Before we start today's story, I wanted to
give you a heads up that if you're listening
with the kiddos, you might want to listen
to this one on your own first.
There's no swearing or anything, but as you
can tell from the title of this episode, we're
going to be talking about Jack the Ripper's
brutal murders…so consider this your parental
warning.
If you're a fan of graphic novels, you know
who Alan Moore is.
He's made a name for himself in the industry
writing Superman and Batman comics for DC.
But even if you're not a fan of graphic novels,
you've probably seen—or at least heard of—some
of the movies that have been created from
his works.
Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen, just to name a few.
While some people would be ecstatic to have
their work adapted for the silver screen,
Alan wasn't.
He'd written the stories like Watchman specifically
as comics and wasn't a fan of having them
turned into films—a completely different
medium.
But that didn't stop it from happening.
Despite his not liking the idea of having
his work turned into movies, today we're going
to be looking at the film that led the way
when it was released in 2001 after being adapted
from a graphic novel of the same name.
Today we're going to be doing a bit of true
crime as we compare history with From Hell.
I'm Dan LeFebvre.
And this is Based on a True Story.
Before we travel back in time, let's set up
our Two Truths and a Lie game!
If you're new to the show, here's how it works:
I'm about to say three facts…two of them
are true, which means one of them is a lie.
Are you ready?
OK, here they are:
1.
Many of Jack the Ripper's victims had their
throats cut from left to right
2.
There were 11 murders linked to Jack the Ripper,
not six like the movie shows
3.
Jack the Ripper's murders were unsolved at
the time, but today we know who he was
Got them?
OK, now as you're listening to our story today,
you'll find the two facts scattered somewhere
throughout the episode.
By a simple process of elimination you'll
know which one is a lie.
And, of course, we'll do a recap at the end
of the episode to see how well you did.
And I wanted to say a big thank you to Nikki
for becoming an official Producer of the show!
If you're not sure what that means, as a Producer
of the show, Nikki got to pick a movie and
have it jump to the front of the line…and
she picked From Hell.
Hence today's episode!
Haha!
Oh, and Producers also get early access to
episodes before anyone else along with some
exclusive bonus episodes.
For example, I've got a bonus episode going
out to accompany this one that dives a little
deeper into the story with some of the letters
that Jack the Ripper wrote…read by yours
truly.
It's some pretty chilling stuff, but if you
enjoy today's episode, you might enjoy that
as well.
If you want to get access to that hop on over
to basedonatruestorypodcast.com/support.
Thank you so much, Nikki, for your support
and for helping keep the lights on here at
the show.
OK, you ready?
Let's compare history with Hollywood's version
of From Hell!
One day men will look back and say I gave
birth to the Twentieth Century.
— Jack the Ripper, 1888
That quote is the very first thing we see
on screen as the movie begins.
Unfortunately, that's not something the real
Jack the Ripper ever said.
Which, I guess, if he had talked about giving
birth to the 20th century in 1888, that'd
be a little strange since he'd be saying that
over a decade too early.
Although, it's worth pointing out that while
the quote may not have been something the
real Jack the Ripper said, the date is accurate.
And so is the text on the next scene where
we find out this is happening in the Whitechapel
District.
That's in the East End of London.
After establishing the time and place, we're
introduced to Mary Kelly, as played by Heather
Graham, as she walks along the street saying
a friendly hello to many of the other women
she passes.
Then, after a brief run-in with the Nichols
Street Gang where we learn that Mary's being
forced to pay protection money, we meet some
of Mary's other friends that are some of the
main characters in the film.
Including Mary, who is often referred to in
historical documents as Marie Kelly, there's
six women getting washed up as we see them
for the first time.
The others are, in no particular order, Liz
Stride as played by Susan Lynch, Dark Annie
Chapman as played by Katrin Cartlidge, Kate
Eddowes as played by Lesley Sharp, Martha
Tabram as played by Samantha Spiro and Polly
Nichols as played by Annabelle Apsion.
All of those women are real, although it's
worth pointing out that we don't really know
if these women knew each other.
What we do know, though, is that they were
all prostitutes in the same area of London.
So there's a chance they knew each other,
but seeing as many of the working women of
Whitechapel back in the day weren't exactly
very well off, that also meant there was little
to no documentation of their day-to-day life.
So even if they were good friends like the
movie suggests, there's no way we'd really
know.
There's one more woman I didn't mention, though.
Her name is Ann Crook, and she's played by
Joanna Page.
I didn't mention her because she's the one
who walks up with a baby after we're first
introduced to the other six ladies first.
Ann tells the story of how she's been taken
care of by a rather well-off man—the father
of the baby.
That man's name, according to Ann, is named
Albert.
And again, both of those are real people.
Well, Ann is usually referred to by historians
today as Annie Crook.
As for the father of the baby, although they
don't really explain who he is until a little
later in the movie, I'm going to go ahead
and spoil it for you and let you know that
Albert was, as the movie says later, Prince
Albert Victor.
Prince Albert was a member of the royal family
in the United Kingdom as the son of Edward
and Alexandra of Denmark.
