*numbah coughs "freemasons" under his breath*

UPDATE: I'm shocked that GTH hasn't reported me to the Illuminati high command for that cough yet...

Before anyone gets the vapors over the Ripper, please look at the facts. There was probably a total of five murders in the slums of London. The victims were all whores. The murders were all gruesome. That's it. There is nothing more.

The reason the Legend of the Ripper got blown out of all proportion is the media. It has carried on for a century and a quarter about this serial murderer

The perp was never caught and that is not unusual with the forensic and scientific skills available in the late 19th Century.

The name comes from an anonymous letter written to the newspapers. We don't know if the killer wrote it or not. It might have been a crank.

All the names alleged to be the Ripper are pure speculation with no scientific evidence to back them up whatsoever.

For some light entertainment, read the Wikipedia article about the Ripper suspects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_suspec ts

From whatever angle: Sick and deranged enough to warrant oblivion.

One of those guys who got away with it. No one will probably ever know who he was but it makes for a great story for centries to come.

The first serial killer ! Maybe he was some kind of genius.If not he was very smart and clever. I think it could have been a ordinary and miserable worker in factory or something from this kind.I mean he was from the low social classes.He must lived in Whitechapel.To do all of this murders in this hood he had to have a knowledge about each street.This can be only man who lived all of his life in this hood. MOTIVES : If he had lived in worker or more miserable family his life was very hard there is no doubt in that.Every day he's working and surviving. But there is high classes and they dont feeling the pain of the miserable life.Jack is seeing in the prostitutes some character of the high classes.

I think it could have been a Doctor,given that organs were often removed.The weapon could have been a scalpel.

The fact that no one knows he was, that he has never caught, and that there is many theories surrounding who he was and why he did it make for one of the world's interesting unsolved mysteries.

I think it is a very good murder story. he is one of the first serial killers of all time.

Im not sure how Jack The Ripper qualifies as an unexplained mystery. He was a guy who killed hookers. He was crazy. The end.

no mystery! william sickret did it! DUH!

It was me!!! I'M Jack the Ripper!! I did all these horrible things. Sorry, but I was a different person back then and I don't think it fair to judge me based on my youthful indiscretions. Besides, there is no way any of you can track me down (Stan isn't my real name) to rat me out, so they'll never catch me. Tee hee.

Those inbred, snaggle-toothed, adulterous clowns of the British Monarchy were definitely involved somehow.

The main reason this was never solved was due to the fact that a primitive police force was dealing with a highly intelligent serial killer who acted in a way much more like the modern varieties of that repulsive species than anything seen to that time. Mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell has recently written a book proposing that the killer was noted artist Walter Sickert, basing her theory on modern forensic techniques including DNA testing. She makes a persuasive case. I'm curious, President XD, that you're aware of a solution to the case. I think we'd all be delighted to hear it. And as regards the comment that the Ripper was 19th century Englands answer to OJ, I beg to differ. The murders in the OJ case were the brutal end of a domestic disaster, and the real interest was on the trial, not on the pursuit of the perpetrator. A better parallell would be the Florence Maybrick case.

This was solved, and Jack didn't hold a candle to the Zodiac killer anyway.

I agree, a very interesting unsolved mystery but I heard a rumour that they are re-opening the case and applying foresnsic technology to the evidence - we will soon know who it really was but tell me, do you want to know? It'll make a great film, so long as Hollywood don't get hold of it.

Everyone has been interested in this case at least once in their lives. Tragic for the victims, though.

A fascinating subject to read about, and probably always will be. So many years have gone by, we'll never know for sure who he really was, but it's safe to say we'll never forget about it, either. Today's forensic science would most likely have allowed us to catch him, but back then there was no inkling of that kind of thing. Patricia Cornwell, the author of a book about Jack the Ripper, has named who she thinks is the killer, and she has some pretty thorough evidence to back it up, but after all these years, I don't think even a mountain of evidence would be enough to convince anyone.

good movie. it was confusing

JTR may have been a serial killer but in a way he was also 19th century England’s answer to OJ (we Yanks had Lizzie B.). Of all the myriad theories, I tend to lean toward the idea that he was someone of prominence, possibly even a Royal. I also believe that someone or several someone’s knew who he was and “dealt with it”. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch then to think, given the Victorian regard for discretion, that he may have finally been quietly bumped off or, at least, locked up in some private institution. And though his story may never be completely known and he did not have to face his deeds in this life, he, like Lizzie, Adolph and scores of others have long ago discovered … you may run but you can’t hide!

I've heard so many theories on who the killer could be and what his motives were, from being an artist to a doctor, it's really intriguing (though terrible that it happened, don't get me wrong, it's just a really fascinating mystery). I have to wonder if we could have found out who he was with out modern forensics abilities. This mystery, unlike many others listed here, also doesn't question the existance of the individual, but rather WHO the individual is, which is also interesting.