Gordon Cummins: Biography and Background

Gordon Frederick Cummins (18 February 1914 – 25 June 1942) was a British serial killer known as the Blackout Killer, the Blackout Ripper and the Wartime Ripper, who murdered four women and attempted to murder two others over a five-day period in Central London in February 1942. He is also suspected of committing two earlier murders in October 1941.

Convicted of the murder of 33-year-old Evelyn Oatley, Cummins was sentenced to death on 28 April 1942; he was hanged at HMP Wandsworth on 25 June, and is the only convicted murderer in British criminal history known to have been executed during an air raid.

All the victims of the Blackout Ripper were strangled, with the bodies of three of his victims extensively mutilated at the point of or after death. The murders themselves have been described by one former detective superintendent within the Metropolitan Police as "by far the most vicious" he ever investigated during his entire career.

Cummins became known as the "Blackout Killer" and the "Blackout Ripper" because he committed his murders during the imposed wartime blackout and because of the extensive mutilations inflicted upon his victims' bodies. He is also known as the "Wartime Ripper" as his murders were committed at the height of World War II.

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