Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 289: Jack the Ripper with Guest Mark Meer

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Illustrious voice actor, comedian and super nerd Mark Meer joins Mike, Jesse and Alex as they deep dive Jack the Ripper while Marks voice acting skills bring shame to the boys. Vampire the Masquerade Content with Mark and Mike - https://open.spotify.com/show/0Zo1MiYe4605e4b8Gj0SkR https://www.youtube.com/@Roll4It/featured MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati All you lovely people at Patreon! HTTP://PATREON.COM/CHILLUMINATIPOD ZocDoc - http://www.zocdoc.com/chill Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Show art by - https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Chaluminati Podcast episode 289. As always, I'm one of your hosts Mike Martin today joined by the Barry Robin and Maurice Gibb of LA and Canada the Bee Gees Jesse and Alex and special guest Mr. Mark Meir himself hello you if you know me then you probably know mark if you follow my other works mark is a longtime partner over at the vampire and the masquerade podcast that we do it It's also a voice actor of extreme renown. You'd probably know him as Commander Shepard in Mass Effect. You were, what's the name of the character in the long dark? Because that's the one I also know you quite well from. That is Will McKenzie. Will McKensley.

Perhaps you remember me from such hits as so cold. Yes. A hundred and fifty ish hours of hearing you say it's so cold and almost dying, but keeping you barely alive so the wolves could kill you later. Welcome to the show. How cold were you, though? So cold. I mean, it's going to depend. You're freezing to death. Go. Well, like in any video game, we tend to do those are tend to be called sort of exertion palettes or things like that. So I'll do various levels of grunting, lifting things and various levels of getting hit or bit by things.

And that in that game in particular, you had varying levels of cold and hunger and all the loans, all the things that you have to deal with in the game. We like to call player versus Canada. It's a weird pull for like, I love the long dark is one of the masterpiece survival games that ever exists. Like one of the best made survival games out there. Everybody always my brother, I think, is a player of that game. He's like a big survival guy. He always tells me, you know, that game's so good. But also go listen to our vampire, the masquerade podcast where you play the Nosferatu known as Max Yes, long long three season story

About none of that today's actually in Alex's hands because we're we're gonna plunge you into the depths of the Chiluminati podcast Something that you are only tangentially aware of because I have probably talked about it a bunch Yes, but I've also listened to it. I quite enjoyed your Jersey Devil episode as well. Hey, look at that. I want to say at the beginning as a Canadian, I could speak with authority on perhaps certain cryptids, the Sasquatch, the Wendigo, the Ogopogo. I won't necessarily be as well read or well spoken on today's topic, but I'll do my best.

Oh, by the end, by the end, let me tell you, you will be. You win. Question, a very important question. What about being Canadian gives you the authority to speak on a Sasquatch? Do you what do you know that we don't? Oh, simply our vicinity to the sightings. Like I, of course, am in Alberta. We're quite close to the sightings. Like I of course am in Alberta. We're quite close to the Rockies.

British Columbia of course will have the lion's share of the Sasquatch sightings in Canada. But Alberta, we got the Rockies, we got lots of woods, we got the timber line. But that wasn't like a hint that every Wednesday you like go and meet the Sasquatch for brunch or something. Yeah, you don't like hanging out with the Sasquatch?

No, no, no. I mean, he has largely a ceremonial role in our government. Oh, of course. Right. Right. Obviously. But I will say that in, you know, small Canadian museums and stuff like that, there's the one in Banff, Alberta, which is near us. It has, it has like a Sasquatch section. There's a, you know, there's a big Sasquatch statue that, uh, that I remember visiting as a kid. So, and then they've got inside, they've got one that actually has hair on it. Do you think Sasquatch in the woods sees the Sasquatch statue and thinks, what the hell is that? Or flattered, you know, like Sasquatch is like,

that's my good side. I like that. It goes back in the woods and, like Sasquatch is like, that's my good side. I like that. He goes back in the woods and does whatever Sasquatch does. I mean, according to some theories, he returns to his own dimension. So who knows? Yeah, you're well read and well versed in actual some sass Sasquatch lore. That's a deep cut of Sasquatch, the interdimensional aspect of it all, which aliens may also be a part of all mixed in with that within. But don't get me started on the Ogo Pogo, because that's I don't know.

