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• Unreported attacks might have occurred.

With the caution that profiling deals in probabilities and generalities, not

certainties, the FBI report suggests that Jack the Ripper:

• Was a white male, 28–36 years of age;
• Was of average intelligence, lucky not clever;
• Was single, never married, and had difficulty in interacting with peo-

ple in general and women in particular;

• Was nocturnal and not accountable to anyone;
• Blended in with his surroundings;
• Had poor personal hygiene, and appeared disheveled;
• Was personally inadequate with a low self-image and diminished emo-

tional responses;

• Was a quiet loner, withdrawn and asocial;
• Was of lower social class;
• Lived or worked in Whitechapel, and committed the crimes close to

home;

• Had a menial job with little or no interaction with the public;
• Was employed Monday to Friday, possibly as a butcher, mortician’s

helper, medical examiner’s assistant, or hospital attendant (the prox-
imity of London Hospital was noted in the profile);

• Was the product of a broken home, and lacked consistent care and

stable adult role models as a child;

• Was raised by a dominant female figure who drank heavily, consorted

with different men, and physically, possibly sexually, abused him;

• Set fires and abused animals as a child;
• Hated, feared, and was intimidated by women;
• Internalized his anger;
• Was mentally disturbed and sexually inadequate, with much general-

ized rage directed against women;

• Desired power, control, and dominance;
• Behaved erratically;
• Engaged in sexually motivated attacks to neuter his victims;
• Drank in local pubs prior to the murders;
• Hunted nightly, and was observed walking all over Whitechapel during

the early morning hours;

• Did not have medical knowledge or surgical expertise;
• Was probably interviewed by police at some point;
• Did not write any of the “Jack the Ripper” letters, and would not have

publicly challenged the police; and

• Did not commit suicide after the murders stopped.

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The geographic concentration of the Ripper crimes has long made their

“topography” of interest to researchers (Fido, 1987). The murders were all
within a mile of each other, and the total hunting area was just over half a
square mile in size. In 1998 a geographic profile was produced for the Jack
the Ripper case based on body dump sites. The peak area of the geoprofile
focused on the locale around Flower and Dean Street and Thrawl Street.

Flower and Dean Street and Thrawl Street no longer exist as they used

to, but in 1888 they lay between Commercial Street to the west and Brick
Lane to the east, north of Whitechapel Road; during the time of the
Whitechapel murders they contained several doss houses. Dorset Street lay
less than two blocks to the north along Commercial Street. This was the vice-
ridden neighbourhood that East End social reformers referred to as the
“wicked quarter-mile” (Begg, Fido, & Skinner, 1991). It appears that the
notorious rookery played a key role in the Jack the Ripper mystery, and there
is some supporting evidence for the geographic profile results.

All the victims resided within a couple of hundred yards of each other

in the Thrawl, Flower and Dean, Dorset, and Church Street doss houses off
Commercial Street (Fido, 1987; Underwood, 1987):

• Polly Nichols used to reside at 18 Thrawl Street; just before her death

she was evicted and moved into the White House at 56 Flower and
Dean Street, a doss house that slept both men and women.

• Annie Chapman’s primary residence was Crossingham’s Common

Lodging House at 35 Dorset Street.

• Elizabeth Stride occasionally lived in a common lodging house at No.

32 Flower and Dean Street, and reportedly was there the night of her
murder.

• Catherine Eddowes usually stayed in Cooney’s Lodging House at No.

55 Flower and Dean Street, and had slept there two nights before her
murder.

• Mary Kelly lived and died in McCarthy’s Rents at 13 Miller’s Court,

off Dorset Street (it was actually the back room of 26 Dorset Street,
situated across the road from Crossingham’s Common Lodging
House). She had previously resided in George Street, between “Flow-
ery Dean” and Thrall Street. Kelly was seen picking up a man on
Commercial Street between Thrall and Flower and Dean Streets the
night of her murder.

These residences were suspiciously close to each other, covering less than

1.5% of the total hunting area. It is difficult to assess the significance of this
finding as the locale had a concentration of slum lodging houses where most

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Spitalfields Parish prostitutes lived at one time or another. These women were
also highly transient.

Two blocks north of Flower and Dean Street was the Ten Bells Pub (now

known as the Jack the Ripper Public House) on Church Street and Commer-
cial Street, across from Spitalfields Market; all the Ripper victims were known
to have drank here. Possibly Whitechapel Road and Commercial Street/Road
were arterial routes used by the killer.

