Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper Who Terrorized Wartime London

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Mar 18, 2026 · 13m

Gordon Frederick Cummins, an RAF airman during the Second World War, became infamous as the “Blackout Ripper,” a serial killer who terrorized London during the wartime blackouts of 1942.

During the darkest years of the Second World War, as London endured nightly air-raid sirens, blackout regulations, and the constant threat of German bombs, a different kind of terror began stalking the city—one that came not from the Luftwaffe, but from the shadows of the streets themselves. In early 1942, while the world focused on vast battles across Europe and the Pacific, Londoners found themselves…