The Unsolved Killings of Jack the Ripper (2023) Movie Script
- (carriage rattling)
- (dramatic music)
- (carriage rattling)
- (somber music)
[Policeman] It was September of 1888.
Streets of Whitechapel were a dark,
and frightening place at the best of times.
(somber music)
I had spent 15 years on
the beat in the East End,
so I knew, better than
most, what went on in
that shadowy corner of the capital.
(dramatic orchestral music)
By that autumn, with a killer on the loose,
the streets became even
darker, and even more frightening.
(dramatic music)
Gruesome murders had left the entire city
in a state of panic and chaos.
- (dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
(dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
- (dramatic music)
In February that year,
I was promoted to Inspector First Class,
but the following autumn,
I was seconded from my new position,
and assigned to the case of the murder
of a woman named Annie Chapman.
(dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
- (dramatic music)
I could not have known the terror,
or frustration of what was to come.
(dramatic music)
The hunt for one of the most elusive,
and mysterious killers in history.
(dramatic music)
Jack the Ripper.
(dramatic music)
(somber orchestral music)
(foreboding music)
Whitechapel in the
1880s was very much one
of the poorest parts of town.
Generations of extreme
poverty, extreme unemployment,
and extreme overcrowding
had turned large parts
of the area into slum ghettos,
and it was a horrible place to live.
- (carriages rattling)
- (somber music)
- (birds squawking)
- (somber music)
There were a number of
different people who were living
in Whitechapel at the time.
You had the working poor, for example.
Certain streets were
seen as worse than others.
So certain streets, people had menial jobs,
and they were able to
work and pay their rent.
Other streets at the time
were described as vicious,
and semi criminal.
There wasn't really a step down
after the slums of Whitechapel.
It really didn't get much worse than that.
- (carriages rattling)
- (somber music)
- (birds squawking)
- (somber music)
The area was dangerous,
unfit to be lived in.
Gloomy by day, dark and dangerous by night,
and it was a horrible place to live.
- (foreboding music)
- (birds squawking)
A number of the buildings were collapsing,
were unfit to be lived in.
Mice and rats infested the walls.
It was a desperate time for
tens of thousands of people
in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields area.
- (horses whinnying)
- (people chattering)
[Speaker] Come on now, come on.
(somber music)
[Speaker 2] Line it up, line it up there.
(foreboding music)
Back in Victorian times,
prostitution was illegal.
But due to the horrible living conditions
that so many people were
forced to contend with it,
it had become so widespread,
that the police were just simply unable
to do anything about it,
and it was just something
that seemed to happen in a lot of areas.
Prostitutes in Victorian
times, much like those today,
would put themselves in great danger.
People forced to work
the streets, put themselves
in great danger to do so.
And much like today, numerous
women in the Whitechapel area
will have been beaten, ripped, ripped off,
and been subjected to
any manner of criminality
as they're forced onto the streets to try,
and get the money to feed themselves.
(foreboding music)
- (people muttering)
- (people whistling)
Crime was very widespread
in Victorian Whitechapel,
but it was a lot of poverty driven crime.
A lot of thefts, muggings,
burglaries, that kind of thing.
Prostitution had become rife.
People were desperate,
and were doing absolutely
anything they could
to get the money to
find a bed for the night,
and feed themselves.
(sinister music)
- (pipes banging)
- (sinister music)
Murder wasn't overly
common in Victorian times.
People often think that there
were murders happening
all the time in the streets,
and there weren't.
It would happen occasionally,
and if they were to hang somebody,
the newspapers would make
a big song and dance out of it.
But murder wasn't overly common,
and certainly not serial
killer, murder mutilation,
in the street, kind of murders.
That was something that
was entirely unheard of.
- (footsteps banging)
- (sinister music)
(tense music)
(dramatic music)
It all began with the
murder of Mary Ann Nichols.
I was handed the file, which informed me
of the killing of 42-year-old
Mary Ann Nichols,
whose body was found on Buck's Row
on the 31st of August, 1888.
- (somber orchestral music)
- (typewriter clanging)
Mary Ann Nichols had
been a casual prostitute
who was residing in a lodging
house in nearby Thrawl Street.
(somber orchestral music)
Her marriage failed in 1880
due to her frequent
overindulgence in alcohol.
After this, she had
begun working the streets
in order to earn a living.
(somber orchestral music)
Mary Ann Nichols at
the time of her murder,
was a 43-year-old English woman.
Who at the time was living
at number 18, Thrall Street,
in the Spitalfield's area of Whitechapel.
She'd previously been
married to a man named William,
with whom she had had five children.
But William had actually
run off with the midwife
that delivered the fifth of her children,
and left Mary Ann to herself.
He'd been forced to pay her
an alimony payment, monthly,
but then it stopped.
She'd taken him to court over that,
and he had said in the courtroom
that he had had her watched,
and knew that she was
living as a prostitute.
In Victorian times, that
meant he didn't have
to pay her anymore, so he
stopped paying her the money.
That then led to her
being entirely homeless,
and sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square.
She'd then been taken by police,
and admitted to a number of workhouses.
And then eventually had ended up,
at the time of the
murder, in Thrawl Street,
one of the worst streets in the area.
In the middle of the worst slum districts
in London, desperate
and just trying to survive.
(somber orchestral music)
[Policeman] In the early
hours of 31st August, 1888,
the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered
in a stable entrance on Buck's Row.
(somber orchestral music)
On the night of her
murder, Mary Ann Nichols
had been staying at Wilmott's lodging house
at number 18, Thrawl
Street in Spitalfields.
And having spent some
time in the Frying Pan pub
on the corner of Thrawl
Street and Brick Lane,
she had been back in the lodging house
at half past midnight.
But had been thrown
out of the lodging house
because she didn't have
money to pay for the bed.
It would appear at this point,
she had produced a hat,
according to a number of witnesses.
It was a new hat,
that she'd apparently found
somewhere in the street.
She placed it onto her head and said,
"Don't worry, save the
bed for me. I'll soon be back.
Look what a jolly bonnet I've got."
She then left the lodging house.
At half past two that
morning, she was then seen
on nearby Osborn Street by
a woman who actually worked
at Wilmott's lodging house.
"She was so drunk," she said,
"That she could barely stand up."
She offered to take her
back to the lodging house,
but Mary Ann refused, saying
that she'd already earned
her money three times
that day, and had spent it.
She headed off alone down Whitechapel Road,
drunk, at half past two in the morning,
and that was the last time
that she was seen alive.
(somber orchestral music)
[Policeman] Around 3:40
AM Charles Cross, a carter,
found the body lying in Buck's Row
on her back, legs straight out.
(somber orchestral music)
She was lying on the
path on the south side
of the road outside of Brown's Stable Yard,
and was found originally by
two men called Charles Cross,
and Robert Paul as they
made their way to work.
But it was so dark, they were unaware
that a murder had taken place.
Unsure whether she was dead,
or simply sleeping, they
decided to get back to work,
and inform a policeman when they saw one.
They did not raise the alarm.
(somber orchestral music)
A few minutes later, a
constable was inspecting
the stable yard next to the board school,
when he noticed the body
of a woman lying on her back.
Upon closer inspection
by the light of his lamp,
he found that Mary had
sustained horrific wounds.
Mary's throat had been
slashed from ear to ear,
and cut back to the vertebra.
Her windpipe and gullet
had been severely slashed,
and there had also been extensive slashing,
and ripping of her abdomen.
(somber orchestral music)
And the investigation began.
(somber orchestral music)
The police had been questioning
the neighborhood's
prostitutes about the character
who had a repetition for being violent,
and had been extorting money
from them for the past year.
