1 00:00:06,548 --> 00:00:07,716 [bell tolls] 2 00:00:07,799 --> 00:00:10,677 [woman screams] 3 00:00:10,760 --> 00:00:12,762 [sinister music plays] 4 00:00:15,098 --> 00:00:16,182 [screams] 5 00:00:16,725 --> 00:00:19,060 [laughter] 6 00:00:20,979 --> 00:00:23,565 The Ripper! He's done it again! 7 00:00:23,648 --> 00:00:25,567 The Ripper has done it again! 8 00:00:30,488 --> 00:00:33,116 [man 1] People have heard the name of Jack the Ripper 9 00:00:33,199 --> 00:00:36,119 even if they don't know what Jack the Ripper did. 10 00:00:36,202 --> 00:00:38,830 He was a terrible killer, Jack the Ripper. Yeah. 11 00:00:38,913 --> 00:00:40,582 And he was never caught or punished. 12 00:00:40,665 --> 00:00:43,418 -What a clever fellow. Yay. -[audience laughs] 13 00:00:43,501 --> 00:00:46,629 [man 1] It happened in Victorian times in London, 14 00:00:46,713 --> 00:00:48,339 but there are books about Jack the Ripper 15 00:00:48,423 --> 00:00:51,551 written in Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish, 16 00:00:51,634 --> 00:00:53,720 so the… the name's around everywhere. 17 00:00:54,304 --> 00:00:55,388 [man] Jack the Ripper! 18 00:00:55,472 --> 00:00:56,931 [speaks in Japanese] 19 00:00:57,015 --> 00:00:58,850 Stop using that stupid name! 20 00:00:59,726 --> 00:01:04,731 Jack has taken on a life of his own that's outside of what he actually did. 21 00:01:05,398 --> 00:01:07,609 But when you realize the full horror of the crimes, 22 00:01:07,692 --> 00:01:09,444 your perspective changes. 23 00:01:10,945 --> 00:01:12,363 The crimes were horrendous. 24 00:01:12,447 --> 00:01:15,408 He tried to cut her nose off, tried to cut an ear off, 25 00:01:15,492 --> 00:01:17,577 put slashes and gashes all over. 26 00:01:18,161 --> 00:01:19,704 He cuts out her heart. 27 00:01:19,788 --> 00:01:22,082 [man 2] It really does take your breath away. 28 00:01:23,083 --> 00:01:25,835 If you think about it, the mystery's popular for several reasons. 29 00:01:25,919 --> 00:01:28,088 Firstly, Jack the Ripper frightened people 30 00:01:28,171 --> 00:01:30,507 in a way that no killer had ever done before, 31 00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:32,675 and probably no killer's ever done since. 32 00:01:33,176 --> 00:01:36,763 The other reason it's remained popular is it's an ever-evolving story. 33 00:01:37,347 --> 00:01:40,141 It happened over 135 years ago, 34 00:01:40,225 --> 00:01:42,602 and yet we're still trying to solve the mystery. 35 00:01:44,562 --> 00:01:46,564 [unsettling music plays] 36 00:02:18,096 --> 00:02:18,930 [music fades] 37 00:02:20,431 --> 00:02:22,433 [bell tolls] 38 00:02:24,853 --> 00:02:26,855 [bell tolls] 39 00:02:29,023 --> 00:02:30,984 [bell tolls] 40 00:02:33,236 --> 00:02:35,238 [bell tolls] 41 00:02:37,323 --> 00:02:38,575 [bell tolls] 42 00:02:39,492 --> 00:02:42,245 [man 2] In the early hours of 31st August of 1888, 43 00:02:42,328 --> 00:02:44,914 a policeman comes down his beat in Whitechapel. 44 00:02:44,998 --> 00:02:47,375 [tense music plays] 45 00:02:47,458 --> 00:02:50,044 [man 2] Suddenly, he sees something lying in a gateway. 46 00:02:50,128 --> 00:02:52,839 As he gets closer, he sees it's a woman lying on the ground. 47 00:02:53,590 --> 00:02:56,509 He's got a lantern, so he shines the lantern onto her 48 00:02:57,343 --> 00:02:58,887 and sees that her throat's been cut. 49 00:03:01,556 --> 00:03:04,726 What he doesn't see is that, beneath her bloodstained clothing, 50 00:03:05,226 --> 00:03:06,269 she's been disemboweled. 51 00:03:07,187 --> 00:03:09,272 [woman] There were several people living in the area. 52 00:03:09,355 --> 00:03:13,610 There was even people in the very house next to the gates in which she was found, 53 00:03:13,693 --> 00:03:14,944 and they hear and see nothing. 54 00:03:15,028 --> 00:03:17,322 It had obviously happened quietly 55 00:03:17,405 --> 00:03:19,657 right under a window 56 00:03:19,741 --> 00:03:22,160 where honest people were sleeping in their beds. 57 00:03:23,369 --> 00:03:25,830 It was a very, very ferocious attack. 58 00:03:25,914 --> 00:03:27,916 [uneasy music plays] 59 00:03:28,583 --> 00:03:32,921 At the mortuary, it was noticed that there was a deep, jagged wound 60 00:03:33,004 --> 00:03:36,090 from the… from the breastbone all the way down to the abdomen, 61 00:03:36,174 --> 00:03:39,260 completely severing the tissue in-- inside her stomach. 62 00:03:39,344 --> 00:03:41,346 [uneasy music continues] 63 00:03:41,846 --> 00:03:43,598 [Richard] When the authorities went around 64 00:03:43,681 --> 00:03:45,350 saying, "Does anyone recognize this person?" 65 00:03:45,433 --> 00:03:47,769 she was identified as someone they knew as Polly. 66 00:03:49,395 --> 00:03:52,774 [Adam] Mary Ann Nichols, commonly known as Polly, 67 00:03:52,857 --> 00:03:55,610 she was 43 years old at the time of her murder. 68 00:03:56,778 --> 00:03:59,197 [Richard] Polly hadn't been in the East End of London for long, 69 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:00,156 as far as we can tell. 70 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:03,409 But she'd become an alcoholic, and that led to a downward spiral. 71 00:04:04,452 --> 00:04:07,038 [Adam] And she was extremely poor, living on her own, 72 00:04:07,121 --> 00:04:10,708 struggling to earn a living through casual prostitution. 73 00:04:13,670 --> 00:04:16,631 [uneasy music plays] 74 00:04:16,714 --> 00:04:18,466 [Richard] She had been drinking that night, 75 00:04:18,549 --> 00:04:20,551 and she didn't have the money to pay for a bed, 76 00:04:20,635 --> 00:04:23,263 so she was ejected from a common lodging house. 77 00:04:23,346 --> 00:04:25,348 [tense music plays] 78 00:04:26,474 --> 00:04:29,978 [Lindsay] She'd gone out for sex work, to raise money for a bed for the night. 79 00:04:31,187 --> 00:04:34,732 Polly's last known words to the deputy of the lodging house is actually, 80 00:04:34,816 --> 00:04:36,609 "See what a jolly bonnet I've got now?" 81 00:04:36,693 --> 00:04:38,945 So that's sort of the words she was saying. 82 00:04:39,028 --> 00:04:41,906 "I'm going out to be able to… to get a gentleman, 83 00:04:42,407 --> 00:04:44,200 because see how beautiful I'm looking." 84 00:04:44,284 --> 00:04:47,036 "I'll be back. Keep my bed. I'll be back shortly." 85 00:04:48,121 --> 00:04:52,375 And that's when she was attacked and horribly mutilated. 86 00:04:55,128 --> 00:04:57,672 [Adam] The killer put his fingers around her throat, 87 00:04:57,755 --> 00:05:00,216 killing her before she had a chance to cry out. 88 00:05:01,342 --> 00:05:02,927 In the East End in the 1880s, 89 00:05:03,011 --> 00:05:06,723 murder wasn't as… as common as… as you might think it was, 90 00:05:07,640 --> 00:05:09,017 and so, Polly's murder 91 00:05:09,100 --> 00:05:12,353 would have been probably seen by the police at the time as a one-off. 92 00:05:17,859 --> 00:05:20,903 [Lindsay] London in 1888 was the biggest city in the world. 93 00:05:20,987 --> 00:05:22,989 You have the West End, very rich, prosperous, 94 00:05:23,072 --> 00:05:25,074 the East End, very, very poor. 95 00:05:25,867 --> 00:05:28,786 Whitechapel was a district within the East End of London. 96 00:05:29,704 --> 00:05:33,458 It was an area where you had people barely able to survive, 97 00:05:33,541 --> 00:05:37,211 people living in poverty, people literally starving to death. 98 00:05:38,713 --> 00:05:42,675 [Lindsay] Off the main thoroughfares, you had all these rat-infested alleyways 99 00:05:42,759 --> 00:05:44,010 and courts. 100 00:05:44,093 --> 00:05:47,013 Really, really horrific. People living in awful conditions. 101 00:05:49,140 --> 00:05:53,019 Many single women in the East End couldn't afford their own house or flat. 102 00:05:53,102 --> 00:05:56,939 So every day, they'd have to try and scrape together four old pennies 103 00:05:57,023 --> 00:05:58,358 for a bed for the night, 104 00:05:58,441 --> 00:06:01,194 in what we call a common lodging house, or doss-house. 