[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Tonight, a spree of gruesome murders
that shocks Victorian England and the world,
a homicidal maniac whose true name remains a mystery.
- The police comb through suspect after suspect,
but there's either no evidence to support
that they were there or they have alibis.
So they're left grasping at straws.
- Now we uncover the top theories
about one of history's most notorious serial killers.
- A few contemporaries believe that Jack the Ripper
might well have been a woman.
- I hope to prove my grandfather's grandfather
was also Jack the Ripper.
- Can his or her identity ever be proven?
Who is Jack the Ripper?
♪ ♪
London, England, August 31st, 1888.
It's early morning
in the impoverished East End neighborhood.
- The East End of late Victorian London
was a sprawling metropolis within the city
of London itself.
There were respectable artisans,
and small traders, and shopkeepers,
but for the most part, it was the home to the poor,
the abject poor, and sometimes the homeless poor.
Fishburne: Delivery driver Charles Cross,
walks through the city's dark streets.
- Charles Cross is walking along Box Row
on his way to work at 3:40 a.m.,
and he spots what he perceives is an unclaimed
or discarded tarpaulin, which is quite a find.
Fishburne: But what he finds isn't a tarp.
It's a female body.
- And at first, he thinks that this woman
is either drunk or asleep.
In fact, she's dead.
Her throat has been slit, and she's been mutilated.
Fishburne: Area residents identify the victim
as Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols.
- Polly Nichols began life as the daughter
of a respectable skilled artisan and his laundress wife.
She married young. She had children.
But alcohol and marital discord led her
to leave the conjugal home
and to live a life on the streets
as a sex worker.
- These women were living
very much a day to day existence,
not necessarily knowing where they were going
to sleep that night.
This put them at a very extreme risk to be taken advantage of
because they did not have a steady living.
Fishburne: At the time, most crimes against sex workers
in London received very little attention.
But the brutal nature of this attack
forces police to take notice.
- This was an attack that was beyond brutal
and almost unprecedented.
Murder was not uncommon in the East End,
but a murder like this was definitely something
that drew attention to both police and citizenry.
- After the Nichols murder, Commissioner Warren
assigned first-class inspector Frederick Abberline
in charge of the Whitechapel murders case.
Fishburne: Abberline interviews the local woman,
looking for suspects.
Everyone he speaks to recalls the same elusive figure.
He's even been given a nickname.
- A common thread amongst all the working women
was there was a man that was extorting them for their money.
His nickname was Leather Apron.
The reason they called him Leather Apron
is because that's what he always wore.
And the working women were convinced
that he killed Polly Nichols.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Soon, the mysterious Leather Apron
is making headlines.
- The press latches onto this story almost immediately
and starts running with it.
- Some of the key sensational newspapers,
like "The Star," or "The Pall Mall Gazette,"
devoted particular attention
to the lurid details of the crime.
All of these created a media spectacle, a frenzy.
Fishburne: The publicity quickly generates
a possible sighting.
- Two days after the murder of Polly Nichols,
a woman sees an individual
who she thinks is Leather Apron
and yells out to a police officer,
"There he goes!"
- The police officer decided to chase him down.
He apprehended him.
The man denies that he's Leather Apron.
The woman still claims that he is.
Ultimately, the police officer lets him go.
Fishburne: Nearly a week passes
as the police try to track down Leather Apron.
Before they can, the killer strikes again.
- At about 6:00 a.m., an elderly man
walking along Hanbury Street near where he lived
saw this body, again, in the shadows of the building.
Later on, after the police were called,
this second victim was identified as Annie Chapman.
- Annie Chapman's wounds were very similar
to Polly Nichols', but much more severe.
The throat was cut deep to the spine again.
The intestines were thrown over the shoulder,
and the uterus was missing.
- Nearby, not far from Annie's body,
was a wet leather apron, which may have been washed
or the killer may have used to wash their hands
and them wiped them on the apron.
Could this be proof that the same killer has struck again?
Fishburne: The press thinks yes.
After the second victim is found,
the public sentiment in the East End turns ugly.
- At this point, the public is becoming more and more frantic.
"Will there be another murder?" "When will it occur?"
"Why can't the police identify the murderer?"
