You have to remember,

at the time these murders were taking place,

Sherlock Holmes mysteries were

the bestselling thing on the planet.

And everybody wanted to sink their teeth

into a nice, juicy mystery.

LYNNE McNEILL: Unfortunately, in the late 1800s, we see a real effort

from the media to let a cult of personality form.

And as much as we abhor violence and murder and killing,

there are some ways in which the serial killer

becomes this sort of folk hero of psychological deviance

that terrifies and intrigues us.

And so it's a delicate balance to make sure we're not

glorifying something that really shouldn't be glorified.

WOOD: The media drove the horrific nature

of the crimes in a sensationalist way.

Whitechapel was obviously in depths of degradation

and-and poverty, and yet, it was literally

two streets away from the, uh, the Bank of England, which was

headquarters of the empire at that time.

And so that become, very quickly,

a national issue and a national concern.

SHATNER: In the aftermath of the two brutal murders,

the London police were unable to identify a prime suspect.

As a result, they chose to cast a wide net

in their search for the killer.

More than 300 people were placed under investigation,

and 80 of them were brought in for questioning.

WOOD: Chief inspector Donald Swanson, who was head

of the investigation from Scotland Yard, wrote a report

at that time saying that potential suspects range

from the highest in the land, Queen Victoria's grandson,

um, right down to East End butchers and slaughtermen.

There was no shortage of candidates.

There were all sorts of people,

from Sir William Gull,

Queen Victoria's physician,

to her grandson, Prince Albert Victor,

or somebody acting on his behalf.

Even Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

Largely on the grounds that he lived at the London Hospital,

which was quite near Whitechapel.

So there are vast numbers

of candidates being put forward.

Some laughable, some quite plausible.

SHATNER: As the police scrambled to identify the man

who murdered Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman,

the vulnerable residents of Whitechapel braced themselves

for more attacks by the unnamed killer.

KOVEN: On the streets and corners

of Whitechapel, the reaction to the murders

changed drastically with the discovery of the second victim.

And it led to the creation

of watch groups patrolling the streets of East London.

Poor women were on high alert, vigilante groups formed

in order to find out who this murderer was.

Over the years, there have been countless theories

as to who committed the Whitechapel murders.

Yet so far, the answer has remained elusive.

But many researchers believe an important clue

can be found by examining a mysterious letter

that may have been written

by Jack the Ripper himself.

SHATNER: Three weeks after newspaper headlines announce

the brutal murder of Jack the Ripper's second victim,

Annie Chapman, the city remains gripped by fear.

As police investigators frantically

round up possible suspects,

a mysterious letter arrives

at London's Central News Agency

that appears to be from the killer himself.

It is written in red ink, riddled with spelling errors

and, strangely,

begins with the words "Dear Boss."

The Dear Boss letter was addressed to the "boss,"

Central News Office City uh, uh, or London City.

And it read...

And it really became a big news story because of that line.

SHATNER: The Dear Boss letter concluded with the words,

"Yours truly,

Jack the Ripper."

The Boss letter is interesting because

it is the first letter apparently having been written

by Jack the Ripper, where he gives himself a name.

Communicating with the public is not an unknown

phenomenon with serial killers,

because it makes them feel superior.

It's sort of this narcissistic view

of them being so much smarter than law enforcement.

"I can do what I want and you are not gonna identify me."

SHATNER: The Central News Agency handed the Dear Boss letter

over to police investigators,

who decided not to release it to the public,

for fear of inciting even more panic throughout London.

But then, two days after the letter had been received,

on September 29, the Ripper struck again.

And this time,

he killed two women

in a single night.

On the night of 29 of September 1888,

two women were murdered in the same night

within an hour of each other, less than a mile apart.

Elizabeth Stride was murdered in a yard on Berners Street.

She was found lying on the ground

with her throat cut, but no mutilations.

And then half a mile away, within the hour,

Catherine Eddowes was murdered in Mitre Square.

Her throat was cut and she terribly mutilated.

And the feeling is that the Ripper was

interrupted in the killing

of Elizabeth Stride, so he fled the scene,

but his lust for blood wasn't sated,

so he sought another victim,

found Catherine Eddowes and, and killed her in Mitre Square.