105 00:06:01,277 --> 00:06:02,236 And I say "beds," 106 00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:05,448 but in many of these places, they were actually coffins 107 00:06:05,531 --> 00:06:07,992 lined up in rows up against the walls. 108 00:06:08,743 --> 00:06:11,412 A lot of the women would have to resort to casual prostitution. 109 00:06:11,496 --> 00:06:16,209 It was a case of what they needed to do to… to get that… that income. 110 00:06:18,044 --> 00:06:21,297 [Richard] There is a term for these women, which was "unfortunates," 111 00:06:21,381 --> 00:06:23,299 because they'd fallen through the net. 112 00:06:25,593 --> 00:06:28,304 [Lindsay] I think Jack the Ripper targeted these women 113 00:06:28,388 --> 00:06:33,142 because they were easy targets and vulnerable ladies walking the streets. 114 00:06:33,226 --> 00:06:35,978 If it was prostitution that they used to survive, 115 00:06:36,062 --> 00:06:38,106 they were the ones who knew the streets. 116 00:06:39,023 --> 00:06:42,235 So, effectively, it was the victims who chose the murder site. 117 00:06:42,318 --> 00:06:45,696 Because of what they did, they knew where to take their clients to 118 00:06:45,780 --> 00:06:47,865 where there was little danger of interruption. 119 00:06:47,949 --> 00:06:52,495 So they chose, unwittingly, the perfect place at which to be murdered. 120 00:06:52,578 --> 00:06:54,455 [somber music plays] 121 00:06:54,539 --> 00:06:57,500 [distant laughter] 122 00:07:00,378 --> 00:07:03,131 [Lindsay] So Polly Nichols is killed August 31st. 123 00:07:03,214 --> 00:07:05,800 Literally a week later, on 8th September, 124 00:07:05,883 --> 00:07:08,511 another murder takes place, and that's Annie Chapman. 125 00:07:09,303 --> 00:07:12,432 [Adam] Annie was found murdered in the rear yard of Hanbury Street, 126 00:07:13,141 --> 00:07:17,395 also in the East End, close to where Polly was killed. 127 00:07:18,646 --> 00:07:23,192 She was laying on her back, in the yard, with her face towards the step. 128 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:27,780 She had terrible mutilations, the same as Polly. 129 00:07:28,906 --> 00:07:30,450 [Richard] The killer's taken a trophy. 130 00:07:30,533 --> 00:07:33,035 He's cut out and gone off with the womb of the victim, 131 00:07:33,953 --> 00:07:36,497 which suggested that the reason for the murder 132 00:07:36,581 --> 00:07:40,668 had been specifically so the killer could acquire that part of her anatomy. 133 00:07:40,751 --> 00:07:44,422 Annie was the oldest of our victims. She was 47 years old. 134 00:07:45,506 --> 00:07:49,677 According to police reports, Annie had no income whatsoever. 135 00:07:50,553 --> 00:07:53,848 To survive, she started selling trinkets on the streets. 136 00:07:55,308 --> 00:07:59,520 When that didn't work, then she would resort to casual prostitution. 137 00:08:01,564 --> 00:08:05,651 Again, as with Polly Nichols, on the night before her murder, 138 00:08:05,735 --> 00:08:07,862 she hasn't got the money to pay for her bed. 139 00:08:07,945 --> 00:08:09,947 [tense music plays] 140 00:08:12,992 --> 00:08:17,497 [Adam] So witnesses said she was walking around, looking for a client, 141 00:08:17,997 --> 00:08:21,584 and then, at some point that night, a witness had seen Annie talking to a man 142 00:08:21,667 --> 00:08:24,879 outside the front door to 29 Hanbury Street, 143 00:08:24,962 --> 00:08:26,589 but she didn't see his face. 144 00:08:27,089 --> 00:08:29,592 She later said he had the appearance of a foreigner 145 00:08:29,675 --> 00:08:31,302 from the way he was dressed. 146 00:08:31,385 --> 00:08:33,554 It's believed that this was Jack the Ripper. 147 00:08:34,722 --> 00:08:38,059 [Lindsay] And according to police records, what we know happens next, 148 00:08:38,142 --> 00:08:41,896 the two go through the entrance, which was never locked, to Number 29. 149 00:08:42,730 --> 00:08:44,190 It led into a passageway. 150 00:08:44,690 --> 00:08:47,527 And the dark passageway led into the backyard. 151 00:08:47,610 --> 00:08:49,070 That's where Jack kills Annie. 152 00:08:49,153 --> 00:08:50,738 [uneasy music plays] 153 00:08:53,074 --> 00:08:56,994 [Adam] Staying at Number 27 Hanbury Street at the time of Annie's murder, 154 00:08:57,078 --> 00:08:58,704 which was the house next door, 155 00:08:58,788 --> 00:09:01,290 uh, was a man… a man named Albert Cadosch. 156 00:09:01,374 --> 00:09:05,419 [Lindsay] He was going into the toilet, which was at the bottom of the garden, 157 00:09:05,503 --> 00:09:10,341 and he overhears a cry of "no" and a thud against the fence. 158 00:09:10,424 --> 00:09:13,135 And many believe that was actually Annie's body hitting the fence. 159 00:09:13,219 --> 00:09:15,221 [uneasy music continues] 160 00:09:16,222 --> 00:09:18,724 [Adam] In all probability, if he had looked over the fence, 161 00:09:18,808 --> 00:09:22,019 he would have witnessed the murder of Annie Chapman being committed. 162 00:09:22,103 --> 00:09:24,105 [tense music plays] 163 00:09:27,567 --> 00:09:30,069 [Lindsay] Annie's throat had been cut from left to right, 164 00:09:30,152 --> 00:09:31,737 back to the spinal column. 165 00:09:31,821 --> 00:09:33,823 She'd been ripped up to the breastbone. 166 00:09:33,906 --> 00:09:37,034 Her intestines had been taken out and placed over her shoulder. 167 00:09:37,118 --> 00:09:40,746 At her feet were several objects from her calico pocket, 168 00:09:40,830 --> 00:09:42,415 which had been cut open. 169 00:09:42,498 --> 00:09:44,458 There was a comb, a piece of paper, 170 00:09:44,542 --> 00:09:47,837 all sorts of things just out of her pocket that she'd been wearing. 171 00:09:48,588 --> 00:09:51,424 He'd laid them out, almost systematically, at her feet. 172 00:09:51,507 --> 00:09:52,341 Very bizarre. 173 00:09:54,677 --> 00:09:58,472 [Richard] And because she's been mutilated in the same way as Polly, 174 00:09:59,140 --> 00:10:02,268 police believe that both murders were by the same hand. 175 00:10:04,854 --> 00:10:06,063 At the scene of the crime, 176 00:10:06,147 --> 00:10:08,941 they're looking for any clues that the murderer's left behind. 177 00:10:09,525 --> 00:10:12,653 And that's when the police find a freshly-washed leather apron 178 00:10:12,737 --> 00:10:13,904 in the corner of the yard. 179 00:10:13,988 --> 00:10:16,616 And they think, "Oh, we've got him. We've got the murderer." 180 00:10:17,575 --> 00:10:20,119 [Adam] And the reason for that bit of excitement was, 181 00:10:20,202 --> 00:10:22,246 after the murder of Polly Nichols, 182 00:10:22,330 --> 00:10:26,459 the police were already investigating a suspect known as Leather Apron. 183 00:10:27,251 --> 00:10:29,211 At the time, the prostitutes in Whitechapel 184 00:10:29,295 --> 00:10:32,840 had started talking about this sinister character called Leather Apron, 185 00:10:32,923 --> 00:10:35,009 and they're convinced this is the man responsible. 186 00:10:35,509 --> 00:10:39,013 [Adam] Leather Apron was a man named John Pizer who lived in Whitechapel. 187 00:10:39,096 --> 00:10:42,475 He was a cobbler. For his work, he naturally wore a leather apron. 188 00:10:43,726 --> 00:10:45,603 So when they found the leather apron, 189 00:10:45,686 --> 00:10:47,897 they dragged him off down to the police station 190 00:10:47,980 --> 00:10:49,982 where they gave him a good interrogation. 191 00:10:50,650 --> 00:10:53,444 [Richard] Now, it turns out the leather apron they found 192 00:10:53,527 --> 00:10:55,196 has got nothing to do with the murder. 193 00:10:55,696 --> 00:10:58,783 It was just a local resident had cleaned his leather apron 194 00:10:58,866 --> 00:11:01,035 and laid it over the, uh, fence to dry off. 195 00:11:01,994 --> 00:11:05,164 Pizer had cast-iron alibis for the nights of the murders, 196 00:11:05,247 --> 00:11:07,166 so he was then released as a suspect. 