Jack the Ripper

A Writer’s Dilemma

The internet is again rife with speculation on the possibility of learning the true identity of notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper. The study claiming to have identified Polish immigrant and barber, Aaron Kominski as Saucy Jack, was quickly debunked by experts in the field of archaeological genetics for various reasons, not the least of which include improper handling of the ‘Ripper shawl’ and the simple fact that mitochondrial DNA can’t be passed by a man to his descendants.

Jack the Ripper was not the world’s first serial killer, but he is by far one of the most famous. His killing spree, which lasted from April to November of 1888, cost at least five women their lives, and shocked a city with its brutality.

The mystery surrounding the Ripper murders and the identity of the killer has been a literary gold mine for over a hundred years. Who was the Whitechapel Killer? What drove him to kill these women? Why did he stop?

When something is so shrouded the mystery of the past it is easy to forget that the victims in these sensational crimes were real people. Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly were women with families and friends who loved them and mourned their loss. Their lives were viciously cut short, all for the sick glee of a stranger who left their bodies bloody and mutilated in the street.

There is a growing sentiment online that serial killers should not be glorified in media. This feeling has intensified in the wake of the Netflix release of the Ted Bundy Tapes, and the acquisition of the Zac Efron movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

I was a child when Ted Bundy was executed for the deaths of over 30 women in the 1970s, but I can remember my parents talking about him. I remember hearing talk about how shocking it was that someone so charming and good looking could be a serial killer.

But I think what shocked people was less that Bundy was so outside the norm of what a murderer was supposed to be as it was to have their prejudices shattered before their eyes. In the ‘70s, it was unthinkable that the clean-cut white boy could be anything other than what he appeared to be, let alone a psychopath and necrophiliac.

Similarly, many investigators wanted Jack the Ripper to be of the lower classes. They wanted him to be an immigrant because it was abhorrent to their own view of the world that he could have been an educated gentleman, and most likely a medical student or a doctor.

As a crime fiction writer, the feeling that it is or should be shameful to be intrigued by the mind of a person who could be so morally reprehensible leaves me with a dilemma. The possibilities of who and what Jack the Ripper may have been are endless. After 130 years, I see Jack as less a person and more a myth in the vein of Edward Hyde. The difference, of course, was the Mr Hyde was never a real person. He didn’t actually hurt anyone.

So, what is a writer to do? Do we stop studying the psychology behind serial killers in deference to their victims? Do we ban all such subject matter? Or only those that pertain to true crime?

It’s a complicated issue, and I don’t have the answer. My personal preference has always been for crime fiction because in the real world, some mysteries are never solved. The guilty often go free, and the innocent are never vindicated. In fiction we get to decide how a story will end. We get to give a sense of order and rightness back to the world after the horror of innocent lives lost.

I think that perhaps we need that power now more than ever. Perhaps terrorists and serial killers should be denied the fame they so desperately seek. But at the same time, I think that who these people are, their hate, their deliberate destruction of those around them needs a light shone upon it.

Ted Bundy was not sexy or charming. He wasn’t special or mentally ill. He was socially inept and angry that he couldn’t get what he felt he deserved out of life. He took that anger out on innocent women.

We may never know who Jack the Ripper really was, but I have a feeling that his story might read along similar lines – an angry, frustrated man of privilege who wasn’t satisfied with his lot in life. And so he vented that rage on the most vulnerable people he could find.