Stephen and Jack
or How an American College Student Became the Web's Top Ripper SleuthDateline: 04/28/97 - Weekly feature from your Guide To Personal Web Pages
The case of Jack The Ripper remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. Debating the identity of the murderer has occupied thousands of "Ripperologists," many of them distinguised criminologists and historians, for more than 100 years. And millions have been enthralled by the trove of popular novels, movies, comics, and other media inspired by the case.
That's why it's so surprising that it took a college sophomore from the University of Delaware to bring the Ripper to the Web, and to do so with such extraordinary depth and style. This is the story of that young man and of how his online "Casebook" uses this new medium to influence the study of perhaps the most notorious serial killer of all time.
Stephen P. Ryder became interested in -- OK, obsessed by -- "JTR" when he was in his early teens and discovered Rumbelow's classic Complete Jack The Ripper. He recalls thinking that the case was the "perfect murder mystery... the ultimate whodunit!"
Going through the Casebook, I grew to understand that enthusiasm: The richness of Ripper lore is inversely related to the scarcity of agreed upon facts in the case. In 1888, in the East End of London, a serial killer strangled and then slashed prostitutes. That's it. Even the number of Ripper murders is still a matter of debate (four? nine? most say five). And how about the gender of the murderer? There's a "Jill The Ripper" theory involving a mad midwife!
In early '96, Ryder went online to search out Ripper information and was quite surprised to find so little on the Web. He had some ideas of his own about a controversial diary allegedly from the period that some believed to be the work of JTR (the so-called "Maybrick" diary). So he contacted the creator of a Ripper game site named Mark Dooling and asked for some free webspace. This was the genesis of the Casebook.
I simply saw an opening on the Net for a Ripper page, grabbed on tight, and let technology whisk me away farther than I ever could have expected. It put me in touch with the right people (without whom the Casebook would hardly be what it is today) and allowed international access to our work. There's no other medium on the planet that yields such outstanding possibilities... After all, how else could a young, relatively inexperienced, and (perhaps my least advantageous characteristic) *American* Ripperologist create something which would be read and enjoyed by tens of thousands worldwide? Something impressive enough to allow my colleagues and I to be accepted in "Ripper circles" whose ranks include the top-named authors and researchers in the UK?
While some, such as the cult newsletter Ripperana, downplay the Casebook, Dooling says "the majority [of Ripperologists] take Stephen very seriously and rightly so since he is obviously dedicated to his work and a truly avid researcher. His contribution to this study has already been great in my honest opinion."
The Casebook has blossomed into more than a Website; Ryder argues that it's a "full-fledged research team" involved in "the first in-depth investigations into such previously overlooked aspects of the case as the Carrie Brown murder and the Fogelma suspect." For his own part, Ryder considers his first "true" contribution to Ripperology to be the unearthing of a book printed only weeks after the last murder. It is the oldest known Ripper book.
By this point, you're probably asking yourself a key question about Ryder: What's his major? Well, he's just your run-of-the mill anthropology student focusing on paleoarcheology and egyptology, a field, by the way, he believes will involve heavy use of the Web. His chosen profession doesn't surprise me. Solving mysteries of the past is clearly something that drives him.
Indeed, JTR may be the ultimate Rorschach inkblot: Which theories they choose to champion, which facts they decide to disregard, reveals more about those studying the crime than they'd probably care to admit.
As one post in the conference area points out: "Most of you would be happy if the case were never solved. I don't blame you. If a single explanation were given the enigma of Jack The Ripper would cease to exist."
