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- [00:02]
Vanessa Richardson
Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and A E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series, the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [00:41]
Narrator/Announcer
This is Crime house.
- [00:47]
Vanessa Richardson
At exactly 1am on Sunday, September 30, 1888, Lewis Deamshuts turned his pony and cart into Dutfield's Yard in Whitechapel, London. He'd spent all of Saturday at a market hawking cheap jewelry from his barrow. Now he was heading to drop off his unsold stock before heading off to bed. The yard was pitch black. Not a single streetlamp anywhere nearby. And as Deemshutz guided his cart through the gate, his pony suddenly stopped. It moved to the left. Nostrils flared, refusing to go any further. Something was in the way. Deemshutz leaned forward and prodded the darkness with his buggy whip. It connected with what felt like a bundle of cloth on the ground. He climbed down and struck a match. The wind put out the flame before he could see it all, but in that half second of light, he made out the shape of a woman lying motionless against the wall. He figured she was drunk, so he went inside to find someone to help wake her up. When he came back with two friends and another match, they discovered that the woman wasn't sleeping. Her throat had been cut, her body still warm. Her name was Elizabeth Stride, another victim of the city's feared serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. What Deemshutz didn't know at the time was how close he'd come to catching him. Because when he turned his cart into that yard, it's believed Jack the Ripper was still inside. Deemshutz was only seconds away from spotting the elusive serial killer who remains true crime's most iconic mystery even today. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, a Crime House original Powered by Pave Studios Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. These cases are wild and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Please leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow so we can continue building this community together. And if you want even more, subscribe to Crime House plus and get every episode of this show and the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early, plus at least two bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes show page. Today I'm digging into the most famous unsolved murder case in history. In the autumn of 1888, a killer terrorized London's East End, targeting the city's most vulnerable women, committing some of the most horrific murders England had ever seen. He mocked the police in letters signed with a name that still gives people nightmares more than 130 years later. Jack the Ripper we know the murders. We know the letters. But what's often overlooked are the victims, the five women whose lives and deaths defined a case that no one has ever solved. All that and more right after this. If you love the thrill of finding a massive discount as much as I do, you need to check out Whatnot. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the United States and it completely changes the game. It's a live shopping app where you can find deals on fashion, beauty, bags, jewelry and more. Buyers connect with passionate sellers to discover unbeatable deals through interactive live video. There are over 10,000 fashion, beauty and handbag sellers on Whatnot, so you can easily shop name brands without the retail prices. I recently joined a live stream and scored a stunning pair of Tory Burch sunglasses for a fraction of what they cost in stores. The seller even tried them on for me live so I could see exactly how they fit before buying them. You almost never pay full price on whatnot and the energy of the community keeps you coming back. Download Whatnot today and get $20 off and free shipping on your first purchase. Search whatnot in the App Store. Sign up and start finding the best deals on the products you love with $20 off and free shipping on your first purchase.
