Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: An elusive killer

who terrorized a city with strange, cryptic messages.

A horrifying crime spree

at the hands of a charming, cold-blooded psychopath.

And violent murders triggered by delusions

of supernatural, occult powers.

Jack the Ripper.

Ted Bundy.

And the Zodiac killer.

These are just a few of history's most deranged

and dangerous criminals who all possessed a taste

for cold-blooded murder.

What causes a person to become a diabolical killer?

Is it a psychological disorder,

a psychopathic trait

or nature vs. nurture?

And are some people actually born to kill?

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 deliverymen 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 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.

MARK 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 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 a hold of this case of murders,

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, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries

were the best-selling 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.

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

a depths of degradation 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 became 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

the potential suspects ranged 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.

SHATNER: Over the years, there have been countless theories

as to who committed the Whitechapel murders,

yet so far, the answers remain 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.

SHATNER: Three weeks after newspaper headlines announce

the brutal murder of the 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 is addressed to "the Boss,"

Central News Office City, 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 29th, the Ripper struck again.

(woman screams)

And this time, he killed two women

in a single night.

On this night of 29th 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 Berner 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 was 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 a-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 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.

RICHARD JONES: 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 her 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 can 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.

SHATNER: Will we ever know the true identity of the infamous

knife-wielding killer, Jack the Ripper?

Perhaps.

But there's another deranged murderer

who also terrorized an entire city

and taunted the public

with threatening letters of a different, cryptic kind

that would take decades to decipher.

SHATNER: The city is gripped by fear

after a number of horrific and unsolved murders

are committed by a shadowy serial killer.

The panic reaches a fever pitch

when the killer releases a series of chilling notes

in which he refers to himself as the Zodiac.

Three virtually identical

handwritten letters arrived at the offices

of three California newspapers.

And those letters took credit for the crimes

and included details from the crimes,

including the ammunition that was used,

the positions of the victims and things like that.

And then another letter that was sent on August 4th of 1969

was the first to use the name "the Zodiac."

The Zodiac's crime spree is often referred to

as a reign of terror.

And that's because his murders

not only sent fear throughout the community

but he eventually threatened to murder schoolchildren on a bus.

He also said he was gonna use a bomb.

He threatened to kill dozens of people over a weekend.

So there were a lot of threats

that sent fear through the community.

DAVID ORANCHAK: His name really got out there, and on top of that,

Zodiac's victims were selected

presumably randomly.

And so people felt like, "Well, he could be

around the corner, ready to kill me or us."

So it became kind of like a bogeyman

waiting to kill somebody out of the blue.

SHATNER: The Zodiac's reign of terror became national news,

not only because of the frightening nature

of his crimes

but also because some of his mysterious letters

were written in code.

The Zodiac, as macabre as this sounds,

turned his killings into a game,

not just for law enforcement to try to figure out

but for the average citizen.

These ciphers sort of served as a way

for people to play his game.

"Can you figure out who I am?"

So, using these codes, while it made Zodiac incredibly scary,

it also made him intriguing because

anybody could figure out who the Zodiac killer is

if you know how to play his game correctly.

SHATNER: The Zodiac's claim that the ciphers revealed

his true identity taunted the police and the public.

Both the authorities and amateurs alike

poured over the encrypted letters,

hoping to crack the killer's devious codes.

SAMI JARROUSH: The first cipher of the Zodiac,

it's commonly referred to as the 408 cipher.

That was actually solved in a matter of days

by a couple of citizens in the San Francisco Bay Area.

BUTTERFIELD: A local high school economics teacher and his wife,

Donald and Bettye Harden,

decided to take the killer's challenge

and spent a weekend trying to solve that cipher.

And they were able to find a solution.

Unfortunately, the Hardens' solution

did not reveal the killer's identity.

But it did begin with the phrase:

Then he talked about collecting slaves for his afterlife.

SHATNER: The shocking content of the first cipher

heightened public panic about the Zodiac.

But the killer's second cipher, known as Z-340,

would not be solved so easily.

BUTTERFIELD: The Zodiac's second cipher

consisted of 340 symbols.

Unfortunately, that cipher was very difficult to solve.

And he may have made it that way deliberately

because he may have been upset

that his first cipher was solved so quickly.

SHATNER: Despite years of effort,

the Z-340 cipher eluded decryption.

By 1974, the Zodiac had released more than 20 letters

in which he claimed to have killed 37 people.

And then, after a five-year reign of terror,

his communications abruptly ceased,

and the case went cold.

It seemed that the codes and the crimes

of this evil genius were destined to remain unsolved.

