The Top Ten Jack the Ripper Suspects

Albert Bachert was a resident of the Whitechapel area and a man who injected himself into the murder enquiry. His mannerisms and characteristics aroused much suspicion and made him a person of interest in the case. It has since been suggested that his background and actions are similar to the profile of some serial killers...

The only suspect with a direct link to one of the Ripper victims, Joseph Barnett was the one-time lover of Mary Jane Kelly and therefore, he knew the area very well. His appearance matched some eyewitness descriptions and some of his characteristics also match the profile that was put forward by the FBI in the 1980s as the type of person the Ripper would have been.

William Bury was a resident of the East End during the Canonical Five murders and a proven killer whose later crimes bore a striking similarity to the Whitechapel murders. He was hanged for the murder of his wife in 1889 and remains the last man to be hanged in the city of Dundee, in Scotland.

A Polish Jew, living in Whitechapel, who had homicidal tendencies and was confined to a lunatic asylum shortly after the last of the Canonical Five murders. Did the Ripper's murderous spree end because Cohen was no longer free to stalk the streets of the East End?

A teacher and barrister, and most surprisingly, a man of a good family, Montague John Druitt disappeared within weeks of the last murder. His lifeless body was found floating in the Thames about seven weeks after the murder of the last victim.

George Hutchinson's first appearance was after the inquest of Mary Kelly when he went to the police with a statement about meeting the victim on the morning of her death. It was the very detailed nature of this statement which led later researchers to look at him more closely, and he was first named as the killer in 1998.

Aaron Kosminski was a low-classed polish Jew and resident of Whitechapel. There is great debate regarding this individual and some senior police sources suggest that he may have been positively identified as the killer. There are also many circumstances connected with this man that make him a strong 'suspect'.

This man was originally brought to the attention of the police as a witness who claimed to have discovered the body of the woman murdered in Bucks Row. There is evidence to suggest that this man not only lied about his true identity but may also have lied about whether he discovered the body. His time alone with the victim also raises much suspicion.

Robert Mann was a Whitechapel Mortuary attendant. His workplace, located in the heart of the Ripper’s killing ground, provided the suspect with a solitary environment in which to come and go undetected. He had access to surgical equipment, including scalpels, and was experienced in watching postmortems being carried out.

An Irish-American self-styled quack and a compulsive slummer of the East End, Doctor Francis Tumblety was certainly a strange character. He had a very public hatred of women and may have matched a couple of eyewitness descriptions of the killer. Tumblety was charged with certain "vices" but jumped his bail and fled the country.