The lack of solving the crime heightened the anxiety,
not just in Whitechapel, but in greater London as well.
♪ ♪
- The newspapers repeat the fact
that these eyewitnesses were describing suspects as Jewish
or "Jewish-looking."
And so it became this idea that a Jewish man
was killing women in Whitechapel.
Fights are breaking out in the streets,
crowds are chanting "down with the Jews,"
and there are full-on riots.
Fishburne: Faced with escalating violence,
police hurry to locate Leather Apron
and quickly nab a suspect.
- The police held an inquest, and they realized
that there was a boot finisher
who was also a Polish Jew named John Pizer.
- And on September 10th, he was arrested.
Pizer's neighbors and friends attested his innocence.
They believe him to be a good man.
That didn't stop the police from harassing him further
and doing a search of his home.
When searching Pizer's home, they found five knives,
which they believed to have blood on them.
Fishburne: While the police analyze the knives,
they interrogate Pizer.
- On the night of Polly Nichols' murder,
Pizer maintains that he was staying at Crossman's Lodge.
On the second night, for Annie Chapman's murder,
Pizer claims he was holed up in his own home,
living in fear.
Fishburne: Police are able to confirm Pizer's alibis
and eliminate the key evidence against him.
- There was no blood on those knives.
After closer examination,
they found out that what was on the knives was actually rust.
- The police ultimately bring in Pizer
for additional questioning
as several eyewitnesses questioned
whether he might've been at the scene
of some of the murders.
They put him through two lineups,
but the lineups amount to nothing essentially
because the accusers turn out to be non-credible.
Fishburne: Pizer is released without charge
on September 11th.
- The fact that these two lineups failed to identify
Pizer raised the ongoing further questioning.
If Pizer wasn't the murderer, then who was?
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: In 1888, residents of London's East End
are on high alert in the wake of the brutal murders
of two young women.
- After Annie Chapman's murder, two weeks pass with nothing.
And so people might be wondering,
"Is he done? Was this it?
Did he leave? Is he in prison?"
Nobody really knows what was happening.
- A few weeks later, not one but two more women
were discovered brutally murdered.
Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes
were discovered within hours of each other.
Both had their throats slashed,
and both had abdominal wounds with their viscera removed.
This was clearly a pattern,
four young women who were brutally murdered
within a short period of time,
all within blocks of each other.
This heightened the anxiety,
not just from the neighborhood, but from the police as well.
- This was something the likes nobody had ever seen.
London was probably dealing
with its first known serial killer.
♪ ♪
- At this point,
even though we now had a third and a fourth victim,
there were no eye witnesses, and there were no leads.
So the police, quite frankly,
were still very much in the dark
as to who the murderer was.
Fishburne: All that changes on October 1st,
when a memo now called the "Dear Boss" letter
transforms a local investigation
into a worldwide phenomenon.
- On September 27th, the Central News Agency
received the "Dear Boss" letter but dismissed it as a hoax,
as there were hundreds of letters coming in.
- But then September 30th occurred,
and Elizabeth Stride
and Catherine Eddowes were murdered.
And in that letter, there were two details
that matched the murders.
The first was that he was gonna get to work right away.
The second was he's gonna
clip the ear off one of the women.
So the police decided to publish that letter.
- It's called the "Dear Boss" letter
because that's how the letter begins.
The killer is addressing the head
of the police as "Boss."
And in it, he mocks the police efforts
and suggests they're miles off track
in their assumptions and searches.
- The "Dear Boss" letter
creates a gripping public persona
and seems to invite both investigators
and the public to want to know more about him.
Fishburne: The disturbing letter ends
with perhaps the most famous alias of all time.
- "My knife's so nice and sharp
"I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.
Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper."
The "Dear Boss" letter fundamentally changed
how people began to think about the murderer
because it endowed the murderer with a playful,
sardonic, wicked,
and some thought perverted and maniacal lust
to violate the bodies of these sex workers.
This letter associated these murders
as the victims of Jack the Ripper
rather than what they had been beforehand,
the Whitechapel murders.
Fishburne: On November 9th,
the Ripper claims another victim.
25-year-old sex worker, Mary Jane Kelly.
- Mary Jane Kelly's murder was the most horrific
of all of the murders.
