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The following program contains disturbing violent images.

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Viewer discretion is advised.

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Tonight, a spree of gruesome murders that shocks Victorian England and the world.

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A homicidal maniac whose true name remains a mystery.

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The police comb through suspect after suspect.

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But there's either no evidence to support that they were there or they have alibis.

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So they're left grasping at straws.

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Now we uncover the top theories about one of history's most notorious serial killers.

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A few contemporaries believe that Jack the Ripper might well have been a woman.

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I hope to prove my grandfather's grandfather was also Jack the Ripper.

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Can his or her identity ever be proven? Who is Jack the Ripper?

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London, England, August 31st, 1888.

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It's early morning in the impoverished East End neighborhood.

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The East End of late Victorian London was a sprawling metropolis within the city of London itself.

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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.

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Delivery driver Charles Cross walks through the city's dark streets.

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Charles Cross is walking along Bucks Row on his way to work at 3.40 a.m.

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and he spots what he perceives as a unclaimed or discarded tarp hole, which is quite a find.

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But what he finds isn't a tarp. It's a female body.

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At first he thinks that this woman is either drunk or asleep.

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In fact, she's dead. Her throat has been slit and she's been mutilated.

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Area residents identify the victim as Mary Ann Polly Nichols.

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Polly Nichols began life as the daughter of a respectable, skilled artisan and his laundress wife.

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She married young. She had children.

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But alcohol and marital discord led her to leave the conjugal home and to live a life on the streets as a sex worker.

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These women were living very much a day-to-day existence, not necessarily knowing where they were going to sleep that night.

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This put them at a very extreme risk to be taken advantage of because they did not have a steady living.

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At the time, most crimes against sex workers in London received very little attention.

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But the brutal nature of this attack forces police to take notice.

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This was a attack that was beyond brutal and almost unprecedented.

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Murder was not uncommon in the East End, but a murder like this was definitely something that drew attention to both police and citizenry.

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After the Nichols murder, Commissioner Warren assigned First Class Inspector Frederick Abberline in charge of the White Chetville murder case.

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Abberline interviews the local women looking for suspects.

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Everyone he speaks to recalls the same elusive figure. He's even been given a nickname.

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Common thread amongst all the working women was there was a man that was extorting them for their money.

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His nickname was Leather Apron.

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The reason they called him Leather Apron is because that's what he always wore.

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And the working women were convinced that he killed Polly Nichols.

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Soon the mysterious Leather Apron is making headlines.

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The press latches on to the story almost immediately and starts running with it.

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Some of the key sensational newspapers like The Star or The Palm El Gazette devoted particular attention to the lurid details of the crime.

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All of these created a media spectacle, a frenzy.

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The publicity quickly generates a possible sighing.

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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.

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There he goes.

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The police officer decided to chase him down. He apprehends him.

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The man denies that he's Leather Apron. The woman still claims that he is. Ultimately the police officer lets him go.

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Nearly a week passes as the police try to track down Leather Apron.

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Before they can, the killer strikes again.

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At about 6 a.m. an elderly man walking along Hanbury Street near where he lived saw this body again in the shadows of the building.

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Later on after the police were called, this second victim was identified as Annie Chapman.

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Annie Chapman's wounds were very similar to Polly Nichols but much more severe. The throat was cut deep to the spine again.

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The intestines were thrown over the shoulder and the uterus was missing.

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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 then wipe them on the apron.

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Could this be proof that the same killer has struck again?

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The press thinks yes. After the second victim is found, the public sentiment in the East End turns ugly.

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At this point, the public is becoming more and more frantic. Will there be another murder? When will it occur?

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Why can't the police identify the murder? The lack of solving the crime heighten the anxiety, not just in Whitechapel but in Greater London as well.

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The newspapers repeat the fact that these eyewitnesses were describing suspects as Jewish or Jewish looking.

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And so it became this idea that a Jewish man was killing women in Whitechapel.

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Fights are breaking out in the streets, crowds are chanting down with the Jews and there are full on riots.

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Faced with escalating violence, police hurry to locate Leather Apron and quickly nab a suspect.

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Police held an inquest and they realized that there was a boot finisher who was also a Polish Jew named John Pizer.

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And on September 10th, he was arrested.

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Pizer's neighbors and friends attested his innocence. They believed him to be a good man.

