Jack the Ripper

The Jack the Ripper case was a series of gruesome murders around Whitechapel, London in late 1888 between the months of August and November. Known in history as the first serial killer case and one of the greatest criminal mysteries the world has ever known. The Whitechapel murders were one of the most tragic moments in Helen Magnus's long life.

History

Beginnings

During her time at the University of Oxford along with the Five, Helen Magnus was able to procure a very rare pure sample of ancient untainted vampire blood that was collected before the species was made sterile and subsequently extinct. The Five's curiosity about the miraculous properties supposedly possessed by the blood led to Magnus designing an experiment to derive an injectable serum from it.

In the Spring of 1886, after each member were injected, they each received their own unique 'gift' as a result. What none of them realized at the time however, was that a killer was also created on that very same night.

Druitt gets sick

Some time not long after the source blood experiment, John Druitt falls chronically ill with an undisclosed mortal sickness. He becomes Helen Magnus's first patient and is cured by a treatment she created based from her own longevity-carrying blood (passing on her ability to him). By then, a rather close relationship had formed between the two of them and things became more serious. After going out on a date together to see his favorite play, "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare, Druitt decided to repay his savoir by proposing marriage to her, to which she accepted. This happiness however was short-lived.

The killing starts

Two years after the Five gained and started adapting to their new found abilities, a string of brutal murders began in the Whitechapel district of London. The victims were all young prostitutes and the brutality of the killings was the most worrisome thing. James Watson decided to use his enhanced intellect to bring the killer to justice, and it was most likely the rest of the Five were drawn in to the mystery due to the possibility of abnormal involvement. For weeks they investigated, but even Watson's brilliant deductive mind was unable to discover the identity of the killer, who was able to stay several steps ahead of him.

A killer among us

Soon however, whether by luck or accident, the identity of the killer was finally revealed to be that of John Druitt, fellow Five member and fiancé of Helen Magnus. While the other members of the Five had been able to adjust to the physical and psychological changes brought about by their transformations, Druitt's power had awoken a psychotic nature within him that craved murders. The rest of the Five were left horrified by the revelation, but none more so than Magnus and James Watson, who thought they knew Druitt the best.

The Five splintered

After the discovery of John Druitt's grisly deeds in 1888, the other four members had distanced themselves from him. The Five eventually split apart over course of the next several decades. Nigel Griffin and Nikola Tesla were the first to depart, pursuing their own interests.

Helen Magnus and James Watson continued to work together, and in 1898 they started to accuse John Druitt (who had at the moment taken to heavily drinking alcohol) of new similar-looking murders, making him show up at the Sanctuary and threaten Magnus about it. He left her alone for quite some time after then due to Watson and Magnus finally solving the Spring-heeled Jack case; resolving the murders to have not been committed by Druitt all along, and by Future-Magnus threatening him right back in return.

In 1908, the Five were summoned together by the British Prime Minister (acting on behalf of King Edward VII) to stop Adam Worth. This case eventually led Worth (who was on the cusp of death) to give John Druitt his safe deposit box. This box contained resources that helped Druitt go into hiding to avoid detection and capture from Helen Magnus and the authorities for the next eighty years.

Druitt only briefly coming into contact with the Five during June 1944 in Carentan, France before disappearing again.

Helen Magnus finally separated from James Watson when she decided to move to Old City and start a new Sanctuary there sometime after her disastrous voyage on the Titanic in 1912.

Continued fallout

With John Druitt's ability to teleport in and out of her life, Helen Magnus eventually had a protective EM shield created and installed in each of her Sanctuaries to keep Druitt out. It is unknown when this occurred, but there is a high likelihood that this happening was due largely in part to Magnus becoming a mother in the early 1980's; finally bringing to term her and Druitt's love child that she kept hidden from him as a frozen embryo for nearly a century.

John Druitt reentered both of their lives in early 2008 when his health deteriorated to the point that he began dying again. In his pursuit of Helen Magnus's curative blood, he killed another prostitute and put Ashley's life in harms way to force Magnus to give him what he wanted. As parents, they quarreled over Magnus's decision to never tell Ashley as to who her father was; Druitt's actions as the Ripper were so vile and heinous that Magnus couldn't possibly tell her, resorting instead to letting Ashley think that he was dead. After Druitt refused Magnus's offer to help him with his 'madness', she decided to poison him, believing it would kill him.

After teleporting away, having been crippled by the blood Helen Magnus gave him, John Druitt was found and revived by Nikola Tesla. During this time, Druitt was also subjugated to Tesla's electrical power as a punishment for Druitt's refusal to help Tesla in one of his plans. This action in turn effectively acted as an electroshock therapy session that cleared his mind; the rage that once fueled him was now gone, returning his mind to a state of feeling whole once again.

Despite his good nature as of late, tension resulting from John Druitt's actions as the Ripper were still ever present when the Five (now substituted with Clara Griffin) regathered in early 2009 to work together against the Cabal's Lazarus virus.