She had her own little room at 13 Miller's Court
where she spent her nights, and so the Ripper was able
to take his time with her after he murdered her.
When they opened the room in the morning,
they discovered pieces of her spread out around the room.
She had been carved down to the bone in some cases.
And they also weren't entirely sure
that the body was Mary Jane Kelly
because her face was so mutilated
that identification is nearly impossible.
♪ ♪
- It was long assumed that the killer had anatomical
or medical knowledge of the human body.
And Mary Kelly's murder totally cemented that.
She had many organs removed.
And they were removed cleanly and precisely.
And that took a significant level of skill
to be able to achieve that.
Fishburne: After Kelly's murder,
the killing stopped,
but the culprit remains at large.
- It's easy to go back and look at the police work
of 1888 and be critical.
However, we have to realize they had so few tools
in order to investigate any crime.
So much of the evidence was innuendo,
was suspicion, was rumor.
And that doesn't pin down the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Fishburne: The case languishes for several years
until a new detective is assigned in early 1892.
- Melville Macnaughten is asked to investigate
the Ripper murders further.
Macnaughten began to build a profile,
which a lot of people still turn to today.
He believed the Ripper was well-educated,
potentially a Polish immigrant,
and he also thought that it was somebody
that, again, had anatomical or medical knowledge.
♪ ♪
He conducts different interviews,
compiling suspects,
and a name that pops out to him is Michael Ostrog.
Fishburne: Ostrog seems to fit the profile perfectly.
- Macnaughten stated two main points about Ostrog,
that he had surgical experience from Russia,
and also that he was a homicidal maniac.
He writes,
"This man was said to have been habitually cruel to women
"and for a long time was known to have carried with him
"surgical knives and other instruments,
"and his whereabouts
"at the time of the Whitechapel murders,
could never been satisfactorily accounted for."
Fishburne: Despite a manhunt,
police are unable to locate Ostrog.
Later investigations reveal why.
- Several of the original investigators
went to their graves believing
that Jack the Ripper was Michael Ostrog.
But Ostrog could not have, in fact, been Jack the Ripper
because he was imprisoned in France
at the time under the name of Grand Guidon.
Fishburne: But Ostrog isn't the only potential suspect
named by Macnaughten.
There's another possibility.
♪ ♪
- Macnaughten also named another suspect
in his memoranda, and it wasn't a full name,
it was just simply a last name, Kosminski.
He was a tailor who arrived in Whitechapel in the 1880s,
early 1880s, and later became a barber.
Kosminski was a great fit for the Ripper profile.
He was considered violent towards women,
he had homicidal tendencies,
his mental stability came into question,
and he was also local during the murders.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Fishburne: Little else is known
about Aaron Kosminski at the time.
But in 2014, a British author,
Russell Edwards, makes a shocking discovery.
- Edwards attends an auction and buys a shawl
that is supposed to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes
and had been found on her body the night of her murder.
- Her found two blood samples on Eddowes' scarf.
It was his hope that these blood stains
might lead to the identify of the Ripper,
and specifically to Kosminski.
The results were very, very intriguing.
- When they compare the DNA on the shawl
with the DNA of Kosminski's descendants,
they discover a match of 99.2% and a match of 100%.
It sounds like they found him.
However, the DNA on the shawl that was tested
was mitochondrial DNA and not nuclear DNA.
- Nuclear DNA can pretty much identify
an individual, specifically.
On the other hand, mitochondrial DNA can say
this blood came from someone with Eastern European ancestry.
So even though this blood on the scarf of Eddowes
was consistent with Kosminski,
it by no means identified Kosminski as the murderer.
- So it appears Jack the Ripper has again
slipped through our grasp.
Fishburne: Or has he?
[dramatic music]
perhaps Offi
Fishburne: As London police struggle
to find Jack the Ripper,
their task seems nearly impossible.
- The police comb through suspect after suspect,
but there's either no evidence to support
that they were there, or they have alibis.
So they're left grasping at straws.
John Pizer, Michael Ostrog, Aaron Kosminski.
Each of them has seemed like a promising suspect,
but ultimately each is cleared.
Fishburne: But one expert believes
Macnaughten was on the right track with one name,
Kosminski.
It's just a simple case of mistaken identity.
