The Ripper Secret

by The Ripper Secret (retail) (epub)

  ‘That’s a great name for the killer,’ Chandler said. ‘“Jack the Ripper” says it all, really. It’s exactly what he does.’

  ‘I’m more interested,’ Abberline murmured, ‘in your views on the letter itself. Do you think that it really was sent by the murderer, whatever his chosen name is, or is it just another hoax?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Chandler said frankly. ‘If it was sent by the killer, I don’t quite see why he’s writing to the newspapers. And don’t forget that we’ve had dozens of letters supposedly sent by the murderer, both at Scotland Yard and at the other London stations, and the newspapers have probably had hundreds by now. If you want my opinion, I think it’s probably a hoax, and the only reason the Central News Office has sent it to us is because of the signature. My guess is that within a day or two we’ll see headlines about this “Jack the Ripper” in all the papers. It’s just too good a name for them not to use it.’

  Chandler glanced back at the letter.

  ‘And another thing,’ he added. ‘This doesn’t look to me like it’s been written by an uneducated hand. The most likely author of this, I reckon, is some bored newspaper reporter who’s trying to drum up a bit more interest in a story that’s nearly died.’

  Abberline nodded.

  ‘I think you’re probably right, and I agree about the name. I’m sure the papers will pick up on it, but I don’t suppose for a moment we’ll hear any more of this. I think – I hope, anyway – that the murders have stopped. After all, it’s now been nearly three weeks since the last one.’

  But within a matter of hours after the police at Scotland Yard received the letter, the threat implied within it was to be executed. Not once this time, but twice, and in the same night.

  Friday, 28 September 1888

  Whitechapel, London

  Alexei Pedachenko had come to a decision, but before he implemented it, he decided to carry out one final test to confirm that the deception he had in mind was necessary. Although he had carried out no further attacks on prostitutes in Whitechapel since he’d killed Annie Chapman on 8 September, he was very aware that there were eyes everywhere. The police presence in the area was still heavy, and he’d read all about the rewards now on offer for information leading to the capture and conviction of the Whitechapel murderer, and about the efforts of the various vigilance committees and freelance patrols that were now operating in the district as well. And every time he walked the streets of Whitechapel late at night, he was very conscious of the watchful and suspicious eyes which followed his every move.

  It was also obvious that Charles Warren had deciphered Pedachenko’s simple clues and worked out the approximate area where the next killing would be likely to occur. The Russian had seen the extra uniformed police officers and the hard-faced men who he assumed were plain clothes detectives around Cannon Street. And although the numbers had been considerably less on the last couple of occasions he had scouted the district, there were still too many people out there for him to feel comfortable about what he was going to do.

  Walking the streets as he had been doing would be too dangerous for the next event – or rather the double event – which he had planned. Some kind of a disguise was absolutely necessary, and he thought he knew what he was going to do, but first he would try one last experiment.

  That evening, he dressed in his smartest clothes, placed a top hat on his head and checked his appearance in the mirror before he left his lodging to ensure that he looked as respectable and gentlemanly as possible. Then he ventured out into the dark streets of the late evening on the edge of Whitechapel.

  He promenaded along streets and roads and alleys, looking for a single woman. He was not, on this occasion, intending to do her any harm. He was only interested in observing her reaction to his presence.

  Just before midnight, he saw a person who he thought would be suitable. A woman, probably in her mid thirties, carefully but poorly dressed, walking along a street directly towards him.

  He glanced around quickly, but there was nobody else in sight.

  As he approached her, he could see that she was sizing him up, and already appeared nervous. Then he stepped in front of her and blocked her path completely, raising his top hat in salute.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, an innocent enough greeting, but the effect on the woman was dramatic.

  She shrank back visibly from him, her head swivelling in all directions as she looked about her vainly for help.

  ‘Please, sir,’ she muttered, ‘please don’t hurt me, sir. Please, sir. Please just let me pass.’

  Pedachenko smiled at her and nodded.

  ‘You’re out very late, I must say,’ he said. ‘Why is that, may I ask?’

  ‘I’m a respectable woman, sir, and my husband is in the hospital. I’ve just been to visit him, and now I must get back home to my children.’

  She could even have been telling the truth, but there was no mistaking the tremor of fear in her voice and the terror on her face. That alone was the confirmation that he sought.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ he said. ‘My only concern in stopping you was to give you some advice. This has become a very dangerous area for a woman alone. I understand your position, but I would suggest that you visit your husband during the hours of daylight, because walking by yourself at night might give some people the wrong idea about why you are here.’

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper which he held out to her.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take this for your trouble, and as recompense because I know that I frightened you. And for your part, although you will not know how, you have helped me as well.’

  Her hand trembling visibly, the woman reached out and took the folded piece of paper from Pedachenko, who doffed his hat to her once again, and then walked on.

  Behind him, the woman stared at his retreating figure, then unfolded the paper and looked at it. It was something that she had heard about, but had never seen before, and had certainly never expected to hold in her hands or to own.

  The piece of paper was a Bank of England five pound note.