Rumors had been circulating
that the killings were the work,
of a Jewish man dubbed Leather Apron,
who had a reputation for
violence against prostitutes
in the East End.
(somber orchestral music)
On the 5th of September,
1888, "The Star" newspaper
published a write up on Leather Apron.
These rumors resulted in
growing anti-Semitic sentiment
in the area.
(somber orchestral music)
(foreboding music)
The case surrounding the murder
of Annie Chapman begins earlier that night
at number 35, Dorset Street
at Crossingham's lodging house
where she was staying.
Half three in the morning,
she was sitting in the kitchen
of the lodging house when she
was approached by the manager,
and asked if she had the money for the bed.
She said she did not, but
told him to save the bed for her.
She would soon be back.
She would find the money.
She left the lodging house
at half past three in the morning,
and then wasn't seen again.
Until her body was then
discovered at five to six
that morning, in the rear yard
of number 29, Hanbury Street,
heavily mutilated with her
throat cut, her body posed,
objects arranged around her body.
(sinister music)
At 6:00 AM on the 8th of
September, 1888, John Davis,
a resident of 29 Hanbury
Street, came downstairs,
walked through the narrow
passageway of the building,
and opened the back door.
- (sinister music)
- (sinister chanting)
At the foot of the
stairs, he found the body
of 47-year-old Annie
Chapman lying flat on her back.
A deep cut had been
slashed across her throat.
Her intestines have been pulled out,
and laid across her shoulder.
Missing from the body were the uterus,
and parts of the bladder.
The contents of her pockets
had been arranged around her,
and lying nearby was a
neatly folded leather apron.
(sinister music)
Annie Chapman, in 1888,
was a 47-year-old woman,
who at the time of her murder
was staying in the slums
at number 35 Dorset Street,
Crossingham's lodging house.
Which is one of the worst
places to stay in the entire area.
Annie Chapman had somewhat
fallen from grace as well.
She had a very tragic back story,
that had led her to the
slums in Whitechapel
in the first place.
She had previously lived in Mayfair.
She lived in Windsor.
She'd been married to her husband John,
and the pair had had
three children together.
But her husband, John, would
appear to have been disabled,
and had been sent to live in a home.
Their daughter, Emily,
then died at the age of 12
from meningitis.
That would seem to have put a great strain
on their marriage, at which point
they both would seem to
have started drinking heavily.
They'd gone their separate ways.
Annie Chapman had
ended up cast into the slums,
and then had found herself
stuck there permanently,
when her husband John,
drank himself to death
on Christmas Day, 1886.
From that time onwards, she
had been living a degraded life
of desperation and destitution.
Trying to do anything she
could to keep going in the slums
of Whitechapel and Spitalfields.
(somber dramatic music)
- (sinister chanting)
- (somber music)
Ayle
Kross
Ayle
Yole
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
Kross
(sinister chanting)
Ayle
Ayle
Kross
(sinister chanting)
Ayle
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
(sinister chanting)
(sinister music)
Ayle
Kross
Ayle kross
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
(sinister chanting)
(gentle dramatic music)
Annie Chapman's body
was discovered at shortly
before six o'clock in the morning
by 56-year-old John Davis,
who actually lived on the top floor
of number 29 Hanbury Street.
(gentle dramatic music)
(typewriter clanging)
He woke up at quarter to
six that morning, he said,
Knowing the time,
because he heard the clock
at the Brewers on Brick
Lane, strike the quarter hour
as he got out of bed.
He made him, and his wife, a cup of tea
for around 10 minutes, he said.
Then descended the
stairs to use the only toilet
on the property.
There was an outhouse in
the back right corner of the yard.
On arriving at the
ground floor, he realized
that the front door was standing wide open,
and was against the wall.
He went to the back door,
he opened it outwards,
and to the left, and on
looking out into the yard,
discovered the horribly
mutilated body of Annie Chapman
at the bottom of a few
steps, and to the left,
in between the steps, and the fence.
Objects had been arranged
around her at the crime scene.
Blood had been smeared on the wall,
and whoever the killer was, was long gone.
(gentle dramatic music)
The murder of Annie Chapman
caused a sensation in the area.
And it was now vividly clear,
to the people living in
the Whitechapel area,
that somebody among them
was murdering the women in the area.
There was a huge amount of pressure
on the police to catch the killer.
And police immediately were
sure that this was the same man
that had murdered Martha Tabram,
and Mary Ann Nichols only a week earlier.
Her body was found
posed in a very similar way.
The injuries were
consistent with the murders
that had gone before.
Objects arranged around
her at the crime scene,
seemed reminiscent of the
crime scene on Buck's Row.
It was clear to everybody
that this was the same man.
He'd struck again, and it was
imperative that we find him.
(gentle dramatic music)
Our interviews confirmed
that a Jewish man named John Pizer,
was who the street walkers
called Leather Apron.
John Pizer was in his 30s.
And he lived at number
22 Mulberry Street nearby.
On the morning of the 10th,
he was arrested at home
by a Sergeant William Thick.
He was arrested without complications.
Anybody who witnessed the arrest,
apparently was completely
unaware of what was happening.
He was then taken quickly
to Commercial Street police station,
where he was interviewed
for at least two days.
The police were convinced
he wasn't actually the killer
after all, because he had an airtight alibi
for the first two murders.
At that point, it became
clear that while he was
in fact the character
known as Leather Apron,
he couldn't possibly have been the killer.
(gentle dramatic music)
[Policeman] On September
27th, 1888, a missive addressed
"To the boss," arrived at
the Central News Agency.
(suspenseful music)
[Jack] "Dear boss," it said,
"I keep on 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.
"That joke about Leather
Apron gave me real fits."
(suspenseful music)
[Narrator] It was signed.
[Jack] "Good luck, yours
truly, Jack the Ripper."
(suspenseful music)
It is that letter that
gave the killer the name
by which he'd forever be known.
(suspenseful music)
There was no definitive way of telling
whether the letter was genuine or not.
We each had our theories.
I, however, was not convinced.
Until he murdered again.
On September the 30th,
there was another murder
in Berner Street just off Commercial Road.
The victim was Elizabeth
Stride, a 44-year-old prostitute.
(suspenseful music)
On the night of
Elizabeth Stride's murder,
she had actually been seen
at around 11 o'clock that night,
drinking with an unknown
man in the Bricklayer's Arms
on nearby Settles Street.
Later on that evening, she'd
then been seen by a couple
of people in the Berner Street area,
and then at around 12:45 had been seen
by a man named James Brown,
talking to a strange individual
on Fairclough Street, only moments away
from where the murder took place.
Whoever the man was, he had
his back turned to James Brown
as he walked past, but he saw
him to be a stoutish-built man
who stood around 5'7 " to 5'9",
and wore a long trench coat
that came almost to his heels.
(sinister music)
As he walked past, he
heard Elizabeth tell the man,
"No, not tonight, maybe some other night,"
and Elizabeth was never seen alive again.
She would later be found
dead, only seconds away
from where she was seen
in that witness sighting.
Lying on her back with her throat cut,
on the floor of Dutfield's Yard.
(gentle sinister music)
Elizabeth Stride was first discovered
at around a minute past one
by a 26-year-old man
called Louis Diemschutz.
She was lying on a back in
Dutfield's Yard on Berner Street,
which lay at the site of number 40,
which was a working men's club
where Louis Diemschutz
actually worked himself.
He'd been returning home
when he discovered the body.
The call quickly went out to the police,
and when police turned up,
they realized that, like
the victims before her,
her throat had been cut deeply,
and she was posed on her
back with her head to the side.