197 00:11:07,917 --> 00:11:12,797 And it turns out he's only the first of an awful lot of suspects in the case. 198 00:11:14,048 --> 00:11:16,467 At this point, the police recognized 199 00:11:16,550 --> 00:11:20,054 that there was, um, something highly amiss in Whitechapel. 200 00:11:20,137 --> 00:11:23,057 Two dreadful murders, terrible mutilations, 201 00:11:23,140 --> 00:11:25,351 most likely killed by the same hand. 202 00:11:26,644 --> 00:11:30,856 [man 1] What was frightening was that there was somebody out there 203 00:11:30,940 --> 00:11:32,775 who wanted to kill you, 204 00:11:33,943 --> 00:11:36,946 and you'd never met them, you'd never done them any harm. 205 00:11:37,655 --> 00:11:42,410 They weren't killing you for a reason. 206 00:11:43,619 --> 00:11:46,288 [Richard] Horror starts to set in about these murders. 207 00:11:47,498 --> 00:11:50,751 People thought, "What sort of monster would do this?" 208 00:11:51,961 --> 00:11:53,921 [unsettling music plays] 209 00:11:56,757 --> 00:11:59,427 There is a sense the killer knew his way around Whitechapel. 210 00:11:59,510 --> 00:12:02,680 Whitechapel, at the time, was made up of lots of narrow alleyways, 211 00:12:02,763 --> 00:12:05,558 twisty little passageways that went between buildings. 212 00:12:06,517 --> 00:12:09,270 All he needs to know is where the nearest bolt-hole is 213 00:12:09,353 --> 00:12:12,606 that he can get down quickly and escape from the scene of the crime. 214 00:12:13,399 --> 00:12:15,276 And then when he's made Whitechapel Road, 215 00:12:15,359 --> 00:12:17,653 the busy main road that goes through the heart of the area, 216 00:12:17,737 --> 00:12:20,448 or Commercial Street, the busy thoroughfares, 217 00:12:20,531 --> 00:12:23,492 then he can just make his way and lose himself in the crowds. 218 00:12:30,624 --> 00:12:34,044 [Adam] The police, very early on, took a decision not to speak to the press 219 00:12:34,128 --> 00:12:37,631 about the activities they were undertaking or their lines of investigation. 220 00:12:37,715 --> 00:12:42,553 And, naturally, the press were looking for sensational stories 221 00:12:42,636 --> 00:12:45,681 and became frustrated that there weren't any leads to act on 222 00:12:45,765 --> 00:12:47,725 except the suspect Leather Apron. 223 00:12:49,852 --> 00:12:52,521 [Lindsay] Then, on 27th September, 1888, 224 00:12:52,605 --> 00:12:56,567 the Central News Agency received a very interesting letter. 225 00:12:56,650 --> 00:12:57,902 Written in red ink, 226 00:12:57,985 --> 00:13:02,656 it starts, "Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me." 227 00:13:02,740 --> 00:13:04,575 "They won't catch me just yet." 228 00:13:05,075 --> 00:13:07,912 [Richard] Then it goes on to boast in mocking terms about what he's done. 229 00:13:07,995 --> 00:13:09,371 The police can't catch him. 230 00:13:10,664 --> 00:13:14,627 [Lindsay] And at the end, it's signed, "Yours truly, Jack the Ripper." 231 00:13:14,710 --> 00:13:16,712 [sinister music plays] 232 00:13:18,297 --> 00:13:23,093 "Dear Boss" letter's prob-probably the most important document that we have 233 00:13:23,177 --> 00:13:26,388 because it's the one that gives us the name "Jack the Ripper." 234 00:13:26,472 --> 00:13:29,475 It summarized what the chap was doing to the ladies. 235 00:13:29,558 --> 00:13:30,893 They were being ripped open. 236 00:13:30,976 --> 00:13:33,854 That type of horror in a nickname, 237 00:13:34,730 --> 00:13:37,149 Jack the Ripper, it's a newsman's dream! 238 00:13:37,733 --> 00:13:41,111 [Paul] The murderer's now got a name, so he's no longer a nebulous figure. 239 00:13:41,195 --> 00:13:44,031 He has that name, Jack the Ripper. 240 00:13:45,950 --> 00:13:48,953 [Richard] The problem is the majority of police officers believe this letter 241 00:13:49,036 --> 00:13:51,288 was the work of an enterprising London journalist 242 00:13:51,372 --> 00:13:53,123 known to senior Scotland Yard detectives. 243 00:13:53,207 --> 00:13:57,336 So in other words, a journalist wrote the letter. It was a journalistic hoax. 244 00:13:57,419 --> 00:14:00,631 [Lindsay] Many people at the time, including relevant police authorities, 245 00:14:00,714 --> 00:14:04,593 did believe they actually knew the identity of the person who did do it 246 00:14:04,677 --> 00:14:08,264 and that that was a, uh, person from the Central News Agency itself 247 00:14:08,347 --> 00:14:11,767 trying to generate, um, you know, excitement for the press. 248 00:14:11,851 --> 00:14:14,520 So I personally don't think the "Dear Boss" letter 249 00:14:14,603 --> 00:14:16,188 was written by Jack the Ripper. 250 00:14:16,939 --> 00:14:21,318 When they got the Ripper letter, there doesn't appear to be one solid suspect 251 00:14:21,402 --> 00:14:24,697 or lines of inquiry that the police were following at that time. 252 00:14:24,780 --> 00:14:28,701 Police were desperate for a breakthrough, so they decided to make the letter public. 253 00:14:29,577 --> 00:14:31,579 And it was reproduced and put up on posters, 254 00:14:31,662 --> 00:14:33,998 but also, it was put in the newspapers as well. 255 00:14:35,124 --> 00:14:37,042 Releasing it proved to be a mistake, 256 00:14:37,126 --> 00:14:40,254 because that name was so chillingly accurate, 257 00:14:40,337 --> 00:14:42,840 Jack the Ripper, it caught on. 258 00:14:42,923 --> 00:14:46,135 And hoaxers across the land began reaching for their pens. 259 00:14:46,218 --> 00:14:50,139 And throughout October, the police were inundated with a barrage of letters, 260 00:14:50,222 --> 00:14:52,057 many signed "Jack the Ripper." 261 00:14:52,141 --> 00:14:56,186 And it became almost a national pastime, writing letters signed "Jack the Ripper." 262 00:14:56,770 --> 00:14:59,440 Every letter had to be read, assessed, 263 00:14:59,523 --> 00:15:02,318 and, if ever possible, followed up and the author traced, 264 00:15:02,401 --> 00:15:05,321 so consequently, the already overstretched detectives 265 00:15:05,404 --> 00:15:07,489 are stretched almost to breaking point. 266 00:15:07,573 --> 00:15:09,325 [unsettling music plays] 267 00:15:09,408 --> 00:15:11,285 Then on 30th September, 268 00:15:11,368 --> 00:15:14,663 within days of the police receiving the "Dear Boss" letter, 269 00:15:14,747 --> 00:15:19,251 the murderer struck again and carries out two murders in less than an hour. 270 00:15:19,335 --> 00:15:22,671 That night is what we… we now call the "Double Event Night." 271 00:15:26,050 --> 00:15:28,928 [Adam] On this spot, um, one o'clock in the morning, 272 00:15:29,011 --> 00:15:31,722 Louis Diemschutz pulled his horse and cart into the yard 273 00:15:31,805 --> 00:15:33,349 immediately behind where I am now. 274 00:15:33,432 --> 00:15:34,725 [horse neighs] 275 00:15:34,808 --> 00:15:36,477 [Adam] And he saw the body of a woman. 276 00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:39,605 It was Elizabeth Stride, the third victim of Jack the Ripper. 277 00:15:42,858 --> 00:15:44,777 [Lindsay] Elizabeth was Swedish. 278 00:15:44,860 --> 00:15:48,530 She worked as a nanny for a while to some children, and as a cleaner, 279 00:15:48,614 --> 00:15:51,075 and then, sadly, she got into prostitution. 280 00:15:52,826 --> 00:15:55,287 [Adam] She'd come to England when she was in her early twenties, 281 00:15:55,371 --> 00:15:57,164 and she found herself, first in… 282 00:15:57,247 --> 00:16:01,418 around the Brick Lane area, in the common lodging houses around there. 283 00:16:01,502 --> 00:16:03,462 And, by the end of September, 284 00:16:03,545 --> 00:16:05,965 she had earned herself a… a few shillings 285 00:16:06,048 --> 00:16:08,008 by cleaning the lodging house she was staying in. 286 00:16:08,092 --> 00:16:11,929 She decided to go out for the night and spend what money she had made. 287 00:16:12,012 --> 00:16:13,597 [ominous music plays] 288 00:16:16,392 --> 00:16:19,478 When the body was found, she had a scarf around her neck, 289 00:16:19,561 --> 00:16:23,857 which had been twisted to one side, and the knot pulled very, very tightly, 290 00:16:23,941 --> 00:16:25,693 and there was a large, jagged cut, 291 00:16:25,776 --> 00:16:28,570 which almost ran to the level of that scarf, 292 00:16:28,654 --> 00:16:32,408 as though it'd been used almost as a guide by the killer. 