For those who don't know, it's a lake monster. It's a Nessie. It's a Nessie. It is a Nessie. In the podcast at some point. But you're since you're Canadian, I think you're like legally our enemy now. So do we have to go to work on who owns the Sasquatch? I'm all right. I'm on Team Canada on this one. I mean, I might be Team Canada. Yeah, I'm gonna let you know.

I'm Team Canada. I'm Team Canada. So Mathis kind of butchered my beautiful long lengthy wordy intros that I often ramped. You didn't even tell me you wanted to do the intro. So I just went in. I wrote an entire episode just like I always do for every guest that shows up. I wanna also say Mark is not just from Canada.

He's from Alberta and he's from Edmonton, which is a cool place to go if you are in Canada. And I wanna point out that even though you are here and everybody's excited to see you because you are a voice actor in video games, you are also, like myself, a very, very storied improviser. You were on Die Nasty, which is a very popular show. The Rapid Fire Theater is a very legendary theater

that he's part of. He was on Gordon's Big Bald Head, which is a crazy sketch show that he was on. For CBC Radio, he did The Irrelevant Show, which is a pretty popular show. Caution May Contain Nuts for APTN. And the Super Channel was designated as must carry by the CRTC, which is important.

It means it's essential. And that's where his show, Tiny Plastic Men, which you have like made, I feel like you made that show a lot. Like you were very central to that show's creation. I was in fact one of the co-creators and one of the stars and writers. And yes, it was on Super Channel.

We, I think we're available, or at least were at some point on Amazon. Plus, baby. Amazon Prime in the states around. That's around one of two very distinct. Oh, no, I'm laughing at this Nardwar ass intro because this man's like, I want to dig up everything, dude. Like, OK, is the improv man like improv is like such a huge part of Alex's life as well makes absolute. It's just very funny to me that he came in with the deets.

Cognitive Sports Los Angeles. I did my 10,000 hours. I also just want to say just a couple things. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Dragon Age. We already talked about the Long Dark. We already talked about that your Commander Shepard. But I also want to say as a you can see in my I don't know if you can see that well But I am a huge comic book reader

So it was very cool to realize that you were also starro in Gotham Knights I was and I was you know you go into these things and you know don't actually know what you're auditioning for so All I knew was that I was playing some sort of alien I didn't find out I was playing Starro, a classic Justice League villain from the Silver Age, until I was in the booth, and I was very excited. Awesome. Yeah, you gave us a very Doctor Who 60s vibe, and I appreciated that. One of the things I'm very excited for

is actually to have Mark and Alex here on the same call, because in both my shows, you both are the comic hyper-focused nerds. You guys know everything about comics. One of Max's, your character in our vampire shows, defining characteristics is his in-depth knowledge of comic book lore and history. Yeah, it's like you and Nosferatu from Nosferatu,

the film worked at my LCS. Yes, yes, yes. It had like a World War II era attitude. It's great, it's great. I was gonna ask you, Mark, like how did you end up lashed into the math is world like I just math has seen like 10 movies. He's not a very I don't know how he would have it's entirely. It's entirely because we played an RPG together like math is of course, I don't know if you're

aware, gentlemen, but is an excellent storyteller for vampire the masquerade. That's the equivalent of the dungeon master in that particular system. And I very much enjoyed the adventures that we've had. Yes, Stitches is a good show. That's how we met was, you know, the old fashioned way, rolling dice. And are you guys back? Are you guys coming back with more? We will be coming back, but we will. Shit, just like we ended like it was a lot of shit was going on behind the scenes. Even getting the last couple of episodes recorded was difficult.