Part of Eddowes’ blood-stained apron was cut away by her killer, and the

missing segment was later found in the passageway to a staircase for the
Wentworth Model Dwellings, No. 108-119 Goulston Street. Located just
south of Wentworth Street, the new flats were one third of a mile away and
a 10-minute walk from Mitre Square where Eddowes was murdered. It
appeared the bloodied apron piece was used to wipe a knife clean. The
following graffito was written in chalk above on the black brick wall (Rum-
below, 1988):

The Juwes are not
The men that

Will be

Blamed for nothing

This location, between Mitre Square and Flower and Dean Street, is on

the likely route home if Jack the Ripper indeed lived in the infamous “wicked
quarter-mile.” Some police theorized at the time the Ripper’s route led to the
vicinity of Flower and Dean Street, and others believed this should be the
epicentre for their manhunt (Fido, 1987).

While the geographic profile for the Whitechapel murders is interesting

and has some supporting evidence, we cannot assess its accuracy. The killer’s
address, like his identity, remains unknown. In 1992, it was claimed the diary
of Jack the Ripper had been found (Harrison, 1993). Such a discovery would
finally solve the world’s most famous mystery, but perhaps leave the world
a less colourful place. Fortunately — depending upon your viewpoint —
forensic tests discredited the diary, leaving the puzzle still intact (Butts, 1994).

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Conclusion

We were just hunting humans. I guess because we thought they were the
hardest things to hunt, but humans are the easiest things to hunt ... Sad to
say, but it’s true.”

—Convicted Canadian murderer; Boyd, 1988, p. 258

The ease with which predators hunt humans has its roots in the nature of
our society — most people do not expect to encounter random violence
during the course of their normal lives. But while serial murder, rape, and
arson are uncommon, their impact can be significant, stretching beyond the
immediate and secondary victims to the community at large. And for reasons
that no one yet fully understands, the incidence of serial murder in North
America appears to be growing.

Attempts to expand our knowledge in this area are a challenge to both

criminology and law enforcement. Even the offenders themselves may not
understand why they do what they do. Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler,
could not explain his hunting processes to interviewers: “I was just driving
— anywhere — not knowing where I was going. I was coming through back
ways, in and out and around. 

That’s the idea of the whole thing. I just go here

and there. I don’t know why

” (Frank, 1966, pp. 289–290). But while the

motivations of criminal predators may be difficult to fathom, such an under-
standing is not necessary for the task of interpreting their crime patterns. As
Felson and Clarke (1998) observe, “highly unusual crime can follow very
routine patterns” (pp. 16–17).

Environmental criminology provides a general framework for addressing

questions related to offender spatial behaviour, and crime pattern theory
suggests a specific method for determining probable area of criminal resi-
dence. Geographic profiling is an example of the practical application of

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criminological theory to the real world of police investigation. “Some of our
[offender profiling] hypotheses ... seem now to have passed into the general
realm of established detective knowledge ... It is this gradual building of
elements of certainty by scientific rigour that is the object of the researchers”
(Copson, 1993, pp. 20–21).

This book has sought to help explain one small part of the phenomenon

of serial violent crime — the geography of offender hunting patterns. Geo-
graphic profiling owes a debt to the work and efforts of many researchers,
and hopefully has helped inform the field in turn. But while we have answers
to some questions, many new ones have been raised.

• What more can temporal patterns tell us?
• What are the similarities and differences between offender types?
• How can psychological and geographic profiles be better integrated?
• How do we improve our offender typologies?
• Can the locations of future crimes be reliably predicted?
• How do past anchor points influence and structure an offender’s

mental map?

• Can the criminal investigative process be improved by adopting prin-

ciples from the field of information theory?

Further study is required to properly examine these and other issues.

Geographic profiling is a decision support tool for criminal inquiries. It

does not solve cases; rather, it focuses an investigation by providing both an
optimal search strategy and a means of managing large volumes of informa-
tion. Crime locations and their patterns provide clues that, when properly
interpreted, can be used to help find the offender. Like all police tactics, it
reaches its potential when employed as part of a package of techniques.
Because address information is so common, a number of different strategies
have been developed that can be integrated with other investigative
approaches. This results in the more effective and efficient use of limited
police resources.

On average, geographic profiling determines the location of offender

residence within 5% of the total hunting area, performance that is signifi-
cantly better than what could be expected by chance. The underlying theory
also provides guidelines for consistent and reliable decision making regarding
the appropriate use of crime sites for this type of analysis. Furthermore, a
variety of investigative strategies have been developed to maximize the utility
of the process. As much of our information is address based, it is likely that
additional applications will be developed in the future.

Any increase in our ability to apprehend criminal predators is desirable

from both community and law enforcement perspectives (see Newark &