Her eyes wide open,
her hand across her chest.
The killer had removed
her hat from her head,
and placed it on the ground behind her.
Scattered objects around
her body, smeared the blood
from her neck wound across her hand,
and her forearm, and then ran.
She was lying in exactly the same position
as Annie Chapman had been.
And as soon as the police
discovered the crime scene,
it was very obvious that the
same killer had struck again.
(foreboding music)
[Policeman] The same
night, only a few miles
to the west, the killer struck again.
(typewriter clanging)
The victim was Catherine
Eddowes, a 46-year-old prostitute
who had been found dead in Mitre Square
with her throat slashed,
and her abdomen mutilated.
- (sinister music)
- (water sloshing)
(sinister music)
In the hours leading up to her murder,
Catherine Eddowes had actually
been arrested for drunkenness
on Aldgate at around
eight o'clock that evening.
She'd been taken by two police officers,
to Bishopsgate police
station, where she was placed
in the cell to sleep it off.
And was then released from police custody
at around one o'clock that morning.
Around half an hour
later, she was then seen
by three witnesses in
the nearby vicinity, talking
to a strange man on the
end of Church Passage,
which led into Mitre Square.
Whoever the man was,
this time he stood facing
the three witnesses as
they passed by in the dark.
But whoever he was, the three passed on,
made their way home, and didn't look back
to see where he went.
- (gentle foreboding music)
- (water sloshing)
(gentle foreboding music)
- (gentle foreboding music)
- (water sloshing)
(gentle music)
The body of Catherine
Eddowes was discovered at 1:46
that morning, lying in the
south corner of Mitre Square
by PC Edward Watkins of
the City of London Police.
She was lying on her back
with her legs wide apart,
both hands by her side
exactly as Martha Tabram
had been lying in George
Yard, back on the 7th of August.
Her throat had been cut
violently in two places.
The killer had mutilated her
abdomen, pulled her intestines
from inside her, and stuffed
them into her throat wound.
A two and a half foot section of her colon
had been removed from inside her,
and was lying by her left
arm at the crime scene.
The killer had inflicted a
number of knife injuries
to her face, removed her left
kidney, and her entire womb,
and taken them with
him from the crime scene
along with nearly half of a
white apron she was wearing.
It had been torn from
her at the crime scene,
covered in blood, and the killer had taken
that with him too.
(gentle sinister music)
[Policeman] On October 1st, 1888,
the Jack the Ripper letter went public.
It was printed in newspapers,
and a mania broke out.
(gentle sinister music)
People traveled from all
around to the murder sites.
It was akin to a carnival atmosphere.
It hampered our investigation immensely.
Having received the "Dear
Boss" letter a few days before,
a number of tabloids then
printed it alongside news reports
of the new double murder.
This only amplified the terror in the area.
Now, the killer had a name.
People didn't know who he was,
but you now knew who
it was, was doing this,
and his name was Jack the Ripper.
(gentle dramatic music)
[Policeman] I witnessed
firsthand the impact
that the media had on our investigation.
From the very beginning,
the sensationalist coverage
of the murders created a climate of fear,
and hysteria in the city,
making it difficult for us
to conduct a thorough,
and methodical
investigation as we intended.
I think by making the
"Dear Boss" letter public,
the newspapers were
hoping to cause hysteria,
and sell as many newspapers as possible.
And that's exactly what they did.
With the double murder having taken place,
and with the "Dear Boss"
letter having been held back
a couple of days since
it was originally received
by the Central News Office,
it was then printed in a number
of tabloids alongside
reports of the double murder.
This created an absolute
sensation in the area.
Huge, sold enormous numbers of newspapers,
and people in the area
were now absolutely aware
of who it was they were up against.
This also, however,
started to attract the attention
of imitators, hoaxers, and any
manner of people who wanted
to cause trouble in the investigation.
Soon a barrage of fake letters would arrive
at newspaper offices, police stations,
and even private homes across the country
from other individuals,
also claiming to be the killer.
(gentle music)
Newspaper attention given
to the "Dear Boss" letter
had caused such a sensation
that writing Jack the
Ripper letters, they said,
had become a national pastime.
Literally hundreds of them were pouring in
from all over the place
in different handwriting
from different places.
Police now have to investigate this.
It was wasting thousands
of hours of police time,
and yes, it just very much got in the way
of the investigation.
(gentle foreboding music)
Criticism of the police
force isn't a new thing,
and in Victorian England,
as the Jack the Ripper case continued,
and the murderer remained at large,
police were taking
enormous amounts of criticism
from both the press, and public alike.
The pressure on the police to
catch the killer was enormous.
[Policeman] Rumors and
false leads spread like wildfire.
Every day, it seemed like a
new suspect was being named,
and then quickly cleared,
diverting our attention,
and resources away
from more promising leads.
This constant barrage of
information also made it difficult
to separate fact from fiction,
and many people began to accuse us
of incompetence, and corruption.
(gentle dramatic music)
It must have been very
frustrating for the police force
to have, under such enormous pressure,
to be conducting interviews,
and interviewing witnesses
and still feel like they
were not getting anywhere.
The enormous amounts
of criticism leveled at them
from all areas of the British press,
was only making things more complicated,
and the sheer number of
fake stories, fake letters,
and fake reports that were
coming into the police as well,
was only complicating
the case even further.
(soaring orchestral music)
October came and went,
and no further murders occurred.
We kept up our investigations,
but we were all convinced
that perhaps it was over.
And we could soon solve
the case and return to normal.
But we were to be proved wrong.
As in the second week of November,
the Ripper struck again, one last time.
(foreboding music)
Some people in the area might
have been breathing a sigh of relief.
Some people might have
thought that the killer had died.
Some people might have
thought he moved away.
Some people might have
thought he could have gone
to prison for something else.
But he was then, once we got into November,
he would make himself known yet again.
Just down the road on Dorset Street,
in the middle of the Spitalfields area,
to commit what surely
was his worst murder of all.
(foreboding music)
Of all of the Jack the Ripper
victims, the least is known
about Mary Jane Kelly.
At the time of her murder,
she was 25 years old,
and everything that we know
about Mary Kelly comes somewhat secondhand
from her boyfriend, Joseph Barnett,
and statements he made to the police,
and things that he
claimed she had told him.
(foreboding music)
Mary Kelly is widely believed
to have been born somewhere
in Limerick in Ireland, and
had moved over to London
only a year or two before her death.
She would appear to
have lived for a short period
of time out in France.
She lived for a short
period of time in Wales.
But at the time of her murder,
was staying only doors away
from where Annie Chapman
had been staying on Dorset Street,
which was considered
to be the worst slum street
in the Whitechapel area.
And potentially the worst
slum street in all of London.
(dramatic music)
(energetic dramatic music)
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The last and
most gruesome murder was that
of Mary Jane Kelly, a
25-year-old prostitute.
Her body was found in her room
in Miller's Court, Dorset Street.
The killer had not only slit her throat,
but had also mutilated her face,
and body beyond recognition.
The scene was so gruesome,
that it left even the most
experienced officers,
and doctors shaken.
(gentle poignant music)
Like the other victims before her,
she was lying on her back,
with her head to the side.
Her eyes wide open, her
hand placed across her chest,
her legs wide apart.
But unlike the other victims,
she'd been extremely heavily mutilated.
The majority of her face had been removed.
Both of her thigh bones had
actually been stripped down
to the bone, and the meat that
had been cut from her thighs,
and her buttocks to do that,
had been placed in a pile
on the bedside table next to her head.