  Sunday, 30 September 1888

  Whitechapel, London

  Elizabeth Stride, sometimes known as Long Liz, was Swedish. She’d been born on 27 November 1843 in a town named Torslanda, not far from Gothenburg, and christened Elisabeth Gustafsdotter. In October 1860, she moved to the Carl Johan parish in Gothenburg and began working there as a domestic servant for a man named Lars Fredrik Olofsson, but had moved on to the Cathedral parish in February 1862, and was still working there as a domestic. Then things began to go wrong for her, because three years later the Gothenburg police registered her as a prostitute, and the following month she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Later that year, in October, she was living in Östra Haga, just outside Gothenburg, and was twice treated in a special hospital for venereal disease, an almost inevitable consequence of her degraded lifestyle.

  She arrived in London in February 1866, either simply to visit the country, or as a domestic servant – at different times she had told both versions of the story – and registered as an unmarried woman at the Swedish parish in London, and later at the Swedish Church in Prince’s Square, St George-in-the-East. In 1869 she married a carpenter named John Thomas Stride at that same church. She was then living in Whitechapel at 67 Gower Street, and Stride’s home was at Munster Street, near Regent’s Park.

  Very little is known about her marriage, except that it failed, and her situation deteriorated further, being admitted to the Poplar Workhouse in March 1877. That same year, she was treated in the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary to be treated for bronchitis, and when she was discharged she was sent from there into the workhouse itself. Afterwards, she lived for most of the time at the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. Her husband, John Stride, died on 24 October 1884 in the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum at Bromley.

  From 1885 to 1888 she lived with a dock labourer named Michael Kidney, for s
ome of that time at 35 Devonshire Street, off Commercial Road, but by the end of September she had moved back to the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street, the address she had used intermittently for about six years.

  She was attractive for a woman in her mid forties, and most people who knew her thought she looked a lot younger, some even believing that she was in her late twenties. She was thin and stood only about five feet three inches tall, so ‘Long Liz’ was probably a reference to the shape of her face, which was long and thin, the features somewhat sharp and pinched, at least partially caused by her various missing teeth. Her hair was curly, and dark brown, almost black, and her eyes light grey.

  According to both her neighbours and the deputy at the Flower and Dean Street lodging house, a woman named Elizabeth Tanner, Stride was a clean, sober, quiet, hard-working and good-natured woman who earned a living as a charwoman, doing cleaning and other domestic duties. She was also as a skilled seamstress, often working for the Jewish tailors in the area: she spoke Yiddish as well as her native Swedish, and was fluent in English, which she spoke without an accent.

  But perhaps the people who talked about Elizabeth Stride were being either polite or generous in describing her as ‘sober’, because it was common knowledge that she had a serious drink problem. She had been arrested on several occasions for being drunk, and had made frequent appearances at the Thames Magistrates’ Court on charges relating to her drinking. She was also known to sometimes use the alias ‘Annie Fitzgerald’ when arrested, perhaps in an attempt to preserve what was left of her reputation.

  It seems likely that in Whitechapel ‘Long Liz’ worked only occasionally as a prostitute, presumably when she was short of funds and when other employment, such as charring or needlework, was unavailable for one reason or another. The watchman at her lodging house told a reporter that ‘when she could get no work she had to do the best she could for her living’, the implication of which statement is reasonably clear.

  Her relationship with Michael Kidney was somewhat stormy and sometimes violent, as both parties habitually sought recourse to alcohol, and separated quite frequently. In April of the previous year, Stride had even charged Kidney with assault, but had then failed to appear at the court to prosecute the charge. The final breakup occurred in the last week of September when Stride again returned to the doss house in Flower and Dean Street, telling friends there that she and Kidney had quarrelled again.

  On Saturday 29 September, Stride worked for a few hours at the doss house, cleaning two of the rooms, and earned the sum of sixpence for her efforts. But instead of immediately paying for her bed that night with this money, she left the building and went with the deputy, Mrs Tanner, to the Queen’s Head public house, located on the corner of Commercial Street and Fashion Street, which was one of her usual haunts, to enjoy a drink together.

  They returned together to the lodging house at about 6.30 that evening, and then separated, Stride heading for the kitchen while the deputy went elsewhere in the building. At about seven, a barber named Charles Preston, another lodger at the premises, saw her in the kitchen, dressed ready to go out, and the dosshouse charwoman, Catherine Lane, confirmed this.

  She stated that Stride had given her a piece of green velvet material to safeguard for her until she returned, and at that time Stride was certainly in funds, because she showed Lane the sixpence which she’d been paid by the deputy for cleaning. At that time she still had not paid for her accommodation for the night, but it was quite common for lodgers to only hand over the money immediately before they went to bed, often in the very early hours of the morning.

  Exactly where she went after leaving the lodging house is unknown, but the probability is that Stride spent some or all of the money that she possessed on drink, because during the rest of the evening, several different people claimed to have seen her in the area at various times, always in the company of a man, or more accurately of men. These were presumably clients she was servicing to raise the funds which she then needed to pay for further drink and her night’s lodging.

