Had the Jack the Ripper murders taken place in 1988 not 1888 then our response to them would have been markedly different. Since those dark days in Victorian London we have learnt much about this type of killer: their damaged childhoods, misfit adulthoods and psychopathic alienation from the human race. But can this new knowledge help to solve a mystery that has been eluding generations of policemen and historians? By comparing the crimes of the Ripper with those of other serial killers, Ripper expert William Beadle creates a more extensive psychological profile of the man behind Jack the Ripper than ever before.

One suspect who embodied all the dire characteristics was William Henry Bury. Bury moved to the East End of London in 1887. He had a terrible childhood, he was a horsemeat butcher, and he had a violent relationship with his wife. But was Bury the Ripper? Beadle uses his Ripper psychological profile in conjunction with newly unearthed evidence: Bury was out all night on the dates of the murders, and when his wife 'committed suicide' she had been strangled and her body ripped up in the same way as the Ripper's victims. When Bury was executed for the murder of his wife, the killings in the East End stopped. A Scotland Yard detective even conceded to the hangman that he was 'quite satisfied you have hanged Jack the Ripper'.