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- [05:58]
Vanessa Richardson
To understand how Jack the Ripper got away with five brutal murders in the span of about 11 weeks, you need to understand where he was killing. Whitechapel was a district in London's East End, tucked up against the north bank of the River Thames. Today, it's less than a mile from some of London's most popular tourist sites. But in 1888, it felt like a completely different world. The population of London was exploding. Back then, Irish immigrants had been pouring into the East London docks, hoping to flee poverty and famine. Russian Jewish immigrants were arriving in droves, escaping genocide. But the housing stock, the jobs and the social safety net hadn't kept up. Some households had as many as 30 people crammed inside, many of them in buildings that had already been condemned. 55 out of every 100 children born in the East End died before they turned five. And then there was the darkness. Literally. Victorian London was plagued by industrial smog and dense fog off the river. Wealthier neighborhoods had gas lamps, but Whitechapel didn't. When the pubs closed and their lights shut off, the streets went completely black. Even police officers were terrified. They refused to patrol certain areas unless the Board of Works installed more street lights. For women, the situation was even worse in Victorian England. A woman without a husband had almost no financial options. If her marriage ended through death, desertion or separation, she had nothing. Which is how many women ended up in sex work. It was illegal, which meant they were completely unprotected by law. Not to mention it was extremely dangerous. Violence against sex workers in Whitechapel was common and rarely prosecuted. An 1888 letter from a journalist named Florence Fenwick Miller described what life was like for women in the East End. She wrote that week after week after week, women were being, quote, kicked, beaten, jumped on until they were crushed, chopped, stabbed, seamed with vitriol, bitten, eviscerated, end quote. And if the woman survived, it was filed as a common assault. If she died, it was manslaughter. That's the world Jack the Ripper chose as his hunting ground. The first of the so called canonical five victims was 43 year old Mr. Maryanne Nichols, but people called her Polly. Polly hadn't always lived on the margins of society. Her father was a blacksmith who supported her into adulthood. She married at 19 and had five kids. But her marriage was an unhappy one, partly because of her struggle with alcoholism. By 1881, she and her husband had separated permanently. When her husband stopped supporting her, citing her sex work as his reason, the parish council sided with him. Paulie was left to fend for herself. She was sent to a workhouse, one of the grim Victorian institutions where the city housed its poorest residents. The workhouse wasn't exactly a choice for people with nowhere else to turn. It was often the only option available in exchange for a roof over your head and basic meals. You wore a uniform and did whatever labor they assigned you. But you couldn't leave without going through an administrative process to prove you had somewhere else to be. Each time Polly got herself out of one of these workhouses, she drifted back to sex work. Each time she got in trouble, she ended up back in a workhouse. It was a vicious cycle, A trap with no exit. By August of 1888, Polly had managed to move herself into a lodging house, often called a doss house, in an area of London called Spitalfields. It was a step up from the workhouse. No uniforms, no forced labor, and. And she could come and go as she pleased. But there was still a nightly rent to pay 4 pence, the equivalent of about $2 today. And she shared a room with four other women. But on the night of August 30, Paulie didn't have enough money in her pocket to pay for it. She'd spent it all at the pub. But by 2:30am that seemed to change. That's when she ran into her roommate Emily, on the street. Holly was drunk but upbeat. She told Emily she'd just made her dos money several times. Problem was, she kept spending it on everything but the rent. She pointed to the new bonnet she was wearing, saying it would help her find another customer. Then the two women went their separate ways. About an hour later, around 3:30am Paulie was walking down Buck's Row, one of the better streets in the neighborhood, when she met someone. Maybe she thought he was a prospective client. Maybe she thought she knew him. Either way, she didn't scream when he pulled out a knife and slit her throat twice. The second cut went all the way to the vertebrae, nearly decapitating her. Then he sliced her abdomen multiple times, exposing her intestines. The whole attack happened so quietly that a sleeping family in the house right above didn't hear a thing. A delivery driver stumbled upon her body at around 3:45am her arms were still warm above the elbow. The police surgeon who arrived before 4am Said she couldn't have been dead, quote, but a few minutes and yet the killer had disappeared into the darkness. Later that morning, the Star newspaper ran a report. The writer who'd seen the body himself wrote that, quote, no murder was ever more ferocious to and brutally done. End quote. He had no idea how much worse it was about to get. A week later, on the morning of September 8, 1888, 47 year old Annie Chapman was found dead in the backyard of a rooming house at 29 Hanbury Street. It was only about a mile from where Polly Nichols was killed. Annie's life had followed a similar arc. She'd been married, had three children, and lost her husband in 1886, which cut off her main source of income. She'd moved to Spitalfields and supported herself through a combination of sex work and selling crocheted goods, never quite making enough through either. She also had chronic tuberculosis and was probably in pain a lot of the time. Like Polly, Annie had gone out that night because she didn't have her DOS money. Like Polly, she. She didn't come back. When the police surgeon, Dr. George Baxter Phillips, examined Annie's body, he was immediately struck by something beyond the throat wound and her sliced abdomen. Annie had been posed, her legs spread and pulled toward her chest. And unlike Polly, her organs hadn't just been exposed. Some of them were missing. Annie's uterus, part of her vagina and. And part of her bladder had been removed entirely and taken from the scene. Her intestines had been severed and placed on her left shoulder. Dr. Phillips estimated that he himself, even in a clinical setting, would have needed at least 15 minutes to inflict Annie's postmortem injuries. The killer did it outdoors in the dark, with police likely to appear at any moment. His report concluded, quote, obviously the work was that of an expert, end quote. That word expert set off a debate that continues to this day. Was Jack a butcher who worked with animal Anatomy? A medical professional, A mortuary worker? What everyone seemed to agree on was that this was not his first time wielding a blade. And it certainly wouldn't be his last.
