Man who studied Jack the Ripper charged with prostitutes’ murder

LONDON - A PhD student, who researched on serial killer Jack the Ripper, has been charged with the murders of three prostitutes in Britain.

Stephen Griffiths, 40, is alleged to have killed Suzanne Blamires, Susan Rushworth and Shelley Armitage within Bradford city’s red light district in the past 11 months, The Telegraph reported Friday.

A caretaker alerted the police Monday after he saw CCTV footage from a block of flats. The recording showed a man and a woman go into a flat in the early hours of Saturday before she ran out fully-clothed two minutes later.

The man followed her. He beat her up and then took out a crossbow before shooting a bolt through her head and dragging the body out of view.

Griffiths was arrested from his home in the red light area where a woman’s head inside a rucksack was understood to have been found. Hours later, a woman’s body parts were discovered in River Aire in Shipley, West Yorks.

He had told a neighbour he was studying at university and “doing a PhD in murder and Jack the Ripper”.

Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved women prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations.

Griffiths holds a degree in psychology and had written extensively on the internet about some of history’s most notorious mass murderers. On a website, he called himself a “misanthrope who bought hate into heaven”.