Was Jack the Ripper a Woman?

Jack the Ripper. The mere mention of the name provokes an instinctual sense of dread enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. The fact that he was never caught irrationally weighs heavily on the human psyche, almost giving one the feeling that he may still be out there lurking in the shadows 130+ years later. While we can be sure this is not the case, one thing that we cannot be sure of is who he was, or should I say who she was. That’s right. A new theory suggests that Jack may not have been a Jack at all. Jill the Ripper? While it doesn’t have the same ring to it, it has become a very plausible theory, and for good reason.

During the span of the murders, various press outlets and Scotland Yard received several letters supposedly from the killer himself. The most notable of these letters, dubbed the Hell letter (as it was signed “from Hell” and contained a piece of human kidney) was sent to one George Lusk, the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, a group of volunteers who patrolled the Whitechapel streets. It was this gruesomely taunting letter that gave rise to the name Jack the Ripper sending a wave of hysteria across England and the rest of the world. 

In the early 2000s, Ian Findlay, a professor of molecular and forensic diagnostics used swabs he took from the “Openshaw letter”, which is the one believed to be the most likely genuine, and utilizing a technique he himself had created, was able to build a partial DNA profile of the would-be killer. Surprisingly the results suggest that the world’s most famous killer may have been a woman. 

Up to the time of the fifth and debatably final Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly, the police of Scotland Yard had four suspects, all male. However, a witness stated she had “seen” Kelly hours after she had been murdered resulting in the chief inspector’s theory that what the witness had actually observed was the killer escaping in Kelly’s clothing. The most likely suspect according to this theory is Mary Pearcey. In 1890 Pearcey was convicted of murdering her lover’s wife and child having used a similar modus operandi to that of the Ripper in committing the crimes.

Sources:

“Mary Pearcey”, Wikipedia

“Was Jack the Ripper A Woman?”, history.com

“Jack the Ripper”, Wikipedia