- [13:47]
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- [14:18]
Narrator/Announcer
government gets a bad reputation, but did you know that? The roads under your feet, the forecast on your phone, the letter in your mailbox. That's all government too. I'm Professor Lindsay Cormack and I'm hosting a new podcast called Government that Doesn't Suck alongside Professor Greg Jackson, who you may know from the hit podcast History that Doesn't Suck. Each episode we dig into the surprising story of an American institution, from the origins of the Internet to the National Park Service to the GI Bill and so much more. You'll hear the stories behind them, plus a conversation with an expert who knows it inside and out. This is the real history of how we built the country under your feet, and you'll never look at any of it the same way again. Listen to, to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [15:10]
Vanessa Richardson
By early September 1888, two women had been murdered in Whitechapel and the city was on edge. 43 year old Paulie Nichols had been killed on August 31, 47 year old Annie Chapman a week later, both butchered in the street with their throats and slashed and their bodies mutilated, done by a killer who left no witnesses and no clues. The police were overwhelmed, the press was spiraling and the people of Whitechapel were terrified. Then came the night of September 29, 1888, the night that ripperologists now call the double event. Elizabeth Stride was 44 years old in 1888. She'd grown up on a farm in Sweden and came to London in her early 20s, hoping to build a new life for herself. For a while it worked. She met a man named John Stride, married him in 1869, and ran a coffee house with him for several years. But the marriage fell apart, partly because of her drinking. By 1888 she was living at a doss house in Whitechapel, supporting herself through sex work and occasional donations from from the local Swedish church. She'd been on and off with a day laborer named Michael Kidney. Their relationship was volatile in itself, enough that he'd sometimes padlocked her inside his room at night to stop her from going out. By late September she'd left him again and was renting a bed at a different lodging house. On the morning of September 29, Elizabeth earned 6P cleaning rooms at the lodging house. She spent part of the evening at the pub with the manager, who seemed to be a friend. She was in a good mood, and while she'd made more than enough to secure her bed for that night. She figured she would earn herself a little extra money. Around 11pm two laborers spotted her in a pub doorway making out with a short, well dressed man. They teased her about it. Then at 11:45, another witness saw her on the next block over, also kissing a man. Possibly the same one. Then again, maybe not. At 12:35am Constable William Smith spotted Elizabeth outside the international working men's educational club. That was a socialist organization. She was with a man he described as about 28 years old. He was wearing a deerstalker hat exactly like Sherlock Holmes, and carrying a newspaper wrapped package. Nine minutes later, a witness named Israel Schwartz turned the corner and saw a man throw Elizabeth to the ground. She screamed. The attacker called out to another person who was standing nearby, and Israel, afraid of getting caught in the middle, just turned and walked away. Fifteen minutes after that, Lewis deamshoots turned his cart into Dutfield's yard and found Elizabeth's body. Her throat had been cut in a single deep slash that severed her windpipe and making it impossible for her to scream. But unlike the previous victims, she hadn't been mutilated. Her body had barely been disturbed because Jack had been interrupted. Many think he was still there when deemshoots arrived. He slipped out of the yard while deemshoots went to find help. And then, still unsatisfied, investigators believe he went looking for someone else to kill. Which brings us to Catherine Eddowes. At 46 years old, she didn't fit the MO of Jack's typical victims. She was the only one of the five who'd had any formal schooling. She was sharp, funny and entrepreneurial. And she had a job that didn't include sex work. She and a man named Thomas Conway made a living selling gallows ballads, printed song sheets based on true crime cases set to the tunes of popular hymns. Basically the true crime podcasts of the Victorian era. They sold them to crowds at public executions, including at her own cousin's hanging. But by 1888, Catherine had separated from Conway and was living with a fruit seller named John Kelly. She worked odd jobs, did seasonal farm labor with John, and by all accounts was well liked. She also had fairly advanced kidney disease, what doctors then called Bright's disease that she