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That didn't stop the police from harassing him further and doing a search of his home.

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When searching Pizer's home, they found five knives which they believed to have blood on them.

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While the police analyze the knives, they interrogate Pizer.

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On the night of Polynykul's murder, Pizer maintains that he was staying at Crossman's Lodge.

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On the second night for Annie Chapman's murder, Pizer claims he was holed up in his own home, living in fear.

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Police are able to confirm Pizer's alibis and eliminate the key evidence against him.

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There was no blood on those knives. After closer examination, they found out that what was on the knives was actually rust.

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The police ultimately bring in Pizer for additional questioning, as several eyewitnesses question whether he might have been at the scene of some of the murders.

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They put him through two lineups, but the lineups amount to nothing essentially because the accusers turn out to be non-credible.

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Pizer is released without charge on September 11th.

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The fact that these two lineups failed to identify Pizer raised the ongoing further question.

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If Pizer wasn't the murderer, then who was?

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In 1888, residents of London's East End are on high alert in the wake of the brutal murders of two young women.

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After Annie Chapman's murder, two weeks passed with nothing, and so people might be wondering, is he done? Was this it? Did he leave? Is he in prison?

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Nobody really knows what was happening.

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A few weeks later, not one, but two more women were discovered brutally murdered.

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Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were discovered within hours of each other, both had their throat slashed and both had abdominal wounds with their viscera removed.

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This was clearly a pattern for young women who were brutally murdered within a short period of time, all within blocks of each other.

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This heightened the anxiety, not just from the neighborhood, but from the police as well.

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This was something that like nobody had ever seen. London was probably dealing with its first known serial killer.

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At this point, even though we now had a third and a fourth victim, there were no eyewitnesses and there were no leads.

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So the police, quite frankly, were still very much in the dark as to who the murderer was.

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All that changes on October 1st, when a memo now called the Dear Boss Letter transforms a local investigation into a worldwide phenomenon.

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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.

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But then, September 30th occurred and Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were murdered.

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And in that letter, there were two details that matched the murders.

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The first was that he was going to get to work right away.

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The second was he's going to clip the ear off one of the women, so the police decided to publish that letter.

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It's called the Dear Boss Letter because that's how the letter begins.

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The killer is addressing the head of the police as boss and in it, he mocks the police efforts and suggests their miles off track in their assumptions and searches.

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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.

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Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet.

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I've laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.

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I am down on oars and I shan't quit ripping them till I get buckled.

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The disturbing letter ends with perhaps the most famous alias of all time.

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My knife's so nice and sharp.

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I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.

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Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.

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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.

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This letter associated these murders as the victims of Jack the Ripper rather than what they had been beforehand, the Whitechapel murders.

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On November 9th, the Ripper claims another victim, 25-year-old sex worker Mary Jane Kelly.

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Mary Jane Kelly's murder was the most horrific of all of the murders.

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She had her own little room at 13 Millers Court where she spent her nights.

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And so the Ripper was able to take his time with her after he murdered her.

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When they opened the room in the morning, they discovered pieces of her spread out around the room.

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She had been carved down to the bone in some cases.

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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.

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It was long assumed that the killer had anatomical or medical knowledge of the human body and Mary Kelly's murder totally cemented that.

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She had many organs removed and they were removed cleanly and precisely.

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And that took a significant level of skill to be able to achieve that.

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After Kelly's murder, the killings stopped, but the culprit remains at large.

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It's easy to go back and look at the police work of 1888 and be critical.

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However, we have to realize they had so few tools in order to investigate any crime.

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So much of the evidence was innuendo, was suspicion, was rumor, and that doesn't pin down the identity of Jack the Ripper.

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The case languishes for several years until a new detective is assigned in early 1892.

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Melville McNaughton is asked to investigate the Ripper murders further.

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McNaughton began to build a profile which a lot of people still turn to today.

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He believed the Ripper was well educated, potentially a Polish immigrant.

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And he also thought that it was somebody that again had anatomical or medical knowledge.

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He conducts different interviews, compiling suspects, and a name that pops out to him is Michael Ostrog.

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Ostrog seems to fit the profile perfectly.

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McNaughton stated two main points about Ostrog, that he had surgical experience from Russia

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and also that he was a homicidal maniac.

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He writes, this man was said to have been habitually cruel to women

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and for a long time was known to have carried with him surgical knives and other instruments.