293 00:16:32,491 --> 00:16:35,285 There was a river of blood running from the throat 294 00:16:35,369 --> 00:16:38,080 down into the gutter in the opposite corner. 295 00:16:38,163 --> 00:16:41,792 Unlike our other victims, she's only had her throat cut. 296 00:16:42,835 --> 00:16:44,712 No mutilations. 297 00:16:45,838 --> 00:16:49,466 Some people do believe that the reason why Jack only cut Elizabeth's throat 298 00:16:49,550 --> 00:16:53,262 was because he was disturbed by that pony and cart coming into the yard. 299 00:16:53,846 --> 00:16:56,557 Because he's been denied the satisfaction of the mutilation, 300 00:16:56,640 --> 00:16:59,143 the killer goes looking for another victim. 301 00:16:59,226 --> 00:17:01,228 [ominous music continues] 302 00:17:02,980 --> 00:17:05,649 Forty-five minutes later, in the City of London, 303 00:17:05,733 --> 00:17:08,652 the body of Catherine Eddowes is found in Mitre Square. 304 00:17:08,736 --> 00:17:10,738 [unsettling music continues] 305 00:17:13,991 --> 00:17:14,950 [music fades] 306 00:17:15,034 --> 00:17:17,036 Where I'm standing here 307 00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:20,039 was roughly where Catherine Eddowes' body was found 308 00:17:20,122 --> 00:17:21,957 on the night of the Double Event. 309 00:17:22,875 --> 00:17:24,918 Catherine was born in Wolverhampton. 310 00:17:25,002 --> 00:17:26,920 Eventually, her two parents die, 311 00:17:27,004 --> 00:17:29,673 and she was placed into orphanages. 312 00:17:29,757 --> 00:17:31,759 And she moves, eventually, to London 313 00:17:31,842 --> 00:17:34,303 where she was known as a sex worker at the time, 314 00:17:34,386 --> 00:17:36,388 but maybe on a casual basis. 315 00:17:36,472 --> 00:17:39,600 She was found around 1:45 in the morning 316 00:17:39,683 --> 00:17:42,102 by, uh, the policeman, PC Watkins, 317 00:17:42,186 --> 00:17:44,646 who was coming around the back, around Mitre Street. 318 00:17:44,730 --> 00:17:46,440 He comes into the square. 319 00:17:46,523 --> 00:17:48,025 He search… He's on his patrol. 320 00:17:49,109 --> 00:17:51,445 He shines the lantern, and he gets such a shock 321 00:17:51,528 --> 00:17:52,780 when he sees the body here. 322 00:17:52,863 --> 00:17:54,782 She wasn't there 15 minutes earlier. 323 00:17:57,076 --> 00:18:01,705 She was the most horribly mutilated of any victim up till that point. 324 00:18:01,789 --> 00:18:03,165 This is another step up. 325 00:18:03,248 --> 00:18:05,626 The throat's been cut. She's been cut open. 326 00:18:05,709 --> 00:18:08,462 V's have been cut into her cheeks, V's into her eyelids, 327 00:18:08,545 --> 00:18:11,465 part of the earlobe's been taken off, tip of the nose. 328 00:18:12,508 --> 00:18:15,761 Also, the killer's cut out and gone off with the uterus and the left kidney. 329 00:18:17,554 --> 00:18:19,765 [Lindsay] You only had one resident on the square. 330 00:18:19,848 --> 00:18:23,185 That was a policeman, Richard Pearce, with his family, just sleeping there. 331 00:18:23,268 --> 00:18:24,978 Policeman hears nothing, 332 00:18:25,062 --> 00:18:28,565 and, amazingly, the night watchman hears and sees nothing. 333 00:18:28,649 --> 00:18:31,193 It's like a ghost kills her here. 334 00:18:34,196 --> 00:18:37,741 [Adam] When Catherine was taken to the City of London mortuary and undressed, 335 00:18:37,825 --> 00:18:40,953 they noticed that the apron she'd been wearing 336 00:18:41,036 --> 00:18:43,831 was covered with blood, uh, understandably, 337 00:18:43,914 --> 00:18:46,542 but a portion of it was missing, as though it had been cut off. 338 00:18:47,709 --> 00:18:49,878 [Lindsay] After Catherine Eddowes' body was found, 339 00:18:49,962 --> 00:18:52,756 a policeman was walking down Goulston Street. 340 00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:57,177 He's shining his lantern into doorways, making sure there's nobody hiding, 341 00:18:57,261 --> 00:18:58,887 trying to find any weapons, 342 00:18:58,971 --> 00:19:03,976 and sees blood in the entrance to the model dwellings on Goulston Street. 343 00:19:04,059 --> 00:19:06,937 And in the blood, he sees a piece of material. 344 00:19:07,020 --> 00:19:10,566 It's actually a section of Catherine Eddowes' apron 345 00:19:10,649 --> 00:19:12,985 cut off from her body in Mitre Square. 346 00:19:14,027 --> 00:19:17,698 Some people believe the reason why the actual apron was dropped there 347 00:19:17,781 --> 00:19:21,535 was because the murderer had wiped his hands and knife. 348 00:19:21,618 --> 00:19:24,663 But why that specific doorway, nobody knows. 349 00:19:25,831 --> 00:19:27,958 [Adam] The thing about the blood on the apron piece, 350 00:19:28,041 --> 00:19:31,003 it could have been Catherine's, obviously, from the horrific wounds. 351 00:19:31,086 --> 00:19:34,047 It could have been the killer's inadvertently cut himself 352 00:19:34,131 --> 00:19:35,549 while carrying out the mutilations. 353 00:19:36,717 --> 00:19:39,553 Unfortunately, there was no blood types at that time, 354 00:19:40,429 --> 00:19:41,847 so it was totally useless. 355 00:19:44,141 --> 00:19:47,311 One of the things many Jack the Ripper letters had been threatening 356 00:19:47,394 --> 00:19:49,188 was they would send a body part to the police. 357 00:19:49,271 --> 00:19:51,273 [uneasy music plays] 358 00:19:52,816 --> 00:19:55,277 [Lindsay] Two weeks after the Double Event, 359 00:19:55,360 --> 00:19:57,529 when Elizabeth and Catherine are killed, 360 00:19:57,613 --> 00:20:00,782 a local man called George Lusk receives a letter. 361 00:20:01,408 --> 00:20:04,328 [Richard] He sat down to his dinner table on 16th October, 362 00:20:04,411 --> 00:20:06,830 and a small package was delivered in the evening mail, 363 00:20:06,914 --> 00:20:10,584 and he opened it, and inside was the letter "from hell." 364 00:20:11,418 --> 00:20:15,255 And with the letter was half a human kidney. 365 00:20:17,216 --> 00:20:18,592 [Richard] George Lusk was the head 366 00:20:18,675 --> 00:20:21,970 of the Whitechapel Mile End Vigilance Committee. 367 00:20:22,054 --> 00:20:24,932 Basically, they would go out at night and they'd patrol the streets, 368 00:20:25,015 --> 00:20:27,851 and they'd keep suspicious characters under surveillance. 369 00:20:28,769 --> 00:20:31,897 So the letter that arrived at Mr. Lusk's house said, 370 00:20:31,980 --> 00:20:33,690 "Mr. Lusk, sir, 371 00:20:33,774 --> 00:20:37,277 I send you half the kidney I took from one woman." 372 00:20:37,361 --> 00:20:39,112 "Preserved it for you." 373 00:20:39,196 --> 00:20:42,950 "T'other piece I fried and ate. It was very nice." 374 00:20:43,033 --> 00:20:45,911 "I may send you the bloody knife that took it out, 375 00:20:45,994 --> 00:20:48,163 if you only wait a while longer." 376 00:20:48,247 --> 00:20:51,416 "Signed, Catch me when you can, Mr. Lusk." 377 00:20:53,669 --> 00:20:55,545 He's obviously saying he's a cannibal 378 00:20:56,338 --> 00:20:59,758 and that he's actually eaten a section of the victim's kidney. 379 00:21:00,467 --> 00:21:01,385 Horrible. 380 00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:06,556 With the Lusk letter, there was a debate within the police 381 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,851 as to whether that was actually Catherine's kidney. 382 00:21:09,935 --> 00:21:13,105 Certainly, the medical opinions at the time differed. 383 00:21:13,855 --> 00:21:15,399 It was the correct kidney, though. 384 00:21:15,482 --> 00:21:19,236 It was the left kidney, and Catherine did have her left kidney taken away. 385 00:21:20,237 --> 00:21:22,572 If that was Catherine's kidney, 386 00:21:22,656 --> 00:21:26,285 then that means that letter is genuine, and there's a 50/50 chance. 