almost certainly didn't know about. She wasn't the habitual drinker the other victims were, though that made little difference to the authorities. When they found her drunk on the pavement on September 29, 1888, they threw her in the holding cell to sober up. Around 1am the same hour Deemshoots was discovering Elizabeth Stride's body. Across town, a constable let Catherine go. She complained she'd get a hiding or a beating for going home so late. But she didn't make it home at all. At around 1:35am two men saw Catherine talking to someone on a street corner near Mitre Square. That's a tiny, poorly lit plaza a few blocks from where Elizabeth was killed. Ten minutes later, a constable patrolling Mitre Square found her body. This time, Jack hadn't been interrupted. The fatal blow was the same, a deep slash to the throat. Then he opened her abdomen and removed her intestines, placing one piece carefully between her body and her left arm. He cut off part of her ear. The missing piece later fell out of her clothing at the mortuary. And he removed her left kidney, which was damaged by Bright's disease. He also removed her uterus, which he took as a keepsake along with the kidney. But before that, he mutilated her face and posed her body. Then he cut a piece from her white apron and disappeared into the dark. About an hour and 20 minutes later, at 2:55am a constable on Goulston street, three blocks from Mitre Square, found the missing piece of Catherine's apron. It was streaked with blood, lying on the pavement, and this time it came with a message. Right above it, someone had written in chalk on the wall. The exact wording was recorded slightly differently by everyone who saw it, but the gist was the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. Some versions spelled Jews as J U W E S, which is why some Ripperologists think this was a Frenchman's attempt at the word for Jews, juive, suggesting a French suspect. Others think Jack was trying to deflect blame onto the Jewish immigrant community in the neighborhood. Others think it wasn't Jack the Ripper at all who wrote it. He just happened to drop the apron there. Police officers argued through the night about whether to photograph it or erase it. Before the mourning crowds arrived, the last thing they needed was an anti Semitic riot. Ultimately, they erased it. The exact wording lost forever. But here's what's interesting. Three days before these murders, on September 27th, the Central News Agency in London had received a handwritten letter. It was addressed Dear Boss and it was signed Jack the Ripper. The letter was sarcastic, chatty and vicious. The writer mocked the police for not catching him and said he was quote down on whores and had no intention of stopping. He said his knife was so nice and sharp and he promised to cut off his next victim's ears and and send them to the police as a souvenir. The Central News Agency assumed it was a prank, though they did forward it to Scotland Yard. Then, three days later, Catherine Eddowes was killed and part of her ear was cut off. So Scotland Yard released the letter to the public on October 1, 1888, hoping someone might recognize the handwriting. And that's how the name Jack the Ripper entered the lexicon. Within weeks, the police was drowning in letters, all from people claiming to be the killer. Most were obvious fakes, but one wasn't. On October 16, 1888, a man named George Lusk, who led a local vigilante group called the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, received a small cardboard box at his home. Inside was a note that began with two words from hell. The writer claimed to have enclosed half of a human kidney. He said he'd fried and eaten the other half and found it, quote, very nice, by the way, there was half a kidney in that box. A doctor confirmed it was human. A second examination found it was from a woman in her mid-40s who appeared to have had kidney disease. A perfect match for Catherine Eddowes, though investigators were never able to confirm it definitively. The press had a field day with the murders, and not always in a useful way. Reporters who didn't have verified facts just made things up. Some published fake witness statements describing the killer as having Jewish features or being otherwise foreign. One journalist dressed as a sex worker and wandered the streets trying to lure Jack. But while the city argued and panicked, Jack was still out there, plotting his next move. Mary Jane Kelly was 25 years old, far younger than any of the other victims. Born in Ireland, she moved to Wales as a child, married a coal miner at 16, and lost him in a work explosion a few years later. She arrived in London in 1884 and worked at a high end brothel in the West End, a safer, more sheltered arrangement than walking on the streets.