Her liver was lying in between her feet.
Her intestines were down
the right side of the body.
Half the right lung
was under the right arm.
The spleen was under the left arm.
Whoever the killer was,
police believed he had been
in the room for at least two hours
at this particular crime scene,
unlike the few minutes
he spent at the other ones.
And the original police report stated
that when police arrived in the room,
organs from inside her body
had been draped across the back
of the chairs, and were
hanging from nails in the wall.
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The murders
had a similar pattern,
and it was evident that they were committed
by the same person.
The killer had targeted prostitutes,
and had mutilated their
bodies in a particular way.
It was a brutal and savage
crime that shook the entire city.
(gentle poignant music)
The pressure that had been building
on the police throughout
the Jack the Ripper case,
really came to a point after
the murder of Mary Kelly.
Metropolitan Police
Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren
was taking more criticism from all angles,
than he ever had before,
and actually resigned the day after
that Mary Kelly was found.
The police now were
taking severe criticism,
all the time, from all angles.
The killer had appeared,
seemed to be right under
their noses the entire time,
and they simply couldn't catch him.
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The murders
had a similar pattern,
and it was evident that they were committed
by the same person.
The killer had targeted prostitutes,
and had mutilated their
bodies in a particular way.
It was a brutal and savage
crime that shook the entire city.
(gentle poignant music)
(gentle dramatic music)
As the lead investigator
on the Jack the Ripper case,
I spent hundreds, even thousands of hours,
poring over the evidence,
and chasing down any potential leads.
Over the years, I have developed
several personal theories
as to the identity of the killer,
but I have been unable to
definitively prove any of them.
(gentle dramatic music)
We had to rely on our instincts,
and the evidence found
at the scene of the crimes.
We analyzed the
bloodstains, the footprints,
and the clothes found on the victims.
We'd searched for any
connections between the victims,
and the killer, but always came up short.
We each had our theories,
but nothing concrete.
(gentle poignant music)
One of my most persuasive theories,
is that the killer was a local
butcher, or slaughtermen.
The Ripper's ability to quickly,
and skillfully dissect his victim's bodies,
suggests a certain level
of anatomical knowledge.
And butchers, fishmongers, and slaughtermen
would have have had access
to the necessary tools, and experience.
Additionally, many of the
murders took place near,
or within areas that were known
to have a high concentration
of such professionals.
(gentle poignant music)
(rain splattering)
Another suspect though, had
now come to police attention,
and his name was Jacob Isenschmid.
Jacob Isenschmid was
actually known by some people
as the Mad Butcher of Holloway.
And after talking to
his wife, police learned
that his butcher's shop in
Holloway had gone bust.
He'd had some sort of breakdown,
and he wasn't the same guy he used to be.
His wife said he was completely irrational,
he was very violent, he was very dangerous.
He always carried big knives with him.
He was in the habit of drinking
at a local pub in Whitechapel.
When it was learned that he was absent
from his lodging house on the night
of the murder of Annie Chapman,
it became very obvious that
there was now another suspect
and the hunt was on to find him.
- (gentle dramatic music)
- (rain splattering)
Police at the time said that
one of the biggest problems
they had to contend with,
was the sheer number of people
in the area who fitted the
rough, vague description
of the wanted man, were
constantly getting themselves
into trouble while acting inappropriately,
while drunk with women, or in some cases
were boldly incriminated
by other individuals.
Joseph Barnett, Montague Druitt.
Another name was Michael Ostrog
who was this Russian barber surgeon
who had appeared to have
been in London at the time.
Albert Bachert.
Dr. Francis Tumblety, was
an American quack doctor
who lived out in New
York on the East coast.
Charles Cross.
Prince was having an affair,
and the royal doctor was sent
to silence everyone that knew about it.
James Maybrick, George Chapman.
Kosminski, and he never gave a first name,
but in the time since
then, people must have,
people decided it must have
been this Aaron Kosminski.
Who's this mentally ill
man that lived in the area.
Jacob Isenschmid, Thomas Cutbush.
It became very frustrating for the police.
The longer the case went
on that there really seemed
to be no suspects.
There were wild rumors,
and wild accusations,
but once John Pizer, and Jacob
Isenschmid had been ruled out
of the investigation,
there really wasn't a lot
to go on after that.
It seemed that if the killer
was going to be caught,
he was going to be caught red-handed,
or he possibly wasn't
going to be caught at all.
- (carriages rattling)
- (foreboding music)
I think if this investigation
was taking place now,
Albert Bachert is far, and
away the number one person
investigators ought to go and speak to.
His parents were German, he was born,
and raised in Whitechapel.
He's the right age.
He fits the right description.
He's got a criminal record
for all the things you'd
expect a serial killer
to have today.
He was constantly injecting
himself into the investigation.
He told the police
that he'd met the killer,
and spoken to him on a couple of occasions.
He told the police that
the killer was writing letters
to his house to threaten
him, and warn him of murders.
He claimed that the killer
was writing graffiti on the wall
of his house, but it was washed away
before police could photograph it.
He turned up entirely uninvited
to the inquest of Frances Coles
at the Working Lads
Institute on Whitechapel Road,
demanding to be on the jury,
just when the jury were about
to be taken to view her body
in the mortuary, and
caused such a big scene
when they wouldn't let him,
that the coroner told
him if he didn't sit down,
and behave himself, he was
gonna have the police remove him
from the building.
He also worked as an
engraver, which is interesting,
engraving the plates
for bank note printing.
Because there were a
number of women in the area
who got attacked but got away,
and later told the police that the killer,
or the attempted killer had
conned them with fake coins.
These coins were reportedly
polished extremely brightly,
and then machined around
the edges, it was said,
to appear like half crowns typically,
which were very valuable.
When actually they were cheap coins,
and worth next to nothing.
Albert Bachert, as a copper plate engraver,
would've had all the
tools, and the knowledge
to manipulate those coins
in that fashion in the house.
And then in 1889, they
actually took him to court,
and charged him on two separate occasions
for passing counterfeit
coins exactly like that,
in a number of different
pubs throughout the East End.
(gentle foreboding music)
The murders in Whitechapel,
had caused such a sensation,
attracted so much attention,
and been such a big deal,
that people were forced for the first time
to really pay attention,
not just to the horrors that had happened,
but to the horrible living conditions
that these people were forced
to endure in the East End.
If anything positive came out of any of it,
it was that such attention
was now focused on the slums,
and the poverty and the lodging houses.
And now people across
London who previously had paid
no real attention to the
slums, and the poverty,
and the people who lived there,
were now so disgusted by
the conditions under which
these people were
continuing to have to live,
that they were now
demanding something be done
to change that.
Numbers of people were demanding now,
that conditions in the East
End had to be improved.
Street lighting needed to be introduced,
something needed to be
done to make the place safer,
and it would be a very
long and slow process,
but eventually that would start to happen.
(gentle foreboding music)
I think the reason people are so interested
in Jack the Ripper, and
the reason why the case,
and stories of it are
inevitably going to stick around
for decades, or centuries to come, is...
It's not the... it's partly the violence.
It's partly the area that it
happened in, and the slums,
and the cobblestones and
the misery and the poverty,
but it was also the first
time that something like that
happened in a major city,
with what would be referred
to as a modern press following it.
So it was the first case to
receive anywhere near the amount
of publicity it did.
And then of course, because
they never caught him,
it's just something that's
always kind of stuck around
in the public imagination.
I think for decades to
come, Jack the Ripper
will still be getting talked about,
when numerous other criminal cases
have been long since forgotten.
