The most classic serial killer if there ever was one. He's like the Mozart of stabbing people (Don't ask me who his Salieri was). Like others, his kill count seems relatively low, but his notoriety isn't so much based on that as his dreadful brutality (which included dissection and allegedly cannibalism). He also sent letters to the police and was never caught (not unlike the Zodiac Killer). The Ripper story, for better or worse, is one that's going to stick with the public imagination like something that is incredibly sticky. Honey? Glue? I don't know.

The most significant effort regarding Jack in fiction is probably found in From Hell, a comic book written by Alan Moore (Watchmen, Constantine, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, etc) and drawn by Eddie Campbell. The book launches head first into what might be the single most compelling unsolved murder spree in world history. The research for the book was so fastidious, it took five years to complete and more recent editions of the comic book tome even include an appendix chock full of research material assembled by the writer, who looks not unlike a madman himself.

The graphic novel was later adapted by the Hughes brothers in 2001, which starred Johnny Depp as an opium addicted investigator sent on the trail of the serial killer. Though, I think I speak for us all when I say that the greatest adaptation of the Ripper story is on that was never made, which is Spinaltap's long-discussed musical "Saucy Jack."

Recent strides in forensic science and investigation techniques have gotten us closer to the identity of the Ripper than ever before, but part of the appeal (or scariness) of the stalker of Whitechapel is that we'll likely never, ever know who he was. On the plus side, we can at least go to bed knowing that this jerk probably died of syphallis or rickets or some other quaint Victorian mallady and will never bother anyone ever agian. We can also take sollace in the fact that the "From Hell" he signed his letters with is, more likely than not, accurate.

James Kislingbury for Citadel Interactive © 2009 

Photo courtesy of Hulton Archive, by Apic

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