Another ripper

Ashley Magnus had undoubtedly inherited her father's killer instinct. Helen Magnus recognized this trait and in response had appropriately channeled it into their Sanctuary work. She focused it into having her track and hunt down not only abnormals, but also information from local contacts as well.

Once John Druitt eventually found out that Ashley was his daughter, from a distance he followed her exploits as an "intrepid duo" with her mother for quite some time.

He noticed that Ashley's work primarily involved her shooting, maiming, or capturing creatures under Helen Magnus's discretion. When Druitt tried to convince Ashley to tell him where Magnus was in order for him to save Magnus from Nikola Tesla, Druitt hit a nerve when he compared her to him. In response to him calling her a killer, saying that she found the exquisite rush of the moment of violence utterly intoxicating (a feeling he knows very well himself), she lashed out at him before soon realizing the truth to his words the more he talked and settled down. Druitt knew Ashley wanted to get some blood on her hands and that she hadn't really tried because she wasn't sure she could 'pull it off'. Shortly after this, Ashley put together all the pieces to realize that Druitt was her father; the revelation occurring in this manor caused a small temporary rift to form between Ashley and her mother over Magnus not being the one to tell her.

When the Cabal captured Ashley and summoned from within her the gifts that she inherited from her father, using it to attack the Sanctuary Network and indiscriminately kill people and abnormal beings, it caused tension and worry to arise in her parents. John Druitt admitted to Helen Magnus that he felt regret at having passed on his bloodlust to her. Based on Druitt previously not always being the way he currently is, having been changed by the source blood, like him, Helen Magnus was convinced that Ashley's condition could be managed. Druitt believed oppositely, that "what's bred in the bone can't be undone in the flesh". If Magnus were wrong, there was a shared unspoken fear between them that Ashley's brought forth bloodlust could lead her to become a Ripper just like her father. However, before any of that could come to pass, Ashley finally broke completely through the mind-control the Cabal held over her and sacrificed herself to save her mother.

Energy creature

The electroshock 'therapy' John Druitt previously received under a year earlier in 2008 began to wear off, starting when he and Nikola Tesla took it upon themselves to hunt down and dispatch members of the Cabal in retribution.

A year later in early 2010, it became obvious to Helen Magnus that John Druitt had begun killing again, murdering more than just Cabal remnants. During an act to try to get Magnus to kill him to end his 'madness', Magnus stunned his heart enough to induce cardiac arrest. When Magnus subsequently revived him with a defibrillator, a strange power surge in the Old City Sanctuary occurred. Afterwards, the building starts to behave like its been possessed by an evil spirit.

When Druitt claims that he feels like he's been "purged / purified" and at true peace inside his mind again like when they first met, both he and Magnus realize that what is now controlling the building is a malicious energy creature that had come from Druitt's body; having latched onto him during one of his teleports. While Druitt believes that all of his Ripper actions were the cause of this creature, Magnus is not so quick to believe the answer is that simple even though she wants to; saying it's far too easy to blame everything that he's done on the creature. Druitt however stands firm, sure that this thing was his 'rage'. Druitt's newfound mental peace however is short-lived. In order to save everyone in the building and prevent the creature from escaping out into Old City, becoming unstoppable, Druitt sacrifices his sanity and retakes the creature back into his body. Rejecting Magnus's help, he randomly teleports off with no particular destination in mind.

John Druitt is eventually found not too long later that same year by Helen Magnus in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on the verge of OD'ing on a random cocktail of local drugs he had taken after a failed attempt by Nikola Tesla to remove his 'onboard elemental'. Magnus stabilizes him and brings him back to the Sanctuary for medical treatment.

Once well, Druitt eventually ends up teaming with Adam Worth under the false promise that Druitt would be able to go back in time with him to the year 1888 before the whole source blood incident. Druitt wanted to change his history by preventing the Five from injecting themselves with the "damnable blood". This action in turn would prevent Druitt from being able to teleport, thus not turning him into the Ripper; resulting in him and Magnus still being together and raising children.

In early 2011 after John Druitt learns that Adam Worth had been lying to him about the year that they would be going back to, traveling to the year 1898 instead of 1888, he goes to Helen Magnus in hopes that her help in finding Worth would secretly result in his wish of going back to 1888 still being fulfilled. Once Druitt and Magnus found Worth (albeit too late), Magnus learned the full truth and became angry at Druitt, squashing his hope. Despite this, Druitt continued to work with Magnus to try to stop Worth from ruining history.

When seemingly out of options, as a solution, Druitt decides to feed the energy creature within him; using the creature to syphon mass amounts of energy away from the protective rift field that was cloaking Worth's work station and time portal. Magnus warned that this action would cause the creature inside him to become too powerful and consume him. However, while Druitt understood this potential outcome, he still sacrificed himself to take responsibility for his actions. Once enough energy was drained from the system, Druitt collapsed to his knees in a euphoric state of mind, his fate left unknown as Magnus travelled after Worth through the portal.