SHATNER: After Jack the Ripper claimed his third and fourth victims,

the police had no choice but to publish the Dear Boss letter,

in the desperate hope that

the public could help them find the killer.

But, unfortunately, the letter did little to solve the case.

Instead, it caused the fear across

London to actually increase, and ensured

that Jack the Ripper's infamous name

would go down in history.

KOVEN: Part of what made that letter horrifying

is that it was understood to have been written

and mailed before the murders were committed,

anticipating them.

When the murders occurred, it thus, for many,

confirmed that the Ripper manipulated the media

in order to gain attention for his gruesome crimes.

SHATNER: But, curiously, not everyone is convinced

that Jack the Ripper was the real author

of the Dear Boss letter.

In fact, some believe that the letter

was actually an invention of the media.

There was a very famous journalist at the time

called George Sims, and he used to write a column

for a Sunday newspaper called The Referee.

It was called the Mustard and Cress column.

And George Sims actually wrote in the column

the following week that the Dear Boss letter

was written by an enterprising London journalist.

And effectively, his argument is, when that letter was sent,

the hysteria in the media and the general fear

of the Whitechapel murderer, had started to die down.

And there is a theory that a newspaperman thought,

"We need to get more sales."

"So what better way to get sales?

We'll get a letter from the killer."

SAFARIK: The Boss letter was released by the police to the public.

Now, they were hoping that somebody might recognize

the writing style or the, or the handwriting itself.

But all it did was really complicate the investigation.

Because then you had hundreds

of people writing in, in the same

style as Jack the Ripper, claiming to be Jack the Ripper,

claiming to know who Jack the Ripper was.

WOOD: The Dear Boss letter encouraged readers

and people out there to send in their own letters

signed Jack the Ripper, most certainly from hoaxers,

people just looking to waste police time.

And every single letter, no matter how ridiculous

it-it seemed at face value,

had to be looked into by the police.

SHATNER: Most of the letters sent to the police

were dismissed as hoaxes.

But some experts believe that, despite the skepticism,

the Dear Boss letter was, in fact,

written by Jack the Ripper himself.

And as evidence, they point to a passage in the letter

detailing a trophy

he would take from his next victim.

The Dear Boss letter read, "Next time I operate I shall

clip the lady's ears off, and send it to the police."

And consequently, within 24 hours,

the police now found the horrifically mutilated body

of Catherine Eddowes and the killer

cut the earlobes as well.

SHATNER: Do Catherine Eddowes' nicked earlobes prove

that Jack the Ripper wrote the infamous Dear Boss letter?

More than 130 years after the letter was sent,

there's likely no way to be certain.

Yet modern forensic experts studying

the Dear Boss letter have used it to help develop

a criminal profile of Jack the Ripper.

And it paints an extraordinarily dark picture

of the shadowy killer.

We know that there were almost

no sightings of Jack the Ripper.

And even in the sightings that existed,

the descriptions are very vague.

So you're left with behavior.

He's organized, and he's engaged in planning.

That requires a slightly older individual.

This is a guy who probably prefers to be by himself.

So his job would probably entail

a job that-- where he could work by himself, isolated.

Could be a hospital worker.

Could work in maybe a butcher's shop.

Or work as a mortician's assistant.

I think he lives in the Whitechapel area,

because he's very familiar with the routines of the police.

And that's why he's a successful killer.

Did Jack the Ripper remain unidentified

because he was clever enough to outsmart investigators?

Perhaps.

But some researchers support a different theory.

They claim that the police never caught

Jack the Ripper because there was a conspiracy

to conceal his identity.

SHATNER: As the city gathers for its annual

Lord Mayor's Day celebration,

the caretaker of a tenement in the Whitechapel district

peers through an apartment window

and makes a gruesome discovery.

He finds the savagely mutilated body

of Jack the Ripper's fifth victim...

...25-year-old sex worker Mary Jane Kelly.

WOOD: When he looked through,

he found an absolutely horrific spectacle.

He saw a massive pile of bloody flesh lying on the bed,

on the bedside table,

almost unrecognizable from Mary Kelly.

