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- Hi friends, how are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day today, you know, staying safe out there. So today I'm doing something a little different with murder mystery makeup because well, with this one I'm digging into like, you know, one of the most famous and mysterious serial killers of all time. And that is, I'm sure you're aware 'cause of like the title or something, that's Mr. Ripper. Hey, Mr. Ripper. In other words, you know, Jack,
So just a little FYI, we call him Jack, but nobody really knows what his actual name is because his identity was never discovered, which also makes this story, again, one of the most famous cold cases in history because people just wanna figure it out. I mean, lots of good theories out there.
But who really knows, huh? Today's story, just a little disclaimer, it is really graphic. There's lots of women being cut up, just bad. And obviously there is murder. So today's episode, I decided to do a two-part series. I've never done that before. I kind of wish I did it with H.H. Holmes because there was so much I had to leave out. And like H.H. Holmes was so comp, oh my gosh, you guys. I wish I did two-part, but I didn't think about it until now.
- All right, so welcome to part one. Today we're gonna be talking about the devil of the 1880s, Victorian London, Jack the Ripper. Oh, and also my name is Bailey Sarian and this is Monday, which means it's Smarter Mystery Makeup. Let's get into
the story. Of course we're gonna start with like the background, okay? So it's late summer 1888 in East London in a neighborhood called Whitechapel which sounds pretty cute but during this time it was rough, okay? Whitechapel is really cute now but back in the 1880s it was poverty stricken. The neighbors were most likely immigrants and a lot of them were Irish and Jewish refugees and they were all just kind of
crammed into this little corner of an already crowded city, you know? It was estimated that there were about 250,000 people living in that one neighborhood.
So it was crowded. Trying to paint the picture here for you. So people who lived in Whitechapel were escaping the Great Irish Famine, which I heard was horrible. It was basically like a genocide. We're not gonna fully get into it, but let's just say that the Irish living there, they really had no other choice because if we're being real here, the English weren't very fond of them.
any kind of immigrants, really. And the immigrants were really just looking for an escape. Their end goal was to make it to the United States. So it's like they were kind of stopping at Whitechapel to then make it to the United States. And there were over like 1.5 million who had made it to the U.S. There were still thousands who just didn't get that far. And many of them were just forced to stay and kind of make home in Whitechapel, where
Unfortunately, they weren't welcome. So tensions were high, you know what I'm saying? Like it wasn't ideal. Meanwhile, there were Jewish immigrants who moved to Whitechapel and they were escaping persecution as well. Like this particular group, they were seeking a way out of the Russian antisemitic pogrom.
So a pogrom was like a very violent anti-semitic protest and it was designed to target the Jewish community and just make it very uncomfortable for them to live in their own cities. It's like everybody hates everybody. During this time and pretty much for all of the 1800s, Russia was expanding its territory into areas where like a lot of
the Jewish community had lived for centuries. They had moved to like modern day Ukraine and Poland. They essentially just wanted them out and would do whatever they could to like achieve that goal of theirs. Dream big, you know, whatever. Basically anything bad that had happened in the Russian empire, they would always blame on the Jewish community. I mean, the Russian economy was tanking at this point. So who do they blame?
The Jews. They're like, yeah, it's their fault, of course, right? Because that's all anybody ever does is blame the Jewish. So in 1881, the Russian Tsar, their emperor, Alexander II, was assassinated. Yeah, assassinated.
And then the Russian media, who do they blame? They're putting out in the newspapers it was the Jews. And then once the media gets involved, you know how it goes, it makes everything worse. And it led to a ton of people getting killed and hurt. For what, you know? It was getting really intense in Russia. So a lot of the Jewish who were living in Russia just end up converting to Orthodox Christianity. And then they pretty much just go full blown into the Russian way of life.
because it was that or be murdered or try to escape. So it was like, which one do you want to try? And that's how a lot of different immigrants had ended up in Whitechapel because immigrants
I mean, it was their escape and it seemed way better than Russia to many of them. So think of the neighborhood like this. I mean, it was overcrowded as hell. Nobody had money. People were just scraping by, okay? And racism was still very much alive in 1888 London. You sound like you're from London. Anybody? You sound like you're from London.