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And his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactorily accounted for.

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Despite a manhunt, police are unable to locate Ostrog.

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Later investigations reveal why.

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Several of the original investigators went to their graves believing that Jack the Ripper was Michael Ostrog.

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But Ostrog could not in fact have been Jack the Ripper because he was imprisoned in France at the time under the name of Grand Bidon.

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But Ostrog isn't the only potential suspect named by McNaughton. There's another possibility.

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McNaughton also named another suspect in his memoranda and it wasn't a full name, it was just simply a last name.

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Kosminski, he was a tailor who arrived in Whitechapel in the 1880s, early 1880s and later became a barber.

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Kosminski was a great fit for the Ripper profile. He was considered violent towards women.

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He had homicidal tendencies. His mental stability came into question and he was also local during the murders.

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Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

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Little else is known about Aaron Kosminski at the time, but in 2014 a British author, Russell Edwards, makes a shocking discovery.

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Edwards attends an auction and buys a shawl that is supposed to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes and have been found on her body the night of her murder.

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He found two blood samples on Eddowes scarf. It was his hope that these blood stains might lead to the identity of the Ripper and specifically to Kosminski.

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The results were very, very intriguing.

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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%.

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It sounds like they found him. However, the DNA on the shawl that was tested was mitochondrial DNA and not nuclear DNA.

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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.

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So even though this blood on the scarf of Eddowes was consistent with Kosminski, it by no means identified Kosminski as the murderer.

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So it appears Jack the Ripper has again slipped through our grasp.

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Or has he?

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As London police struggle to find Jack the Ripper, their task seems nearly impossible.

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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.

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John Pizer, Michael Ostrog, Aaron Kosminski. Each of them has seemed like a promising suspect, but ultimately each is cleared.

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But one expert believes McNaughton was on the right track with one name, Kosminski. It's just a simple case of mistaken identity.

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McNaughton's initial instincts with Kosminski were sound, but later research led us to a different person with an even darker history.

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In December 1888, a man named David Cohen is admitted to a London asylum.

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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.

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Whilst committed, Cohen exhibits violent behaviour. He attacks staff, he attacks women, he shows violent tendencies, the very tendencies that elevate somebody to rip a suspect's status.

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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 could attribute his disdain to the working ladies of East End.

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Most notable about this suspect is the timing.

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The murder cease after Cohen is committed, but the police don't make the connection in time and he dies before his true identity is known.

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Cohen remains anonymous until 1987, when British researcher Martin Fido claims to finally know his true identity.

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Cohen's real name is believed to be Nathan Kaminsky.

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Kaminsky, Kosminsky. It's very easy to see how McNaughton could have confused one name from the other.

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And the parallels don't end there.

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Nathan Kaminsky was a Jewish resident of the East End who was treated for syphilis.

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There's one other key detail about Kaminsky. He was a bootmaker, so he spent hours working with very sharp tools, and he wore a leather apron.

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It certainly appears plausible that this simply may have been a mistake between two names that were very similar.

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When Inspector Abilene retired in 1892, that was not the end of the case for him.

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He still conducted more research and complying a list of suspects. For him, it was unfinished business.

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In 1903, almost 15 years after the crime, the now retired chief investigator, Frederick Abilene, announces another suspect.

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So a man named George Chapman was executed in February 1903.

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In Abilene, after reading that, saw the similarities between the white chapel murders and the murders that Chapman did.

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It convinced him enough that Chapman may very well have been Jack the Ripper.

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George Chapman was not his birth name. He was born as Severin Kuzhawski, and he came to London from Poland in 1888, coincidentally the same year of the Ripper murders.

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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.

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Kuzhawski left for America, and his departure from English shores coincided with the ceasing of the Jack the Ripper murders.

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If Chapman was Jack the Ripper, it's possible his killing streak didn't stop after all.

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George Chapman marries three more times over a period of nine years, and all three succumbed at his hands to poisoning.

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Chapman is tried and executed for his wife's murders in 1903. The case generates headlines for weeks.

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Upon his arrest and hanging in 1903, he says to Inspector Godley, congratulations, you have caught Jack the Ripper at last.

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On Averlin'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 Averlin building a greater profile of what he was after, George Chapman just ticked every box for him.

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But Averlin's suspicions come too late.

