The Complete Jack the Ripper Paperback – June 3, 2013 by Donald Rumbelow (Virgin Books)

Donald Rumbelow is the true expert on Jack the Ripper. He approaches this case with an unbiased view of the murders and suspects. His deductions are based on whether the evidence fits the suspect not making the evidence fit his pet suspect. He also does an excellent job of debunking many of the more far fetched theories and suspects.

I have the hardback of his first edition of this book and formed a lot of my ideas about the case from that book. When I read other articles or books on the case, they did not seem as sound as authoritative as Mr Rubelow's book. I was thrilled when I saw this update and bought the Kindle edition.

He has expanded the book to include more material especially his analyses of recent theories. He does not disappoint with the update.

While Mr Rumbelow has his own suspect, he admits that we will not likely ever know the true perpetrator. Too much time has passed, all the witnesses and investigators are dead, a lot of evidence was lost or destroyed over the years, and forensics of the time were not as developed as a science with police officers specially trained in the field as they are today. Crime scenes were not secured and methods for chain of custody are not as rigorous as they are now either.

I am not so sure about Montague Druitt and think his suicide was coincidental with the cessation of the ripper crimes. Sexual serial killers tend to target prostitutes because they make easy targets. The very nature of their work puts them in harms way every time they get in a car or go with a customer. They tend to be heterosexual but highly misoginitic when women are their targets. The mutilations suggest that this is the case. Serial killers also have a pattern of collecting "trophies" of their crimes so they can relive the experience, hence the missing organs or personal items that were obviously taken.

There has been a claim that one of the victim's shawl was found with DNA but the provenance of the shawl and DNA testing results have been called into question.

I strongly recommend this for anyone who likes reading about true crime or is an amateur ripperologist.