387 00:21:26,368 --> 00:21:29,121 So I, personally, have always believed in that letter 388 00:21:29,204 --> 00:21:32,499 and believed that the Lusk letter was genuine, but others disagree. 389 00:21:32,582 --> 00:21:35,210 There are those who say that it's the only genuine letter 390 00:21:35,294 --> 00:21:36,586 that came from the murderer. 391 00:21:36,670 --> 00:21:38,255 Personally, I don't believe it was. 392 00:21:38,338 --> 00:21:41,341 I think it was probably the joke of a medical student. 393 00:21:41,425 --> 00:21:45,262 Uh, it was quite common for medical students to get hold of body parts. 394 00:21:46,013 --> 00:21:49,683 The point is that everybody got hooked on this Jack the Ripper scare. 395 00:21:49,766 --> 00:21:52,561 It's… it's become almost, uh, an obsession. 396 00:21:52,644 --> 00:21:55,439 People are just, "I need to get involved. I want to get involved." 397 00:21:59,860 --> 00:22:02,029 [Adam] In the October of 1888, 398 00:22:02,821 --> 00:22:05,198 the police had organized a house-to-house search 399 00:22:05,282 --> 00:22:06,825 in the whole of Whitechapel. 400 00:22:06,908 --> 00:22:09,411 There were several hundred houses, uh, searched. 401 00:22:09,494 --> 00:22:12,539 A thousand people were investigated. 402 00:22:12,622 --> 00:22:17,002 But they really didn't have, uh, much of a lead to go on at all, really. 403 00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:23,550 It's important to remember, in 1888, the police were really limited 404 00:22:23,633 --> 00:22:26,511 with the amount of, uh, investigatory tools that they had. 405 00:22:27,596 --> 00:22:29,723 [Paul] They didn't have simple things like fingerprints, 406 00:22:29,806 --> 00:22:32,476 and they certainly didn't have CCTV, 407 00:22:32,559 --> 00:22:36,897 which would have enabled them to… to keep an eye on different areas. 408 00:22:38,565 --> 00:22:41,193 [Richard] Basically, the police investigation depended on 409 00:22:41,276 --> 00:22:42,277 a search of the area. 410 00:22:42,361 --> 00:22:45,364 Is there perhaps a footprint there that they can use? 411 00:22:45,447 --> 00:22:50,118 But none of the traditional methods of detecting a crime are working. 412 00:22:51,745 --> 00:22:54,873 We do have witnesses who say, "Oh, I saw this. I saw that." 413 00:22:54,956 --> 00:22:58,085 But we don't know whether they did see the killer or not. 414 00:22:59,044 --> 00:23:02,297 A lot of those who saw him talked about him being about 5 ft. 6 in., 5 ft. 7 in., 415 00:23:02,381 --> 00:23:06,218 but, then again, that was probably an average height for a man at the time. 416 00:23:07,803 --> 00:23:11,598 Um, different ages from twenties to forties, different clothing. 417 00:23:12,307 --> 00:23:15,477 [Adam] The problem with eyewitness identification at that time 418 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:17,145 is the lighting was extremely poor. 419 00:23:17,229 --> 00:23:20,690 It's like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and it's dark. We've got limited lighting. 420 00:23:20,774 --> 00:23:22,317 How well do we notice things? 421 00:23:22,401 --> 00:23:26,321 Often, witnesses can be quite wrong accidentally in their descriptions. 422 00:23:27,364 --> 00:23:31,410 [Adam] So, unfortunately, no one knew what Jack the Ripper looked like. 423 00:23:33,036 --> 00:23:35,247 [uneasy music plays] 424 00:23:35,330 --> 00:23:38,125 [Richard] At this point, the police are going through the East End, 425 00:23:38,208 --> 00:23:39,584 searching for the murderer. 426 00:23:41,044 --> 00:23:42,671 You've also got an interesting situation 427 00:23:42,754 --> 00:23:44,840 where you've got lots of people out in disguise 428 00:23:44,923 --> 00:23:46,383 to try and catch the Ripper. 429 00:23:47,008 --> 00:23:49,261 We know of three medical students being used as decoys 430 00:23:49,344 --> 00:23:51,471 to try and lure the murderer out. 431 00:23:52,305 --> 00:23:55,767 [Paul] Men who dressed up as women, wandering around the East End 432 00:23:55,851 --> 00:23:58,103 in the hope of being attacked by Jack the Ripper 433 00:23:58,186 --> 00:23:59,938 so that they could catch him. 434 00:24:00,647 --> 00:24:02,983 The women started to arm themselves. 435 00:24:03,066 --> 00:24:07,696 So we have pictures of them holding knives, guns, scissors, 436 00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:10,907 knowing that, you know, they have to go out on the streets. 437 00:24:10,991 --> 00:24:14,077 They have nowhere else to go. They have to get their four pennies for a bed. 438 00:24:14,661 --> 00:24:16,204 But what an awful situation to be in, 439 00:24:16,288 --> 00:24:19,708 to think that your next customer could be your last. 440 00:24:22,878 --> 00:24:24,880 [unsettling music plays] 441 00:24:26,089 --> 00:24:28,758 [Richard] The whole of October went by without any murders, 442 00:24:29,468 --> 00:24:33,180 largely because the police presence in the area has really been stepped up. 443 00:24:33,805 --> 00:24:38,226 So nothing happened until the next murder on 9th November. 444 00:24:38,852 --> 00:24:41,438 And it is the worst in the series by far. 445 00:24:41,521 --> 00:24:43,899 [unsettling music plays] 446 00:24:46,193 --> 00:24:48,570 Mary Jane Kelly was in her mid-twenties, 447 00:24:48,653 --> 00:24:50,780 so she's the youngest of all of our ladies. 448 00:24:52,365 --> 00:24:54,284 And, like the other victims, 449 00:24:54,367 --> 00:24:58,955 she needed to get money, so she worked as a lady of the night. 450 00:25:00,165 --> 00:25:02,959 She has a room of her own in Whitechapel. 451 00:25:05,295 --> 00:25:10,717 A man called Thomas Bowyer goes around to collect rent from Mary Jane Kelly. 452 00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,303 -He knocks on the door. Nothing. -[knocking] 453 00:25:13,386 --> 00:25:15,931 [Lindsay] So he goes around to a side broken window. 454 00:25:16,014 --> 00:25:19,893 He moves the curtain. [gasps] And sees this horrific sight. 455 00:25:19,976 --> 00:25:21,603 Absolutely shocking. 456 00:25:23,438 --> 00:25:25,565 [Adam] Having the opportunity in that locked room, 457 00:25:25,649 --> 00:25:28,026 the killer could do whatever he wanted. 458 00:25:28,860 --> 00:25:31,154 Mary Kelly's body was completely eviscerated. 459 00:25:31,238 --> 00:25:34,533 Her face was completely cut off, breasts removed, 460 00:25:34,616 --> 00:25:37,786 laying on the bed, entrails all… all around the place. 461 00:25:39,704 --> 00:25:40,914 [Lindsay] She's killed indoors. 462 00:25:40,997 --> 00:25:45,085 She's the only murder to have been actually, uh, sort of happening indoors. 463 00:25:46,545 --> 00:25:48,922 [Richard] The police took a photograph of the body on the bed. 464 00:25:49,005 --> 00:25:51,216 It's one of the earliest crime scene photographs we have. 465 00:25:52,050 --> 00:25:55,887 You… you can't even think it's a human being. It was horrendous. 466 00:25:57,222 --> 00:25:59,849 [Lindsay] He'd cut off three flaps of flesh, 467 00:25:59,933 --> 00:26:01,893 put that on the bedside table. 468 00:26:01,977 --> 00:26:06,565 He'd cut off and extracted several sections of her abdominal area, 469 00:26:06,648 --> 00:26:08,316 placed them around her body. 470 00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:12,404 And if that's not enough, he slices the flesh off from her thigh, 471 00:26:13,697 --> 00:26:15,282 her thigh bone is exposed, 472 00:26:16,408 --> 00:26:18,868 and then he cuts out her heart. 473 00:26:19,995 --> 00:26:23,331 But sadly, Mary Jane Kelly's heart was never found. 474 00:26:27,210 --> 00:26:31,256 [Richard] The divisional police surgeon to Scotland Yard, Dr. Thomas Bond, 475 00:26:31,339 --> 00:26:34,676 he performed a postmortem on Mary Kelly as she lay in her room. 476 00:26:36,177 --> 00:26:39,097 [Adam] They said that it looked as though Mary 477 00:26:39,180 --> 00:26:42,017 potentially had been asleep when she was attacked. 