More than 30 years would pass

before software engineer David Oranchak became inspired

to take on the Z-340 cipher.

I first heard about the Zodiac ciphers

when the Zodiac movie came out in 2007.

And so there was already kind of a vibrant community

of people involved with the Zodiac ciphers specifically.

So when I saw that, I thought,

"Hey, I want to take a crack at that."

Because I'm a programmer, uh, I like puzzles,

and it would be very cool to be able to-to crack that.

SHATNER: To try and solve the cipher, David Oranchak teamed up

with Australian mathematician Sam Blake

and Belgian computer programmer Jarl Van Eycke.

The team became kind of this collaboration of people

that would run experiments, try out different ideas,

come up with computer programs

and different kind of specialized tools

in order to try out these ideas

or to just run a bunch of keys and try to break the code.

SHATNER: In spite of their combined efforts, the Z-340 cipher

seemed like it might be an unbreakable code.

But then, after 15 years of challenging work,

the team finally cracked it.

ORANCHAK: It was very satisfying to decrypt the message.

It was very exciting.

Once we had the solution,

I put together a report and sent it to my contacts

in the code-breaking unit of the FBI.

And then very quickly, they came back to us and said,

"This looks good. It looks strong.

Looks like the real solution."

And that's when the media storm hit.

SHATNER: The revelation that the Z-340 cipher had been broken

more than 50 years after it was released

made headlines around the world.

But, unfortunately, the decrypted message

did not reveal the killer's identity.

However, the search continues,

because there are other Zodiac ciphers

that are yet to be solved,

the most fascinating of which is called Z-13.

This cipher will literally make you pull your hair out,

because at first glance, you would think it's got to be easy.

There's only 13 characters in the cipher.

What's worse is that it starts with the phrase, "My name is..."

He's literally telling you, "Here's who I am."

And to this day, no one's been able to figure it out as of yet.

Will we finally solve the Z-13 cipher

and reveal the identity of the Zodiac killer?

Or are the mysterious coded symbols just the musings

of a homicidal lunatic?

The study of cryptic clues helps in trying to understand

how the mind of a murderer works.

Like in the case of one of the 20th century's

most notorious criminals,

Ted Bundy.

SHATNER: Days before his execution,

convicted serial killer Ted Bundy confesses

to the murder of at least 30 people,

ending a crime spree that lasted for more than a decade.

HICKEY: We often use Ted Bundy as the perfect example

of a psychopath because he had all the attributes.

He was charming. He was likable.

He was... kind of handsome guy. He was very articulate.

He knew how to ingratiate himself into people's lives,

and he did all the things

that you expect a normal person to do.

And yet, every step of the way, everything he did was about him.

He was a predator.

He never stopped being a predator.

SHATNER: But how could an otherwise clean-cut

and successful young man like Ted Bundy

become a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer?

Did the circumstances of his life turn him into one,

or was he literally born to kill?

JUDY HO: There's been a lot of studies lately

on the brains of psychopaths.

And some of the most important findings

is that we see that they have a connectivity problem

with different parts of their brain.

FALLON: From the scans that I had seen,

scans of all these different murderers,

including psychopathic murderers,

there was the same pattern.

And that same pattern was a loss of activity

in this area of the brain

above the eyes, above the orbits.

So it's called orbital cortex.

This is the limbic system, the cortical limbic system,

and this is what's turned off.

When we look at someone who is a true psychopath,

it's most likely you'll not find

much brain activity in the limbic system.

And those parts contain areas of empathy

and understanding, care and concern, conscience.

This seems to line up with the reports of psychopaths,

you know, doing some horrific things,

you know, killing multiple people,

and then just getting back up, going to a movie.

They just don't seem to have their emotions

stimulated the way that a normal person's brain would.

There have already been studies about trying

to rewire the brain of psychopaths

in that we're trying to improve

some of their connectivity problems.

Because if we see that there's an issue

with two parts of the brain

not communicating well with each other,

maybe we can send some electrical impulses through it

and see if we can stimulate them into more action.

TRAVIS TAYLOR: If we do a brain scan on every baby that's born

and we decide that this one has the type of brain

that's going to be a criminal mind,

what do we do with that?

Is that, uh, something that we have to retrain this child?

Do we keep this child under protection as they grow up?

How do we respond to that type of information?

FALLON: Are we more determined by genetics or environment?

We had an ongoing Alzheimer's study

that we were doing a clinical trial on,

but we didn't have enough controls.

And so I said, "Look, I'll ask my family."

