We’ve painted them as monsters who crawled out of the depths of Hell to cause us misery. We say they’re void of all emotion except hate. We are told that they’re animals, and we believe it. But the fact is, they’re human. At some point, they were us, broken down into lumps of unstable emotion. They were the little boy down the street who always obeyed his parents, crushed by the weight of religion and debt. They were the woman tired of being kicked around, so she kicked back, only to find she kicked too hard. They were an ordinary man, shaped into a manifestation of his society’s fear and loathing. They are murderers.

  

Jack the Ripper (1888-1891)

Tensions were high in the Whitechapel district of London. A world-wide economic depression had hit Whitechapel hard, forcing a great deal of its people into poverty. This, combined with the racial tensions between the Irish immigrants and English citizens of London at the time, caused a violent crime wave to sweep London, but more specifically, Whitechapel. All of the hate and violence in Whitechapel at the time are what many believe to be the cause of infamous Whitechapel Murderer, or more popularly known a, Jack the Ripper. 

Jack the Ripper is one of the most well-known and infamous serial killers of all time. He has been portrayed in media numerous times and is known for the brutal nature of his killings, along with the continued mystery of his identity. Due to the overcrowding of London’s Whitechapel district, rampant crime of the time, and shoddy paperwork of the 19th Century, there are no documents that confirm the amount of victims the Ripper had, but most historians believe that the “canonical five” (Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly) are the most likely to be the Ripper’s victims. Jack the Ripper targeted prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London and would kill with deep throat slashes and then remove the organs, and mutilate the face, abdomen, and genitals of the victim. This shows two things: he had surgical intelligence, and he hated his victims. The people of London increasingly believed that the Ripper existed because they hadn’t seen anything as brutal as his murders before. To this day, nothing is certain about the Ripper, not his name, not his face, not his motives, not even his existence, only his hatred towards his victims. Almost everything about Jack the Ripper remains a mystery, and seemingly, always will.

John George Haigh (1944-1949)     

John George Haigh was born in a small village in England and was raised by pious and conservative protestant parents. This strict and religious childhood caused Haigh to suffer religious nightmares, which he described after his capture.

"I saw before me a forest of crucifixes which gradually turned into trees. At first, there appeared to be dew or rain, dripping from the branches, but as I approached I realized it was blood.”  Haigh said during his confessions, “The whole forest began to writhe, and the trees, dark and erect, to ooze blood...A

man went from each tree catching the blood...When the cup was full, he approached me. 'Drink,' he said, but I was unable to move." Nonetheless, Haigh was a textbook “Good Christian Boy.” Haigh made it into two admirable schools, got a well-paying job in insurance and advertising and married Beatrice “Betty” Hamer in 1934.

Haigh had everything a man could want, so it’s somewhat understandable why his life spiralled down to murder when he lost everything. Haigh was fired at the age 21 after it was discovered that he was stealing from a cash box. Soon after, the marriage fell apart when he was imprisoned for fraud the same year. While in prison his family spurned him. This, along with his strict childhood, could have led to a loss of faith, which would have made it easier to rationalize his killings. In 1936, he was arrested again after a scam that he had been executing in London was discovered. He was released in 1940, only to be arrested several more times for his constant scams. In prison, Haigh came to the conclusion that his repeated arrests were possible because he left his victims alive.          

In 1943, he met an old boss of his, William McSwan. McSwan introduced Haigh to his wealthy family, and Haigh became envious.  In 1944 he gained the trust of the family and then killed them, tossed their bodies into acid, dumped the sludge that was their remains into the floor drain of Haigh's rented workshop, and then forged himself into their wills. When he became tight on money again in 1947, he began the cycle a second time with another wealthy couple, Archibald and Rose Henderson. His final victim was Olive Durand-Deacon, the widow of a solicitor. He lured her into another workshop he had rented and killed her. However, unlike the previous site, this workshop did not have a floor drain, meaning that Haigh had to dump the sludge on a pile of rubble in the back of the workshop. Olive was reported missing, and her connection to Haigh led the police to the discovery of his criminal record. When police went to question Haigh, they discovered the sludge in the back of his workshop and later discovered it was Olive’s body.  Haigh confessed to Olive’s murder, the McSwans’ murders, the Henderson’s murders, and three other murders that couldn’t be proven. He was convicted of the three murders and was executed in 1949.

Aileen Wuornos (1989-1990)

Although her rants near the time of her death were incoherent, there were two things that were consistent in Aileen Wuornos’ life: she traded sex for items of value and her opinion of men was low. Her father impregnated her when she was 17 and sexually assaulted children. He was arrested when Aileen was born, and her mother abandoned her and her brother when she was four years old. The siblings were adopted by their grandparents, where a greater Hell awaited them. Her grandfather frequently got drunk, raped her, and beat her. He would have friends over to rape her; one even got her pregnant when she was 14. At school she would trade sex services for cigarettes, drugs, and food. At 15, Wuornos was thrown out of the house by her grandfather.

In order to support herself, Wuornos became a prostitute. She had frequent run-ins with the law for drunk driving, firing a gun out of a vehicle, disorderly conduct, assault, and robbery. She met her girlfriend, Tyria Moore, in 1986. Moore was the first and only love Wuornos ever had. This relationship with Moore would lead to her capture. Between the years of 1989 and 1990, seven men allegedly either raped or attempted to rape Wuornos. She shot, killed, and stole from all of them. Moore wondered where the money came from but didn’t want to ask, for she knew of the first murder. Eventually, the guilt grew too heavy for Moore to bear and she turned her lover over to the authorities in 1991. She was convicted and sent to prison, where she remained until her execution in 2002. While imprisoned, Wuornos was convinced that society was trying to drive her insane by putting her in the news.

The unfortunate souls who do not possess the will to push through the strain of society are who become murders like these. Do not blame them for their misfortune, for  you may have done the same. People like this have not been sent to this earth to cause agony, they were molded by society to. It was not the Devil who claimed the lives of man, it was the people, warped by society, who did. 

-Aiden Clark