How did forensics experts create a modern profile of Jack the Ripper?
by Julia Layton
November 21,2006

.....A new documentary airing in England this week takes another look at the case using state-of-the-art profiling techniques to see if modern detectives can solve the crime. Some results have already been revealed. First, those involved in creating the documentary think the police were looking for the wrong type of person. In 1888, the detectives were expecting Jack the Ripper to seem mentally ill, which may explain why they never caught him. Modern psychological profilers think Jack the Ripper most likely looked and acted perfectly sane. A geographical profiler, who uses locations and details of crimes to try to pinpoint where the killer lived, has determined that Jack the Ripper probably lived in the area of Flower and Dean Street in east London, within 1 square mile (2.6 square km) of each of the killings and within 100 yards (91 meters) of a known residence of each of his victims. In 1888, London police actually canvassed this exact area asking residents if they had seen anything related to the crimes. But they had no sketch of the subject, and they came up with nothing. It could be that the sketch was the missing piece, and now, investigators have one.

Full story: http://people.howstuffworks.com/ref/ripper...le.htm?cid=rss2

Michael, the FBI did a psychological profile for a 1988 TV special called The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper. They came up with something very similar:

male, late twenties, local resident, employed, free from family accountability, low class, not fastidious, not surgically or anatomically skilled, likely to have had previous run-ins with the law, likely to be seen by others as a loner, likely to have been abused as a child - especially by or with concurrence of mother.

"Justice isn't about the dead -it's about us." - Patricia Cornwell, author of "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed."

Cornwell gave a talk recently aired by CSPAN at the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine.

She talked like the identity of the Ripper was established.

There was also a recent arrest of a serial killer of prostitutes in England.

There is also an active case of four prostitutes found in a drainage ditch near the highway leading into Atlantic City.

The recent publicity on that case got me an assignment to write a story about a decades old similar cold case double homicide from 1969 when two college coeds were found murdered in the woods near a highway.

I will post the story if anyone is interested.

BK
bkjfk3@yahoo.com