The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (46 page)

Prison, Cambridgeshire, where he is presumably kept By October 21, police confirmed that they were under closer watch, with a private cell of his own.

searching for the killer of “a woman.” Inside sources put the body count at seven, with the latest murder five days earlier. An eighth intended victim had survived her

“IVAN the Ripper”

wounds, providing homicide investigators with the like-In 1974, a decade after VLADIMIR IONOSYAN sparked a ness reproduced in suspect sketches. Five days later, on local panic with the “Mosgas” murders, residents of October 26, authorities reported they were holding a Moscow circulated rumors of another homicidal

suspect in a series of stabbings who had killed at least maniac at large. According to reports, the slayer was a 11 Moscow women. The unnamed prisoner had been fair-haired, handsome young man, armed with a cob-arrested on the evening of October 24, after three vic-bler’s bodkin or similar instrument, who trailed his tims were slain in a period of 24 hours.

female victims from the city’s ornate subway stations, Police maintained their news blackout as the suspect stabbing them to death in nearby streets and alleys.

was shuffled off for psychiatric evaluation, and the dis-Manhunting is doubly difficult in a society that position of the case remains unknown, but this time admits no crime problem, but Moscow police indirectly the official silence backfired. On the streets, a popula-confirmed at least some of the reports. By October 19, tion starved for solid news fell back on rumor, doubt-extra police and militia patrols were at large, their ing that the slayer had been captured. “They caught activity officially explained as preparation for the one, but there is a second killer,” one woman confided annual celebration of the Bolshevik revolution on to a Western journalist. “They still have not caught the November 7. At the same time, posters bearing sketches main one.”

130

J

“JACK the Ripper”

Neither crime had anything in common with the death Arguably the world’s most infamous serial killer, Victo-of Mary Nichols, and detectives had to wait for further rian London’s unidentified slasher of prostitutes slayings to reveal a pattern.

remains an object of study—some say obsession—for On September 8, the police found their link with the thousands of students today. If we may trust the faceless discovery of Annie Chapman’s corpse a half mile from experts on
Jeopardy,
more books, plays, articles, and Buck’s Row. The victim, yet another prostitute, had first movie scripts have been written about Red Jack than been choked unconscious, after which her throat was about any other murderer in history, except Adolf cut and she was disemboweled. Her entrails had been Hitler. At that, Der Führer had to kill some 20 million torn away and draped across one shoulder; portions of people just to break the tie, while Jack the Ripper the bladder and vagina, with the uterus and ovaries, slaughtered only five. Still, his (or her) identity remains were missing from the scene.
The Lancet
quoted Dr.

an active topic of debate, with new works on the sub-Bagster Phillips, medical examiner, on the proficiency of ject published every year.

Chapman’s killer. “Obviously,” Dr. Phillips said, “the Because he got away.

work was that of an expert—or one, at least, who had The mystery of Jack the Ripper opens on August 31, such knowledge of anatomical or pathological exami-1888, with the discovery of a woman’s lifeless body on nations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with Buck’s Row, in the heart of London’s Whitechapel slum.

one sweep of the knife.”

The victim was Mary Nichols, known as Polly to her The first of several letters allegedly penned (in red friends, and she had earned her meager living as a pros-ink) by the killer was written on September 25 and titute before a presumed final client showed a taste for mailed three days later, addressed to London’s Central blood. Her throat was slashed, with bruises found News Agency. It read:

beneath the jaw suggesting that she had been punched
Dear Boss,

or choked unconscious before the killer plied his blade.

Upon undressing Polly at the morgue, the medical
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they
examiner found deep postmortem slashes on her

won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so
abdomen, with stab wounds to the genitals.

clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke
The murder of an East End prostitute was nothing
about [unnamed suspect] Leather Apron gave me real
new to Scotland Yard. Detectives had two other cases
fits. I am down on whores and shan’t quit ripping them
on the books for 1888 already. Emma Smith had been
till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I
attacked on April 2, by a gang of four or five assailants,
gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me
living long enough to describe her killers. Martha
now. I love my work and want to start again. You will
Tabram was found in Whitechapel on August 7,

soon hear of me and my funny little games. I saved
stabbed 39 times with a weapon resembling a bayonet.

some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over
131

“JACK the Ripper”

the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and
I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope
ha ha.
The
next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to
the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this
letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out
straight. My knife is nice and sharp I want to get to
work right away if I get the chance. Good luck.

Yours truly,

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name. Wasn’t good
enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my
hands curse it. They say I am a doctor now
ha ha.

The Ripper claimed two more victims on September 30. The first, Elizabeth Stride, was found in a narrow court off Berner Street at 1:00 A.M. Her throat was slashed, but there had been no other mutilation, indicating that her killer was disturbed before he could complete his grisly task. Three-quarters of an hour later, Catherine Eddowes was found by a constable in Mitre Square. According to the officer, she had been gutted “like a pig in the market,” with her entrails

“flung in a heap about her neck.” The murderer (or someone else) had chalked a cryptic message on a nearby wall: “The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.”

Medical examination of the corpse from Mitre

Square revealed that Eddowes had been slashed across the face, her throat was cut, and she was disemboweled.

