In Pursuit of Jack the Ripper: An Introduction to the Whitechapel Murders

With the addition of Deputy Chief Robert A. Snow, Suffolk County Police Department, Police-Writers.com now lists 1123 state and local law enforcement officials who have authored 2446 books.

Robert A. Snow “began his investigative career with the Suffolk County, New York Police Department as an undercover officer with the Narcotics Squad and Organized Crime Unit. He went on to head the Sex Crimes Unit, Frauds Bureau, Anti-Corruption Bureau, and Internal Affairs Bureau, attaining the rank of Deputy Chief of the Department. He is the former Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Forensic Services Unit and is currently a National Cold Case Investigator assisting law enforcement agencies across the country in the investigation of child abduction and homicide cases.” Robert A. Snow is the author of In Pursuit of Jack the Ripper: An Introduction to the Whitechapel Murders.


According to the book description of In Pursuit of Jack the Ripper: An Introduction to the Whitechapel Murders, it is “the ultimate cold case, from 1888 to 1891, London’s East End was rocked by a series of brutal murders. The victims were prostitutes whose corpses were left gruesomely mutilated. These crimes came to be known as the Whitechapel murders and were attributed to an unidentified fiend who named himself “Jack the Ripper”. The search for his true identity consumed an enormous amount of police resources and generated more than 1,600 pages of reports—but the case was never solved. Now, after 120 years of speculation and debate, this infamous serial homicide case is reexamined by a leading cold case investigator. Using modern investigation techniques and technology, author Robert A. Snow takes a fresh look at the mystery of the Whitechapel murders—and the serial killer who got away with his vicious crimes. The Ripper left nothing usable at the scene of his crimes and he came and went like a ghost. It is possible, even likely, that he was interviewed by the police at some time during the course of their investigations, but was able to allay their suspicions. Jack may have been insane, but he wasn’t stupid.”

One reader of In Pursuit of Jack the Ripper: An Introduction to the Whitechapel Murders said, “This is not a book of theory or unsupported speculation. The author does not impose his pet ideas on the facts. It is written from a modern police perspective for serious students of the Ripper case (and there are many) who want a clear statement of the real facts and basic undeniable inferences on which to ground their own investigations and theories.

Chief Snow, who has broad experience in police investigations, has done a tremendous amount of "legwork" in original sources; transcribing autopsies, coroner proceedings, and contemporaneous news reports; reconstructing the locations by painstaking review of archived London records and much more. The result is a remarkably brief but authoritative review of what can be reliably established about the victims, the witnesses, the suspects, and the methods of the perpetrator who committed crimes so heinous that they still haunt us today. It is presented in format which can easily used as a reference, and with some of the common misconceptions and popular misunderstandings cleared away to make room for further inquiry into the enduring mystery of this early and most famous example of the "serial killer."