There was a lot of political unrest, social tensions were building, and honestly, no one liked each other. Nobody trusted anybody. There was no sense of community happening. Most of the native Londoners, they didn't like the immigrants much at all. And they kind of saw it as like, if you spoke a different language than them, I mean, good luck.
No one's going to help you. It sounds like this was pretty much a really not great time, huh? So a lot of the immigrants who came to Whitechapel kind of needed to find work. They needed to make money, right? And they had no choice but to turn to the oldest profession, as they say. And many of them started doing sex work.
So, weirdly enough, sex work wasn't illegal, but quote-unquote soliciting was. Meaning, like, you couldn't be advertising handies for $5 and, like, a stagecoach or whatever, but you could legally get paid for sex acts. Do you know what I'm saying? Just no flyers involved or asking or promoting. I know it's confusing, but...
Whatever. Honestly, though, after a while, police just kind of gave up on trying to police this situation. And many of them refused to even arrest or protest sex workers unless they absolutely had to. So it was like very chaotic in the East End of London. I mean, it was definitely not an ideal place to live, right, for anyone. But it was ideal for a murderer.
So there are five murders that historians have linked directly to Jack the Ripper. And during this time, there was like so much killing going on. Things were just confusing for the police. I mean, they didn't know whose head belonged to who and it's the 1880s. So solving mysteries, it was honestly just a wild guess. They're like, yeah, head gone, that guy.
I don't know how they did much of anything back then, huh? Okay, so it's early morning on August 31st, 1888 in crowded Whitechapel. And even though it's like 3.30 a.m., there are still people out, you know, probably wandering home from like a pub or heading out early to work somewhere. And this is pre-electric streetlights. So there was only gas lit, you know, lights in the lampposts.
and they're pretty weak. So it's like not the best to see with those lights. So a neighbor is walking home on the cobblestone like streets. It's kind of narrow, it's dimly lit, super cute, vintage. It's a street called Bucks Road. And the neighbor sees a woman who is passed out in like a gateway. He sees that her legs are spread apart. I know. And her skirt is raised up over her waist.
Oh God, you know, it's like great. Now this neighbor, he's not quite sure if she's drunk or like, is she just passed out? Is she dead? He doesn't know. So he calls another man over. He's like, "Hey, come check this out." And then the two of them are now looking at her. They touch her face and her face is still warm.
which is like, okay, great. But her hands at this point were limp and cold. So they don't really think she's dead. They just kind of think she's passed out and drunk because her face is still warm. So they're like, well, might as well just leave her. There's really not much we can do. So they at least, these nice men, they at least put her skirt back down for her, which I thought was, I was like, oh, that's nice. They
At least they did that for her, huh? So then the two guys wander off and go about wherever they're going. 30 minutes go by and then a street cop wanders onto the scene and notices this poor woman on the street. But unlike those good Samaritans who left her for dead,
He notices that she's bleeding pretty badly from the back of her neck area. So he and his partner call for backup and a medic, but when the medic gets there, that's when he says it's too late. And that's when this woman laying on the street was pronounced dead. She was very dead because when the medic looked at her wound, he saw that her throat had been cut so deep that it almost went all the way through her neck.
Like, all the way through. And, like, almost fully decapitated her. It was brute. Just stab it all the way through.
It was aggressive. It was very aggressive. So at this point, it's about 4 a.m., and the medic kind of is, like, feeling her body and notices that her legs and some parts of her body were still warm. So, like, she couldn't have been dead for more than an hour. So this could mean one of two things. Either the guys who first found her were so drunk and the lighting was so bad that they just, like, didn't notice the massive gash in her neck.
or the blood, or she was alive when they found her, maybe just passed out, knocked out or something. And whoever maybe had done it, like the killer, heard the men coming, ran away, hid somewhere. And when the killer heard them leave, he came back and sliced her neck.
