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Authors: Donald Bain, Jessica Fletcher
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killer was either an acquaintance or a stranger, someone she planned to meet or someone who surprised her. Not much help there. But the killer had attacked her from behind. That much was certain. He or she would have had to move swiftly to catch Alicia off guard. There had been no indication that I could see that she’d fought off her assailant, although it had been dark when I discovered her.
I eventually climbed into bed with Alicia’s book and paged through it, paying particular attention to the parts she had underlined.
The original “Jack the Ripper” was a product of late-nineteenth-century England. He’d operated in the Whitechapel district of London where poverty, crime, and violence were commonplace. Five grotesque murders sharing similar characteristics are attributed to this otherwise unnamed killer, although another six with variations on the distinctive features are thought to have possibly been his as well, but may have been the work of imitators spurred on by sensational news coverage.
In a typical case, the victim was a poor woman from the slums, most likely a prostitute. She would be found with her neck slashed and her body mutilated, in some instances with an organ removed. The crimes took place at night, within a few streets of one another, either at the end of one month or the beginning of another, and on or near the weekend, leading criminal profilers of the day to speculate that the murderer may have worked during the week and/or lived nearby. Others—including Queen Victoria—suggested that he may have been employed on a cattle boat, since Whitechapel was near the London Docks and cattle boats docked on Thursday or Friday and went out again on Saturday or Sunday. Those theories were never confirmed, nor was the one that suggested, given the killer’s interest in the body, that he was either a butcher or a surgeon.
The investigation was shared by two police divisions—Whitechapel and the City of London—as well as the central investigating unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, orScotland Yard as it’s known. Although thousands of people were questioned, hundreds investigated, and nearly a hundred jailed for varying periods of time, the killer had never been apprehended.
Alicia had highlighted a paragraph that referred to a volunteer citizen effort that arose when local businessmen, impatient with the authorities’ progress, took matters into their own hands, patrolling the streets searching for suspicious individuals. Using the newspaper to advance its agenda, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee hired private investigators to question witnesses, and encouraged the government to offer a reward for information, but was no more successful in identifying or capturing Jack the Ripper than the police.
I closed the book, intending to finish it the next day, and placed it on my nightstand. As I turned out the light, my mind ricocheted from fact to fallacy, from what I thought I knew to what was still a mystery.
The unsolved crimes of Jack the Ripper had inspired hundreds of fictional and nonfictional accounts in print, on film, on stage and television, in songs, poems, and games. Was this Bermuda killer a modern-day copycat? Could he have been reading the same book to learn the ways of his eighteenth-century predecessor? How were the Bermudian police going to track him down? According to the press conference, the police were already getting outside help, but what could someone who wasn’t familiar with the island contribute? I was also curious about the beautiful woman whom the police commissioner had indicated when he spoke about help coming from Scotland Yard.
I must have dozed off during my reflections on the crime, but something interrupted my sleep. I opened my eyes and lay quietly trying to summon up what had awakened me.
It was probably unwise to read stories about Jack the Ripper before trying to sleep,
I chided myself. The images Alicia’s book aroused were not the stuff of
I eventually climbed into bed with Alicia’s book and paged through it, paying particular attention to the parts she had underlined.
The original “Jack the Ripper” was a product of late-nineteenth-century England. He’d operated in the Whitechapel district of London where poverty, crime, and violence were commonplace. Five grotesque murders sharing similar characteristics are attributed to this otherwise unnamed killer, although another six with variations on the distinctive features are thought to have possibly been his as well, but may have been the work of imitators spurred on by sensational news coverage.
In a typical case, the victim was a poor woman from the slums, most likely a prostitute. She would be found with her neck slashed and her body mutilated, in some instances with an organ removed. The crimes took place at night, within a few streets of one another, either at the end of one month or the beginning of another, and on or near the weekend, leading criminal profilers of the day to speculate that the murderer may have worked during the week and/or lived nearby. Others—including Queen Victoria—suggested that he may have been employed on a cattle boat, since Whitechapel was near the London Docks and cattle boats docked on Thursday or Friday and went out again on Saturday or Sunday. Those theories were never confirmed, nor was the one that suggested, given the killer’s interest in the body, that he was either a butcher or a surgeon.
The investigation was shared by two police divisions—Whitechapel and the City of London—as well as the central investigating unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, orScotland Yard as it’s known. Although thousands of people were questioned, hundreds investigated, and nearly a hundred jailed for varying periods of time, the killer had never been apprehended.
Alicia had highlighted a paragraph that referred to a volunteer citizen effort that arose when local businessmen, impatient with the authorities’ progress, took matters into their own hands, patrolling the streets searching for suspicious individuals. Using the newspaper to advance its agenda, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee hired private investigators to question witnesses, and encouraged the government to offer a reward for information, but was no more successful in identifying or capturing Jack the Ripper than the police.
I closed the book, intending to finish it the next day, and placed it on my nightstand. As I turned out the light, my mind ricocheted from fact to fallacy, from what I thought I knew to what was still a mystery.
The unsolved crimes of Jack the Ripper had inspired hundreds of fictional and nonfictional accounts in print, on film, on stage and television, in songs, poems, and games. Was this Bermuda killer a modern-day copycat? Could he have been reading the same book to learn the ways of his eighteenth-century predecessor? How were the Bermudian police going to track him down? According to the press conference, the police were already getting outside help, but what could someone who wasn’t familiar with the island contribute? I was also curious about the beautiful woman whom the police commissioner had indicated when he spoke about help coming from Scotland Yard.
I must have dozed off during my reflections on the crime, but something interrupted my sleep. I opened my eyes and lay quietly trying to summon up what had awakened me.
It was probably unwise to read stories about Jack the Ripper before trying to sleep,
I chided myself. The images Alicia’s book aroused were not the stuff of
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