PICKNETT: The murder of Mary Jane Kelly,

the last known Ripper victim,

was different for some reasons from the others.

One is that Mary was the only full-time prostitute

among the canonical victims.

The other is that it happened indoors.

She rented her own place.

Although she was incredibly behind with the rent.

29 shillings, that was a lot.

She was seen with a man, actually,

shortly before

she just disappeared forever into the house.

And this man came and tapped her on the shoulder

and said something, and they both laughed and walked off.

And she obviously invited the man

into her room.

But, sadly, there were no details about the man.

SHATNER: The murder of Mary Jane Kelly marked the first time

that the London police took photographs of a crime scene.

It was such a horrific attack,

that there was a new determination

to catch Jack the Ripper

before he struck again.

The city was in an uproar.

They were calling the police incompetent,

that they couldn't catch this guy.

I think one of the reasons

that they took photographs actually at the scene

is that they recognized

there's some dynamic here we need to capture.

They were under a lot of pressure

to solve these cases,

identify this individual.

I think anything that would help them to do that,

um, was gonna be in their best interest.

SHATNER: The use of crime scene photography

in Mary Kelly's murder investigation

was an invaluable tool for detectives

trying to identify Jack the Ripper.

But why weren't pictures taken

at the scene of the previous four murders?

Well, according to one theory,

it could have been due to a conspiracy

to conceal the Ripper's identity

because he was potentially a member

of a powerful secret society

known as... the Freemasons.

CHRIS RULI: Freemasonry has its origins in England.

It's a secret society based on

the Enlightenment values of the liberal arts and sciences.

Individuals who are Masons, they're not just

this small group of guys who are sort of on the sidelines.

There are prominent individuals.

Freemasonry was rampant

through the establishment of Victorian England.

There were Freemasons absolutely everywhere.

Through the royal family,

through the government,

through the aristocracy,

through the church, through local councils,

and in the police, of course.

If Jack the Ripper had been a Freemason,

in particular, if he had been a member

of an influential lodge,

it's more than likely he would have been protected.

SHATNER: But what evidence is there to suggest that

Jack the Ripper was a Freemason?

Some researchers point to a curious message

left near by the murder scene of Jack the Ripper's

fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes.

PICKNETT: When the police were called

to the horrendous discovery

of Catherine Eddowes' body,

according to the description in the police records,

on the wall nearby somebody had written,

"The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing."

But Jews are spelt J-U-W-E-S.

The spelling kind of summoned to mind

Jubela, Jubelum, and Jubelo,

who were three legendary assassins in Masonic law.

McMAHON: According to Masonic ritual,

these three men-- Jubelo, Jubela, Jubelum--

killed the chief architect

of King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem

3,000 years ago

because of the city's wickedness.

And their murder of the chief architect

is re-enacted in Masonic rituals

as part of the Master Mason ritual.

And so the spelling of "Juwes" was the thing that really

struck the police as a deliberate misspelling

that's meant to mean something central to Masonic belief.

SHATNER: Could Jack the Ripper have scrawled

the graffiti message to let other Freemasons know

that he was a member of their secret society?

It may sound far-fetched,

but, incredibly, the actions

of the lead investigator in the case

suggest that this theory could be true.

McMAHON: During the course of the police investigation,

Charles Warren, the London police chief,

took the controversial and rather odd decision

to wipe the graffiti off the wall.

Now why did he do that?

Maybe one of the reasons is that Charles Warren,

as a Freemason, saw this on the wall,

and thought, "Oh, no, no way

"am I having these murders in the East End

connected to Freemasonry."

And so he wiped that off.

JONES: There's a lot of people who say

the connection between Jack the Ripper and the Masons was

that the Masons orchestrated the murder

of the prostitutes who were blackmailing a member

of the royal family, Prince Albert Edward Victor,

who's Queen Victoria's grandson,

the heir presumptive to the throne of England.

In a nutshell, the theory is that Prince Albert Edward Victor

did frequent brothels,

and he'd had a child by a girl named Annie Elizabeth Crook.

And she told a particular group

of prostitutes her secret.

And they then set about blackmailing the royal family.

KOVEN: The speculation seems far-fetched,

but the Jack The Ripper murderer unfolds

during a mania for what is called "slumming."