- [24:47]
Narrator/Announcer
And.
- [24:47]
Vanessa Richardson
But by 1887, she'd made her way to the East End. That year, she met a dock worker named Joe Barnett, who swept her off her feet. They moved into a single rented room together on Dorset street in Spitalfields. When Joe lost his job In August of 1888, Mary Jane went back to sex work to support them both. And she kept inviting other women she knew, women with nowhere to go to share their room. Joe eventually moved out, but he still visited her every day. On November 8, 1888, Mary Jane spent the evening at a pub in Spitalfields with a mustachioed man. Around 11:45pm a neighbor saw her heading back to her room with a man of average height wearing a threadbare overcoat. At 2am, a laborer named George Hutchinson spotted her speaking with a different man. This one was expensively dressed with a gold chain, fur trimmed coat and what Hutchinson described as Jewish features. He followed them and watched them enter the cul de sac where Mary Jane's building was. Then, at some point that night, neighbors heard a woman scream once. Just once. They didn't investigate. The next morning, at around 10:45am her landlord's assistant assistant came to collect overdue rent. Mary Jane didn't answer. He peeked through a broken window pane. The attending officer described the room as looking like a slaughterhouse. The killing wound was the same as always, a slash to the throat. But the mutilation was methodical, prolonged and deliberate in a way that the earlier killings were not likely because Mary Jane was the only victim to killed indoors, which gave him hours of uninterrupted time. And when the police surgeon finally cataloged Mary Jane's injuries, the only organ he couldn't account for was her heart. Jack had taken it with him. Five women dead in 11 weeks and then. Silence. Mary Jane Kelly was murdered on November 9, 1888. And that was that. After this, Jack the Ripper's killing spree stopped. There were other suspicious murders of women in Whitechapel in the months that followed, but most researchers agree that none of them match Jack's MO closely enough to be definitively tied to him. So the canonical five ends with Mary Jane. But serial killers don't usually just stop for the sake of it. Something forces them into it. They get caught, they get injured, they die. But in Jack's case, it might have just gotten too complicated. A 2005 forensic analysis led by criminologist Robert Keppel concluded that Jack's murders were actually requiring more time and planning. With each iteration, he was taking more risks and needed more control over his environment. Mary Jane Kelly's murder, indoors with hours of privacy, may have been what he'd been building toward all along. Or maybe the people of Whitechapel just got lucky. Maybe he just got the heck out of Dodge. In the aftermath of Mary Jane Kelly's murder, the Metropolitan Police were under enormous pressure. They'd interviewed over 2,000 people. They'd arrested at least 80 individuals for further questioning, but they hadn't charged a single one of them with murder. Local papers ran cartoons of the police wandering around with Blindfolds. While criminals escaped, vigilante groups patrolled the streets themselves with sticks and whistles. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, George Lusk's group, was practically a shadow police force at this point. And somewhere out there, Jack the Ripper was probably watching. By 1894, Scotland Yard's Assistant Chief Constable, Sir Melville McNaughton, had narrowed his focus to three suspects. These names appear in what's now called the McNaughton Memoranda, an internal document he wrote to counter inaccurate press reports about the case. The first name was Montague John Druitt, a 31 year old Oxford educated boy, barrister and schoolteacher. Druitt came from a medical family and had been working at a boarding school in Blackheath when the murders began. That was a nicer neighborhood in southeast London, about six miles from Whitechapel. In late November 1888, three weeks after Mary Jane Kelly's death, he was suddenly dismissed from his teaching position. The reason was never publicly stated. His brother later told investigators only the that Druitt had got into serious trouble. Dru's family told McNaughton they believed Druitt was, quote, sexually insane and they thought it was entirely possible he was Jack the Ripper. On December 31, 1888, a man fishing in the Thames near Chiswick pulled a body from the river. It had been in the water for about a month. Stones were found in the pockets. When his brother William went to Dru's rooms and searched through his papers, he found a note addressed to him. Quote, since Friday, I felt I was going to be like mother and the best thing for me was to die. End quote. Druitt's mother had been committed to a psychiatric institution in July 1888. She later died there. McNaughton believed Druitt was the most likely suspect. The murders stopped when Druitt died, but there was no physical evidence connecting him to any of the killings and he had no known connection to Whitechapel whatsoever. So let's talk about the second name in the m' Naughton memoranda. Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor with a long history of fraud, convictions and psychiatric hospitalizations. He'd been released from his most recent hospital stay in the spring of 1888, before the murders began, and he'd failed to check in with authorities as required. Required. Meaning his whereabouts during the murders were genuinely unknown. He was never found by investigators, and the case against him rested entirely on the fact that he'd gone off the grid at exactly the right time. The third Name was Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish barber in his early 20s whose family had moved from Poland to Whitechapel in the 1880s. By the end of the decade, Aaron's mental health had deteriorated. He refused to bathe, claimed to hear voices, and said he was controlled by a higher power. He had also developed a strong hatred of women, particularly sex workers. Here's where it gets really interesting. Investigators claimed they showed Aaron to a witness named Israel Schwarz, that man who'd seen someone attack Elizabeth Stride that September night. And Schwarz identified him. But when investigators asked Schwarz to testify against Aaron Aaron in court, he refused. He said he didn't want to be responsible for sending a fellow Jewish man to the gallows. Without his testimony, there was no case. Aaron was committed to a psychiatric institution in 1891, where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 1919. He was never charged. There's also a fourth suspect worth mentioning because the timeline is super compelling. His name was Francis Tumlety, a self styled American doctor. In reality, just a con man who'd been living in London in the summer of 1888. He was flamboyant, wealthy and deeply misogynistic, despite having no apparent sexual interest in women. Multiple acquaintances said he hated women with a violent, explosive rage. And there was one detail about Tumlety that made investigators hair stand on end. He reportedly kept a collection of preserved human uteruses in glass jars on display in his home. Investigators started watching Tumlety in August 1888, around the time of the first murder of Polly Nichols. On November 7, two days before Mary Jane Kelly's murder, he was arrested on charges of gross indecency under Victorian laws that criminalized same sex conduct. He was released on bail on November 9th. Mary Jane Kelly was killed. On November 12th, Tumulty was arrested again, this time on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders, then released on bail again on November 24th. He fled to Boulogne, France, under a false name, then crossed the Atlantic to New York. Scotland Yard sent inspectors after him. New York's police chief tracked him to a boarding house on East 10th street and put him under surveillance. But British law couldn't touch him. There was no extradition for the specific charges involved. He eventually moved to Rochester, New York, where he lived freely until he died in 1903. In 1913, a letter from retired chief inspector John Littlechild surfaced calling Tum quote a very likely suspect. And the crimes did stop when Tumlety fled England. So it's hard to ignore. The years after the murders brought a whole New set of theories, most of them not worth your time. But there was a diary that surfaced in the early 1990s claiming to be a confession from a Liverpool cotton merchant. His name was James Maybrick. And while it looked good at first, it turned out to be almost certainly forged. The man who produced it, who was not Maybrick, admitted to faking it, then retracted the confession. Plus, the ink he used was not commercially available until after Maybrick's death. More recently, theorists have been exploring the DNA angle. In 2007, a ripperologist named Russell Edwards bought a silk shawl at auction, supposedly taken from the scene of Catherine Eddowes murder. It had been kept unwashed in a family's possession since 1888. In 2014, Edwards published a book claiming that DNA testing on the shawl had identified Jack the Ripper as Aaron Kosminski. The problem was the testing method. The analysis used mitochondrial DNA, not nuclear DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is easier to extract from old degraded evidence, but it can't identify a specific individual. It can only establish whether