He was the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne
of Great Britain, older brother of Prince
George and grandson of Queen Victoria.
Although his father wasn't king when he was
born in 1864, when his grandmother, Queen
Victoria, passed away in 1901, Albert's father
became King Edward VII.
Speaking of Ann and Albert, going back to
the movie, the next big plot point in the
movie is a scene where we see the couple having
sex.
Then Ben Kidney bursts into the room with
a couple of goons and haul them both off.
Oh, and Ben Kidney, who's played by Terence
Harvey, is a fictional character.
Although he could've been modeled after a
real person named Michael Kidney.
In the movie, Ann and Albert are taken away
in two different carriages.
We never see where Albert goes, but we see
Ann get interrogated by Kidney—"Who knows!?"
The movie doesn't really tell us why he's
trying to interrogate Ann, but we'd later
find out he was trying to learn who else knows
about the baby Ann and Albert had.
After this, still in the movie's storyline,
we see the first murder.
It's Samantha Spiro's character, Martha Tabram.
She parts ways with Mary, who's taking Ann's
baby to her parents, Ann's parents that is,
while Martha is going back to work.
Suddenly, Martha is pulled into a dark corner.
Amid Martha's muffled screams, all we can
see is the glint of a knife.
Stabbing.
With each stroke, a little more blood covers
the knife.
The specifics of how the murder happened was
fictionalized for the film on the account
of—well, the obvious.
By that, what I mean is that to this day we
don't know for sure who Jack the Ripper really
was.
And, sadly, it is true that Martha was murdered
in Whitechapel on Tuesday, August 7th, 1888.
So there's not going to be any reports or
documents of an event only witnessed by two
people—one of whom we don't know who it
is, and the other being murdered.
But was it Jack the Ripper?
Maybe.
Even though the movie never comes out and
shows the killer, we get the implication maybe
it was.
In truth, we don't really know.
At the time, the viciousness of Martha's murder—39
stab wounds—led the police to connect it
to the slew of Jack the Ripper murders that
followed hers, but more recently a lot of
historians and other various experts who have
studied the Jack the Ripper mystery extensively
have suggested perhaps her murder was not
connected to Jack.
One of the big reasons for that is because
Martha's murder was unlike any of the others—she
was stabbed instead of slashed.
But it was still a brutal murder of a prostitute
around the same time, so maybe there is a
connection.
Speaking of which, the movie never mentions
this at all, but there's another murder that
actually happened before Martha that some
today think might be a victim of Jack.
That'd be another prostitute named Emma Smith.
She was attacked and raped on Tuesday, April
3rd, 1888.
That's 126 days before Martha was murdered.
But the reason the police of the time did
not connect Emma to Jack while they did connect
Martha was because Emma didn't die.
She survived the attack and told the police
that she had been assaulted by either two
or three men—she wasn't sure.
One of them, though, she said was really young.
Sadly, she developed peritonitis after the
attack.
That's an inflammation of the inner wall of
the abdomen, and something she'd contracted
because during the rape apparently the attackers
had used a blunt object so forcefully it'd
ruptured that lining.
Emma passed on the morning of April 4th, 1888,
the day after the attack.
So does that mean Jack the Ripper is actually
multiple people?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Some have suggested maybe Emma wasn't a victim
of Jack, but rather a local gang.
In the movie, there's the mention of a Nichols
Street Gang, and while we don't really know
specifics about the people involved in local
gangs like that, we do know that there were
multiple gangs in the streets of Whitechapel
in 1888.
Or maybe Emma really was the first victim
of Jack the Ripper and she recognized him,
so she deliberately led the cops down the
wrong path because she was afraid he'd finish
the job.
Or maybe she'd been attacked by her own employers—her
pimps—who were using her as an example for
other prostitutes.
There's a lot of theories.
We'll just have to be satisfied without knowing
the truth.
Going back to the movie, after Martha's murder
we're introduced to Johnny Depp's version
of Inspector Frederick Abberline.
As a little side note, if you've read the
graphic novel the movie is based on, he's
Frank Abberline.
And maybe it's just me, but I've never heard
of the name Frank used as a shortened version
of Frederick so we could come to the conclusion
that Frank Abberline is a fictionalized version
of the real Frederick Abberline.
However, it'd seem the movie is a little more
accurate than the graphic novel here because
the real person's name was indeed Frederick
Abberline.
He was the Chief Inspector for the London
Metropolitan Police who was assigned to the
murders that would turn out to be Jack the
Ripper's victims.
Although, throughout the movie Johnny Depp's
version of Frederick Abberline has a bit of
a special power where he sees visions of the
killings.
A special power that seems to be induced mostly
when he's high on drugs.
And since we were just speaking of the graphic
novel, it's worth pointing out that in there
Frank Abberline didn't have that sort of special
power.
Instead, he did meet up with a man named Robert
James Lee.
It was Lee who was a clairvoyant claiming
to see the murders in his visions, not Abberline.
Let's hop back into the movie's timeline,
though, and the next major plot point happens
when we're introduced to a couple more characters.