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Chapman was hung, so he went to his death without ever being identified as Jack the Ripper. We will never have that answer.

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Jack the Ripper. Three words at the end of an 1888 letter that continued to elicit fear to this day.

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For over a century that letter has been thought to be the only piece of physical evidence tied to the true killer.

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That changes in 2011, when one man uncovers a dark family secret.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inside Moyamen Singh prison, a serial killer is executed by hanging. His name H. H. Holmes.

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H. H. Holmes was taken down off of the scaffold and placed in a double wide coffin that was already half full of cements.

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Then the coffin was filled the rest of the way with cements and buried in an unmarked grave.

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Decades later, one man finds out an alarming fact.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This World's Fair was especially important for Chicago because Chicago won out over so many better known cities.

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This was the chance for Chicago to prove to the world that they were a city worth reckoning with.

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Everyone that went to the fair needed a place to stay.

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Holmes knew that.

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He planned the building.

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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.

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He had secret rooms, rooms that could be sealed off and people could be suffocated or rooms that could be filled with gas.

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After Holmes murdered his victims on the upper floor, he sent them down chutes into the basement where they could be dissolved in vats of acid or quick lime.

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He would then sell the skeletons to medical schools for about $200 each, which would be $5,000 to $10,000 since today's money.

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This is someone who's truly monstrous.

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So much time and dedication to create the perfect space for him to murder exactly when and how he wants to.

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Then in 2011, fresh information raises new questions.

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Could Britain's infamous serial killer actually be H.H. Holmes?

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I was approached by a group of gentlemen who were also investigating the possibility that Holmes had been in London during the infamous Whitechapel murders.

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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.

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Jeff believes Holmes' background is a perfect match for the Ripper.

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H.H. Holmes, as Herman Webster Mudgeit, obtained his degree as a doctor, a licensed physician to practice medicine in America.

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Some speculate that, like H.H. Holmes, Jack the Ripper might be selling pieces of his victims.

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One of the rumors going around at the time was that there was a doctor who was willing to pay 20 pounds for each human uterus he received.

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Two of Jack the Ripper's victims had their uterine removed.

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This is similar to the idea of Holmes selling human skeletons for money. Could they be connected?

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As a next step, Jeff investigates the infamous Dear Boss letter.

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While I was investigating the possibility that Holmes had been in London, had written Dear Boss and had murdered Catherine Edo's.

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I was approached by a gentleman from Pennsylvania and he presented me with some handwriting comparisons.

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I was shown these handwriting comparisons with perhaps the most infamous true crime letter of all time, Dear Boss.

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It chilled me to the bone. It was obviously the same handwriting.

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I knew that graphology and handwriting comparison was a powerful forensic science.

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I went to the scientists at the University of Buffalo who had designed a computer program, the Cedar Fox system,

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which was recognized by the federal courts, which was recognized by the FBI, which was recognized by Scott Linyard.

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They took the material, the Dear Boss letter, and the Holmes correspondence.

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Their professional opinion was that it was similar in style. They ran it through their system and when they returned with their results,

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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.

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With such a prolific crime spree in America, how could Holmes have committed a murder in London?

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While investigating the possibility that Holmes had been in London at the exact time of the Whitechapel murders,

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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.

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In 2006, Scott Linyard and the BBC commissioned a composite rendering of Jack the Ripper based on first-hand accounts from 1888.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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is also Jack the Ripper.

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Until that day, the Holmes theory remains yet another intriguing possibility.

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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.

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Most violent murders of women are men, but not all of them.

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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.

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This understanding that women were capable of violence perhaps fueled at least a few to speculate that Jack the Ripper might have been Jilda Ripper, a female killer.

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The idea of Jilda 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.

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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.

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There is however one witness, Carolyn Maxwell, who claims to have seen Mary Jane Kelly the morning after her murder at 8.00 and 9.00 a.m.

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Carolyn 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.

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Despite the fact that their evidence seems to go against what the doctors have said, Carolyn Maxwell is very certain of both the date and the time because of when her husband would have to go to work.

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Although it was just one witness's account, Inspector Frederick Aberline believes there could be something to it.

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Aberline concludes that it could have been the ripper who put on Mary Jane Kelly's clothes and was seen by Carolyn Maxwell. So therefore the ripper could be a woman.