(gentle foreboding music)
(orchestral music)
- (dramatic music)
- (carriage rattling)
- (somber music)
[Policeman] It was September of 1888.
Streets of Whitechapel were a dark,
and frightening place at the best of times.
(somber music)
I had spent 15 years on
the beat in the East End,
so I knew, better than
most, what went on in
that shadowy corner of the capital.
(dramatic orchestral music)
By that autumn, with a killer on the loose,
the streets became even
darker, and even more frightening.
(dramatic music)
Gruesome murders had left the entire city
in a state of panic and chaos.
- (dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
(dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
- (dramatic music)
In February that year,
I was promoted to Inspector First Class,
but the following autumn,
I was seconded from my new position,
and assigned to the case of the murder
of a woman named Annie Chapman.
(dramatic music)
- (women whispering)
- (dramatic music)
I could not have known the terror,
or frustration of what was to come.
(dramatic music)
The hunt for one of the most elusive,
and mysterious killers in history.
(dramatic music)
Jack the Ripper.
(dramatic music)
(somber orchestral music)
(foreboding music)
Whitechapel in the
1880s was very much one
of the poorest parts of town.
Generations of extreme
poverty, extreme unemployment,
and extreme overcrowding
had turned large parts
of the area into slum ghettos,
and it was a horrible place to live.
- (carriages rattling)
- (somber music)
- (birds squawking)
- (somber music)
There were a number of
different people who were living
in Whitechapel at the time.
You had the working poor, for example.
Certain streets were
seen as worse than others.
So certain streets, people had menial jobs,
and they were able to
work and pay their rent.
Other streets at the time
were described as vicious,
and semi criminal.
There wasn't really a step down
after the slums of Whitechapel.
It really didn't get much worse than that.
- (carriages rattling)
- (somber music)
- (birds squawking)
- (somber music)
The area was dangerous,
unfit to be lived in.
Gloomy by day, dark and dangerous by night,
and it was a horrible place to live.
- (foreboding music)
- (birds squawking)
A number of the buildings were collapsing,
were unfit to be lived in.
Mice and rats infested the walls.
It was a desperate time for
tens of thousands of people
in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields area.
- (horses whinnying)
- (people chattering)
[Speaker] Come on now, come on.
(somber music)
[Speaker 2] Line it up, line it up there.
(foreboding music)
Back in Victorian times,
prostitution was illegal.
But due to the horrible living conditions
that so many people were
forced to contend with it,
it had become so widespread,
that the police were just simply unable
to do anything about it,
and it was just something
that seemed to happen in a lot of areas.
Prostitutes in Victorian
times, much like those today,
would put themselves in great danger.
People forced to work
the streets, put themselves
in great danger to do so.
And much like today, numerous
women in the Whitechapel area
will have been beaten, ripped, ripped off,
and been subjected to
any manner of criminality
as they're forced onto the streets to try,
and get the money to feed themselves.
(foreboding music)
- (people muttering)
- (people whistling)
Crime was very widespread
in Victorian Whitechapel,
but it was a lot of poverty driven crime.
A lot of thefts, muggings,
burglaries, that kind of thing.
Prostitution had become rife.
People were desperate,
and were doing absolutely
anything they could
to get the money to
find a bed for the night,
and feed themselves.
(sinister music)
- (pipes banging)
- (sinister music)
Murder wasn't overly
common in Victorian times.
People often think that there
were murders happening
all the time in the streets,
and there weren't.
It would happen occasionally,
and if they were to hang somebody,
the newspapers would make
a big song and dance out of it.
But murder wasn't overly common,
and certainly not serial
killer, murder mutilation,
in the street, kind of murders.
That was something that
was entirely unheard of.
- (footsteps banging)
- (sinister music)
(tense music)
(dramatic music)
It all began with the
murder of Mary Ann Nichols.
I was handed the file, which informed me
of the killing of 42-year-old
Mary Ann Nichols,
whose body was found on Buck's Row
on the 31st of August, 1888.
- (somber orchestral music)
- (typewriter clanging)
Mary Ann Nichols had
been a casual prostitute
who was residing in a lodging
house in nearby Thrawl Street.
(somber orchestral music)
Her marriage failed in 1880
due to her frequent
overindulgence in alcohol.
After this, she had
begun working the streets
in order to earn a living.
(somber orchestral music)
Mary Ann Nichols at
the time of her murder,
was a 43-year-old English woman.
Who at the time was living
at number 18, Thrall Street,
in the Spitalfield's area of Whitechapel.
She'd previously been
married to a man named William,
with whom she had had five children.
But William had actually
run off with the midwife
that delivered the fifth of her children,
and left Mary Ann to herself.
He'd been forced to pay her
an alimony payment, monthly,
but then it stopped.
She'd taken him to court over that,
and he had said in the courtroom
that he had had her watched,
and knew that she was
living as a prostitute.
In Victorian times, that
meant he didn't have
to pay her anymore, so he
stopped paying her the money.
That then led to her
being entirely homeless,
and sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square.
She'd then been taken by police,
and admitted to a number of workhouses.
And then eventually had ended up,
at the time of the
murder, in Thrawl Street,
one of the worst streets in the area.
In the middle of the worst slum districts
in London, desperate
and just trying to survive.
(somber orchestral music)
[Policeman] In the early
hours of 31st August, 1888,
the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered
in a stable entrance on Buck's Row.
(somber orchestral music)
On the night of her
murder, Mary Ann Nichols
had been staying at Wilmott's lodging house
at number 18, Thrawl
Street in Spitalfields.
And having spent some
time in the Frying Pan pub
on the corner of Thrawl
Street and Brick Lane,
she had been back in the lodging house
at half past midnight.
But had been thrown
out of the lodging house
because she didn't have
money to pay for the bed.
It would appear at this point,
she had produced a hat,
according to a number of witnesses.
It was a new hat,
that she'd apparently found
somewhere in the street.
She placed it onto her head and said,
"Don't worry, save the
bed for me. I'll soon be back.
Look what a jolly bonnet I've got."
She then left the lodging house.
At half past two that
morning, she was then seen
on nearby Osborn Street by
a woman who actually worked
at Wilmott's lodging house.
"She was so drunk," she said,
"That she could barely stand up."
She offered to take her
back to the lodging house,
but Mary Ann refused, saying
that she'd already earned
her money three times
that day, and had spent it.
She headed off alone down Whitechapel Road,
drunk, at half past two in the morning,
and that was the last time
that she was seen alive.
(somber orchestral music)
[Policeman] Around 3:40
AM Charles Cross, a carter,
found the body lying in Buck's Row
on her back, legs straight out.
(somber orchestral music)
She was lying on the
path on the south side
of the road outside of Brown's Stable Yard,
and was found originally by
two men called Charles Cross,
and Robert Paul as they
made their way to work.
But it was so dark, they were unaware
that a murder had taken place.
Unsure whether she was dead,
or simply sleeping, they
decided to get back to work,
and inform a policeman when they saw one.
They did not raise the alarm.
(somber orchestral music)
A few minutes later, a
constable was inspecting
the stable yard next to the board school,
when he noticed the body
of a woman lying on her back.
Upon closer inspection
by the light of his lamp,
he found that Mary had
sustained horrific wounds.
Mary's throat had been
slashed from ear to ear,
and cut back to the vertebra.
Her windpipe and gullet
had been severely slashed,
and there had also been extensive slashing,
and ripping of her abdomen.
(somber orchestral music)
And the investigation began.
(somber orchestral music)
The police had been questioning
the neighborhood's
prostitutes about the character
who had a repetition for being violent,
and had been extorting money
from them for the past year.