We'll get them all into PET scans,

and they'll be controls because in our family,

there is no Alzheimer's.

And so I went through this pile of these Alzheimer's scans,

and we cover up the names because I don't like to know

who I'm looking at, what I'm looking at.

You got to stay double blind, right?

And each one was normal, normal, normal.

I get to the last scan, and I saw this

very obviously, completely psychopathic pattern.

It looked like all these psychopathic murderers

I've looked at.

I said to the technicians, "Very funny.

"You-you've slipped in one of these psychopathic murderers.

"This is, like, the worst one I've seen.

And whoever this is, we got to notify the police."

And he goes, "This is somebody who's very dangerous."

So, when I pulled off the name tag on the PET scan,

I looked at it and laughed.

I said, "Guys, this can't be right."

It was my name on there.

So it was me that had the full-blown

psychopathic pattern in my scans.

Jim Fallon found that he actually has sort of

this classic psychopathic brain from an imaging perspective.

But he's in a long-term relationship, he has a wife,

and sometimes she has to remind him

to be more empathetic, but he's a good citizen.

HICKEY: I would say that 30% is about biology and genetics,

and 70% is about nurturing or the lack of nurturing.

It is like nature loads the gun and nurturing pulls the trigger.

SHATNER: Although, according to his own research,

James Fallon's brain is similar to those possessed

by people with psychopathic tendencies,

he hasn't gone on to commit murder.

But why not?

Could it be that the urge to kill requires something more?

Something harder to identify within the human brain?

Perhaps the answer lies not in studying

the brain's physical attributes

but instead in the dark recesses of the imagination.

Like in the case of a troubled teen

whose twisted fantasies of possessing supernatural powers

led to a grisly murder

at the hands of a so-called vampire.

SHATNER: After a difficult and dysfunctional childhood,

15-year-old Rod Ferrell finds solace

in death, the occult and blood-drenched horror films.

At his local high school, Rod discovers a group

of kindred spirits among some outcasts

who also enjoy his favorite vampire role-playing games.

DAVID SKAL: In the '90s, people stopped being afraid of vampires.

They started identifying with them,

sometimes very intensely.

And I think it was the beginning of a world

in which the boundaries between imagination and reality

were going to become increasingly blurred.

And, uh, that can be a dangerous place to be.

JOSEPH LAYCOCK: Rod Ferrell did not grow up with his father around much.

He has alleged that his grandfather sexually abused him.

Add to that that he was experimenting

with LSD and other kinds of psychedelic drugs,

and this is a recipe for extreme behavior.

BROWNING: He was part of this vampire coven

over which he was sort of the elder or master.

He knew about vampire lore through the game

Vampire: The Masquerade, and he began

to believe he was some sort of,

uh, embodiment of some vampire god.

LAYCOCK: Rod often told them

that he was a 400-year-old vampire named Vesago.

That he could help them cross over,

which means to become a vampire through rituals

that sometimes involved cutting each other

and drinking each other's blood.

SHATNER: In order to protect each other

from a world that didn't understand their obsessions,

Rod and his coven formed a sacred pact

and then sealed it in blood.

HARVEY ROSENSTOCK: To belong to a gang, there has to be

some kind of ritual

that distinguishes you from everybody else.

You're taking a vow that,

from this point forever, irreversible,

I'm a member of this gang.

And when we get to the vampire type thinking,

there always has to be blood involved.

We're gonna cut my wrist,

the other member is gonna suck the blood

so that each one is consuming the blood of the other person

so that now we're all one blooded family.

SHATNER: Over the course of the next year,

Rod would move with his mother to Eustis, Florida.

After forming a close friendship with one of his new classmates,

a girl named Heather Wendorf,

the pair spent their weekends in the local graveyard,

engaging in bloodletting rituals.

There are some people who adhere to a delusion.

A delusion is a belief in psychiatry

that you accept something in spite of facts to the contrary.

And therefore, they start to really believe

that they have these extraordinary powers.

SHATNER: During a series of tearful phone calls,

Rod listens as Heather describes a miserable home life,

culminating in alleged abuse at the hands of her father.

Enraged that his close friend has been mistreated,

Rod and three members of his clan rush to her aid.

When the group arrived at the home

of Heather Wendorf in Eustis, Florida,

Rod and one of his companions went inside.

They came in through the garage,

where Rod found a crowbar which he took with him.

When he went inside, he found Heather's father

asleep on the couch.

And he beat him to death with a crowbar.

He also encountered Heather's mother,

who splashed, uh, coffee on him in self-defense,

and he beat her to death as well.

