Lullacide

In the autumn of 1888, the fog rolled through London's East End like a thick wool blanket. In Whitechapel, where the streets were narrow and the gas lamps flickered, the poor folk went about their business. They had pennies to earn and gin to drink. They didn't notice the shadow that moved between the alleys.

The Ripper murders occurred in the impoverished Whitechapel district of London's East End.

One by one, five women who worked the dark streets of Whitechapel were found in the morning. The things that had been done to them were so terrible that even the doctors turned pale. 'This is the work of someone who knows his way around a knife,' they said. The newspapers called him Jack.

The canonical five victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.

Jack wrote letters to the police! 'Dear Boss,' he wrote in red ink. 'I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won't fix me just yet.' He signed it 'Jack the Ripper.' Was it really from Jack? Nobody knows. But the name stuck like blood on a cobblestone.

The 'Dear Boss' letter, received by the Central News Agency in September 1888, coined the name 'Jack the Ripper.'

The police searched high and low. They interviewed butchers and doctors and leather workers. They brought in bloodhounds. Queen Victoria herself demanded answers. But the fog kept its secrets, and Jack kept his. After five terrible weeks, the murders simply stopped. Just like that.

Despite massive police efforts, the Ripper was never identified. The murders ceased as suddenly as they began.

To this day, nobody knows who Jack really was. A doctor? A prince? A butcher? A madman off a boat? Everyone has a theory, and none of them are proven. Jack the Ripper is the world's most famous mystery. And somewhere in the fog of Whitechapel, perhaps the shadow still smiles, knowing it got away.

The Ripper's identity remains one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries, with over 100 suspects proposed.