Now that theory to me kind of made sense. Like maybe she was drugged with something and just knocked out. Because how would they not notice that her neck was cut so badly? Now the men, they said there was no evidence of any blood around her when they first saw her. Like and even if she was dumped there, you think there would be a trail of blood somewhere, right?
So the killer must have like seen them coming and then been like, oh shit, and then ran off. But again, just a theory. We don't really know because back then this shit was messy. Now it's 4.30 a.m. and the big brass Scotland Yard, which is kind of like the UK's FBI,
Correct? I believe so. Well, they heard about this murder where the lady's head is cut so deep and so they rushed to the scene to gather evidence. But when they arrived, they find a resident literally washing the blood and any evidence that was around completely away. This person was like literally sweeping the street, just making the neighborhood look nice, just doing everything you're not supposed to, to a crime scene.
He's like, "Oh, we gotta get rid of this blood. Dirty." So there goes all or any evidence. And if that wasn't bad enough, the inspectors headed over to the mortuary where her body had been at. And then when they arrived, they find out that the mortuary workers had also been dumb and they washed down her whole body and threw away her clothes. Yeah.
I know these people are very eager to clean. That's what I was thinking too. I was like, wow, they really like cleanliness, don't they? Too bad they're ruining all of the evidence or any type of clues, really. So there was lots of evidence lost, right? But this is what they had. The woman was later identified as Mary Ann Nichols.
She was 43 years old. She was down on her luck, a single mother of five. She had spent her rent money drinking that night. She was removed or kicked out by her landlady until she could come up with the money. To make some quick cash, she also would work as a sex worker. And it's believed that that night she most likely was out on the streets trying to make some extra money.
when she most likely met her killer. Now, the thing about her killing was that the way she was killed was like,
Real bad. Okay, not only had poor Mary Ann's throat been slit, but she also had been completely disemboweled. I know disemboweled. What? What does that mean? Her lower stomach had been cut open and like all of her insides were just spilled out on the table once the coroner cut her clothes off. Yeah, and
This sounds bad, but it's what, you know, it was kind of what they thought. That it was kind of weird that this victim was not sexually assaulted. It's like, that's bad, but then it's kind of like, I mean, it's different, right? I mean, thank God, but I don't know. What the fuck was going on? So the coroner had found like no evidence of sexual assault. She was just found flayed, gutted, and left for dead.
and the killer was probably still close by, whoever that may be. So this murder obviously hit a little different for everybody. I mean, there's always plenty of murders and rapes happening in Whitechapel, which is sad, especially it would happen to sex workers, but no one had taken the time to like cut someone's guts out before.
Like, what was that? You know? Scotland Yard asked the people around Whitechapel, especially among like the sex workers, they asked like, have you seen this guy? You know, maybe someone who's a little weird, aggressive.
Anyone unusual? So they're asking around, asking around, and then they, the women all mention a guy that they nicknamed Leather Apron because he always wore a leather apron.
Kind of weird to be wearing a leather apron. I mean, I would think so. To go pick up sex workers wearing a leather apron, I mean, that to me would scream like butcher, right? Anyway, so this guy was like mentioned a handful of times and obviously had made a lasting impression because he was weird.
because according to the sex workers, he'd been running an extortion racket amongst them. He would like approach them wearing his butcher apron, of course, and then threatened to rip them open if they didn't give him their money. So a little spooky. So this is their new main suspect. I mean, sounds...
sounds like this could be the guy right so leather apron was quickly identified as a guy named john pizer so he was a slipper maker by trade which is kind of cute but hadn't really been working at it lately he mainly made all of his money by robbing the sex workers and like threatening them and stuff
So that's great. Anyway, Mary Ann Nichols' murder didn't go unnoticed by the press. The inspector asking questions about John got the media into like a big frenzy. I mean, who can blame them? It was some juicy, bloody murder.
