In September 1888, someone claiming to be a murderer sent a letter signed "Jack the Ripper" to a London newspaper. The letter is now believed to have been a hoax, possibly written by journalists hungry for circulation. Yet it stuck. Five women, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, were killed in Whitechapel's slums between August 31 and November 9, 1888, their throats cut and bodies mutilated. The killer was never caught, and remains unidentified.

What turned these murders into legend wasn't the crimes alone but the machinery of media. The sensational letter gave readers a name and a persona, even if fictional. Another letter arrived at the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee with half a preserved human kidney, deepening public fascination. Newspapers couldn't resist: extensive coverage made the Ripper international news. The removal of internal organs from at least three victims sparked speculation the killer had surgical knowledge, feeding theories still debated today. These details, real and invented, merged in the public mind into a singular, terrifying figure.

Police investigated eleven brutal murders across Whitechapel and Spitalfields between 1888 and 1891, but never connected them conclusively. The five canonical victims remain the most likely linked to a single hand. What makes Jack the Ripper endure is not certainty but mystery: we know exactly who didn't do it, but the actual killer vanished into history. The legend became a combination of fact, folklore, and pseudohistory, proving that sometimes the most powerful criminal becomes famous not because of what we know, but because of what we'll never know.