And then when that happened, now it's just been chaos for a lot of people. And right now, one of the main players is just traveling a ton for work. So we'll get that back and scheduling. I mean, RPG podcasts are really just like the RPG that you play or dining room table. It's impossible to schedule everyone. The harder it becomes. Yeah, very true. Yeah. But yeah, you should listen to Stitch of Fate because it's, it's a particularly good one. And it's like nicely, like not a lot of those podcasts are like slick, but this one's like actually good listening.

We aim for slickness. And we should mention Stitch of Fate was the first one. Cracked Crown is our current narrative, but it's all under the- Same story world, same universe, same characters, just the next- It's all under the Pod by Night banner. Yes Just the next it's all under the pod by night banner Yes, and there's a patreon and all that good stuff. Yeah, max is particularly good he sounds like one of my Eastern European friends dads who like Drove me in his wife beater in his minivan to go buy me a giant bologna sandwich one time in the 90s

by the way, though Speaking of creatures of the night and high strangeness, Mark, I'm going to ask you the same. I'm going to open the show by asking the same thing I ask everyone here. That requires a bit of a caveat, which is that the big reason that Chiluminati works is because of the interplay, as I see it, of the different energies that our three hosts bring to the mic. Mathis is, of course course the overthirsty,

woo-wooed out, spooky molder of the group. A show that was shot very much in British Columbia, Canada. I'm dreading this. Jessie is the babylicious, science-minded skeptic, Dana Scully, minus all the weird, confusing Irish Catholic baggage and internal family angst that she has, and the weird Moby Dick fixation that she's about. I do love Moby Dick though.

And I'm like Tony Shalhoub in Galaxy Quest or something. I'm just happy to be here. I love wild concepts. I'm probably Stone. Whoa, whoa, no! I get that quote! I've seen that movie multiple times. You can't say that's Mulder and Scully,

and that I'm Tony Shalhoub from a totally different property. You can't do that. It's a jungle out there, dude. You're like the, what is it, the horseman? Those guys. I want to make sure I've got this right. So you're not totally Shalhoub's character.

You're the actor, Tony Shalhoub. No, no. Okay. Yeah. You know what? I'm Tony Shalhoub just doing bit parts for his own happiness in like mid tier double A 90s movies that are carried by Tim Allen. Like, I'm having a great time as Tony Shalhoub in this podcast. It's great. But what I want to know is, which one are you? Are you a scully, a molder or a Shalhoub? the Shalhoub category, because again, you seemed impressed by my knowledge of, say, Bigfoot's possible extradimensional origin. But a lot of that is filtered through pop culture.

It's not like I'm doing the hard research. I'm usually just like, I wrote a short story where somebody else had picked up on this or a comic book or what have you. But here's the thing, that's where that stuff lives. And I'm going to say something else. Everything that I've ever done an episode on and now we've done, I don't know, 300 episodes on the show. So 189 today, crazy amount of episodes on the show, like, never am I like more fascinated

by finding out like the boring truth of something. And some of the stuff that's on the show, you know, jumps off off the page and gains its life after it's already occurred and all the stories have been researched. So I think we're gonna see something like that occur today, magic before our very eyes. And I think that's pretty interesting. But before we do that,

I have another question for Mark, which is, do you personally, because of course this is a show about the paranormal, murder, bizarre happenings, strange things. Do you personally, or does somebody that you know in your family, or do you have like a long running family story that somebody whips out when this type of stuff pops up? Like a local legend even or a murder in your neighborhood or something? Is there anything like that in your

life that you feel comfortable sharing with the Chiluminati audience at large? Myself? No, I've not had any personal brushes with the paranormal. Of course, I love that sort of thing. I like comic books, I like horror movies. I like all these things. So I'm very immersed in the secondhand lore, I guess, of that. However, I do know my wife's, in my wife's family,

there's certainly, she's from England. So they tend to live in very old houses there. So ghost stories and hauntings. Graveyards everywhere. Yeah, so hauntings and things like that, that is certainly prevalent. And like I say, I live in Canada and we have Sasquatch museums.