You know, so media is all up in everyone's business per use. So John goes from, you know, like his small time extortionist to a big time murder suspect. And he is now public enemy number one in Whitechapel. So this loser, he's panicking. He's like, what do I do? Whoops. So he runs off and he goes and like hides with some relatives in a different town. Okay. Okay.
If that doesn't make you look obvious, then I don't know what will, but okay. But he runs off and he's living in a different town. So it's a little weird when another murder takes place if their main suspect isn't even around, right? On September 8th, 1888, just a little before
- Just before 6:00 AM, a resident finds the body of a woman in his backyard. His backyard being at 29 Hanbury Street, which is like just down the street from where Mary Ann Nichols was found. Now this woman also had her skirt lifted just above her waist, no signs of sexual assault, but the difference was with this woman, she had her arms above her head, which had suggested that she had fought back.
she was trying to fight. So maybe this attacker came out of nowhere or she was, like, fully conscious, you know?
who knows i mean yay no sexual assault but she still died you know like so a lot of people are kind of thinking the media is thinking like what's that what is like this killer's end goal you know what what what is really going on so this woman was found at 6 00 a.m and at 6 00 a.m there's a lot of there's a lot more people out moving and grooving but still
There were no witnesses, which was really confusing. It's confusing because I cannot stress enough how crowded Whitechapel was, like the whole neighborhood. And by 6 a.m., most people were already heading off to work, like walking to work. And it was just strange that nobody saw anything. Come on, that's weird. Now here's the annoying part. There were a bunch of gawkers that showed up.
Like there's plenty of people hanging around after she died and word got out like, "Oh, there's a dead body over there." People were like, "What? Let me go see." Lots of people hanging around. By the time the inspectors got to the crime scene, there was a huge crowd that had formed around her body. And shortly after she would be identified as 28 year old Annie Chapman. She was known to be a severe alcoholic who'd been abandoned by her husband.
and was forced, you know, to turn to sex work.
to make some kind of income. She was pronounced dead at 6:30 a.m. And just like with poor Mary Ann the week before, she had her abdomen, her lower area, violently cut open. And Annie's death was particularly brutal. I mean, they're all brutal, but the coroner later discovered that not only had she been disemboweled, but her uterus had been cut and snatched right out of her body.
Bro, I don't know what's going on. Nobody knows what's going on. Why the uterus? Leave our uteruses alone. We just want to be left alone, you know? All throughout history, we just want to be left alone and make some money. It's like, damn, we can't do nothing. So this obviously fucked up and also suggests to the investigators that the murderer has some kind of anatomical knowledge. It's giving doctor vibes.
Somebody who knows the body and where to cut. I mean, it's not just every casual psycho who knows, like, one, where is the uterus, right? All right? And then two, like, be able to identify where it's at and able to remove it. The uterus is not a very big organ. It's only three inches. And you got to know where you're looking. So...
All signs point to someone who knows what they're doing. This is concerning, right? The investigators are now definitely paying attention and not only them but the uterus stealing also like triggers something for the coroner. He remembered someone had recently been going to the medical schools in London to see if they were interested in buying wombs. Coincidence?
I think not. So rumor had it that there was an American doctor who was loitering around the medical schools saying that he could get a good deal on uteruses. Uteri? Utes? What's the plural for uteruses? Wombs.
Yep, and he could get them about 20 pounds a pop, but I wouldn't get one. I don't know. He had some kind of deal with uteruses. Does this not sound like H.H. Holmes though, hmm? Sadly, this lead dried up quickly because all of the schools denied any kind of demand for wombs or dealing with, you know, "suspicy" American doctors.