When wealthy, elite people went to the precincts

of the poor on a night out to enjoy themselves.

At dens of inequity, sites of prostitution,

and East London was famous for the dangerous

proximity of both wealth and sexual exploitation.

JONES: According to the royal family conspiracy theory,

the Freemasons were then brought in to murder the prostitutes,

who were blackmailing the royal family.

Consequently, that's why police were made to erase the graffiti,

to take away any suspicion from the Masons.

Is it possible that the case of Jack the Ripper

remains unsolved because there was a conspiracy

to protect his identity?

Perhaps.

But there are some who argue that the killer was never

found in England because he was actually...

an American.

SHATNER: Two months before the horrific Whitechapel killing spree began,

an American named Francis Tumblety arrived

in the city, although this was not his first trip to London.

For more than a decade, Tumblety had sold a number

of medical remedies in both the United States and England,

and had also claimed to be a doctor

and treated numerous patients, in spite of the fact

that he was not a licensed physician

and had no formal medical training.

And there are those who believe that this dishonest,

self-proclaimed doctor was,

in fact...

Jack the Ripper.

PICKNETT: Francis Tumblety was an American

so-called "Indian herb doctor."

In other words, he basically was a quack

who went around selling

alleged remedies, cure-alls,

uh, preying on the gullible.

And he was over in London

during the time of the Ripper murders.

DONNELLY: Tumblety was horribly

misogynistic, 'cause it seems that

early in his life, he had, uh, married young.

Found out later that the woman he married was a prostitute

and had continued prostitution after they were married.

And so he would often espouse

hatred toward all of womankind,

and especially prostitutes.

He was a-an unpleasant character.

He used to host dinners, at which his great

party trick was to pass around anatomical

specimens in glass jars--

of female body parts,

including uteruses.

And Tumblety's name has been connected

with the whole Ripper murders

because he was a larger-than-life

unsavory character.

SHATNER: As London was shaken by the first four Ripper murders,

investigators began to suspect that

Francis Tumblety could be the killer.

DONNELLY: Several of the medical examiners who looked at the mutilated

bodies of the victims did comment that the killer

seemed to possess some rudimentary medical knowledge.

And we know that Tumblety was known

in the States to have performed at least, uh, one

abortion that went, uh, fatally wrong.

And was wanted by the police in

both the U.S. and Canada

for passing himself off as a fake doctor.

McMAHON: There is no doubt that the London police

viewed Francis Tumblety as a key suspect.

They looked at his attitude towards women.

They looked at his desire to be taken seriously

as a surgeon and his odd collection of uteruses,

and they believed that Tumblety could have been Jack the Ripper.

SHATNER: According to London police records,

Tumblety was questioned about the Ripper murders.

But he was ultimately released for lack of evidence.

Then, shortly after the Ripper's fifth and final victim,

Mary Kelly, was murdered,

Tumblety left London and returned

to New York City.

Some historians believe that the timing

of these events is no coincidence.

When Tumblety first arrives, um, in London,

right after he gets there, the Ripper murders begin.

And right after he leaves, they stop.

While we don't know exactly

where Tumblety was or exactly what he was doing,

there was a woman who ran a lodging house

at 22 Batty Street.

And that is about a ten-minute walk

from each of the crime scenes.

She had a lodger and...

she referred to him as an American doctor.

There were rumors that she had found a bloody shirt

uh, after this lodger had returned late at night,

covered in gore.

And then the lodger took up new residence

at the Charing Cross Hotel.

The day after the last Ripper murder,

the lodger from the Charing Cross Hotel

disappeared without paying his bill.

But left behind a small black doctor's bag.

Once it was turned over to the police

and the contents were examined, inside they found

some herbal medicines, some clothing,

little bit of jewelry,

and, um, some pornography.

Which Tumblety is known to have sold.

Now it's hard to know for certain because this is just

a theory, but based on the timeline

and the nature of this individual,

it is quite possible that he could have been

involved in the Ripper murders.

SHATNER: The London police may have had trouble proving

that Francis Tumblety-- the so-called American doctor--

could have been Jack the Ripper.