William Gull, who's played by Ian Holm, and
Dr. Ferral, who's played by Paul Rhys.
William is explaining a medical process while
Dr. Ferral performs it on a girl tied down
in the center of a bunch of medical students
looking on.
The girl is Ann Crook, who we saw earlier.
The procedure is one a lobotomy—removing
the connections to the frontal lobe of the
brain.
As William Gull explains it in the movie,
this simple procedure will cure the violent
form of the poor girl's dementia permanently.
Except…Ann was fine.
She had no issues before this procedure.
We know this from seeing her earlier in the
film as a happy girl enjoying life with Albert
and their newborn baby, Alice.
So something fishy is going on.
And again, the movie is showing something
that we just don't know is true.
But I suppose that also means we don't know
it's not true…hence why there's been so
many debates back and forth for centuries.
Way too much than we could hope to cover in
a single episode.
For the sake of our story today, though, let's
summarize this theory because it's really
the plot of the theory for both the From Hell
graphic novel and the movie.
Do you remember the baby that Ann Crook had
with Albert earlier in the movie?
Well, according to this version of the story,
Annie Crook got pregnant and married Albert.
If you recall, Albert was none other than
Prince Albert Victor.
So the marriage and baby meant that the child,
whose name was Alice Margaret, might have
claim to the throne.
We don't really know how legitimate that claim
would've been, but it'd seem no one wanted
to find out.
To make sure it never got out, Annie had the
lobotomy to remove her memory.
Then Sir William Gull, who at that point was
a surgeon connected to the royal family, enlisted
the help of a couple other men to silence
Annie's friends—the six other women we were
introduced to earlier.
And just like the movie suggests, according
to this version of the story, Sir William
Gull is Jack the Ripper.
He's sent by the royal family to hide the
fact that Britain's heir to the throne had
a child with someone they deemed unworthy—Annie.
Seemingly on his own, Sir William Gull decides
to turn the women into a Masonic ritual series
of killings, perhaps in an attempt to further
distance the murders from the crown.
Then, as we saw at the very end of the movie,
William Gull himself is silenced with a lobotomy.
The same way he silenced Ann Crook.
At least, that's how the story goes—and
for what it's worth, the movie is pretty faithful
to this version of the story.
Unfortunately, we just don't know if any of
that is true.
Let's start with Annie Crook.
We don't really have any records indicating
she lived anything but a normal life.
In fact, some historians point to an Annie
Crook living in the Upper Rathbone Place area
of London in 1891 along with a child named
Alice Margaret as being the one and same Annie
Crook.
If you happen to have an Ancestry.com subscription,
you can find the census records to find her
listed there, living with Annie's parents,
William and Sarah.
And if that's the same Annie Crook with little
Alice then that'd seem to call into question
the storyline that both the graphic novel
and movie follow—that Annie was lobotomized
and lived out the rest of her life not at
home but rather shrouded in anonymity in a
mental hospital.
Some historians have even managed to track
what they claim was Annie's life through to
her eventual death in 1920, including multiple
instances of her holding down jobs along the
way.
Not something you'd get from someone locked
away in a mental ward.
What, then, of Sir William Gull?
Well, he was a real person.
And he was, like this version of the story
suggests, a surgeon.
He rose from a rather obscure background to
prominence toward the end of 1871 when he
successfully treated the then-Prince of Wales,
Edward, after he came down with typhoid fever.
Saving the future king's life helped William's
status, and he was given a Baronship as well
as being named the Physician-in-Ordinary to
Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
Although it's worth pointing out that the
real William Gull never seemed to get a lobotomy
like the movie suggests.
Instead, in 1887, William Gull suffered a
stroke that he feared was but the first of
many to come.
And he was right.
He'd end up suffering numerous strokes over
the next couple of years.
Maybe, as some have suggested, William Gull's
stroke in 1887 caused something to go wrong
in his mind that led to the killings.
If you recall, the first of the Jack the Ripper
victims passed away in April of 1888—assuming
that Emma Smith was indeed his victim.
If you recall from the movie, it's implied
that the queen had something to do with the
murders when we see Ian Holm's version of
Sir William Gull receiving his marching orders
of silencing the women from none other than
Queen Victoria, who's played by Liz Moscrop.
And perhaps that's one reason why this version
of the story has held so much weight for so
long.
After all, how spicy of a conspiracy is it
that Jack the Ripper was actually commissioned
by the throne itself?
Maybe Jack the Ripper was born out of a perfect
storm of sorts, when Sir William was asked
to cover up Prince Albert's child and the
strokes that Sir William suffered around the
same time.
And maybe all of that was covered up by Queen
Victoria.
Or maybe not.
Either way, we'll never know.
What we do know is that, unlike what we see
in the movie, Sir William Gull was never lobotomized.
Instead, his health deteriorated after that
first stroke in 1887.
On January 27th, 1890, he suffered what would
be his final stroke.
Then, on January 29th, Sir William Gull passed
away.