And also the doctors who may have been buying body parts, they didn't want to out themselves either. They're not supposed to be buying organs in general from dudes off of the street. So they're not going to say like, oh yeah, I know the guy. Because then, you know, they get in trouble. But this pretty much led to the investigators losing that lead and it going nowhere. Also, there was a leather apron that was left at the scene.
which is a pretty big clue, but also the leather apron guy, he had an alibi. He was literally hiding in his family home. So he was cleared of being a suspect. Thank you. But this is also another hint, you know, like leaving the apron at the scene meant that the killer was probably reading the news and was trying to like go with their lead.
Whoever it was, seemed like they were trying to frame John, you know, by leaving an apron. It's like, uh-oh.
It was too obvious that whoever it was was leaning into this leather apron situation. So we're two murders into this. People are getting super riled up. The media is going crazy over these killings and investigators don't have much to go on. Good news though, the Scotland Yard is about to get a very big break in the case. The bad news, they don't use it. They don't do anything with it.
because why would they? On September 29th, 1888, the London Central News Agency forwarded a letter to Scotland Yard. So it was a letter, it was like a cheeky little number allegedly written by the killer to taunt everyone. But this news agency had received a handwritten note written in red ink and was from someone claiming to be the killer.
And the letter was signed, Jack the Ripper. So this letter was called Dear Boss. That's what it was labeled as, the Dear Boss letter. And here's what the letter said. Quote, Dear Boss, I am hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. The joke about leather apron gave me real fits.
I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over 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 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's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get the chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. P.S. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands. Curse it.
No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. Ha ha. That kind of felt like a little riddle, didn't it? Everyone spoke like a, like a little, in little riddles. I would say bring it back, but I have no idea what's going on. Okay, so investigators originally dismissed this letter. They just tossed it aside and didn't even think about it. They assumed most likely it was a
prank or like some bored kid or maybe like a journalist from a London tabloid just trying to sell newspapers.
And this did happen, like, you know, so it wasn't wrong of them to assume that, but it was like, a little too early to assume that. I mean, most modern historians agree with them, which I'll get into in part two, but still other experts think it might be genuine. There was one thing that many speculators, historians, people who read letters and analyze the writing and all that,
A lot of these people agreed that the letter read very American. Just throwing that out there. So many are thinking, could Jack the Ripper, the notorious Victorian serial killer, be from like Ohio? Oh shit. Well, whoever it was, they weren't done with London not long after the killer strikes again.
Again. This time though, there were two victims found in just a single night. It's September 30th, 1888. A full month had gone by since the first victim, Mary Ann, was murdered. Around like 1:00 AM, the body of a woman named Elizabeth Stride is discovered in a dark alley. Her throat was slit.
but she wasn't disemboweled like the previous two victims. And with this one, there was a witness. A man in the neighborhood saw Elizabeth with a...
And the neighbor got a really good look at this person, which is like, "Ooh, yeah, eyewitness. Just what we need, babe. Just what we need." Now, this neighbor described Elizabeth's companion as around 30 years old, about five foot five inches tall, with a dark mustache and sandy eyelashes, and was wearing a black suit and a bowler hat. I personally love this neighbor coming through with a good description, you know? Okay, so, Elizabeth's companion
Okay, neighbor, a true eyewitness. Now, the only downside, okay? The downside is that it's 1888 and who didn't have a mustache and a bowler hat?
So it's like, fuck, you know, but okay. They got something, at least shit. Now this neighbor saw the two of them at around 11:45 PM. Now to this guy, it appeared that they were both a little drunk and they were like making out in a doorway while they waited out a rainstorm. I know, kind of cute, kind of romantic. But then she dies, so it's not. Then a second neighbor sees the same couple around midnight.
but it was not a romantic makeout session in the rain. He said he watched as the man pulled Elizabeth into the street, spun her around and then threw her onto the sidewalk as she screamed. Now these are different times. So you've got to understand why this neighbor or this eyewitness doesn't get involved because this neighbor was like, oh, that man is probably beating his wife.
like we all see, you know? So he does the quote unquote respectable thing and just crosses the road or crosses the street, I should say, to avoid them. He doesn't want to get involved.
