Copycat Killers

[JustATheoryGuy]

This is just an idea, but what if only one or two of the murders were done by jack the ripper and the rest were done by a series of copycat killers?

[c.d.]

Hello Theory Guy,

Welcome to the boards. This idea has been discussed numerous times and a little research on the various threads should bring it up. So don't take it personally if you don't get a big response.

But to answer your question -- is is possible? Absolutely. Is it probable? Everyone has to make up their own minds on that. But keep in mind it is not like someone wore a yellow tie with polka dots to a party and then yellow ties with polka dots were then seen all over town. Ask yourself, how likely is it that killers willing and capable of cutting a woman's throat and ripping out her internal organs all somehow showed up in Whitechapel in the Fall of 1888? Casebook itself is a testimony to the unique nature of these crimes.

c.d.

[Damaso Marte]

There's at least two prominent posters here who think that only Nichols and Chapman were killed by the same killer and the others were all copycats.

[Harry D]

Peter Turnbull wrote in 'The Killer Who Never Was' that every murder was done by a different hand!

Without any definitive forensics there's nothing to rule out the possibility of copycats but there's no evidence or historical precedent to support it either. People like to focus on the variations between murders to promote multi-killer hypotheses rather than accept the obvious commonalities, and the rarity of murders of this nature.

[Abby Normal]

This is just an idea, but what if only one or two of the murders were done by jack the ripper and the rest were done by a series of copycat killers?

hi just
welcome! copy cat killers-as in someone else committed the murder and tried to make it look like another killers work, or that someone thought the killers work was "cool" and wanted to emulate, is really just Hollywood stuff. in the history of serial killers only one case that I know of someone tried to make it look like the work of a known killer-and that was a case in which the killer tried to make it look like a manson murder.

sure killers will stage a crime scene to make it look like a burglary gone wrong or a sexual assault murder when they were in fact for other MOTIVES, but true copy cat killings just really don't exist.

[NottsRipper]

I think the serial killer tends to be quite egotistical and so to try and attribute their work to another would defeat the object. There would be something that sets them apart