Jack The Ripper Research Paper

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Richard Ramirez once said, “We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid control life itself.” Throughout history, there have been many people put to death because they have taken the life of another person. From 1976 to now, there have been 1,246 death sentences in America alone; however, in some murder cases, the culprit remains a mystery. Jack the Ripper is one of the most notorious killers in the world’s history. Since then, there have been many investigations that included numerous suspects; despite modern technology, there has never been conclusive evidence that proves only one person committed the murders. This means that there could have been multiple people who used …show more content…

During Ripper’s reign of terror, there were eleven women murdered, however these five women were connected due to the signature of the killings. Assumedly Ripper’s first victim, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was found in front of a horse stable on Buck’s Row in the early morning hours of August 31, 1888. The two men who found her, Charles Cross, Robert Paul, saw Nichols “lying on the ground with her skirts pulled up to her waist.” The men felt her face and hands, which they described as “cold to the touch,” because they were unsure if she may have been passed out from drunkenness or dead. After realizing she was dead, the men reported their finding to the first police officer they could find. Only moments later, PC John Neil came across her body and shone his lantern over it revealing her “lifeless eyes staring up into the night sky.” Nichols’ throat had been cut deeply in two places almost causing decapitation. Her abdomen was also mutilated; there was a deep gash and several other incisions both made by the same knife. The murder of Nichols may sound brutal, however, Ripper only gets more twisted. Ripper takes the life of his next assumed victim, Annie Chapman, with many similarities. She was found on the morning of September 8, 1888 with similar cuts on her throat as Nichols. With this victim, Ripper had not only …show more content…

For example, Derek Brown, a local delivery driver for Preston, Lancashire’s newspaper. Brown was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of thirty years for the murders of Xiao Mei Guo and Bonnie Barrett. It has been reported that Brown “wanted to become a serial killer,” so he preyed on women he though wouldn’t be missed. Guo was an illegal immigrant who sold DVD’s and Barratt was a crack addicted prostitute. Brown, as described by Judge Martin Stevens, “disposed of the bodies with ‘frightening efficiency.’” The women’s bodies have never been found and Brown has refused to give up the information despite the sufferings of the women’s families. Detective Mark Kandiah said that Brown would be questioned more to find the whereabouts of the bodies; Kandiah described Brown as “clearly a very evil man.” (Joseph) Another copycat murder spree began only two years after Ripper’s spree when local builder, Joseph Roberts, became the prime suspect in the murder investigation of Amelia Jeffs. Roberts had been working on building the house where Amelia Jeffs’ body had been found in a cupboard. Nine years later, another girl, Bertha Russ, was found in the cupboard of another newly built house. Roberts was later found guilty for the deaths of Annie West, Eliza Skinner, and Mary Voller; these deaths occurred during the nine year period between Jeffs’ murder and Russ’s. Each girl was “snatched from off the streets

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