The killer had removed a kidney, which was not recovered at the scene. One final bit of evidence, a superficial wound beneath one ear, suggested that the killer had attempted to fulfill his promise of a trophy for police.

That morning, while police were scouring the streets of Whitechapel, someone mailed another message to the Central News Agency.

Letter written by “Jack the Ripper” to the Central News
I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the
office in London (Wide World API)

tip. You’ll hear about Saucy Jack’s work tomorrow.

Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit.

Couldn’t finish straight off. Had no time to get ears for
very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it
police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to
out if you only wait a whil longer

work again.

[signed] Catch me when you can Mister Lusk
Jack the Ripper

Examining the partial kidney that accompanied the A third communication was mailed on October 16 to letter, Dr. Openshaw, pathological curator of the Lon-George Lusk, head of the newly organized Whitechapel don Hospital Museum, pronounced it “ginny,” of the Vigilance Committee. It read:

sort expected from an alcoholic. It showed symptoms of
From hell

Bright’s disease, as (allegedly) did the kidney left to Catherine Eddowes by her killer. Dr. Openshaw also
Mr. Lusk

noted that the renal artery is normally three inches
Sir I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman
long: two inches had remained with Eddowes; one inch
prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate was
was attached to the repulsive trophy sent to Lusk.

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“JACK the Ripper”

(Another pathologist, Dr. Sedgwick Saunders, reported record, of his guilt in two sadistic murders, some inves-that Eddowes’s remaining kidney was perfectly healthy; tigators treated Sadler as a suspect in the Ripper crimes, he believed the kidney sent to Lusk was a prank by but he was never charged.

medical students.)

Suspects abound in this intriguing case, with anyone London’s panic had begun to fade by Halloween, but and everyone fair game for one dramatic theory or Jack the Ripper was not finished yet. Police were sum-another. In the absence of conclusive evidence (no fin-moned on the morning of November 9 to Miller’s gerprints, no witness to the crimes, no DNA), the list of Court in Spitalfields to view the sad remains of Mary suspects grows with every passing year. Those on record Kelly, former prostitute. Discovered by her landlord’s to date include:

errand boy, inquiring after tardy rent, she was the only victim killed indoors, Jack taking full advantage of the
Montague John Druitt
(1857–88), a London barris-opportunity to sculpt a grisly piece of butcher’s art.

ter first on Macnaghten’s suspect list, whose body, As usual, the victim had been murdered with a slash weighted with stones in an apparent suicide, was across the throat, this time so deep that she was nearly dredged from the Thames on December 1, 1888.

decapitated. Jack had skinned her forehead, slicing off Macnaghten wrote that “From private informa-her nose and ears. Her left arm had been nearly severed tion I have little doubt but that his own family at the shoulder, while both legs were flayed from thighs suspected this man of being the Whitechapel mur-to ankles. Kelly had been disemboweled, one hand derer.” An alternative theory paints Druitt as both inserted in her gaping abdomen, her liver draped across killer and victim, murdered by affluent Oxford one thigh. Her severed breasts lay on the nightstand associates to avert potential scandal.

with her kidneys, heart, and nose. Police found strips of PROBLEMS: Macnaghten misidentifies Druitt

flesh suspended from the nails of picture frames, and as a 41-year-old doctor; no evidence links Druitt blood was spattered on the walls. Examination showed to the crimes; his apparent suicide note does not that she was three months pregnant, but her killer mention the murders.

claimed the uterus and fetus for himself.

Aaron Kosminski
(1864/65–1919), a Polish Jew So closed the Ripper’s reign of terror as it began, in employed in London as a hairdresser, the second mystery . . . or, did it? The private papers of Sir Melville of Macnaghten’s three suspects, allegedly driven Macnaghten, former chief of CID for Scotland Yard, insane by masturbation, confined to a lunatic asy-named three prime suspects, while insisting that the lum in 1891.

Ripper “had
five
victims and five only.” However, other PROBLEMS: No evident link to the murders;

students of the case are not so sure. A number of them no proven Ripper crimes between November 1888

reckon two more victims in the tally, thus raising the and February 1891 while he was still at large.

body count and expanding the Ripper’s career from 10

Michael Ostrog
(born c. 1833), the third official sus-weeks to three years.

pect, described by Macnaghten as “a mad Russian Prostitute Alice Mackenzie, found dead on July 17, doctor & a convict & unquestionably a homicidal 1889, is the first “extra” victim normally ascribed to maniac.” A known thief and con man, paroled

Jack. With her throat slashed and familiar gashes to her from his last prison term in 1904, he thereafter abdomen, Mackenzie seemed a likely new addition to vanished from the public record.

the Ripper’s list. One medical examiner, Dr. Thomas PROBLEMS: Ostrog was not a doctor (though

Bond, openly credited Jack with the crime, while Dr.

he sometimes posed as one); no evidence connects Bagster Phillips disagreed. (Dr. Phillips also thought two him to the murders.

separate killers were responsible for the established Rip-

“Jill the Ripper”
—Nickname for an unknown per crimes in 1888). While hesitating to connect female suspect, allegedly an abortionist concealing Mackenzie’s murder to the Ripper, Phillips
did
believe it her crimes with mutilation, proposed in 1888.