Just beat your wife alone in peace over there. But then this is where it gets weird, okay? Because this witness said that after crossing the street, he saw a second man who was smoking a pipe nearby. Now, he described the second man as being around 5'11", with light brown hair, and also a mustache. The witness said that the first man, the alleged wife-beater, caught him watching them.
So this wife beater called out to his second man and says, Lipski. Oh, and the word Lipski was an anti-Semitic slur in 1888. So what this first man was saying was essentially, go chase after that Jewish witness. So...
The man does just that. I mean, the second man starts to follow the witness while the other man who was attacking Elizabeth starts to drag her into an alley. So the witness obviously like freaks out by what he was seeing. So he hauls ass out of there.
And sadly, he would be the last person to ever see Elizabeth alive. Now this witness kind of threw a wrench into the investigation of Jack the Ripper because he's always been considered a lone killer. So this was bizarre, right? And police decided to leave that little detail of there being an accomplice out of their profile. They even found the man who the witness described as the pipe-smoking Lipski,
But they ended up clearing him. Yeah, I don't know. It was also said that the police didn't really dig that deep into it either. So, okay.
You know, it's like, all right, okay. But you know what? The cops were really busy that night. So maybe it just like slipped through the cracks. We'll never really know. Because less than an hour after finding Elizabeth's body, they found another woman. A woman named Catherine Eddowes, who was found dead at 1.45 a.m. in Mitre Square. Now, just like the previous victims, her skirt was above her waist and her throat open.
was slit, but this time the ripper, he went off, all the way off on this poor woman. Her entire body and face were completely mutilated. Oh my God, oh my God. She was completely shredded and her uterus and left kidney had been removed and taken.
But like, damn, it was like, why did he go so hard on this woman? Her face was so messed up that a part of her ear was missing. Remember the part in like the Dear Boss letter where clipping the lady's ear off was mentioned? So, okay. And just like the previous victims, she was also pretty drunk when she was killed.
But I'm starting to think that everyone in Whitechapel in 1888 was at least a little drunk all of the time because that kind of seems like how it really was, you know? Earlier that evening before her murder had taken place, she, Catherine, had gotten arrested for drunken behavior, but she was released at around 1:00 a.m., which was pretty much right after Elizabeth was killed.
Just like with Elizabeth, there were witnesses this time. There was a group of three neighbors who were out that night and they saw her with a man. They remembered or they described him as being like medium height, tall,
with brown hair and had a mustache. And it would only be about 15 minutes later that her body would be found just mutilated. Cannot stress enough how like bad she was. I saw a picture. I know, I know. Please don't look it up unless you want your whole day and life and week to be ruined. But I saw the picture. Bitch, what the actual...
Fuck! This person went off, I'm not kidding. But also this kind of proved their belief that whoever had done this had to know what they were doing because to mutilate her body so badly and get the proper organs and whatnot in only 15 minutes, you know, like this person knew what they were doing.
I mean, it's obviously someone who knew what they were doing and it was not just some random person on the street. So this killer is ramping up big time, right? Not just by killing twice in one night, but also by potentially leaving a clue.
While investigating the crime scene, police found a piece of Catherine's bloodstained apron in a doorway. Now on the wall above it, there was a note written in chalk and the message said, the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. I was like, okay, all right. This message is known as the Gulston Street Graffito.
