Jack the Ripper was a serial killer that acted in 1888, killing five prostitutes from 31st of August to the 9th of November. They were never heard from nor any murder that is considered theirs committed, though some crimes from soon after have been linked to him. However, only the “canonical five”, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catharine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, will be considered. Jack the Ripper was not one person, and nor were multiple people working to be the one identity. Instead, there was a main murderer, a coincidental murderer, and a copycat murderer.
Montague John Druitt killed Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, and Catharine Eddowes and would be the person that most would call “Jack the Ripper” He has enough
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He had a motive for the murder; they had had a falling out only ten days before her death over letting a prostitute stay with them, which he was not pleased with. In this argument, he was quite violent, smashing a window, and moved out from an eighteen month living arrangements. However, afterwards he was extremely kind to her, giving her money and gifts until her death. The murder was quite obviously a faulty copy of the delicate and precision based murders which were attributed to Jack the Ripper. The corpse was mutilated almost beyond belief, instead of the neat cuts along the neck and abdomen. The circumstances were also too different to be seen as a “true” Ripper murder. Instead of being outdoors, Mary Jane Kelly was killed inside her room, already naked upon death, instead of outside in an alleyway. In her room, she lay, extremely cut up, on her bed, with her clothes folded on the chair next to her bed. This is vastly different to the meticulously cut up women in alleyways and other locations that were out of the way in order to not be seen. If Joseph Barnett is the murderer, it solves the mystery of the locked door. In Kelly’s room, the door is locked which can only be done with a key or if someone knew the geography of the room well enough that they could lock it from the outside. Barnett, having lived there for a year and a half, would know how to lock the door through the window, and would most likely have a key to their formerly shared room. Even Barnett’s job as a fish porter can support the argument that he was the one who murdered Kelly. He would not be used to working with knives, which would have explained the mutilations and their lack of care, contrary to the Ripper’s normal methods. Joseph Barnett was angry at his lover for allowing a prostitute to stay with them, as well as going back to prostitution