But upon his return to the United States,

the press had no such trouble convicting him

in the court of public opinion.

And many people came to believe that Tumblety

was the real Ripper.

STEWART EVANS: There's an interview with Tumblety

that appeared in newspaper reports on 29 of January 1889,

the year after the murders, when he's actually interviewed

by a reporter who puts it to him that he's Jack the Ripper.

And his replies are very, very interesting.

He claimed the only reason the stupid English police

arrested him is because he's American.

And in his own words, the killer wore a slouch hat,

according to descriptions, and he said, "I wore a slouch hat."

And so there's an accumulation of what one might call

circumstantial evidence with regard to-to Tumblety.

SHATNER: Is it possible that Francis Tumblety

was Jack the Ripper?

Many researchers believe the evidence is compelling.

And as proof, they point to a curious object

that was in Tumblety's possession when he died.

When Tumblety died in 1903, he was in hospital run by nuns

in St. Louis, and certain things

were found on his person, which included

a plain brass ring, almost like a curtain ring.

And the only Ripper victim

who actually lost anything

of a substantial nature was Annie Chapman.

And she'd had such a ring, a plain brass ring,

stolen off her finger by the killer.

So with regard to Tumblety actually being Jack the Ripper,

for a lot of people now, he's the favorite Ripper suspect.

Was the most notorious serial killer in English history

actually the American doctor Francis Tumblety?

It's certainly a theory worth considering.

But many researchers believe the best way to solve

the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity

is to utilize something that 19th-century investigators

couldn't even begin to fathom:

DNA evidence.

SHATNER: At Lacy Scott and Knight Auction Centre,

a 19th-century silk shawl sells for $6,500.

An extraordinary amount for such a seemingly ordinary item.

But this is not a typical garment,

because in 1888 it was found

on the body of Jack the Ripper's fourth victim,

Catherine Eddowes.

And it may be stained with the blood

of the Ripper himself.

SAFARIK: The shawl was reported

to have been collected by a Metropolitan Police Officer

who took it from the scene.

It's reported to have been handed down among

many generations of different people.

And it was bought by an individual who wanted

to conduct mitochondrial DNA tests on the shawl.

And his goal was to identify Jack the Ripper

with forensic evidence.

SHATNER: More than a century after Jack the Ripper's unsolved murders,

could modern forensic science

finally identify the killer?

According to many researchers,

it's a distinct possibility.

It's amazing now with DNA analysis that crimes

that are sometimes decades old can be solved.

We've recently had a number of cold cases

that have been solved through DNA evidence.

Often for cases going back 20 years, 30 years.

It's an incredible tool in crime solving if done properly.

GRANDE: There's this idea that the Jack the Ripper case

is unsolvable because

a lot of the evidence from that time has been destroyed.

But there was blood and semen on the shawl

that was ostensibly worn by Catherine Eddowes.

So new DNA testing techniques

could allow a sample to be tested

to identify Jack the Ripper.

SHATNER: In 2020, a paper published

in the Journal of Forensic Sciences

announced that experts were able to analyze

the blood found on the shawl.

They determined that the DNA was a close genetic match

to the descendants of a man named Aaron Kosminski.

And, incredibly,

it turns out that Kosminski

was one of the top suspects

in the Ripper case.

GRANDE: Many people have a favorite suspect

in the Jack the Ripper case.

And there's a lot of people that believe

that Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.

If we look at the evidence connecting Aaron Kosminski

to the crime, we see that he lived in the area.

He was young, he was almost in the age range

for the profile of serial killer at age 23.

PICKNETT: Kosminski was a Polish Jew, an immigrant.

He was a barber.

But in those days,

if you're a barber you also were a surgeon.

I mean, doing dentistry and bits of surgery.

So he would have the knives.

He would know about anatomy.

Which sounds so absolutely spot-on

to prove this person was actually Jack the Ripper.

But, sadly, he had been called in

as a suspect by the police

but let go.

JONES: Kosminski appears to have been the prime suspect

for Scotland Yard detectives. Dr. Robert Anderson,

who was the assistant commissioner

and the head of the criminal investigation department,

he does say in his memoirs

that they knew who Jack the Ripper was

and he was a low-born Polish Jew,

living in the heart of the area.