♪ ♪
- Macnaughten's initial instincts
with Kosminski were sound,
but later research led us to a different person
with an even darker history.
Fishburne: In December, 1888, a man named David Cohen
is admitted to a London asylum.
- David Cohen wasn't actually a real name.
It's the name that the police would use
for an unknown Jewish suspect,
much like we use the name John Doe today.
- Whilst committed, Cohen exhibits violent behavior.
He attacks staff. He attacks women.
He shows violent tendencies,
the very tendencies that elevates somebody
to Ripper suspect status.
Cohen also had syphilis and had been treated for it,
which suggests that he potentially engaged
with prostitutes and may have caught it from them,
which would attribute his disdain
to the working ladies of the East End.
Fishburne: Most notable about this suspect is the timing.
- The murders cease after Cohen is committed,
but the police don't make the connection in time,
and he dies before his true identity is known.
Fishburne: Cohen remains anonymous
until 1987 when British researcher, Martin Fido,
claims to finally know his true identity.
- Cohen's real name is believed to be Nathan Kaminski.
Kaminski, Kosminski, it's very easy to see
how Macnaughten could have
confused one name for the other.
Fishburne: And the parallels don't end there.
- Nathan Kaminski was a Jewish resident at the East End
who was treated for syphilis.
There's one other key detail about Kaminski.
He was a boot maker, so he spent hours
working with very sharp tools, and he wore a leather apron.
- It certainly appears plausible
that this simply may have been a mistake
between two names that were very similar.
♪ ♪
- When Inspector Abberline retired in 1892,
that was not the end of the case for him.
He still conducted more research
in compiling a list of suspects.
For him, it was unfinished business.
Fishburne: In 1903, almost 15 years after the crime,
the now retired chief investigator,
Frederick Abberline, announces another suspect.
- So a man named George Chapman was executed
in February, 1903.
And Abberline after reading that saw the similarities
between the Whitechapel murders and the murders
that Chapman did.
It convinced him enough
that Chapman may very well have been Jack the Ripper.
♪ ♪
- George Chapman was not his birth name.
He was born as Seweryn Klosowski,
and he came to London from Poland in 1888,
coincidentally the same year of the Ripper murders.
- In Poland, he was a surgeon's assistant,
dressing wounds and the like.
In London, he became a barber
and ran a barbershop on Cable Street
during the times of the murders.
Klosowski left for America,
and his departure from English shores
coincided with the ceasing of the Jack the Ripper murders.
Fishburne: If Chapman was Jack the Ripper,
it's possible his killing streak didn't stop after all.
- George Chapman marries three more times
over a period of nine years,
and all three succumbed at his hand to poisoning.
Fishburne: Chapman is tried
and executed for his wives' murders in 1903.
♪ ♪
The case generates headlines for weeks.
- Upon his arrest and hanging in 1903,
he says to Inspector Godley,
"Congratulations, you have caught
Jack the Ripper at last."
On Abberline's own admission,
Chapman was not even on his radar
as a suspect at the time of the murders,
but due to subsequent research and Abberline
building a greater profile of what he was after,
George Chapman just ticked every box for him.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But Abberline's suspicions come too late.
- Chapman was hung, so he went to his death
without ever being identified as Jack the Ripper.
We will never have that answer.
♪ ♪
- Jack the Ripper,
three words at the end of an 1888 letter
that continue to elicit fear to this day.
For over a century, that letter has been thought
to be the only piece of physical evidence
tied to the true killer.
That changes in 2011
when one man uncovers a dark family secret.
♪ ♪
May 7th, 1896, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Inside Moyamensing Prison,
a serial killer is executed by hanging,
his name, H.H. Holmes.
- H.H. Holmes was taken down off of the scaffold
and placed in a double-wide coffin
that was already half full of cement.
Then the coffin was filled the rest of the way with cement
and buried in an unmarked grave.
Fishburne: Decades later,
one man finds out an alarming fact.
- When I was 40 years old
and my grandfather had passed away,
I was given some material which led me to believe
that the man known to history as Dr. H.H. Holmes
was actually Herman Webster Mudgett,
my great-great-grandfather.
