Plot Synopsis

AMERICAN RIPPER is a one-hour reality series that follows Jeff Mudgett (the great-great-grandson of serial killer, H.H. Holmes) as he tries to prove an astonishing, controversial theory: that H.H. Holmes and Britain's notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, were the same man. Herman Mudgett (aka H.H. Holmes) was America's first serial killer rumored to have claimed as many as 200 lives in the late 19th century. Simultaneously, an unidentified murderer known as Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the streets of London. Mudgett leads an investigation that secured permission to exhume the presumed body of H.H. Holmes for DNA testing to determine whether he pulled off the ultimate con, escaping his own execution to lead a second secret life. From the moment 20 years ago when Mudgett's world was shaken at the revelation that he was the descendant of H.H. Holmes, he became obsessed with acquiring information about his ancestor. Through extensive research, he began to believe the bold theory that Holmes was also Ripper. Now, the retired attorney has partnered with former CIA criminologist, Amaryllis Fox, who has spent her career identifying terrorists across the globe, to launch a deeper investigation. Forensic science was at its infancy in the 1800s, leaving countless unanswered questions throughout the timeline of these killing sprees. This series hunts down evidence to prove a link between these two monstrous men including: Holmes' personal copy of his published memoir, housed at the Library of Congress; clues about his earliest victims in Holmes' hometown and childhood home in Gilmanton, N.H.; crime scene evidence from the Jack the Ripper murders including photos, eyewitness accounts and coroners' reports; new interviews with numerous historians and detectives; and new leads in the search for long-lost remains of Holmes' many victims.
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On Tuesday, August 29, 2017 at 10pm ET/PT, History Channel premiered the season finale of AMERICAN RIPPER. In the season ender, "The Grave," the investigation hunts for proof that Holmes pulled off one final swindle -- escaping his own execution -- by exhuming the killer's alleged gravesite to discover what, if anything, lies beneath.