Now we haven't really mentioned it until now,
but the timing of Sir William's death could
itself be what suggests he wasn't Jack the
Ripper.
You see, despite what the movie shows, the
final murder tied to Jack the Ripper was in
1891—after Sir William died.
Well, maybe.
Now would be a good time to go over the victims.
There's more than the six women we see killed
in the movie.
In all, there are 11 women believed to have
been victims of Jack the Ripper.
Although, as is the case with just about every
aspect of this sad story, we just don't know
how many of them were actually Jack's victims.
We already learned about Emma Smith, who was
attacked and raped on Tuesday, April 3rd,
1888.
She died the next day as a result of the attack,
making her what many consider to be the first
victim of Jack the Ripper.
Then there was the first murder we see in
the movie, Martha Tabram.
Now, as we learned, some don't think she was
a victim of Jack the Ripper since she was
stabbed 39 times, but others do.
She was murdered on Tuesday, August 7th, 1888.
The next murder was on Friday, August 31st,
1888.
That was Polly Nichols.
At least, that's her name in the movie.
In the graphic novel, they more accurately
name her as Mary Ann Nichols.
Polly was her nickname.
Although the movie shows Johnny Depp's version
of Inspector Abberline come into the picture
after Martha's murder, it was after Polly's
murder that the real Inspector Abberline was
brought onto the case.
Even though they weren't sure if Polly's death
was linked to Emma's or Martha's, the murders
of women in close proximity and close timing
was something that led cops at the time to
think there might be a serial killer on the
loose.
Well, they would have if the term "serial
killer" had existed back then.
But you know what I mean.
The reason they thought there might be a connection
had to do with the manner in which Polly was
murdered…something the movie gets pretty
accurate.
Polly's throat was slit from left to right.
Not once, but twice.
As if that wasn't enough, her abdomen had
been ripped apart with several deep gashes,
likely with the same knife used to slit the
throat.
Then, as the police were trying to figure
out what happened to Polly, another body showed
up.
This time it was Dark Annie Chapman.
Again, that's what the movie calls her.
And like Polly, that was her nickname.
Her friends called her Dark Annie because
she had dark brown hair.
Annie Chapman's body was found on Saturday,
September 8th, 1888.
Like Polly, Annie's throat had been slit from
left to right.
And like Polly, Annie's abdomen had been mutilated,
but the coroner would later suggest the cuts
had been made by a very fine blade—the kind
a doctor would use in surgery.
Interestingly, her body was found in the back
yard of a home occupied by a dozen people
at the time.
No one had seen or heard anything.
After Annie was Elizabeth Stride, or Liz as
she's called in the movie.
In the movie, when we see Liz get murdered,
something different happens.
For the first time, someone stumbles upon
Sir William and his coachman, Jason Flemyng's
character, Netley, while Liz is still alive.
Netley, who is muffling Liz's screams at this
point, yells at the unnamed man, who moves
on.
Then Liz's body is discovered later.
Of course, there's no way we know if this
is how it happened or not.
But it could have been.
At about 1:00 AM on Sunday, September 30th,
1888, Elizabeth Stride's body was discovered
lying in a pool of blood with a slit across
her throat from left to right.
By the account of the man who discovered the
body, a man named Louis Diemschutz, the body
was still warm suggesting that Elizabeth had
been murdered just moments before he stumbled
upon the body.
He thought perhaps he had even scared off
the killer.
Unlike Polly or Annie, though, Elizabeth's
body wasn't mutilated.
Or maybe it was just that the killer didn't
have time to mutilate it before Louis happened
upon the scene.
We don't know.
According to the movie, as Johnny Depp's version
of Inspector Abberline and the cops are arriving
on the scene of Elizabeth's murder, we see
a dark shadow cover the screen in front of
another of the women.
It's Lesley Sharp's version of Kate Eddowes.
All we hear is, "Excuse me, miss," and the
shadow passes across the screen, blanketing
it in darkness for the fraction of a second.
When we can see Kate again, her hands are
on her throat with blood spurting through
her fingers as she slides down the wall.
Then there's a commotion—another body!
The cops rush to the scene, and we see Inspector
Abberline arrive to find a message scrawled
in chalk.
While dramatized, of course, the basic gist
of all of that is true.
If it is true that Louis Diemschutz stopped
the killer when he found Elizabeth Stride's
body, still warm, at 1:00 AM on September
30th, then the killer went right back to work.
At about 1:45 AM, Catherine Eddowes' body
was found.
Unlike Elizabeth's body, though, the killer
apparently had time to finish his work on
Catherine.
Her throat was slit from left to right from
what the coroner concluded was a sharp knife
at least six inches in length.
Catherine's face was cut open as was her abdomen,
and her intestines were strung up over her
right shoulder.
There was a smaller, completely separated
piece of intestine strung along her left arm
and chest.
Finally, the coroner later conclude that Catherine's
kidney and uterus were removed.
Well, most of it anyway.
The doctor arriving on the scene estimated
that she'd been dead for no longer than 10
minutes.
Just like in the movie, about 1,500 feet away
from where Catherine's body was found, there
was a piece of her apron covered in blood.