Notes

• Ripper victims: Seven unnamed female prostitutes and Molly.
• Continuity: Originally, for over a century, Helen Magnus was burdened with an enormous amount of guilt over the Ripper murders as she believed John Druitt's madness was a result of her treating him with her blood to save him when he was dying; the treatment she thought had somehow unintentionally caused a rage-filled psychosis to overtake him. According to her, "it all went wrong" after he became her first patient. She then spent the intervening years continually trying to undo that mistake.
  • This was partially retconned later on in the series to have Helen Magnus believe more-so that John Druitt's condition was due to when Druitt was initially changed by the source blood itself (still an experiment created by her). Both scenarios however were still considered to have awakened an inheritable bloodlust within him that was to some degree passed on to Ashley Magnus.
• Overall, John Druitt's 'Ripper' persona in this show is displayed as being a combination of both an awakened bloodlust as well as the will of the energy creature inside him. Druitt repeatedly maintained that his Ripper murders (and the start of subsequent murders afterwards) were the result of an 'irresistible force' thrust upon him; that he was in the grip of something he couldn't control and that his actions were not his own. He sincerely admitted to Helen Magnus that he tried to stop and never wanted the killing to begin again.
  • John Druitt's seen behavior aside from killing people indicates that he continually feels plagued about his condition; tortured over the urges he feels and the fact that he can't seem to stop his actions nor be cured of his rage and thus ends up isolating and self-harming: whether by booze, drugs, or tempting Helen Magnus's hand in attempts to try to supposedly drown the madness out or end it altogether.
• It is unknown if John Druitt's resulting behavior at the end of Episode 3x20 - "Into the Black" indicates that the energy creature within him either:

1. Was more than satisfied with the amount of energy it was fed and is now completely sated into blissful contentment, or
2. Had decided to completely abandon John Druitt's body; having jumped into the devices connected to the Praxian geothermal energy system, leaving him a 'free' man at peace once again.

Historical differences

Differences between the Jack the Ripper case as seen on Sanctuary vs real-life historical evidence:

• The show identifies 'Montague John Druitt' as the killer. In real life, Montague Druitt was only considered a suspect, with many people disregarding him as the murderer as only circumstantial evidence of private suggestions tied him to the case. Despite him being unlikely, various forms of media and entertainment (including this TV show) have popularized his name over the years since the early 1960s.
• In Episode 0x01 - "Webisode 1" and Episode 1x02 - "Sanctuary for All, Part II", John Druitt's eighth (and last) Ripper victim is Molly - a completely fictitious victim created for the show. She is also the only named Ripper victim on the show.
• In Episode 0x04 - "Webisode 4", John Druitt as Jack the Ripper is said to have murdered (a total of) eight innocent women / prostitutes. In real-life, only five murders are believed to have been the work of the Ripper between the timeframe of August 1888 and November 1888.
• In Episode 1x13 - "Revelations, Part II" James Watson details John Druitt's seventh victim, saying 1) April 1888 and 2) that the body was found under a bridge near Wapping. In real life, this is a hodgepodge where the show writers blended the first 'Whitechapel murder' with details that do not specifically relate to any of the other ten murders, especially not the seventh one.
• Who the show considers to be the other seven Ripper victims is unknown. While the show does draw certain aspects from the actual Jack the Ripper case, it is clearly only represented onscreen as a loosely-based inspired work rather than as a hardcore factual depiction of it. Due to this, it may be safe to assume that these seven dead characters in the world of Sanctuary are completely fictitious creations (just like Molly) and are not each a tie-in counterpart representation of an actual real-life victim aside from the considered shared timeframe of the last Jack the Ripper murder occurring in November 1888.
  • Molly may be a replacement/stand-in for the murder of Mary Jane Kelly and/or just heavily inspired by it. In the opening scene of "Webisode 1" (re-used in "Sanctuary for All, Part I"), Molly is seen prostituting outside of the Ten Bells in November 1888. Historically, the Ten Bells is associated with two victims of the real Jack the Ripper, Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly. Annie Chapman (considered the second canonical victim, murdered on September 8^th, 1888) may have drunk at the pub shortly before being murdered. It has also been suggested that the pavement outside of the pub was where Mary Kelly picked up clients as a prostitute. Mary Jane was killed in the very early morning of November 9^th, 1888. Kelly is considered the fifth and last canonical Ripper victim.
  • Something Molly shares with the other four canonical Ripper victims is that she was murdered outdoors and whose mutilations could have been committed within minutes (in Molly's case, she was killed simply via a singular deep slit to the throat by John Druitt's rapier blade). A major difference with Kelly is that she was murdered within the sparsely furnished single room she rented at 13 Miller's Court, affording her murderer an extensive period of time to eviscerate and mutilate her body. Kelly's body was by far the most extensively mutilated of the canonical victims, with her mutilations taking her murderer approximately two hours to perform.