A copy of his memoirs went to Chief Inspector Swanson,

who was the detective who had the job of assessing all

the information that's been brought in on the case.

And his copy of Anderson's memoirs,

in the margin, Swanson scrawls the name Kosminski.

SHATNER: Is it possible that the DNA collected

from Catherine Eddowes' bloody shawl proves that

Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper?

Perhaps.

But not everyone agrees with that theory.

SAFARIK: There's a lot of debate

on either side of this argument

about the strength or validity of this shawl.

And it is probably the last piece

of potential forensic evidence

that really exists in this case.

Eddowes barely had any money at all.

Did that shawl actually belong to her?

There's lots of debate about whether it did or didn't.

There's debate about what is actually on the shawl?

Is it blood?

Is it other types of body fluids?

HENDLEY: You have to keep in mind storage, for one thing.

This shawl has been stored somewhere for over a century.

Also, you have to keep in mind

that just because this suspect's

DNA is on the shawl, maybe he visited

this prostitute, so it's an interesting puzzle piece

but until there's more further evidence,

I would still be a little skeptical

whether the mystery has been solved.

Was Aaron Kosminski really Jack the Ripper,

as the DNA evidence suggests?

It's a compelling theory, but one that's hard

to prove since the killer is long dead.

What is it about London's most famous unsolved crime

that continues to keep the memory of Jack the Ripper

still very much alive?

SHATNER: Every day, hundreds of people eagerly participate

in what are known as

-Jack the Ripper walking tours. -(indistinct chatter)

For a small fee, tourists can view

the sites of all the Ripper murders

to learn some of the history about

the notorious killings

and their mysterious perpetrator.

The tours are so popular that they are offered

seven days a week by at least ten different companies.

But why is the public still so

fixated on the case of Jack the Ripper,

almost 140 years after he terrorized London?

PICKNETT: The Jack the Ripper killings happened in 1888.

And we're well into the 21st century,

and it still grabs us, it still fascinates us.

And it's just actually escalating, if anything.

We sit there, and we think this is a great puzzle

to be solved and somehow,

we don't think about the hideous,

sordid reality that real women died.

KOVEN: The Ripper case remains so gripping and fascinating,

first and foremost, because it's an unsolved case.

But perhaps a real tragedy about our ongoing fascination

with this case is not just that it's an unsolved case,

but that it is a crime of sexual violence against poor women.

Sadly, the Ripper story is a kind of renewable resource

of dark fears about poverty,

about unloosed female sexuality, and about male power.

The Ripper played on those anxieties,

and that remains an object

of extraordinary fascination for people today.

McNEILL: Serial killers from the past are safe,

are fascinating, and they're not gonna come get us.

Here we have a series of killings,

there was a definite pattern.

The type of women who were being murdered,

the way they were murdered, lends itself

to that desire to say, "This is too purposeful.

I have to be able to make it make sense in some way."

And that drive to make sense of one of the most

insensible things we have, the wanton and willful

murderer of other people,

is a really strong drive that we have.

SHATNER: The enduring worldwide fascination

with Jack the Ripper is undeniable.

But ironically,

some researchers suggest that,

despite his notoriety,

it's possible that Jack the Ripper

never existed in the first place.

DONNELLY: Jack the Ripper is often referred to

as the first serial killer.

But the fact that the Ripper was never caught

or identified could be because the police were

trying to prove that many of these victims were

the work of a single individual.

SAFARIK: We had a lot of eyewitness testimony

about Jack Ripper, but most of it

was poor.

Most of it was seen in darkness from great distances.

None of the eyewitness testimony ever

identified a particular individual.

So if you don't have witnesses and you don't have

a confession and you really don't have any evidence

that supports any particular individual

130 years later,

I don't know that it's absolutely clear

that Jack the Ripper was just one person.

He could have been a lot of people.

Was Jack the Ripper a deranged serial killer

who terrorized London?

Or were the grisly murders carried out

by a number of different people?

Perhaps one day, modern forensics,

or some long-lost piece of evidence,

will reveal the truth, but until then,

the mystery of Jack the Ripper

will remain unsolved and...

unexplained.

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