478 00:26:42,601 --> 00:26:47,105 [Richard] Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard at the time, 479 00:26:47,188 --> 00:26:51,443 sought the opinion of Dr. Thomas Bond on the five murders. 480 00:26:51,526 --> 00:26:53,778 Anderson sent him the inquest reports 481 00:26:53,862 --> 00:26:56,698 on the deaths of Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, 482 00:26:56,781 --> 00:26:59,159 Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes. 483 00:26:59,242 --> 00:27:02,454 [Adam] Dr. Bond was known to have… have been consulted 484 00:27:02,537 --> 00:27:06,291 on some of the most notorious cases of the 1870s and 1880s 485 00:27:06,374 --> 00:27:08,418 across the country, not just London. 486 00:27:08,501 --> 00:27:11,963 After years of working for Scotland Yard, 487 00:27:13,048 --> 00:27:16,217 he became interested in the psyche of a killer. 488 00:27:16,301 --> 00:27:19,846 He was trying to get an understanding of how a murder was committed, 489 00:27:19,929 --> 00:27:22,724 rather than just the… the physical, medical side of things. 490 00:27:24,392 --> 00:27:26,186 Dr. Thomas Bond produced 491 00:27:26,269 --> 00:27:29,105 what is probably the first attempt at profiling a serial killer. 492 00:27:29,981 --> 00:27:35,070 And on 10th November, he submitted a report to Scotland Yard, 493 00:27:35,153 --> 00:27:39,908 which really shaped a lot of the way that we think about the… the Ripper today. 494 00:27:41,368 --> 00:27:44,120 [Richard] Bond talks about the similarities between the murders. 495 00:27:44,621 --> 00:27:48,041 He says that… that it would have been a surprise attack, 496 00:27:48,124 --> 00:27:50,043 that they wouldn't have been expecting it. 497 00:27:50,126 --> 00:27:52,712 The evidence does suggest he was able, for some reason, 498 00:27:52,796 --> 00:27:57,342 to overpower his victims very quickly and render them unconscious. 499 00:27:59,719 --> 00:28:02,972 [Adam] The idea that the victims were killed while they were laying down 500 00:28:03,056 --> 00:28:05,892 is a conclusion drawn up by Dr. Bond in his report. 501 00:28:05,975 --> 00:28:08,895 It certainly gives a lot of credence because there were thumb marks 502 00:28:08,978 --> 00:28:11,648 and finger marks found on the necks of the victims, 503 00:28:11,731 --> 00:28:15,819 which indicate they were strangled, certainly into insensibility, 504 00:28:15,902 --> 00:28:18,947 lowered to the ground, and then had their throat cut. 505 00:28:21,324 --> 00:28:23,910 And then the mutilations were carried out after death. 506 00:28:27,205 --> 00:28:29,207 [uneasy music plays] 507 00:28:30,959 --> 00:28:33,169 [Adam] Certainly in the 1880s, 508 00:28:33,253 --> 00:28:37,090 the idea of a serial killer as we know it today simply didn't exist. 509 00:28:37,966 --> 00:28:40,677 [Paul] It wasn't until the 1970s 510 00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:45,974 that the term "serial killer" became invented, as it were. 511 00:28:46,057 --> 00:28:51,271 But in 1888, the general public simply didn't believe 512 00:28:51,354 --> 00:28:54,691 that there were people out there who were killing without 513 00:28:54,774 --> 00:28:57,068 what they perceived of as a… as a motive. 514 00:28:57,736 --> 00:29:03,908 So the press and the public came up with suspects like the deranged doctor, 515 00:29:04,868 --> 00:29:06,286 a midwife, 516 00:29:07,036 --> 00:29:08,079 a butcher, 517 00:29:08,955 --> 00:29:13,460 because they had various skills that Jack the Ripper had. 518 00:29:14,586 --> 00:29:16,671 A butcher would have anatomical knowledge, 519 00:29:16,755 --> 00:29:19,007 but not necessarily surgical skill. 520 00:29:19,549 --> 00:29:21,426 A doctor would have both, of course. 521 00:29:22,969 --> 00:29:27,557 But the doctors at the time were divided in their opinions 522 00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:33,062 about whether or not the killer had surgical skill and anatomical knowledge. 523 00:29:33,146 --> 00:29:37,484 He certainly would appear to have known 524 00:29:37,567 --> 00:29:40,278 where things were in… in the human body 525 00:29:40,361 --> 00:29:43,156 to be able to extract various things. 526 00:29:44,908 --> 00:29:47,786 He would have been operating, uh, in some cases, 527 00:29:47,869 --> 00:29:50,997 in near to complete darkness. 528 00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:57,712 I think he's got to have had a degree of knowledge and skill 529 00:29:57,796 --> 00:29:59,297 to have been able to do that. 530 00:29:59,881 --> 00:30:01,883 [uneasy music plays] 531 00:30:02,759 --> 00:30:06,721 We know the murders weren't committed for robbery. 532 00:30:06,805 --> 00:30:08,389 They weren't committed for revenge. 533 00:30:08,473 --> 00:30:10,099 Not for any financial gain, 534 00:30:10,183 --> 00:30:12,185 not for jealousy, not because they're drunk. 535 00:30:12,268 --> 00:30:17,273 It's been done purely for the satisfaction of carrying out those mutilations. 536 00:30:18,942 --> 00:30:22,362 [Adam] The mutilations became more and more intense as the series progressed, 537 00:30:22,445 --> 00:30:25,698 because that lower level of mutilations wasn't enough 538 00:30:25,782 --> 00:30:28,409 for him to get the thrill that he was seeking. 539 00:30:29,202 --> 00:30:31,996 They were committed purely for a sexual thrill. 540 00:30:34,499 --> 00:30:39,045 That motive, or… or that sort of mental outlook on… on a perpetrator 541 00:30:39,128 --> 00:30:40,922 hadn't been looked at all before. 542 00:30:43,591 --> 00:30:46,302 In his report, Bond also gave his opinion 543 00:30:46,386 --> 00:30:49,472 as to what the killer was like in terms of character. 544 00:30:50,306 --> 00:30:54,853 He was a… a quiet, well-respected man, probably dressed respectably. 545 00:30:54,936 --> 00:30:57,188 He talks about his living arrangements as well. 546 00:30:57,272 --> 00:30:59,816 That he… he probably had a room he could… 547 00:30:59,899 --> 00:31:02,944 at least a room he could retire to, where he could clean himself up. 548 00:31:03,528 --> 00:31:04,946 He talks about even his income, 549 00:31:05,029 --> 00:31:08,283 that he's either got a private pension or a private income. 550 00:31:08,366 --> 00:31:10,493 He talks about that he's living with his family. 551 00:31:10,577 --> 00:31:12,287 His family might be shielding him. 552 00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:17,417 [Lindsay] Many people back then thought Jack the Ripper was possibly a lunatic 553 00:31:17,500 --> 00:31:19,711 and therefore may have been walking around the streets 554 00:31:19,794 --> 00:31:23,423 sort of frothing from the mouth and looking clearly very evil-looking 555 00:31:23,506 --> 00:31:24,549 and not very well. 556 00:31:24,632 --> 00:31:27,135 Clearly, the ladies of the night are clever, 557 00:31:27,218 --> 00:31:29,596 and they're not gonna approach anybody like that. 558 00:31:33,683 --> 00:31:37,729 I think the idea of Jack the Ripper as an unknown assailant, 559 00:31:37,812 --> 00:31:41,232 walking around deserted streets in the early hours with a top hat, 560 00:31:41,316 --> 00:31:42,609 carrying his black bag, 561 00:31:42,692 --> 00:31:45,737 is an image which has… has stayed with us for over a hundred years. 562 00:31:47,572 --> 00:31:49,741 When you look at the early silent movies 563 00:31:49,824 --> 00:31:52,911 where there was a lady being tied to a railway track, in danger, 564 00:31:52,994 --> 00:31:56,372 the villain who did that always had a top hat, black cloak, 565 00:31:56,456 --> 00:31:57,790 usually a nice, big mustache. 566 00:31:57,874 --> 00:32:01,002 Exactly the image that you think of Jack the Ripper today. 567 00:32:01,085 --> 00:32:05,173 And he really fits nicely into that real perpetrator of terrible deeds. 568 00:32:10,178 --> 00:32:12,347 [Paul] The black bag part 569 00:32:12,430 --> 00:32:17,810 comes from a man who was seen close to the murder of Elizabeth Stride. 