For the last 10 to 15 years of my life,
I've been researching the possibility that Dr. Holmes,
along with the 40 other aliases
he used on his criminal exploits,
was also the most notorious cold case of all time,
Jack the Ripper.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Born Herman Mudgett,
Holmes moves to Chicago in 1886,
where he eventually rushes to build a three-story hotel
for the upcoming World's Fair.
- This World's Fair was especially important
for Chicago because Chicago
won out over so many better-known cities.
This was the chance for Chicago to prove to the world
that they were a city worth reckoning with.
♪ ♪
- Everyone that went to the Fair
needed a place to stay.
Holmes knew that. He planned the building.
He constructed it as a motel in order for innocent victims
to spend the night so that he could choose
which one he wanted to pursue his terrible business.
- He had secret rooms, rooms that could be sealed off
and people could be suffocated
or rooms that could be filled with gas.
After Holmes murdered his victims on the upper floors,
he sent them down chutes into the basement,
where they could be dissolved in vats of acid or quicklime.
He would then sell the skeletons to medical schools
for about $200 each,
which would be $5,000 to $10,000 in today's money.
This is someone who is truly monstrous.
So much time and dedication to create the perfect space
for him to murder exactly when and how he wants to.
Fishburne: Then in 2011,
fresh information raises new questions.
Could Britain's infamous serial killer
actually be H.H. Holmes?
- I was approached by a group of gentlemen
who are also investigating the possibility
that Holmes had been in London
during the infamous Whitechapel murders.
He had been there looking into the possibility
of opening up a business selling human body parts
and articulated skeletons to medical schools
and universities, just as he had done in America.
Fishburne: Jeff believes Holmes' background
is a perfect match for the Ripper.
- H.H. Holmes, as Herman Webster Mudgett,
obtained his degree as a doctor,
a licensed physician to practice medicine in America.
Fishburne: Some speculate that like H.H. Holmes,
Jack the Ripper might be selling pieces of his victims.
- One of the rumors going around at the time
was that there was a doctor who was willing to pay £20
for each human uterus he received.
Two of Jack the Ripper's victims had
their uteri removed.
This is similar to the idea of Holmes
selling human skeletons for money.
Could they be connected?
Fishburne: As a next step,
Jeff investigates the infamous "Dear Boss" letter.
- While I was investigating the possibility
that Holmes had been in London, had written "Dear Boss,"
and had murdered Catherine Eddowes,
I was approached by a gentleman from Pennsylvania,
and he presented me with some handwriting comparisons.
I was shown these handwriting comparisons
with perhaps the most infamous true crime letter of all time,
"Dear Boss."
It chilled me to the bone.
It was obviously the same handwriting.
I knew that graphology and handwriting comparison
was a powerful forensic science.
I went to the scientists at the University of Buffalo
who had designed a computer program,
the CEDAR-FOX system,
which was recognized by the federal courts,
which was recognized by the FBI,
which was recognized by Scotland Yard.
They took the material, the "Dear Boss" letter
and the Holmes correspondence, and their professional opinion
was that it was similar in style.
They ran it through their system,
and when they returned with their results,
over 90% similarity.
I needed to tell the world we had done it.
We had--after 134 years,
we had finally solved Jack the Ripper.
Fishburne: With such a prolific crime spree
in America,
how could Holmes have committed a murder in London?
- While investigating the possibility
that Holmes had been in London
at the exact time of the Whitechapel murders,
we were able to discover letters
that Holmes had written expressing his frustration
with being unable to obtain his favorite American periodicals
while he was in London.
Fishburne: In 2006, Scotland Yard and the BBC
commissioned a composite rendering of Jack the Ripper
based on firsthand accounts from 1888.
- While it's not something that could prove guilt
at a murder trial, the drawing, if you'll take a close look,
has a remarkable resemblance to the photograph
the Boston police took of H.H. Holmes
after they arrested him.
It's almost exact.
♪ ♪
There is a fascination
with how many H.H. Holmes actually murdered,
just as there is a fascination
with serial killing in our society.
We all want to know how many innocents died at his hand.
One day, I hope to prove that H.H. Holmes,
my direct ancestor, my grandfather's grandfather,
is also Jack the Ripper.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Until that day, the Holmes theory remains
yet another intriguing possibility.
