American Ripper

Over the years I've always had a fascination of just who Jack The Ripper was? So when I heard about this new documentary I tried to keep an open mind going into it. I will always listen to theories on who it could be. I had done a little research and had heard that many people had said that Jeff Mudgett who has the leading role in this documentary series and is H.H. Holmes great, great grandson, or something like that, was a bit 'nutty' ... All this show really does is confirms that. His theory that H.H. Holmes is Jack The Ripper... NO, HE'S NOT. 100% he's not. Don't waste your time with this. It's full of close but not close enough theories. A lot of it is based on if Holmes faked his own death and the Ripper style murders that happened afterwards.. Well, it turns out he didn't fake his own death and the Ripper style murders still happened. They go on about periods where he stopped killing. And the murders started in London. There could be many other explanations for this.

Like I said, there are too many... so it's Holmes, it's Holmes, it's Holmes... Only to discover it's not. All the conclusive - we can't say it's not him... yeah, but you can't say it is him. Like I said. Don't waste your time on this. If I could give a good bit of advice - Go and read some books on Jack The Ripper and come to your own conclusions... Just be prepared for your main suspect to change the more you read into this... I know I have over the years

Well I learned two irrevocable things about this series: #1. I wasted 8 hours of life watching it. #2. We still don't know who The Ripper was. This series lost me on series 7 when Jeff Muddget convinces himself, after every other expert debunks all his theories, that H.H. Holmes escaped his own hanging death and exacted revenge on all the people that assisted in his capture or criminal trial. What's worse is although quite sexy in her own way, the CIA operative Amaryllis Fox actually entertained this theory. The first few episodes I found somewhat entertaining as it did shed facts of the crimes, and hopes that there was some plausibility to the claim Holmes was linked. All in all, I guess The History Channel succeeded in what they set out to do and that was to get people to watch. I confess I watched all 8 episodes but I figured, "what the hell," I've already wasted 6 hours of this debacle.

The amount of recap in this series is astounding. Instead of 8 episodes, they could've made it into 5. I bet they said the same phrases a hundred times: what they're investigating, what they hope to find, what their expectations were, etc. It actually got mildly infuriating because it was constant recapping. The actual content was good and interesting, though. You can probably just watch the last 3 episodes to get all the info you need, and avoid literal hours of filler shots and repetition.

Don't forget the fact that this series only has one season, so it left off without answers to several questions they'd already posed. Frustrating.

OK the main flaw that I feel throws this conspiracy theory out the window is this: We have an American in Chicago, living in a town that was familiar to him with a simple "grid" system infrastructure which would have been easy for him to navigate. However,he jumps on a ship and travels to London to commit several murders that he does under the cover of darkness in an unfamiliar city that is basically a "labyrinth" of confusing streets and gets away every time? I think not! Jack the Ripper was a local to the area and that is how he managed to elude capture - I know its not as exciting but do we want reality or entertainment.

I watched this gripping story and am still disappointed that any results of dredging the river near a factory Holmes owned was not revealed. Amarylis and Jeff visit this spot towards the end of the presentation and agree that it would have been easy and indeed probable that incriminating evidence may have been discarded underwater. They agree it should be dredged and checked but the show just ends there. I am to this day wondering if anything like that was done! Quite frustrating reallly, and not logical that it wouldn't have been followed up on given their 'thorough' investigation'. Hopefully someone will reveal this to those of the watchers who may be also wondering.