SHATNER: In the aftermath of the horrific killings,

Rod was convicted of first-degree murder.

LAYCOCK: Sociologists who study adolescent crime

have framed this as a kind of game that gets out of hand.

I think that Rod Ferrell and his friends had a kind of game

where they played the role of vampires until they reached

irrevocable consequences when Rod Ferrell

sort of got caught up in his role and murdered the Wendorfs.

This is a little bit like putting on a Halloween mask

and then discovering that you can never take it off.

SHATNER: It's disturbing to think that delusions

can drive some to commit violent acts of murder.

But stranger still is the story of a killer

who left witnesses questioning their own imaginations

when they were confronted by a superhuman being--

part man, part animal-- that is known

as Spring-heeled Jack.

SHATNER: Around 9:00 p.m., an 18-year-old Jane Alsop,

a young woman born into Victorian high society,

hears a rattle outside her front door.

(rattling)

She looks outside and sees a mysterious figure

who identifies himself as a policeman

and asks her for assistance.

Believing him, she opens her door,

and very soon, she'll wish she hadn't.

He's kind of wrapped in this cloak,

and he says he's a policeman.

And he throws off his cloak,

and then she kind of suddenly sees he's got this strange face

with these big, red eyes.

He looks very sort of inhuman.

And then she realizes he's also got claws.

And he blows this sort of ball of flame in her face.

Kind of described as a blue-white flame.

And then he lurches at her, he starts to attack her.

This man began to claw at her face, her neck,

her arms and her dress.

She was screaming and struggling,

and luckily, her sister heard her.

Jane was actually being dragged out of the home.

Her sister, fortunately, was able to get her back inside

but not before Jane's dress was almost completely torn off.

SHATNER: Who or what attacked Jane Alsop?

Her attack made headlines all over London,

and a wave of terror flooded the city.

Because this was not the first woman said to have been attacked

by a shadowy figure that is known in urban legend

as Spring-heeled Jack.

In the 1830s, this curious story emerges

in the newspapers that there is an attacker

on the dark, foggy streets of London

called Spring-heeled Jack,

who has eyes that are like balls of fire,

who has clawlike hands,

who wears this skintight black costume,

and who can jump enormous heights.

SHATNER: The urban legend of a phantom attacker

with superhuman abilities does sound a bit hard to believe.

But incredibly, after reports

of Spring-heeled Jack

started appearing in the 1830s,

they continued for decades.

Spring-heeled Jack sightings lasted a very long time.

There's a sighting in Liverpool in 1904.

In Sheffield, he was known to be around the region

until the First World War.

So you've got a character that, if it is the same individual,

is coming up for at least 100 years since he first appeared.

SHATNER: Was there really

a fire-breathing superhuman with claws

preying on women for 100 years?

Well, some experts believe that details

of this mysterious attacker were embellished

like many good urban legends.

And some suggest this monster served as a cautionary tale

for Victorian women living in 19th-century London.

The time period in which Spring-heeled Jack emerged

was the 1830s, so we're pretty much smack in the middle

of the Industrial Revolution at this point.

Industrialization changed a lot.

It moved people out from pastoral spaces

into urban spaces.

It created a lot of congestion,

people living on top of each other

in sometimes rough conditions.

And the story that we see is of this bizarre criminal

targeting women specifically in this urban setting.

KARL BELL: Spring-heeled Jack does speak to some of that violence

towards women in the Victorian period.

He's almost kind of reinforcing the notion

that women should just be sitting at home

and the public sphere is kind of the masculine sphere,

but it's something that was often spoken about

in this time period.

And-and so there is a sort of a controlling element to this.

SHATNER: Was Spring-heeled Jack invented

to keep 19th-century women at home?

It's certainly possible.

But if that's true, then why has this story

reemerged in the modern age?

A family is taking a taxi ride through town,

and suddenly, they witness something

that's impossible to explain.

They see a figure jump over a highway divider,

run across two lanes of traffic,

and then somehow leap up a 15-foot embankment,

all within the span of about two seconds.

On top of this, they said whoever this was

had no facial features.

So this is a really strange encounter,

and it sounds a lot like the original

Spring-heeled Jack sightings from the 1800s.

So, what exactly is Spring-heeled Jack?

A man or a monster?

Either way, the question remains:

Are there those among us

who possess psychological disorders

or psychopathic traits

that predispose them to becoming serial killers?

Or does a certain environment create a breeding ground

for the urge to stalk, manipulate and kill,

to satisfy some dark craving within?

For now, what truly goes on in deep, shadowy minds

of diabolical killers

will continue to remain unexplained.

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