Fishburne: At the time of Jack the Ripper's murders,
and in the decades since,
nearly every investigator has relied
on one crucial assumption,
that the killer was male.
- Most violent murderers of women are men,
but not all of them.
- The poor women of East London were no strangers to courts.
Many were hauled in for disorderly conduct,
for rough taunts, for fighting,
for themselves engaging in violent acts,
sometimes against men, sometimes against other women.
This understanding that women were capable of violence
perhaps fueled at least a few to speculate
that Jack the Ripper might have been Jill the Ripper...
♪ ♪
A female killer.
- The idea of Jill the Ripper actually originates
from the time of the murders themselves.
After the murder of the fifth victim,
Mary Jane Kelly,
Mary Kelly's estimated time of death
was between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m.
And this is based on the doctor looking at her body,
the stiffness of her limbs,
and the temperature of her body,
as well as witnesses who heard
or last saw Mary Jane Kelly alive.
There is, however, one witness, Caroline Maxwell,
who claims to have seen Mary Jane Kelly the morning
after her murder at 8:00 and 9:00 a.m.
Caroline was very certain of her identification
because she knew Kelly and because Kelly was
wearing a very specific outfit that Maxwell had seen before,
including a very specific red shawl.
Despite the fact that her evidence seems
to go against what the doctors have said,
Caroline Maxwell is very certain of both the date
and the time
because of when her husband would have to go to work.
Fishburne: Although it was just one witness' account,
Inspector Frederick Abberline
believes there could be something to it.
- Abberline concludes
that it could've been the Ripper
who put on Mary Jane Kelly's clothes
and was seen by Caroline Maxwell.
So therefore, the Ripper could be a woman.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Abberline, however,
is never able to identify who this woman might be.
So he moves on to investigate other theories.
But in 1939, author William Stewart
picks up where Abberline left off.
- William Stewart believes that if Jack the Ripper
actually had been a woman that she,
in fact, might've been a midwife.
Many of these young women were prostitutes.
It would not have been uncommon
that they would be seeking an abortion
or, in some cases, a delivery.
So, therefore, a midwife walking those streets
in the middle of the night with an apron with blood
on it would not necessarily have caused suspicion.
It could've been fairly commonplace,
given that environment at that time.
Fishburne: Stewart points to the state
of Mary Jane Kelly's room as further proof.
- A midwife could have gotten close to these women.
When Mary Jane Kelly's body was discovered,
her clothes were folded on the chair next to the bed.
This was an indication that she was very comfortable,
and calm, and was not surprised
by somebody coming in unexpectedly.
Fishburne: But why would a midwife
specifically target Mary Kelly?
- We don't know Mary Jane Kelly was killed,
but Stewart suggests that she asked the midwife
to come to perform an abortion,
changed her mind,
and then threatens to rat the midwife out to the police
since abortions were, at the time, illegal.
Fishburne: If the killer was a woman, who was she?
- Any surgeon will tell you
that to make an abdominal incision,
to remove the viscera, requires a fair amount of strength.
It's not something that can be done without some power.
And it takes some time.
So that, again, leads me to believe
that Jack the Ripper
was a fairly well-built, strong individual.
About two years later, the police identified a woman
who they thought might have been Jack the Ripper.
- In December of 1890, a woman named Mary Pearcey is executed
because she murdered her lover's wife and child
and dumped their bodies in the streets.
Similar to the Ripper's victims,
both the wife and child had their throats cut.
We don't actually know very much about Mary Pearcey.
We don't know for sure that she was a midwife
or had medical knowledge.
But we do know that she was capable
of this kind of violence.
Ripper investigator Melville Macnaughten
describes Pearcey saying,
"I have never seen a woman of stronger physique.
Her nerves were as iron-cast as her body."
Fishburne: Ultimately, no female is arrested
in the Jack the Ripper case.
- I can understand why Macnaughten
may have thought this, but people at the time
especially would not have wanted to believe
that a young woman would've been capable of such things.
Fishburne: At the time,
that was the end of the Jill the Ripper theory
until new evidence surfaces.
- In May of 2006, an Australian researcher,
Ian Findlay,
identified female DNA from the saliva
of one of the envelopes that was sent by Jack the Ripper.
However, I think you need to put this in the context
of even with modern DNA analysis,
you're still dealing with samples over a century old.