570 00:32:18,770 --> 00:32:20,897 And he was carrying a black bag, 571 00:32:20,980 --> 00:32:24,484 but, in fact, he'd been doing business somewhere and was just on his way home, 572 00:32:24,567 --> 00:32:27,278 and he had a cast-iron alibi and had nothing to do with it, 573 00:32:27,362 --> 00:32:29,072 but the black bag stuck. 574 00:32:29,155 --> 00:32:30,907 [uneasy music plays] 575 00:32:30,990 --> 00:32:33,826 [Paul] Jack the Ripper with the top hat and carrying the Gladstone bag 576 00:32:33,910 --> 00:32:35,453 and wearing a cape, 577 00:32:36,371 --> 00:32:38,957 I think would have probably stood out like a sore thumb 578 00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:41,542 in the East End of London at… [chuckles] …at that time. 579 00:32:42,126 --> 00:32:45,338 The real Jack the Ripper must have been able to just walk the streets 580 00:32:45,421 --> 00:32:47,966 without being particularly noticed by anybody. 581 00:32:50,468 --> 00:32:53,554 [Richard] And there were lots of slaughterhouses in the area at the time, 582 00:32:53,638 --> 00:32:57,350 and it was quite common to see people in bloodstained clothing 583 00:32:57,433 --> 00:33:00,103 walking around the area in the early hours of the morning. 584 00:33:03,189 --> 00:33:06,734 Just after Mary Kelly's murder, something unusual happens. 585 00:33:06,818 --> 00:33:11,030 [Adam] A bunch of time passed by and the murders stop. 586 00:33:13,157 --> 00:33:15,535 So why would the killer stop? 587 00:33:18,204 --> 00:33:22,917 Had he satisfied his bloodlust through the horrific mutilations of Mary? 588 00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,797 If the murders have ended, something's happened to the murderer. Has he died? 589 00:33:28,423 --> 00:33:31,134 [Lindsay] He may have left the country, may have gone on holiday, 590 00:33:31,217 --> 00:33:32,969 may have been locked up for another crime. 591 00:33:33,052 --> 00:33:37,015 Some people have… have conjectured that maybe he was in quite ill health. 592 00:33:38,683 --> 00:33:41,853 And then some people thought he may be a sailor. 593 00:33:42,812 --> 00:33:46,399 Commit the murder, and then disappear again on the boat going out again. 594 00:33:47,483 --> 00:33:51,404 It's almost a perfect way of… of committing a murder. 595 00:33:52,405 --> 00:33:54,866 [Richard] And then, of course, there is the asylum theory. 596 00:33:55,366 --> 00:33:59,245 The murders ended because the killer went into an asylum. 597 00:34:03,791 --> 00:34:08,337 Very early on in the investigation, the police had an awful lot of suspects. 598 00:34:08,421 --> 00:34:13,593 You've got people being pulled in, uh, by the police on almost a conveyor belt. 599 00:34:14,761 --> 00:34:17,513 [Adam] Every person that was potentially sighted, 600 00:34:17,597 --> 00:34:19,098 uh, acting in a suspicious manner, 601 00:34:19,182 --> 00:34:22,518 or looked like someone that had been seen by a witness, 602 00:34:22,602 --> 00:34:24,228 they had to follow up their story. 603 00:34:26,105 --> 00:34:27,690 And over the years, 604 00:34:27,774 --> 00:34:30,401 there's obviously a lot of people, for very good reasons, 605 00:34:30,485 --> 00:34:33,488 who've done their own research and come up with their own suspects. 606 00:34:33,571 --> 00:34:36,824 And there are a handful of suspects worth taking seriously. 607 00:34:37,950 --> 00:34:41,579 [Lindsay] One suspect in the police files is Montague John Druitt. 608 00:34:43,790 --> 00:34:46,334 [Richard] Druitt was a barrister in South London. 609 00:34:47,418 --> 00:34:48,628 He was also a teacher as well. 610 00:34:51,714 --> 00:34:54,175 Around about November 1888, he was dismissed. 611 00:34:57,637 --> 00:35:02,433 [Adam] His body was found floating in the Thames on the last day of 1888. 612 00:35:04,352 --> 00:35:05,728 [Richard] When the murders stopped, 613 00:35:05,812 --> 00:35:08,648 one of the things the police thought is he's committed suicide. 614 00:35:08,731 --> 00:35:11,818 So they're looking at all the suicides that take place 615 00:35:11,901 --> 00:35:13,486 just after Mary Kelly's murder. 616 00:35:14,362 --> 00:35:17,615 One suicide that comes forward is that of Montague John Druitt. 617 00:35:18,991 --> 00:35:20,535 According to the police reports, 618 00:35:20,618 --> 00:35:23,079 his own family thought that he was the murderer. 619 00:35:24,330 --> 00:35:29,043 His brother testifies that, uh, he's… he's been mentally unstable for a time. 620 00:35:29,127 --> 00:35:31,587 He's found a note saying he felt he was going mad. 621 00:35:31,671 --> 00:35:33,047 It's better that he should die. 622 00:35:35,007 --> 00:35:39,512 But there's no firm evidence that points to Druitt having visited Whitechapel, 623 00:35:39,595 --> 00:35:43,141 let alone being seen with any of the women on the nights of their murders. 624 00:35:43,224 --> 00:35:47,979 It purely seems to come down to the fact that he was found drowned in the Thames 625 00:35:48,062 --> 00:35:50,439 at the end of that year. 626 00:35:55,069 --> 00:35:56,612 [uneasy music plays] 627 00:35:56,696 --> 00:36:00,158 [Richard] Dr. Francis Tumblety is one of the most intriguing suspects. 628 00:36:01,117 --> 00:36:04,745 He's the only one of the suspects who was actually arrested for the murders 629 00:36:04,829 --> 00:36:06,497 just before Mary Kelly's murder. 630 00:36:06,998 --> 00:36:09,709 He was an American, and he was given bail, 631 00:36:09,792 --> 00:36:12,712 and he skipped bail and then went back to America. 632 00:36:13,296 --> 00:36:16,924 When he was in New York, Tumblety started giving interviews saying, 633 00:36:17,008 --> 00:36:20,303 "Well, I was arrested on… on suspicion of being the murderer." 634 00:36:21,179 --> 00:36:24,182 So Tumblety said, "All I did was, I did what everybody did." 635 00:36:24,265 --> 00:36:27,602 "I was fascinated, so I went into the area to look at the murders." 636 00:36:28,311 --> 00:36:30,771 And somehow he got himself arrested 637 00:36:30,855 --> 00:36:33,858 on suspicion of having committed the Jack the Ripper murders. 638 00:36:34,567 --> 00:36:37,695 But, of course, there's no evidence to suggest he was the killer. 639 00:36:40,990 --> 00:36:43,784 [Adam] The last prime suspect after Tumblety and Druitt 640 00:36:43,868 --> 00:36:45,870 was just given the name Kosminski. 641 00:36:47,955 --> 00:36:52,835 [Paul] The name Kosminski appears to have come from police files. 642 00:36:53,461 --> 00:36:58,257 They described him as a Polish Jew who was put into an asylum. 643 00:36:59,258 --> 00:37:01,135 We don't know who Kosminski was, 644 00:37:01,219 --> 00:37:05,973 but a search was done, and it does appear to have been 645 00:37:06,057 --> 00:37:09,268 a fairly comprehensive search of asylum records, 646 00:37:09,352 --> 00:37:10,895 looking for a Kosminski. 647 00:37:11,854 --> 00:37:17,109 And the only one that's been found is a man called Aaron Kosminski. 648 00:37:18,236 --> 00:37:20,947 [Adam] Aaron Kosminski lived in Whitechapel. 649 00:37:21,030 --> 00:37:23,366 He was a young Polish Jew. 650 00:37:25,117 --> 00:37:28,162 But he didn't go to the asylum until 1891. 651 00:37:28,246 --> 00:37:31,666 He was still wandering around Whitechapel three years after Mary Kelly was killed, 652 00:37:31,749 --> 00:37:34,835 so that doesn't really chime with the idea 653 00:37:34,919 --> 00:37:38,923 that the suspect was taken off the street soon after the last murder. 654 00:37:40,633 --> 00:37:41,801 [Richard] Sir Robert Anderson 655 00:37:41,884 --> 00:37:44,512 and Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson, 656 00:37:44,595 --> 00:37:46,806 the two highest-ranking officers on the case, 657 00:37:46,889 --> 00:37:51,060 both appear to have thought that a man named Kosminski was the murderer. 658 00:37:51,143 --> 00:37:53,229 Anderson and Swanson were in the position to know 659 00:37:53,312 --> 00:37:55,147 all the evidence against all the suspects, 660 00:37:55,231 --> 00:37:57,942 and if they thought the evidence against Kosminski 661 00:37:58,025 --> 00:38:00,403 was stronger than the evidence against any other suspect, 662 00:38:00,486 --> 00:38:03,656 he has to be high on the list of suspects of being Jack the Ripper. 