  At about eleven that evening, she was seen by two men in another pub, the Bricklayers Arms in Settles Street, in the company of a man, presumably another client. Three-quarters of an hour later, she was seen with a different client in Lower Berner Street, and at about half past midnight a police constable saw her in the same area with a male who did not match the descriptions of either of the men previously seen in her company.

  Fifteen minutes after that, Stride was seen standing by a gateway in Berner Street when another man approached her. A brief altercation occurred, and the man tripped her up and threw her down onto the pavement before running away.

  * * *

  It had been, by any standards, an eventful evening for Elizabeth Stride. She had serviced a number of clients, had drunk far too much alcohol, and then been attacked by a potential customer. But she had no option but to stay out a little longer because she still needed more money.

  So at about ten minutes before one on that Sunday morning, she had taken up a new position near the International Working Men’s Educational Club at 40 Berner Street. This was a socialist organization mainly patronized by Russian and Polish Jews, and which published the Yiddish journal Der Arbeter Fraint, ‘The Worker’s Friend’. She’d only been there for a few minutes when she saw an unwelcome figure approaching her.

  Another woman, another ‘unfortunate’, was strolling along the pavement directly towards her and that, Stride decided, simply wouldn’t do. She still needed a few more coppers for the night, because she hadn’t just been lifting her skirt for strangers. She’d also been interspersing her work with drinking sessions in nearby pubs, and a lot of the money she’d earned had already been spent. So the last thing she wanted was any competition for the last few remaining men – and potential clients – on the streets.

  As the woman approached, Stride stepped forward to confront her.

  ‘Oi, you,’ she said, ‘don’t you stop anywhere along here. This is my patch, so you can just piss off out of it. Find somewhere else to sell yourself.’

  The woman looked at her, but didn’t reply, just continued her steady progress along the pavement.

  Stride stared at her, wondering who she was, because she didn’t think she’d seen her before, and she knew many of the other ‘unfortunates’ in the area by sight if not by name.

  ‘You’re new here, aren’t you? But it doesn’t matter. Just keep walking down the street and there won’t be a problem.’

  But the woman didn’t seem to have any intention of walking past. She had altered course very slightly and was heading directly towards where Stride was standing.

  ‘I ain’t kidding, you know. Mess about with me, and you’ll be sorry.’

  The woman smiled in the gloom, and as she did so Stride realized there was something unusual about her, though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was.

  And then things happened very quickly.

  The approaching woman reached out her hand towards Elizabeth Stride’s shoulder, as if to reassure her. But the instant her fingers closed around the multi-coloured striped silk handkerchief Stride was wearing around her neck, the woman’s grip tightened suddenly and dramatically.

  In moments, Stride found herself fighting for breath, and for her life, her hands grabbing ineffectually for the handkerchief which was pulled tight around her throat. Her attacker was dragging her backwards through the gates which adjoined the Jewish club and into the dark open space – Dutfield’s Yard – which lay beyond. Stride tried desperately to scream, but the pressure of her own handkerchief around her neck was choking her and preventing her from making a sound.

  In her last moments of consciousness, Elizabeth Stride belatedly realized exactly what had seemed unusual about the woman who had approached her on the street. It was the fact that the ‘woman’ was actually a man.

  Pedachenko maintained the pressure around the neck of his victim, even after she had passed out, thi
s time making absolutely sure that she was dead before he pulled the knife out of its sheath.

  He was desperately trying to avoid getting any blood on his new disguise, because he only had a couple of female outfits that he could use. He’d found the dresses and other garments in various pawn shops outside Whitechapel, never buying more than one item each time, but his problem had been finding clothes that fit him, because he was both bigger than, and a different shape to, most women.

  When he was certain that the woman was dead, he swiftly cut her throat, the trademark wound which he had decided to inflict on each victim following the killing of Martha Tabram. Then he wiped the blade on her dress and replaced the weapon in its sheath. This one he wasn’t going to mutilate, because that night, for the first time, he was going looking for a second victim, and with her he intended to take his time.

  This first corpse, he was sure, would be found quite quickly, because there was clearly some kind of an event taking place in the club next door. That would obviously concentrate all the police resources on that one spot and provide him with an ideal opportunity to carry out the second killing without being disturbed.

  And there was another reason for carrying out the two killings on the same night. Charles Warren, Pedachenko knew, was not a stupid man, and would certainly have been very well aware of the geometric shapes which were being formed by the positions of the corpses. As the second triangle would represent the square of the Masonic symbol, the location of the third murder, the apex of the triangle, would be very easy to predict.

  If Pedachenko did not complete that triangle that very night, he guessed that Warren would flood the western part of Whitechapel with police officers and keep them there for the foreseeable future. And that would severely hamper the Russian’s plans. So it had to be done tonight.

  Moments later, Pedachenko strode out of the yard and back into Berner Street. He deliberately took small steps, so as to appear more female, as he walked north towards Commercial Road, where he turned left, heading back towards the centre of Whitechapel. He had already decided that he would find his second victim of the night somewhere near Fenchurch Street, due west of Berner Street, and that would complete the shape of the second triangle.