And I'll talk more about it in part two next week because modern historians take it very seriously. So I don't want to like just discredit it or breeze by, but I am right now. Anyway, just like this Dear Boss letter, the chalk message was very triggering. Remember, race relations were really bad in Whitechapel then, especially anti-Semitism. So the police debated on whether or not they should just
It's so dumb. Erase it. They're like, we should just erase it because it could cause bigger problems. I mean, there was no sense in getting the whole neighborhood all riled up and potentially like creating a much bigger problem. I mean, it was just chalk, you know? So they were like, hey, just wipe it away and we can go home early or something. I don't know. It's like, at least get a picture of it. Right? Like,
God damn you guys, what are you doing over there? Not solving mysteries, obviously. On the flip side, some officers said that they should wait until like they could photograph it since it was a major clue. But the argument ended with the big boss, the police commissioner, his name was Sir Charles Warren. He arrived at like 5:30 in the morning and ordered them to just erase it. He was like, you know what? No big deal, just remember it in your mind everybody.
and we're just gonna Scooby-Doo it really quick. We're Scooby-Doing this whole mystery. You got it?
No clues. So when you get to the erasing evidence level in a serial killer case, and you're probably clearly at peak hysteria. I mean, it's not Whitechapel anymore. I mean, all of London was really scared. And it was Jack the Ripper all day, every day. So much media attention, tons of rumors, tons of people trying to copycat.
and the investigators had really not been making any ounce of progress. You can't blame everyone for being scared. The only people who are giving updates are the media, but they've got it all wrong. Just a scary time. Meanwhile, there were tons of letters coming in, like just either fake letters to the press or to the Scotland Yard, all claiming to be Jack the Ripper, 'cause people just love attention.
You know? So they copycat because they have literally nothing else to do in their lives. Like how lame. Get some original ideas, losers. There was one letter that caught Scotland Yard's attention. It's now known as the Saucy Jack Postcard. And it was very similar to the Dear Boss letter. It was dated October 1st, 1888. I mean the day after Elizabeth and Catherine were murdered. So...
It's kind of like, mm-hmm. This little postcard said, "'I was not coddling dear old boss when I gave you the 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 not the time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.'
Jack the Ripper. So this one stood out because whoever wrote it had an insider knowledge into the murders and
that not only the part about Catherine's ear, but also it made sense like, why did Jack kill twice that night? And why was Elizabeth not mutilated like Catherine was? A lot of questions, no answers. I mean, according to Saucy Jack, I guess Elizabeth was being way too loud when he was trying to murder her. So he just slit her throat and bailed. Yeah, she was being a little too loud. He's like, hey, shut up.
It's not funny. It's just like, it's a funny response to think that she was being a little too loud. Oh my God. You know, it's just like, oh my God. Killers say the darndest things. There was one more letter I wanted to mention just real fast because it is important to the Jack the Ripper lore. It's called the From Hell Letter and it arrived at the Central News Agency along with half a human kidney. So yeah, I think that one's kind of,
It was noted, you know? But unfortunately, this one proved to be a hoax pretty quickly, unfortunately. And we'll talk about it. I mean, I think it's the perfect story for part two. So I'm gonna put it in there. Right now, we're just talking about the murders themselves. And then we'll get into the theories and all that. The letters, the lore.
Many were suggesting that they only sent half of a kidney because the whole kidney probably costed a little bit more at that time, and it was more of a bargain to just send half.
I mean those letters coming in, whether they were fake or not, they were really like the only leads the investigators were getting at this time. They had nothing. They had nothing. For the whole month of October, Jack didn't strike. I mean, no one had their throat slit. No one had their uterus stolen. And some people were starting to think like, oh my God, is this guy, is he gone? Is it finally over? Are we safe out here? The answer was no.