That's about 500 meters or so, and the clothing
led the police to find the writing on the
wall.
And the movie got that pretty close.
In the movie, the message is:
The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed
for nothing
In truth, the message said:
The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed
for nothing
Although the movie is correct in showing that
the police commissioner wanted to erase the
words.
In the movie it's Ian Richardson's character,
Sir Charles Warren, playing the commissioner.
And that was the real commissioner's name
at the time.
At this point, the murders were already causing
a media frenzy, and fearing the words would
spark an anti-Semitic riot, Commissioner Warren
ordered the words erased when he arrived on
the scene at about 5:00 AM.
The surgical precision to remove Catherine's
organs were something that led the cops at
the time to assume that the killer had to
have known quite a bit about the position
of organs in the body—basically, the killer
was probably a surgeon.
But even that was debated at the time.
Other doctors suggested there's no way it
was a surgeon.
Oh, and there's one scene in the movie where
both the graphic novel and the movie get its
name.
That comes when Johnny Depp's version of Inspector
Abberline receives a letter from the killer
along with a kidney.
According the movie, the letter has the words,
"From Hell" on it.
That's true, although it was really sent to
George Lusk.
We haven't talked about him, but he's got
a small role in the movie played by Vincent
Franklin.
George was a local businessman who had been
elected to be the chairman of the Whitechapel
Vigilance Committee during the murder spree
from Jack the Ripper.
So he wasn't a police officer, but he was
sort a citizen's liaison to the police.
At the height of the murders, in October of
1888, George Lusk asked for extra police protection
at his home because he had spotted what he
described as a sinister-looking man with a
beard watching his home.
Then, one day, he received this chilling letter
alongside a box with half of a human kidney
inside.
This is the letter now known as the "From
Hell" letter from Jack the Ripper:
From hell
Mr Lusk
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one
women prasarved it for you tother pirce I
fried and ate it was very nise I may send
you the bloody knif that took it out if you
only wate a whil longer.
signed Catch me when
you Can
Mishter Lusk.
Can you imagine getting that at your home?
That was just one of the letters that Jack
the Ripper sent.
In fact, even though the "From Hell" letter
is signed by "Catch me when you can", we get
the name Jack the Ripper from a different
letter.
As with just about everything in this case,
not everyone agrees the letter signed as Jack
the Ripper was authentic, but I'll make sure
to include more of those in the bonus episode
for Producers.
In the movie, there's one more murder.
It's the dramatic end of the movie where we
see Heather Graham's character, Mary Kelly,
asleep in her bed.
Or is it really Mary?
Meanwhile, there's an epic escape going on
as Johnny Depp's version of Inspector Abberline,
who at this point has a thing for Mary Kelly,
gets kidnapped by Sir William Gull's Masonic
associates.
With ample time, Sir William arrives at Mary's
home and begins his work.
We don't see much other than the result—a
room covered in blood.
Everywhere.
Then, he pulls out his surgical kit and removes
Mary's heart, which he cooks over the fire.
After this, in the movie, we find out that
wasn't really Mary.
It'd seem she managed to get away, taking
baby Alice back to her seaside home in Ireland.
Instead, the woman murdered was Ada, a newcomer
to the area as played by Estelle Skornik.
The brutality of the murder was right.
Was it Mary Kelly?
Well, they didn't have DNA testing so we don't
really know for sure, I guess, but she was
positively identified by a man named Joseph
Barnett.
He's not in the movie at all, but he is in
the graphic novel as the man who Mary was
living with.
And that's more accurate than the movie, which
seems to have added the romantic relationship
between Inspector Abberline and Mary Kelly—that
wasn't really in the graphic novel.
In fact, Inspector Abberline was married in
the book to his second wife, Emma, just like
he was in real life at the time.
Something else the movie portrays with Heather
Graham's version of Mary is that she had red
hair.
Remember Dark Annie, who got her nickname
because of having dark brown hair?
Well, it'd seem Mary had the nickname Black
Mary on account of her having black hair.
But then again, she also had the nickname
"ginger", so even that has some rather conflicting
reports.
As for the murder itself, unfortunately the
movie is accurate in depicting a brutal scene.
In fact, if anything, the movie probably doesn't
show the full extent of the brutality.
He's not in the movie at all, but Dr. Thomas
Bond was one of the physicians who examined
the body after it was discovered on Friday,
November 9th, 1888.
For a long time, his report had gone missing
but then in 1987 it was anonymously returned
to Scotland Yard.
That's a mystery for another day.
I know I started off this episode with a parental
advisory, but I'll give you another one right
now…this is a small excerpt from Dr. Bond's
notes regarding the state of Mary's body when
it was discovered.
If you'd rather not hear it, feel free to
skip ahead—I wouldn't blame you.
Oh, and if you're like me and unfamiliar with
one of the words used, supine, that basically
means lying face up.
The body was lying naked in the middle of
the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis
of the body inclined to the left side of the
bed.
The head was turned on the left cheek.
