Name me some movies...

I've always been fascinated by the granddaddy of all serial killers, Jack the Ripper; the Ripper's story has been fallow ground for filmmakers. His identity was never discovered, so there was a lot of room for "artistic license."

A number of films have been made theorizing on various possibilities as to the Ripper's identity:

• The Lodger (various versions, although the 1927 Hitchcock is considered the definitive)
• Murder by Decree (1979)
• Time After Time (also 1979)
• Jack the Ripper (TV Movie, 1988)
• From Hell (2001)

I've never yet seen a criminal under arrest or on trial who didn't have a story about how fate conspired against them to bring them to the such a low point. Some seem fairly reasonable, sometimes almost believeable until you stop and think about how many people suffered so much worse and yet never robbed, never killed.

Sure, society may sometimes contribute; so can heredity, lack of education, and many other factors. But most of the people who grew up in Hell's Kitchen did not turn to crime. Plenty of people lacked proper school, but some taught themselves to read and became successes in the business world. As for heredity, Al Capone had one brother who died in the Chicago crime wars, but he had another brother who was a respected lawman in another community. Texas gunman John Wesley Hardin was the son of a Methodist preacher and the brother of an attorney, both of whom were lynched by a mob after Hardin killed a popular deputy in Comanche, Texas, and escaped.

If it only took hate, injustice, and hard treatment to produce a criminal or killer, every one of the millions freed from German death camps after World War II should have become a mass murderer. Every GI who comes home from war, should be a potential gunman.

Criminals make excuses for their actions; few ever own up to the fact they made the choice to rob and kill. And movies seldom show the dirty side of their outlaw subjects.