Jack the Ripper—The Policeman: The Complete History of the Jack the Ripper Murders

In this flawed account, Beattie (The Death Railway) asserts that Jack the Ripper must have been a policeman, because only a copper could have evaded police patrols and gained the trust of the prostitutes the Ripper slaughtered. He proceeds to try to fit the facts to his predetermined conclusion. Beattie names Police Constable Bowden Endacott as the Ripper, based on Endacott’s 1887 arrest of Elizabeth Cass for prostitution; Cass in turn charged him with lying about the grounds for her arrest. For Beattie, the fallout from the perjury accusation “finally broke Bowden Endacott, and the inner rage that had for so long been burning inside of him erupted to the surface in a frenzy of murderous revenge.” There’s zero evidence that Endacott was the Ripper, and Beattie is reduced to claiming that his candidate’s supposed history of lying was significant, because “many serial killers are compulsive liars.” The absence of meaningful sourcing further diminishes Beattie’s arguments. Those misled by the inaccurate subtitle will be better served by more objective studies of the case, such as Donald Rumbelow’s The Complete Jack the Ripper. (Oct.)