The left arm was close to the body with the
forearm flexed at a right angle and lying
across the abdomen.
the right arm was slightly abducted from the
body and rested on the mattress, the elbow
bent and the forearm supine with the fingers
clenched.
The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at
right angles to the trunk and the right forming
an obtuse angle with the pubes.
The whole of the surface of the abdomen and
thighs was removed and the abdominal Cavity
emptied of its viscera.
The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated
by several jagged wounds and the face hacked
beyond recognition of the features.
The tissues of the neck were severed all round
down to the bone.
The viscera were found in various parts viz:
the uterus and Kidneys with one breast under
the head, the other breast by the right foot,
the liver between the feet, the intestines
by the right side and the spleen by the left
side of the body.
The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs
were on a table.
The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated
with blood, and on the floor beneath was a
pool of blood covering about two feet square.
The wall by the right side of the bed and
in a line with the neck was marked by blood
which had struck it in a number of separate
splashes.
There's more…too much more.
I'll include more of his notes along with
the bonus episode for Producers, but for our
purposes today it's worth pointing out that
Dr. Bond would go on to mention that the pericardium,
the cavity where the heart lies, was cut open
and the heart was missing.
Oh, and Dr. Bond also remarked in his notes
that the mutilations were more in line with
a butcher cutting up dead animals—he said
there was no reason to believe the mutilation
was done with any sort of surgical precision
by someone with knowledge of human anatomy.
In the movie, Mary is the last of the murders
we see.
Ian Holms' version of Sir William Gull gets
a lobotomy to cover up the murders and the
matter is considered resolved by Queen Victoria.
As we already learned, the real Sir William
ended up passing away in 1890 from one of
many strokes he'd had over the course of a
few years.
So what, then, of the murders that happened
after he died?
Well, it's true that many believe Mary Kelly
was indeed the final victim of Jack the Ripper.
Following this hypothesis, the suggestion
is that after Mary was murdered Jack was captured,
perhaps on another charge not even connected,
and locked away the murders ended.
And it is true that after the vicious nature
of Mary's murder, the police stepped up their
effort even more.
A massive search was underway and the police
even published an open pardon to anyone who
might be associated with Jack the Ripper—anyone
but the person who actually performed the
murders would get a pardon if they helped
the police catch the murderer.
Maybe it worked.
Maybe Mary Kelly was Jack the Ripper's final
victim.
Maybe it didn't.
A little over a month after Mary Kelly was
murdered, a police constable on patrol in
Whitechapel discovered another body.
It belonged to a woman named Rose Mylett,
but unlike Jack's other victims Rose died
not from a slit throat but from strangulation.
After Dr. Bond analyzed Rose's body, he came
to the conclusion that there weren't any signs
of struggle.
Perhaps Rose had accidentally strangled herself
by hanging while drunk.
Then again, Emma Smith and Martha Tabram didn't
have their throats slit either.
And that's one reason why many don't think
they're associated with Jack's killings.
Interestingly, Rose Mylett knew and even lived
in the same house as Emma Smith for a while.
As for signs of struggle, if you remember,
Elizabeth Stride was murdered near an occupied
home.
They'd concluded there were no signs of struggle
in that case, either.
If Rose was one of Jack's victims, she was
the final one for 1888.
Sadly, possibly not the last, though.
On Wednesday, July 17th, 1889, the body of
Alice McKenzie was found.
Her throat had been slit from left to right,
and like some of Jack's earlier victims the
abdomen had been mutilated.
However, the cuts on the abdomen weren't quite
as deep, indicating a shorter knife had been
used than the one in Jack's earlier killings.
As a result, there were some conflicting thoughts.
Some thought the slit throat and mutilations
suggested Alice was another of Jack's victims
while others, including Inspector Abberline,
didn't agree.
Speaking of mutilations that caused controversy
about whether or not it was Jack's victim,
a couple months after Alice's body was found,
on Tuesday, September 10th, 1889, a torso
was found in Whitechapel near Pinchin Street.
Despite a search of the area, no other body
parts were found and the torso could never
be identified.
Some suggest since it was found in Whitechapel
and was obviously a mutilated body, it must
be Jack the Ripper, while others suggest perhaps
this torso was linked to another rash of killings
in London.
We haven't even talked about those yet, and
they're typically not associated with Jack
the Ripper, but right around that same time
there were a series of murders in London's
East End, of which Whitechapel is just one
of the districts.
That began as one murder in 1887 in which
the only evidence left was a torso.
Then in 1888, another victim was murdered
and two more in 1889.
Each time, the killer left behind a torso—hence
the name as the Thames Torso Murders.
Could the Pinchin Street torso be connected
to Jack the Ripper or was that the work of
the Thames Torso Killer?
Or could it be that they're one and the same?
Those are all questions left unanswered.
Two years after Alice and the Pinchin Street
torso were discovered, the final victim sometimes
associated with Jack the Ripper was found.
That was of a 25-year-old woman named Frances
Cole, the same age as Mary Kelly when she
was murdered.
Frances' body was discovered on Friday the
13th in February of 1891.