And I think that calls into question
how valid those findings are.
It's really a shame that we can't explore this further.
But I think for the time being,
we should continue to refer to him as Jack the Ripper.
Fishburne: There's no doubt that the most famous
unsolved murder case in London's history is
that of Jack the Ripper.
- Jack the Ripper ruthlessly ended the lives of five women.
But his legacy has been
immensely productive of cultural forms,
of novels, documentaries, works of art,
each of which seeks to try to tell this story
and understand its meanings.
Fishburne: But what if this famed British mystery
isn't strictly British?
- In 2005, Trevor Marriott releases a book
that offers a new possibility, a new suspect,
bringing infamy to a relatively unknown.
It suggests that the Ripper might have been
a merchant seaman who never lived in London at all
but was docked at the Thames
during the times of the Jack the Ripper murders.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
In 1894, Juliana Hoffman is found slain
in her New York apartment.
Her throat was cut from ear to ear.
Two years later, the culprit was executed
in Sing Sing Prison via electrocution.
Her killer was a man named Carl Feigenbaum,
and his lawyer upon his execution has said,
"I believe that Carl Feigenbaum,
whom you have just seen put to death in the electric chair,
"can easily be connected with the Jack the Ripper murders
in Whitechapel, London."
Fishburne: When Trevor Marriott digs deeper,
he realizes there's a chance
that Feigenbaum's lawyer was right.
- The docks on the Thames are in very close proximity
to the murder sites in Whitechapel,
so that does lend to the fact
that he could have done this.
He was definitely close enough.
- As a merchant seaman, such as Feigenbaum,
they would never have been caught
because they come into port,
commit the murder, and then leave,
only to return again to commit the next murder.
Fishburne: When Marriott analyzes
London's port records,
his theory becomes more plausible.
- Trevor Marriott believes that Carl Feigenbaum was German.
And his theory on Feigenbaum centers
around the Norddeutscher Lloyd Shipping Company.
According to Trevor's theory,
a lot of vessels from this German shipping company
had boats docked in London at the time of the murders.
And that could place him
on the Norddeutscher line of vessels.
Fishburne: According to Marriott,
the killings might not stop there.
- This theory makes a lot of sense,
in part because the police were looking
very specifically at locals,
at people living there or with connections to the area.
And especially because Jack the Ripper was never caught.
And so Jack the Ripper may have had murders
in other ports of call that were never connected back.
- Marriott does further research
into the Norddeutscher Lloyd Shipping Company
and tracks departures from Bremen and analyzes the times
that they are docked in other countries.
He stated in addition
to the London killings,
there are six prostitutes murdered in Nicaragua
in January, 1889, one in Wisconsin in 1890,
two more in Germany and Switzerland that same year,
and three more in America through 1894,
all of which coincide with those German merchant vessels
coming and going.
Many of the woman had their throats cut,
which is a Ripper trademark.
The targets were also similar. Many were prostitutes.
So there was definitely a crossover between the killings
that Marriott found in other countries,
along with the Ripper murders in London.
Fishburne: But without more solid evidence,
it's impossible to prove Feigenbaum's guilt.
- While there is evidence
that contradicts Feigenbaum as Jack the Ripper,
the underlying theory of the killer
being a merchant seaman is very credible.
- It's interesting, sure, but tying all of this
to one man is a bit of a stretch.
I mean, there are plenty of misogynistic,
violent men in the world.
I mean, just look at how many
we've spoken of just from London.
♪ ♪
- The most powerful evidence that we have
about the Ripper's crimes were the bodies of his victims.
♪ ♪
And while he taunted the police and the public
by producing for himself a diabolical,
wicked, witty public persona,
he left behind so few hard clues
by which we can actually nail down who he was.
Fishburne: Can we ever crack the case of Jack the Ripper?
- I don't think we're ever going to find out
who Jack the Ripper really was,
but I also don't think we're gonna stop looking.
♪ ♪
- There may be no killing spree in history
with more possible suspects
and fewer pieces of concrete evidence
than the one committed
by the self-proclaimed Jack the Ripper.
But with so many obsessed investigators
dedicated to closing this case,
perhaps soon Jack the Ripper will get a new name,
one that finally reveals his true identity.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."