Rumors had been circulating
that the killings were the work,
of a Jewish man dubbed Leather Apron,
who had a reputation for
violence against prostitutes
in the East End.
(somber orchestral music)
On the 5th of September,
1888, "The Star" newspaper
published a write up on Leather Apron.
These rumors resulted in
growing anti-Semitic sentiment
in the area.
(somber orchestral music)
(foreboding music)
The case surrounding the murder
of Annie Chapman begins earlier that night
at number 35, Dorset Street
at Crossingham's lodging house
where she was staying.
Half three in the morning,
she was sitting in the kitchen
of the lodging house when she
was approached by the manager,
and asked if she had the money for the bed.
She said she did not, but
told him to save the bed for her.
She would soon be back.
She would find the money.
She left the lodging house
at half past three in the morning,
and then wasn't seen again.
Until her body was then
discovered at five to six
that morning, in the rear yard
of number 29, Hanbury Street,
heavily mutilated with her
throat cut, her body posed,
objects arranged around her body.
(sinister music)
At 6:00 AM on the 8th of
September, 1888, John Davis,
a resident of 29 Hanbury
Street, came downstairs,
walked through the narrow
passageway of the building,
and opened the back door.
- (sinister music)
- (sinister chanting)
At the foot of the
stairs, he found the body
of 47-year-old Annie
Chapman lying flat on her back.
A deep cut had been
slashed across her throat.
Her intestines have been pulled out,
and laid across her shoulder.
Missing from the body were the uterus,
and parts of the bladder.
The contents of her pockets
had been arranged around her,
and lying nearby was a
neatly folded leather apron.
(sinister music)
Annie Chapman, in 1888,
was a 47-year-old woman,
who at the time of her murder
was staying in the slums
at number 35 Dorset Street,
Crossingham's lodging house.
Which is one of the worst
places to stay in the entire area.
Annie Chapman had somewhat
fallen from grace as well.
She had a very tragic back story,
that had led her to the
slums in Whitechapel
in the first place.
She had previously lived in Mayfair.
She lived in Windsor.
She'd been married to her husband John,
and the pair had had
three children together.
But her husband, John, would
appear to have been disabled,
and had been sent to live in a home.
Their daughter, Emily,
then died at the age of 12
from meningitis.
That would seem to have put a great strain
on their marriage, at which point
they both would seem to
have started drinking heavily.
They'd gone their separate ways.
Annie Chapman had
ended up cast into the slums,
and then had found herself
stuck there permanently,
when her husband John,
drank himself to death
on Christmas Day, 1886.
From that time onwards, she
had been living a degraded life
of desperation and destitution.
Trying to do anything she
could to keep going in the slums
of Whitechapel and Spitalfields.
(somber dramatic music)
- (sinister chanting)
- (somber music)
Ayle
Kross
Ayle
Yole
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
Kross
(sinister chanting)
Ayle
Ayle
Kross
(sinister chanting)
Ayle
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
(sinister chanting)
(sinister music)
Ayle
Kross
Ayle kross
Ayle kross
Yole
Ayle
(sinister chanting)
(gentle dramatic music)
Annie Chapman's body
was discovered at shortly
before six o'clock in the morning
by 56-year-old John Davis,
who actually lived on the top floor
of number 29 Hanbury Street.
(gentle dramatic music)
(typewriter clanging)
He woke up at quarter to
six that morning, he said,
Knowing the time,
because he heard the clock
at the Brewers on Brick
Lane, strike the quarter hour
as he got out of bed.
He made him, and his wife, a cup of tea
for around 10 minutes, he said.
Then descended the
stairs to use the only toilet
on the property.
There was an outhouse in
the back right corner of the yard.
On arriving at the
ground floor, he realized
that the front door was standing wide open,
and was against the wall.
He went to the back door,
he opened it outwards,
and to the left, and on
looking out into the yard,
discovered the horribly
mutilated body of Annie Chapman
at the bottom of a few
steps, and to the left,
in between the steps, and the fence.
Objects had been arranged
around her at the crime scene.
Blood had been smeared on the wall,
and whoever the killer was, was long gone.
(gentle dramatic music)
The murder of Annie Chapman
caused a sensation in the area.
And it was now vividly clear,
to the people living in
the Whitechapel area,
that somebody among them
was murdering the women in the area.
There was a huge amount of pressure
on the police to catch the killer.
And police immediately were
sure that this was the same man
that had murdered Martha Tabram,
and Mary Ann Nichols only a week earlier.
Her body was found
posed in a very similar way.
The injuries were
consistent with the murders
that had gone before.
Objects arranged around
her at the crime scene,
seemed reminiscent of the
crime scene on Buck's Row.
It was clear to everybody
that this was the same man.
He'd struck again, and it was
imperative that we find him.
(gentle dramatic music)
Our interviews confirmed
that a Jewish man named John Pizer,
was who the street walkers
called Leather Apron.
John Pizer was in his 30s.
And he lived at number
22 Mulberry Street nearby.
On the morning of the 10th,
he was arrested at home
by a Sergeant William Thick.
He was arrested without complications.
Anybody who witnessed the arrest,
apparently was completely
unaware of what was happening.
He was then taken quickly
to Commercial Street police station,
where he was interviewed
for at least two days.
The police were convinced
he wasn't actually the killer
after all, because he had an airtight alibi
for the first two murders.
At that point, it became
clear that while he was
in fact the character
known as Leather Apron,
he couldn't possibly have been the killer.
(gentle dramatic music)
[Policeman] On September
27th, 1888, a missive addressed
"To the boss," arrived at
the Central News Agency.
(suspenseful music)
[Jack] "Dear boss," it said,
"I keep on 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.
"That joke about Leather
Apron gave me real fits."
(suspenseful music)
[Narrator] It was signed.
[Jack] "Good luck, yours
truly, Jack the Ripper."
(suspenseful music)
It is that letter that
gave the killer the name
by which he'd forever be known.
(suspenseful music)
There was no definitive way of telling
whether the letter was genuine or not.
We each had our theories.
I, however, was not convinced.
Until he murdered again.
On September the 30th,
there was another murder
in Berner Street just off Commercial Road.
The victim was Elizabeth
Stride, a 44-year-old prostitute.
(suspenseful music)
On the night of
Elizabeth Stride's murder,
she had actually been seen
at around 11 o'clock that night,
drinking with an unknown
man in the Bricklayer's Arms
on nearby Settles Street.
Later on that evening, she'd
then been seen by a couple
of people in the Berner Street area,
and then at around 12:45 had been seen
by a man named James Brown,
talking to a strange individual
on Fairclough Street, only moments away
from where the murder took place.
Whoever the man was, he had
his back turned to James Brown
as he walked past, but he saw
him to be a stoutish-built man
who stood around 5'7 " to 5'9",
and wore a long trench coat
that came almost to his heels.
(sinister music)
As he walked past, he
heard Elizabeth tell the man,
"No, not tonight, maybe some other night,"
and Elizabeth was never seen alive again.
She would later be found
dead, only seconds away
from where she was seen
in that witness sighting.
Lying on her back with her throat cut,
on the floor of Dutfield's Yard.
(gentle sinister music)
Elizabeth Stride was first discovered
at around a minute past one
by a 26-year-old man
called Louis Diemschutz.
She was lying on a back in
Dutfield's Yard on Berner Street,
which lay at the site of number 40,
which was a working men's club
where Louis Diemschutz
actually worked himself.
He'd been returning home
when he discovered the body.
The call quickly went out to the police,
and when police turned up,
they realized that, like
the victims before her,
her throat had been cut deeply,
and she was posed on her
back with her head to the side.