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Aberline 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 Aberline left off.

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William Stewart believes that if Jack the Ripper actually had been a woman, that she in fact might have been a midwife.

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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.

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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 have been fairly commonplace given that environment at that time.

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Stewart points to the state of Mary Jane Kelly's room as further proof.

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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.

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But why would a midwife specifically target Mary Kelly?

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We don't know why Mary Jane Kelly was killed, but Stewart suggests that she asked the midwife to come to perform an abortion, changed her mind, and then threatened to rat the midwife out to the police since abortions were at the time illegal.

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If the killer was a woman, who was she?

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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.

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So that again leads me to believe that Jack the Ripper was a fairly well-built, strong individual.

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About two years later, the police identified a woman who they thought might have been Jack the Ripper.

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In December of 1890, a woman named Mary Percy is executed because she murdered her lover's wife and child and dumped their bodies in the streets.

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Similar to the Ripper's victims, both the wife and child had their throats cut.

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We don't actually know very much about Mary Percy. We don't know for sure that she was a midwife or had medical knowledge.

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But we do know that she was capable of this kind of violence.

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Ripper investigator Melville McNaughton describes Percy saying,

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I have never seen a woman of stronger physique. Her nerves were as iron-cast as her body.

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Ultimately, no female is arrested in the Jack the Ripper case.

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I can understand why McNaughton may have thought this, but people at the time especially would not have wanted to believe that a young woman would have been capable of such things.

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At the time, that was the end of the Jill the Ripper theory, until new evidence surfaces.

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In May of 2006, an Australian researcher, Ian Finley, identified female DNA from the saliva of one of the envelopes that were sent by Jack the Ripper.

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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.

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And I think that calls into question how valid those findings are.

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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.

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There's no doubt that the most famous unsolved murder case in London's history is that of Jack the Ripper.

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Jack the Ripper ruthlessly ended the lives of five women.

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But his legacy has been immensely productive of cultural forms, of novels, documentaries, works of art,

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each of which seeks to try to tell this story and understand its meanings.

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But what if this famed British mystery isn't strictly British?

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In 2005, Trevor Marriott releases a book that offers a new possibility, a new suspect, bringing infamy to a relatively unknown.

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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.

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In 1894, Juliana Hoffman is found slain in her New York apartment.

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Her throat was cut from ear to ear. Two years later, the culprit was executed in Sing Sing Prison by an electrician.

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Her killer was a man named Kyle Figenbaum, and his lawyer, upon his execution, has said,

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I believe that Kyle Figenbaum, 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.

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When Trevor Marriott digs deeper, he realizes there's a chance that Figenbaum's lawyer was right.

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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.

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As a merchant seaman such as Figenbaum, 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.

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When Marriott analyzes London's port records, his theory becomes more plausible.

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Trevor Marriott believes that Kyle Figenbaum was German, and his theory on Figenbaum centers around the Norddeutsche Lloyd shipping company.

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According to Trevor's theory, a lot of vessels from this German shipping company had both docked in London at the time of the murders, and that could place him on the Norddeutsche Line vessels.

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According to Marriott, the killings might not stop there.

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This theory makes a lot of sense, in part because the police were looking very specifically at locals, that people living there are with connections to the area, and especially because Jack the Ripper was never caught.

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And so Jack the Ripper may have had murders and other ports of call that were never connected back.

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Marriott does further research into the Norddeutsche Lloyd shipping company, and tracks departures from Bremen, and analyzes the times that they are docked in other countries.

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He stated,

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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.

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Many of the women had their throats cut, which is a river trademark.

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The targets were also similar. Many were prostitutes.

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So there was definitely a crossover between the killings that Marriott found in other countries, along with the Ripper murders in London.

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But without more solid evidence, it's impossible to prove Fiegenbaum's guilt.

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While there is evidence that contradicts Fiegenbaum as Jack the Ripper, the underlying theory of the killer being an emergent seaman is very credible.

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It's interesting, sure, but tying all of this to one man is a bit of a stretch.

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I mean, there are plenty of misogynistic, violent men in the world.

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I mean, just look at how many we've spoken of just from London.

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The most powerful evidence that we have about the Ripper's crimes were the bodies of his victims.

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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.

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Can we ever crack the case of Jack the Ripper?

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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 going to stop looking.

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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.

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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.

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I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.