Again, it seems that her body was discovered
just moments after the murder, which happened
at around 2:15 AM.
While many think Frances Cole wasn't a Ripper
killing, her throat was cut from left to right
and then back again, right to left.
With her murder, there might've finally been
a break in the case.
She'd been seen with a man named James Sadler
earlier, someone who the police had on their
list of suspects to be Jack the Ripper.
After Frances was murdered, they arrested
James for her murder.
Unable to find any more proof, they had to
release him on March 3rd, 1891.
Oh, and as a little side note, James Sadler
wasn't on the police's short list of suspects.
There were a few men that they were looking
at closer than others.
They were, in no particular order, Dr. Francis
Tumblety, Aaron Kosminski, Michael Ostrog
and Montague Druitt.
Then there was Chief Inspector Abberline's
favorite for the murders, a man named Severin
Klosowski—he went by the much-easier-to-pronounce
George Chapman.
While those might be considered the primary
suspects at the time of the murders, they
weren't the only suspects overall.
Even Lewis Carroll, the guy who wrote Alice
in Wonderland has ended up on the suspects
list for some.
The fear and terror that gripped the streets
of Whitechapel has been something that countless
historians, experts and others have tried
to solve ever since.
Ripperologists.
That's the name for true crime buffs who become
obsessed with the search for the man that
might've been the real Jack the Ripper, even
to this day.
Or woman.
Inspector Abberline thought perhaps it could've
been a female killer.
In all, there have been well over 500 suspects.
Some with closer connections, like the storyline
of Prince Albert Victor and Sir William Gull,
both of whom are on that list of suspects.
Of course, as we learned, there's no way Sir
William could've been Jack the Ripper if it
is indeed true that Frances Cole was a Ripper
victim since her murder was after Sir William
died.
Over a hundred years after Jack the Ripper's
last murder, a massive clue broke the case
wide open.
That was in 1992, when a remarkable diary
surfaced.
Without ever writing their own name across
over 9,000 words, the author confesses to
the murder of five women in London and another
prostitute in Manchester, some 200 miles or
322 kilometers to the north of London.
Well, I guess saying that the author never
gave their name isn't entirely correct.
At the very end of the diary, after all of
the confessions, the author wrote these words:
I give my name that all know of me, so history
do tell, what love can do to a gentleman born.
Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper.
Dated this third day of May 1889.
As you can probably guess, this caused a new
whirlwind of theories and ideas—including
the fact that the diary itself was a hoax.
After all, why after all this time had it
come to light?
The man who produced it, Michael Barrett,
claimed he got it from a friend named Tony
Devereux in 1991.
Unfortunately, Tony died soon after giving
it to Michael so the trail stops there.
Is it a forgery?
Maybe.
But what if it's not?
According to researchers like Bruce Robinson,
who spent years researching the subject matter,
and Robert Smith, who authored the book 25
Years of The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The
True Facts, the diary is not only authentic,
but Michael Barrett didn't reveal his true
source of the diary out of fear of being charged
with a crime.
It'd seem the diary was discovered in a Liverpool
home of a man named James Maybrick.
That would seem to line up with the contents
of the diary.
Even though the author of the diary never
comes out and says their name, most historians
agree that with the other events and things
mentioned within point to it belonging to
James Maybrick.
He's not in the movie at all, but James Maybrick
was a cotton merchant who lived in Liverpool.
On April 27th, 1889, James' health suddenly
declined until passing away 15 days later
on May 11th.
Do you remember the date at the end of the
diary?
May 3rd.
What if James knew he was dying, and the diary
was his deathbed confession of sorts?
Doctors determined the cause of death to be
arsenic poisoning, and immediately James'
wife, Florence, was arrested and charged with
the murder.
She received a life sentence, but was released
in 1904 and lived until passing on October
23rd, 1941.
So was James Maybrick the infamous Jack the
Ripper?
Maybe.
If so, that'd mean the murders of Alice McKenzie
and Frances Cole weren't Jack's victims since
they both happened after James died in May
of 1889.
And, for that matter, it'd mean the Pinchin
Street torso wouldn't be connected to Jack,
either.
Many already don't consider those murders
to be connected to Jack, so that doesn't discount
James Maybrick.
In 2011, a man named Jose Abad proposed a
different theory.
Jose is a handwriting expert who compared
the writing from Jack the Ripper's diary to
other handwriting from suspects at the time.
He believes he found a match in none other
than Inspector Frederick Abberline—the police
officer in charge of the investigation for
the murders.
And while entirely circumstantial, the dates
could line up with all of the women even possibly
thought to be Jack's victims.
The last of those, of course, being Frances
Cole who was murdered on February 13th, 1891.
Inspector Abberline retired from the police
on February 8th, 1892 before taking over the
European arm of the United States' Pinkerton
National Detective Agency for over a decade.
It'd seem he wasn't done with detective work—he
just wanted a change of scenery.
On December 10th, 1929, Frederick Abberline
passed away from natural causes at the age
of 86.
Three months later, his wife of more than
50 years, Emma, passed away as well.