Her eyes wide open,
her hand across her chest.
The killer had removed
her hat from her head,
and placed it on the ground behind her.
Scattered objects around
her body, smeared the blood
from her neck wound across her hand,
and her forearm, and then ran.
She was lying in exactly the same position
as Annie Chapman had been.
And as soon as the police
discovered the crime scene,
it was very obvious that the
same killer had struck again.
(foreboding music)
[Policeman] The same
night, only a few miles
to the west, the killer struck again.
(typewriter clanging)
The victim was Catherine
Eddowes, a 46-year-old prostitute
who had been found dead in Mitre Square
with her throat slashed,
and her abdomen mutilated.
- (sinister music)
- (water sloshing)
(sinister music)
In the hours leading up to her murder,
Catherine Eddowes had actually
been arrested for drunkenness
on Aldgate at around
eight o'clock that evening.
She'd been taken by two police officers,
to Bishopsgate police
station, where she was placed
in the cell to sleep it off.
And was then released from police custody
at around one o'clock that morning.
Around half an hour
later, she was then seen
by three witnesses in
the nearby vicinity, talking
to a strange man on the
end of Church Passage,
which led into Mitre Square.
Whoever the man was,
this time he stood facing
the three witnesses as
they passed by in the dark.
But whoever he was, the three passed on,
made their way home, and didn't look back
to see where he went.
- (gentle foreboding music)
- (water sloshing)
(gentle foreboding music)
- (gentle foreboding music)
- (water sloshing)
(gentle music)
The body of Catherine
Eddowes was discovered at 1:46
that morning, lying in the
south corner of Mitre Square
by PC Edward Watkins of
the City of London Police.
She was lying on her back
with her legs wide apart,
both hands by her side
exactly as Martha Tabram
had been lying in George
Yard, back on the 7th of August.
Her throat had been cut
violently in two places.
The killer had mutilated her
abdomen, pulled her intestines
from inside her, and stuffed
them into her throat wound.
A two and a half foot section of her colon
had been removed from inside her,
and was lying by her left
arm at the crime scene.
The killer had inflicted a
number of knife injuries
to her face, removed her left
kidney, and her entire womb,
and taken them with
him from the crime scene
along with nearly half of a
white apron she was wearing.
It had been torn from
her at the crime scene,
covered in blood, and the killer had taken
that with him too.
(gentle sinister music)
[Policeman] On October 1st, 1888,
the Jack the Ripper letter went public.
It was printed in newspapers,
and a mania broke out.
(gentle sinister music)
People traveled from all
around to the murder sites.
It was akin to a carnival atmosphere.
It hampered our investigation immensely.
Having received the "Dear
Boss" letter a few days before,
a number of tabloids then
printed it alongside news reports
of the new double murder.
This only amplified the terror in the area.
Now, the killer had a name.
People didn't know who he was,
but you now knew who
it was, was doing this,
and his name was Jack the Ripper.
(gentle dramatic music)
[Policeman] I witnessed
firsthand the impact
that the media had on our investigation.
From the very beginning,
the sensationalist coverage
of the murders created a climate of fear,
and hysteria in the city,
making it difficult for us
to conduct a thorough,
and methodical
investigation as we intended.
I think by making the
"Dear Boss" letter public,
the newspapers were
hoping to cause hysteria,
and sell as many newspapers as possible.
And that's exactly what they did.
With the double murder having taken place,
and with the "Dear Boss"
letter having been held back
a couple of days since
it was originally received
by the Central News Office,
it was then printed in a number
of tabloids alongside
reports of the double murder.
This created an absolute
sensation in the area.
Huge, sold enormous numbers of newspapers,
and people in the area
were now absolutely aware
of who it was they were up against.
This also, however,
started to attract the attention
of imitators, hoaxers, and any
manner of people who wanted
to cause trouble in the investigation.
Soon a barrage of fake letters would arrive
at newspaper offices, police stations,
and even private homes across the country
from other individuals,
also claiming to be the killer.
(gentle music)
Newspaper attention given
to the "Dear Boss" letter
had caused such a sensation
that writing Jack the
Ripper letters, they said,
had become a national pastime.
Literally hundreds of them were pouring in
from all over the place
in different handwriting
from different places.
Police now have to investigate this.
It was wasting thousands
of hours of police time,
and yes, it just very much got in the way
of the investigation.
(gentle foreboding music)
Criticism of the police
force isn't a new thing,
and in Victorian England,
as the Jack the Ripper case continued,
and the murderer remained at large,
police were taking
enormous amounts of criticism
from both the press, and public alike.
The pressure on the police to
catch the killer was enormous.
[Policeman] Rumors and
false leads spread like wildfire.
Every day, it seemed like a
new suspect was being named,
and then quickly cleared,
diverting our attention,
and resources away
from more promising leads.
This constant barrage of
information also made it difficult
to separate fact from fiction,
and many people began to accuse us
of incompetence, and corruption.
(gentle dramatic music)
It must have been very
frustrating for the police force
to have, under such enormous pressure,
to be conducting interviews,
and interviewing witnesses
and still feel like they
were not getting anywhere.
The enormous amounts
of criticism leveled at them
from all areas of the British press,
was only making things more complicated,
and the sheer number of
fake stories, fake letters,
and fake reports that were
coming into the police as well,
was only complicating
the case even further.
(soaring orchestral music)
October came and went,
and no further murders occurred.
We kept up our investigations,
but we were all convinced
that perhaps it was over.
And we could soon solve
the case and return to normal.
But we were to be proved wrong.
As in the second week of November,
the Ripper struck again, one last time.
(foreboding music)
Some people in the area might
have been breathing a sigh of relief.
Some people might have
thought that the killer had died.
Some people might have
thought he moved away.
Some people might have
thought he could have gone
to prison for something else.
But he was then, once we got into November,
he would make himself known yet again.
Just down the road on Dorset Street,
in the middle of the Spitalfields area,
to commit what surely
was his worst murder of all.
(foreboding music)
Of all of the Jack the Ripper
victims, the least is known
about Mary Jane Kelly.
At the time of her murder,
she was 25 years old,
and everything that we know
about Mary Kelly comes somewhat secondhand
from her boyfriend, Joseph Barnett,
and statements he made to the police,
and things that he
claimed she had told him.
(foreboding music)
Mary Kelly is widely believed
to have been born somewhere
in Limerick in Ireland, and
had moved over to London
only a year or two before her death.
She would appear to
have lived for a short period
of time out in France.
She lived for a short
period of time in Wales.
But at the time of her murder,
was staying only doors away
from where Annie Chapman
had been staying on Dorset Street,
which was considered
to be the worst slum street
in the Whitechapel area.
And potentially the worst
slum street in all of London.
(dramatic music)
(energetic dramatic music)
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The last and
most gruesome murder was that
of Mary Jane Kelly, a
25-year-old prostitute.
Her body was found in her room
in Miller's Court, Dorset Street.
The killer had not only slit her throat,
but had also mutilated her face,
and body beyond recognition.
The scene was so gruesome,
that it left even the most
experienced officers,
and doctors shaken.
(gentle poignant music)
Like the other victims before her,
she was lying on her back,
with her head to the side.
Her eyes wide open, her
hand placed across her chest,
her legs wide apart.
But unlike the other victims,
she'd been extremely heavily mutilated.
The majority of her face had been removed.
Both of her thigh bones had
actually been stripped down
to the bone, and the meat that
had been cut from her thighs,
and her buttocks to do that,
had been placed in a pile
on the bedside table next to her head.
Her liver was lying in between her feet.
