This is the story of the famous Jack the Ripper murders, and so this show contains explicit

descriptions and shocking situations.

The story, at least in general, is known to most everyone who has been exposed to even a

little bit of the world of Victorian London.

It's become legend, to be sure, with the gory and lurid details repeated by those who

have read the most detailed published accounts, watched the movie retellings, or voraciously

read the newest books published, claiming to have at last solved it all.

Most everyone seems to know at least something or have

at least some opinion about Jack the Ripper. The images that exist in our minds of just who this

serial killer was who stalked the streets of London's poverty-stricken East End in the late

1880s gives us an often top-hatted,

shadowy man wearing a long coat, perhaps, to conceal the residue of his crimes, sometimes

carrying a medical bag with implements to commit his crimes.

That to us is most often Jack the Ripper. But that is an image created by the greedy

Victorian press, as well as in some modern media, to give us at least a tangible form of a

vicious murderer whose identity remains unknown. Perhaps that is the core of the fascination of this story and its events to this day.

More than 100 fictionalized accounts have been written along with the ongoing parade of nonfiction

books popping up claiming to at long last have solved the crime.

Hollywood films and television recreations and documentaries all attempt to uncover something

everyone up to now has somehow missed, and which will expose once and for all the identity

of Jack the Ripper.

Today's episode takes a look at this series of crimes.

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