So was Inspector Frederick Abberline the infamous
Jack the Ripper?
Maybe.
This episode of Based on a True Story was
written and produced by me, Dan LeFebvre.
Have you ever seen those movies where you
get to the end and it turns out everything
was a dream?
I feel like this episode is one of those films.
Was anything in From Hell even real?
I mean, sure, the people and places were real.
The murders, sadly, were real.
But did they happen how the movie suggests?
Was the storyline real?
For that matter, are any of the other Jack
the Ripper storylines real?
We just don't know.
We don't know if the diary is real.
We don't know if it's Inspector Abberline's
handwriting.
No matter how many supposed answers we find,
the only thing that is certain is that we
just don't know.
To start digging into some of the theories
and potential other suspects or storylines
about Jack the Ripper, there's a couple places
I'd recommend.
First, start with the graphic novel that the
movie is based on.
Yeah, it's not going to be historically accurate,
but it's worth reading even if it's to see
how they changed the movie—for example,
in the movie we see Johnny Depp's version
of Inspector Abberline die at the end but
that never happened in the graphic novel.
I'd also recommend Robert Smith's book, 25
Years of The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The
True Facts, to learn more about the diary
or Jose Abad's book that dives deeper into
the concept that Chief Inspector Frederick
Abberline might've been Jack the Ripper.
That book is called Jack the Ripper: The most
intelligent murderer in history.
Another great resource is a website called
Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
They've got a lot of the facts and theories
laid out in a great way to help you start
digging deeper.
You can find that at casebook.org or hop on
over to basedonatruestorypodcast.com and I'll
add links to those books and plenty more resources
to begin your deep dive into the story of
Jack the Ripper.
Before we get to the answer to the two truths
and a lie game, here's another 5-star review!
This one is a very brief review from Janinegil
over on Apple Podcasts and it says:
Really interesting
Love hearing the real stories that inspire
films
I'll keep my reply brief as well—Thanks
so much!
And while I'm thanking people, I want to say
another "Thank you" to Nikki for helping me
keep the lights on here at the show by becoming
an official Producer and for picking From
Hell as the topic for today's episode.
Thanks Nikki!
Now, it's time for the answer to our two truths
and a lie game from the beginning of the episode!
As a refresher, here are the two truths and
one lie:
1.
Many of Jack the Ripper's victims had their
throats cut from left to right
2.
There were 11 murders linked to Jack the Ripper,
not six like the movie shows
3.
Jack the Ripper's murders were unsolved at
the time, but today we know who he was
Did you find out which one is a lie?
The lie is… #3.
Or is it?
Call it a bit tricky, but I thought with the
subject matter today it'd be fitting to answer
this the same way we did with everything else
in our story today…maybe.
Looking through the lens of history, do we
know who Jack the Ripper was?
There's a lot of people out there who are
convinced that we know who Jack the Ripper
was.
It was Prince Albert Victor himself.
Or it was James Maybrick.
Or it was Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline.
Or it was George Chapman.
Or it was Dr. Francis Tumblety.
Or it was Sir William Gull.
While we know a lot more now than they did
at the time, and there's some pretty damning
evidence…but I think too much time has passed.
So that means, in my personal opinion, #3
is the incorrect answer.
As infuriating as it is to have such a mystery
left unanswered, I don't think we can conclusively
say—without a shadow of a doubt—that we
know who Jack the Ripper was.
Although you'll get a pass if you guessed
#2.
As we learned, there were a total of 11 women
who might have been killed by Jack the Ripper.
That's why I said linked, and not confirmed.
Although there were five of them that a majority
of people think were Jack's victims—the
rest are up for debate.
Now, as fascinating as the mystery of Jack
the Ripper is…I think it's important to
not forget the poor women who died such horrible
deaths.
So as a final recap, lest we forget the names
of the victims…
These first two women are debated as to whether
they're Jack's victims or not, but they still
deserve to be remembered.
Emma Smith: Tuesday, April 3, 1888
Martha Tabram: Tuesday, August 7, 1888
These five are almost certainly Jack's victims.
They're also the women that writer Alan Moore
dedicated his graphic novel From Hell to:
Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols: Friday, August 31,
1888
Annie Chapman: Saturday, September 8, 1888
Elizabeth Stride: Sunday, September 30, 1888
Catherine Eddowes: Sunday, September 30, 1888
Mary Jane Kelly: Friday, November 9, 1888
These four might be Jack's victims…they
might not be:
Rose Mylett: Thursday, December 20, 1888
Alice McKenzie: Wednesday, July 17, 1889
Pinchin Street torso: Tuesday, September 10,
1889
Frances Coles: Friday, February 13, 1891
And now it's your turn…I want you to weigh
in!
Do you think the diary is real and confirms
the identity of Jack the Ripper?
Or is it a hoax?
Consider this your official invitation to
join the Based on a True Story Facebook group
and share your thoughts with the community!
You can also find me on Twitter where I'm
@danlefeb.
Thanks so much for listening, and I'll chat
with you again really soon!
