Jack the Ripper's Letters Were Gruesome and Graphic — Were They Really From the Killer?

When people think of a serial killers with a penchant for writing letters, the Zodiac probably comes to mind. Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, the mysterious murderer sent four coded missives to local newspapers in the northern California region where his crimes took place. The final letter was cracked in December 2020 by a small group of cryptographers.

Long before the Zodiac terrorized people in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jack the Ripper went on a killing spree in London. Over the course of three months in 1888, Jack the Ripper butchered sex workers in an area known as Whitechapel. After the second murder, he chose to send a letter to the Central News Agency in London. It wasn't the only one. Here's what we know about Jack the Rippers letters, if they were really from the notorious killer.

The killings began on Aug. 31, 1888, when 43 year-old Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols was found with her throat slashed. She was a sex worker who suffered from alcoholism and was probably trying to make enough money to rent out a bed for the night. A little over a week later, Jack the Ripper claimed his second victim, Annie Chapman. Her throat was also slashed, except this time, Chapman was disemboweled and her uterus had been removed.

Nearly three weeks after he killed Chapman, the Central News Agency received a letter which began with the words "Dear Boss." First he joked about the police looking for someone wearing a leather apron, as one was found at the Chapman crime scene, which suggested they were on the wrong track. He then shared he was "down on w----s and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled." The letter promised to cut the ears off his next victim, in order to send them to police, and described a feeling of excitement and anticipation.

On Sept. 30, 1888, Jack the Ripper claimed his fifth victim, 46-year-old Catherine Eddowes. Like all of the women he targeted, Eddowes was a sex worker with a troubled past. At that point, her death was the most violent. Both of Eddowes's uterus and left kidney were removed and then taken, though one of those body parts might have turned up later.

The "From Hell" letter was sent to George Lusk on Oct. 16, 1888. Lusk was the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, which was basically a group of civilians who patrolled the streets at night. This letter arrived with half a human kidney, but was written in a less flowery fashion than the "Dear Boss" letter. Riddled with misspellings, it suggested that Jack the Ripper ate the other half of the kidney, and promised to send the bloody knife used to cut it up. It was signed, "Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk."

In 2018, Dr. Andrea Nini from the Linguistics and English Language Department of The University of Manchester took a look at the "Dear Boss" letter as well as a postcard sent soon after. "I came across the Jack the Ripper letters a few years ago and I was surprised to know that there had not been any forensic linguistics analysis of them, so I thought that I could apply modern forensic linguistic techniques to uncover evidence about their author," Dr. Nini told the university's website.

Dr. Nini concluded they were probably written by the same person. Opinions about the "From Hell" letter are also divided. Some believe it was sent from a medical student as a sick joke, as they would have access to a kidney.