The Atlanta Ripper

During the second decade of the twentieth century, an unidentified serial killer was believed to have operated in Atlanta, Georgia, brutally killing at least twenty Black woman. Due to the similarities between the Whitechapel victims and the victims in Atlanta, the Georgia press dubbed their killer “the Atlanta Ripper,” an anonymous monster whose presence held the city’s Black population in a grip of fear. For a period of roughly five years, the Atlanta Ripper killed with regularity on the city streets, slashing, mutilating, and otherwise brutalizing the bodies of the women they killed. Despite having at least six viable suspects, investigators were never able to conclusively identify the Atlanta Ripper and the murders remain unsolved.