my friends because jack the ripper had one jack the river jack the ripper had one more murder up his sleeve so this next murder had a slight change of like venue for jack his fifth and final victim wasn't found on the street but instead her own
On November 9th, 1888, the landlord at 13 Miller's Court in Whitechapel sent his assistant up to the room of a 25-year-old woman named Mary Jane Kelly. Like Jack's previous victims, she was definitely his type or
or this person's type. Maybe it's a woman killer, we don't know. Mary Jane was a heavy drinker in a rough relationship who had turned to sex work to keep herself afloat. It's 10:45 at night and Mary Jane still hasn't paid her rent. So the landlord tells his assistant to go upstairs and get the rent from her because hello, it's due. So the assistant goes up there
knocks on the door but there was no answer and they know mary jane's in there because they hadn't seen her come downstairs all day but there was something a little funny so mary jane had lost her key a few weeks back after a night of drinking so this night she needed to get back into her room but she's like oh shit i lost my key so she ends up breaking the window like next to the door so she could just reach in and unlock it you know that move the reach in and unlock
So she does that. So when the assistant is outside knocking on the door, she's not answering, but he knows she's up there. So he does the whole reach in, unlock and open the door. And he walks in and this is when he finds Mary Jane on the bed and she was definitely dead. She was definitely dead. This was another one where the killer went off because it was like, what? Her face was cut up.
beyond recognition. Her boobs were cut off, she had been disemboweled, and all of her organs were neatly placed next to her body. It was like, oh, that's nice, but also, why? There was one kidney and one breast under her head, and then her other breast was like next to her foot. Her liver was in between her feet.
Her intestines were spread out along the right side of her body while the spleen was on her left. Yeah, what kind of Frankenstein doctor is going on? It's one thing to be murdered, but then for someone to proceed and completely take apart your body like you are nothing, just an experiment or something is like the, just, ugh.
Mm-mm, that's so sad. It's like these poor women are just trying. They're just trying. That's all we're ever doing. We're all just trying. And then someone comes along and takes advantage of it. It's disgusting. Also on top of all of that, she had been skinned. The rest of her body had been skinned down to the bone.
Bro, I was like, what the fuck is going on right now on this day? Jeez. So Mary Jane seemed out of all of them to get the worst of it. Jack went full The Ripper, okay? But at this point in mid-November 1888, most experts had agreed that Mary Jane was Jack The Ripper's last victim before he just retires, right?
moved away, died.
We don't know. It just ended here. Well, I mean, what I mean is like the spree had ended, but the case never did. Mary Jane's murder was actually like the climax of hysteria for Whitechapel in London. I mean, word had spread about her murder. And even before the coroner could even take her body to the morgue, there were over a thousand people gathered outside of the boarding house at 13 Miller's Court just waiting
waiting to see something. The way she was treated, it was just insanity, I think. And then word spread about that. So people were just like, I want to see. I want to see. Like, do you? Do you really want to see? So here we are, November, 1888. Women have been cut open and murdered. An entire community is living in fear. The city of London is obsessed with this case. I mean,
and the media is taking it to the next level. So what happened next? I mean, why did the case go cold so quickly? Was Jack the Ripper just a genius who, you know, was able to bamboozle everybody? Or was Scotland Yard just being fricking lazy? And on top of that, who are the leading contenders for the Ripper's identity? 'Cause there are many, right? Well,
I will be digging into all of that in our next episode, our part two of Jack the Ripper. I know. I mean, this Jack the Ripper guy is whoever they were. They knew what they were doing. They were doing it with a purpose, it seems like. And also, they were quick.
It had to be someone at one of those medical schools. Maybe they just needed a couple, you know? But then again, like back then, how do you solve? No, because if it was a medical teacher or something, why would they send letters? Like they wouldn't want to be outed. Would they? I don't know. Maybe. Or it was HH Holmes, which I'm always leaning towards because it just sounds like...
something he would do, right? I don't know. I think we go back to the drawing boards on this one because, again, how do you solve mysteries back then? They didn't collect or keep anything that could be tested or DNA'd, you know? And that's unfortunate. But in our part two, we're going to talk about, like, all the letters, all the theories, suspects, because it gets cray. There's so many layers to the story and so much lore. But other than that, I think...
That is all for now and I will be seeing you next week. I love and appreciate you guys so much. Have a good rest of your week and please be safe out there. Please be safe. Make good choices and I'll be seeing you real soon. Goodbye.