Airdate: Jack the Ripper

Three part British history doco Jack the Ripper will screen on SBS this week.

I’m sure we’ve had others reinvestigate this case?

In 1888 London witnessed the most notorious unsolved crime in British history. It saw the birth of the modern serial killer and launched the legend of ‘Jack the Ripper’, meanwhile his victims have been forgotten. Now, three experts in forensic psychology, policing, and history reinvestigate the case and question the version of the story we think is true. The teams’ mission is to separate fact from fiction and to ask how much of what we know about this celebrated killer a myth, and why has the only truth – the story of the five brutally murdered women – been hidden by history?

Series One: Episode One:
Re-examining one of history’s most infamous cold cases are three experts – consultant forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes, former murder detective Howard Groves and social historian Ruth Goodman. Howard, Kerry, and Ruth analyse historical documents, contemporary press reports as well as police and witness statements hoping modern methods in policing, psychological profiling and historical context might unearth something that could have been missed at the time or since. Using our incident room and historical archive vault the team start with the discovery of the savagely mutilated body of ‘Polly’ Nichols in Whitechapel.

Wednesday, 13 July at 8.30pm on SBS.