Her intestines were down
the right side of the body.
Half the right lung
was under the right arm.
The spleen was under the left arm.
Whoever the killer was,
police believed he had been
in the room for at least two hours
at this particular crime scene,
unlike the few minutes
he spent at the other ones.
And the original police report stated
that when police arrived in the room,
organs from inside her body
had been draped across the back
of the chairs, and were
hanging from nails in the wall.
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The murders
had a similar pattern,
and it was evident that they were committed
by the same person.
The killer had targeted prostitutes,
and had mutilated their
bodies in a particular way.
It was a brutal and savage
crime that shook the entire city.
(gentle poignant music)
The pressure that had been building
on the police throughout
the Jack the Ripper case,
really came to a point after
the murder of Mary Kelly.
Metropolitan Police
Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren
was taking more criticism from all angles,
than he ever had before,
and actually resigned the day after
that Mary Kelly was found.
The police now were
taking severe criticism,
all the time, from all angles.
The killer had appeared,
seemed to be right under
their noses the entire time,
and they simply couldn't catch him.
(gentle poignant music)
[Policeman] The murders
had a similar pattern,
and it was evident that they were committed
by the same person.
The killer had targeted prostitutes,
and had mutilated their
bodies in a particular way.
It was a brutal and savage
crime that shook the entire city.
(gentle poignant music)
(gentle dramatic music)
As the lead investigator
on the Jack the Ripper case,
I spent hundreds, even thousands of hours,
poring over the evidence,
and chasing down any potential leads.
Over the years, I have developed
several personal theories
as to the identity of the killer,
but I have been unable to
definitively prove any of them.
(gentle dramatic music)
We had to rely on our instincts,
and the evidence found
at the scene of the crimes.
We analyzed the
bloodstains, the footprints,
and the clothes found on the victims.
We'd searched for any
connections between the victims,
and the killer, but always came up short.
We each had our theories,
but nothing concrete.
(gentle poignant music)
One of my most persuasive theories,
is that the killer was a local
butcher, or slaughtermen.
The Ripper's ability to quickly,
and skillfully dissect his victim's bodies,
suggests a certain level
of anatomical knowledge.
And butchers, fishmongers, and slaughtermen
would have have had access
to the necessary tools, and experience.
Additionally, many of the
murders took place near,
or within areas that were known
to have a high concentration
of such professionals.
(gentle poignant music)
(rain splattering)
Another suspect though, had
now come to police attention,
and his name was Jacob Isenschmid.
Jacob Isenschmid was
actually known by some people
as the Mad Butcher of Holloway.
And after talking to
his wife, police learned
that his butcher's shop in
Holloway had gone bust.
He'd had some sort of breakdown,
and he wasn't the same guy he used to be.
His wife said he was completely irrational,
he was very violent, he was very dangerous.
He always carried big knives with him.
He was in the habit of drinking
at a local pub in Whitechapel.
When it was learned that he was absent
from his lodging house on the night
of the murder of Annie Chapman,
it became very obvious that
there was now another suspect
and the hunt was on to find him.
- (gentle dramatic music)
- (rain splattering)
Police at the time said that
one of the biggest problems
they had to contend with,
was the sheer number of people
in the area who fitted the
rough, vague description
of the wanted man, were
constantly getting themselves
into trouble while acting inappropriately,
while drunk with women, or in some cases
were boldly incriminated
by other individuals.
Joseph Barnett, Montague Druitt.
Another name was Michael Ostrog
who was this Russian barber surgeon
who had appeared to have
been in London at the time.
Albert Bachert.
Dr. Francis Tumblety, was
an American quack doctor
who lived out in New
York on the East coast.
Charles Cross.
Prince was having an affair,
and the royal doctor was sent
to silence everyone that knew about it.
James Maybrick, George Chapman.
Kosminski, and he never gave a first name,
but in the time since
then, people must have,
people decided it must have
been this Aaron Kosminski.
Who's this mentally ill
man that lived in the area.
Jacob Isenschmid, Thomas Cutbush.
It became very frustrating for the police.
The longer the case went
on that there really seemed
to be no suspects.
There were wild rumors,
and wild accusations,
but once John Pizer, and Jacob
Isenschmid had been ruled out
of the investigation,
there really wasn't a lot
to go on after that.
It seemed that if the killer
was going to be caught,
he was going to be caught red-handed,
or he possibly wasn't
going to be caught at all.
- (carriages rattling)
- (foreboding music)
I think if this investigation
was taking place now,
Albert Bachert is far, and
away the number one person
investigators ought to go and speak to.
His parents were German, he was born,
and raised in Whitechapel.
He's the right age.
He fits the right description.
He's got a criminal record
for all the things you'd
expect a serial killer
to have today.
He was constantly injecting
himself into the investigation.
He told the police
that he'd met the killer,
and spoken to him on a couple of occasions.
He told the police that
the killer was writing letters
to his house to threaten
him, and warn him of murders.
He claimed that the killer
was writing graffiti on the wall
of his house, but it was washed away
before police could photograph it.
He turned up entirely uninvited
to the inquest of Frances Coles
at the Working Lads
Institute on Whitechapel Road,
demanding to be on the jury,
just when the jury were about
to be taken to view her body
in the mortuary, and
caused such a big scene
when they wouldn't let him,
that the coroner told
him if he didn't sit down,
and behave himself, he was
gonna have the police remove him
from the building.
He also worked as an
engraver, which is interesting,
engraving the plates
for bank note printing.
Because there were a
number of women in the area
who got attacked but got away,
and later told the police that the killer,
or the attempted killer had
conned them with fake coins.
These coins were reportedly
polished extremely brightly,
and then machined around
the edges, it was said,
to appear like half crowns typically,
which were very valuable.
When actually they were cheap coins,
and worth next to nothing.
Albert Bachert, as a copper plate engraver,
would've had all the
tools, and the knowledge
to manipulate those coins
in that fashion in the house.
And then in 1889, they
actually took him to court,
and charged him on two separate occasions
for passing counterfeit
coins exactly like that,
in a number of different
pubs throughout the East End.
(gentle foreboding music)
The murders in Whitechapel,
had caused such a sensation,
attracted so much attention,
and been such a big deal,
that people were forced for the first time
to really pay attention,
not just to the horrors that had happened,
but to the horrible living conditions
that these people were forced
to endure in the East End.
If anything positive came out of any of it,
it was that such attention
was now focused on the slums,
and the poverty and the lodging houses.
And now people across
London who previously had paid
no real attention to the
slums, and the poverty,
and the people who lived there,
were now so disgusted by
the conditions under which
these people were
continuing to have to live,
that they were now
demanding something be done
to change that.
Numbers of people were demanding now,
that conditions in the East
End had to be improved.
Street lighting needed to be introduced,
something needed to be
done to make the place safer,
and it would be a very
long and slow process,
but eventually that would start to happen.
(gentle foreboding music)
I think the reason people are so interested
in Jack the Ripper, and
the reason why the case,
and stories of it are
inevitably going to stick around
for decades, or centuries to come, is...
It's not the... it's partly the violence.
It's partly the area that it
happened in, and the slums,
and the cobblestones and
the misery and the poverty,
but it was also the first
time that something like that
happened in a major city,
with what would be referred
to as a modern press following it.
So it was the first case to
receive anywhere near the amount
of publicity it did.
And then of course, because
they never caught him,
it's just something that's
always kind of stuck around
in the public imagination.
I think for decades to
come, Jack the Ripper
will still be getting talked about,
when numerous other criminal cases
have been long since forgotten.
(gentle foreboding music)
(orchestral music)