663 00:38:04,407 --> 00:38:08,995 The only problem is that, uh, we can't say with any degree of certainty 664 00:38:09,078 --> 00:38:13,499 that Aaron Kosminski is definitely the Kosminski they had in mind. 665 00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,842 [Adam] Over the years, there's been more and more suspects 666 00:38:22,925 --> 00:38:25,428 and various theories coming out. 667 00:38:26,012 --> 00:38:28,306 And, in fact, the Johnny Depp film From Hell 668 00:38:28,389 --> 00:38:32,601 and the Michael Caine 1988 television series, 669 00:38:32,685 --> 00:38:37,690 probably the two most well-known fictional versions of the Ripper story, 670 00:38:37,773 --> 00:38:40,401 both featured Sir William Gull as the Ripper. 671 00:38:40,484 --> 00:38:42,486 [sinister music plays] 672 00:38:45,323 --> 00:38:48,117 [Lindsay] So Sir William Gull, who has been claimed as the murderer 673 00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:50,202 in nearly all the films you will ever see, 674 00:38:50,286 --> 00:38:52,288 has being linked since the 1970s 675 00:38:52,371 --> 00:38:54,665 with what we call the Royal Conspiracy Theory. 676 00:38:55,958 --> 00:38:57,418 So according to the theory, 677 00:38:57,501 --> 00:38:59,795 Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, 678 00:38:59,879 --> 00:39:03,049 had an affair with an East End prostitute, and they had a baby. 679 00:39:03,132 --> 00:39:04,550 A baby girl, Alice. 680 00:39:04,633 --> 00:39:06,802 Alice had a nanny, Mary Jane Kelly. 681 00:39:06,886 --> 00:39:08,137 Mary Jane had four friends. 682 00:39:08,220 --> 00:39:10,931 Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes. 683 00:39:11,015 --> 00:39:14,602 And together, as a group, they set out to blackmail the Crown and the government 684 00:39:14,685 --> 00:39:16,771 with this secret knowledge about a baby. 685 00:39:16,854 --> 00:39:19,648 Therefore, the royal doctor, Sir William Gull, 686 00:39:19,732 --> 00:39:21,692 was sent out to track them down to kill them 687 00:39:21,776 --> 00:39:23,527 to keep the secret silent forever. 688 00:39:25,029 --> 00:39:28,949 The problem with that theory is that Sir William Gull had had a stroke in 1887, 689 00:39:29,033 --> 00:39:32,578 so he was physically incapable of, uh, trundling around Whitechapel, 690 00:39:32,661 --> 00:39:34,789 carrying out these murders and mutilations. 691 00:39:35,289 --> 00:39:37,541 [Lindsay] Sir William was never a contemporary suspect. 692 00:39:37,625 --> 00:39:39,752 His name does not appear in any police files, 693 00:39:39,835 --> 00:39:41,087 in any contemporary papers, 694 00:39:41,170 --> 00:39:44,256 in any contemporary documentation with this case whatsoever. 695 00:39:45,132 --> 00:39:47,885 [Adam] And of course, when that theory is completely debunked, 696 00:39:47,968 --> 00:39:49,428 it stayed in the consciousness. 697 00:39:49,929 --> 00:39:53,808 Many people just blame anybody who was literally alive at the time. 698 00:39:53,891 --> 00:39:57,728 And I think quite a lot of people have been blamed with no real evidence, 699 00:39:57,812 --> 00:40:00,106 because very few records, sadly, exist. 700 00:40:02,942 --> 00:40:06,070 The Jack the Ripper murders, as most people would tend to think of them, 701 00:40:06,153 --> 00:40:08,322 were just over the autumn of 1888. 702 00:40:08,406 --> 00:40:11,617 That's the murder of five victims in a number of weeks. 703 00:40:11,700 --> 00:40:14,537 But there's a police file called the Whitechapel murders file, 704 00:40:14,620 --> 00:40:18,791 which ranges from 1888 all the way through to 1891 705 00:40:18,874 --> 00:40:21,627 and covers much more than the five victims. 706 00:40:21,710 --> 00:40:23,587 We don't know how many, if any, 707 00:40:23,671 --> 00:40:27,174 of the other victims in the Whitechapel murders wider file 708 00:40:27,258 --> 00:40:29,301 may have been killed by the Ripper as well. 709 00:40:30,678 --> 00:40:32,721 [thunder rumbles] 710 00:40:32,805 --> 00:40:34,723 [thunder crashes] 711 00:40:36,434 --> 00:40:39,812 [Paul] There's a file, which we refer to as the "suspects file," 712 00:40:40,479 --> 00:40:43,607 of people who were questioned about the Ripper 713 00:40:43,691 --> 00:40:46,944 and perhaps suspected of it for a short while. 714 00:40:47,570 --> 00:40:50,781 Um, that file's gone, and we don't know wh-- what's happened to it. 715 00:40:51,365 --> 00:40:54,618 [Adam] It was well-known that in the years following the 1880s, 716 00:40:54,702 --> 00:40:55,953 going into 1890s, 717 00:40:56,036 --> 00:40:59,248 police officers were allowed to go and examine the papers. 718 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,919 And it seems that right from that point, certain sheets or reports, 719 00:41:04,003 --> 00:41:06,213 photographs of the victims that we have today, 720 00:41:06,297 --> 00:41:11,343 were slowly weeded out, taken away, removed by souvenir hunters. 721 00:41:12,303 --> 00:41:15,473 Bond's report went missing from the files for several years, 722 00:41:15,556 --> 00:41:19,185 and when it was recovered, sent anonymously to Scotland Yard. 723 00:41:19,977 --> 00:41:22,104 [Paul] The "Dear Boss" letter went missing. 724 00:41:22,188 --> 00:41:24,607 And that, fortunately, was returned. 725 00:41:24,690 --> 00:41:27,485 And some of the photographs of the victims, 726 00:41:27,568 --> 00:41:32,072 uh, have been discovered, uh, in the last couple of decades. 727 00:41:33,282 --> 00:41:35,367 It's a bit like putting together a jigsaw. 728 00:41:35,451 --> 00:41:36,994 You have all these pieces, 729 00:41:37,786 --> 00:41:41,290 and some of those pieces don't actually fit that jigsaw. 730 00:41:41,874 --> 00:41:45,461 And so you manage to put together all the ones that seem to form a picture. 731 00:41:45,544 --> 00:41:49,256 You get a picture. And then you get chunks in the picture that are missing. 732 00:41:55,471 --> 00:41:57,389 [Lindsay] It is frustrating, as a crime historian, 733 00:41:57,473 --> 00:42:00,184 not being able to say, "This is the person that did it." 734 00:42:00,267 --> 00:42:03,187 And more to the point, to be able to solve these killings 735 00:42:03,270 --> 00:42:07,149 for the victims' families and descendants, because they are still out there. 736 00:42:08,275 --> 00:42:11,445 [Richard] The more people look into it, the more facts come to light, 737 00:42:11,529 --> 00:42:14,990 and the more facts come to light, then the story just evolves, 738 00:42:15,074 --> 00:42:18,160 develops, and takes on, uh, different aspects, 739 00:42:18,244 --> 00:42:21,539 and goes off in directions that you would never expect it to go off in. 740 00:42:22,122 --> 00:42:24,500 Of course, we'd love to know who Jack the Ripper was. 741 00:42:24,583 --> 00:42:27,753 I mean, uh, the end of the mystery, th-- that would be terrific. 742 00:42:28,337 --> 00:42:32,174 What we would like is any… any new information. 743 00:42:32,258 --> 00:42:33,842 Anything that people have got. 744 00:42:34,927 --> 00:42:37,680 [Richard] There might be documents out there that are in people's lofts. 745 00:42:37,763 --> 00:42:39,473 They might be in people's cellars. 746 00:42:41,100 --> 00:42:44,103 [Adam] I believe there's something potentially out there 747 00:42:44,186 --> 00:42:47,273 which could take the case much forward and potentially solve it. 748 00:42:47,356 --> 00:42:50,985 Somebody might, one day, might open a trunk, might open a case, 749 00:42:51,068 --> 00:42:53,404 and there's the evidence that names Jack the Ripper. 750 00:42:55,864 --> 00:42:58,325 But until that happens, it's still a mystery. 751 00:42:58,409 --> 00:43:00,411 [uneasy music plays] 752 00:43:04,832 --> 00:43:06,458 [bell tolls] 753 00:43:08,877 --> 00:43:10,879 [unsettling music plays] 754 00:44:22,743 --> 00:44:23,952 [music ends]