two people share a client common female ancestor. Which means the match to Aaron was really just a match to his female ancestral line. It told investigators that whoever left biological material on the Shaw was a relative of someone related to Aaron. A very long way from proof, but it's definitely a start. However, it doesn't answer the question, who was Jack the Ripper? The honest answer is we don't know and we probably never will. But we do know some things. We know that Jack killed at least five women in 11 weeks. And that a city full of police officers and vigilante groups never caught him. We know that the investigation yielded 2,000 interviews, over 80 temporary arrests and zero charges. And we know why he chose women who the city had already decided didn't matter. When Polly Nichols was fighting to survive in the workhouse system, nobody was protecting her. When Annie Chapman was turned away from her do house in the middle of the night for not having four pence, nobody stopped to ask if she'd be safe. When Catherine Eddowes was released from the drunk tank at 1am into the streets, the constable's parting words to her were that she had no right to get drunk. And when Elizabeth Stride was thrown to the ground in Berner Street, a witness just crossed to the other side of the road and kept walking. So what do you do with that? What is there to say? Historian Hallie Rubenhold published a book in 2019 called the Five. She spent years reconstructing the lives of these women and she argues that we've spent a hundred years fixating on the killer while barely learning the victims names. That fixation has made Jack the Ripper into a legend when the real story is simpler and worse. Five women were failed so completely by their society that a murderer moved freely among them for months. The murders did eventually drive some change. The intense press coverage forced wealthier Londoners to confront conditions in the East End slums. By the 1890s, the worst slums were cleared and redeveloped. The workhouse system was eventually abolished. In an indirect way, Jack the Ripper's targeting of Whitechapel's vulnerable women helped make those streets a bit safer. That's not justice. It's not even close to justice. But it is the truth. So here's the question I keep coming back to and I want to hear what you think. Would we know Jack the Ripper's name at all if his victims had been wealthy women? Women whose disappearances would have triggered an immediate all hands investigation? Or did the legend grow precisely because there was such a gap between how brutal the murders were and how little the world had previously cared about the women he killed? Leave a comment wherever you're listening or head to Spotify and vote in our poll. Do you think any of the potential suspects we mentioned were the guy? Or did Jack the Ripper slip through so methodically that he was never even on the police's radar? I really want to know what you think. Paulie Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Those are the names that matter. Whatever Jack's real identity was, he lived and died in obscurity. And he is truly gone. But the women he killed had real lives and real stories. Paulie was a mother of five. Annie crocheted lace and sold it on street corners. Elizabeth had flowers pinned to her jacket when she was found. Catherine once sold a ballad about true crime to the crowd at her own cousins hanging. Mary Jane sang so loudly in her room the night she died that her neighbors nearly banged on the door. Jack the Ripper has haunted us for more than 130 years. But the real haunting should be this. Five ordinary, complicated, struggling women failed at every turn by the society that created the conditions of their deaths and remained remembered for most of the past century mainly as victims rather than as people. That's a story worth sitting with. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next time. We'll hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious Cults, Conspiracies and Criminal Acts Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus. You'll get every episode of this show and the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early, plus at least two bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try for free at the top of the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes show page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzofsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Roman d' Angelo and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening. Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and A E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case case the interrogations, the dead ends and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.