Have you, has she seen anything? Has she ever, does she have like that boot that came through the wall that one time that scared the shit out of everyone at dinner or something? Oh, you've heard the story of the boot. The boot. No, but there are family stories, including some ghost photography. I've had the opportunity to witness and it does seem a bit eerie. Did you witness anything like that didn't make you feel like Dana Scully? Like did you ever, do you feel,

did you ever feel the magic? My cousin used to tell me that one Christmas morning he looked to the fireplace and he saw a sparkle after he heard a noise downstairs and that's his paranormal story. So, I don't know, you never know. Is there anything ever stuck with you in your life that's happened like that?

It's not a paranormal story. That's a heartwarming Christmas tale. That's a heartwarming Christmas tale. That's a brush of the paranormal. That sounds like a Jesse paranormal story. Like, yeah, I saw a spark. That was weird. Yeah, yeah.

End of story. I saw a table when I closed my eyes. Sparkled by the chimney. And a laugh in the air. Yeah, I don't know. You never know. Some people are like, oh, I got like 15 stories. Some people are like, I completely believe in everything, Mathis. And I've never seen anything. So I mean, I've seen I've seen those ghost photography things that I was talking about. And yeah, there's like, basically, the one that stuck out to me the most is a reflection of what is clearly a person in a mirror. They were actually, I think,

they were taking a picture of something to have it appraised like an old piece of furniture. There was a mirror in it and you can see that it's somebody, he's wearing clothing from a few decades before. Nobody recognizes him. He was not in the room. You can see from the position where he's standing in the room, it's like, well, there's no one there. Why is there a reflection show? So yes, who knows? There's something about photographs and mirrors in general, like, you ever look in a mirror and you just like feel like it's another place? Like, I don't know, I always think

about that stuff all the time. I have a story. Similarly, somebody came up to us on stage one time where we were doing a Chiluminati show and show me a picture of like this restaurant, like under the restaurant in New Orleans, and I probably told this story before, but under the somebody came up to us on stage one time where we were doing a Chiluminati show and show me a picture of like this restaurant like under the restaurant in New Orleans, and I probably told the story before, but under the restaurant in New Orleans, there was like, that's a very haunted place. Let's guess my family's from Slidell, Louisiana, shout outs to them.

But this restaurant was like one of those ones that's like been open for a really long time. And they're the owner who hasn't been available for many years, has always had a table kept underneath the restaurant for him, right? And so, it's one of those kind of situations where it's like in the wine cellar, there's like a beautiful table, and they went up and you can see the table

if you go around this alley, so they took a picture of it, and it was like one of those Apple live photos, and the ghost kind of like moved a little bit in it, so it's pretty crazy. I don't know, something about ghost pictures really does scare the shit kind of like moved a little bit in it so it's pretty crazy I don't know something about something about ghost pictures really does scare the shit out of me but yeah thank you for that that was perfect I can see the future people are satisfied which with what has occurred already well about

this they're satisfied other stuff that's going on in today's world not so much but anyway speaking of things that don't necessarily feel 100% right now, yet we still must somehow suffer through some new leadership has recently come into power at the Department of Lies over at Chiluminati, who, for whatever reason, seemed to pay way too much attention to what I put on this show. So just to show that I am technically compliant with these people, even though it is completely under duress, I have decided to have Jesse read the following statement to kick us off today.

Speaking of under duress, for centuries, from a certain point of view, owning the line between fiction and history has been the sole focus of our great organization. And as always, we here at the Chiluminati Podcast know that ultimately, where we end up drawing that line is entirely up to us, by which we mean, if it's not clear, the Royal Us, of course. Not just us, the Chiluminati, no no no, not at all what we meant, though if we're being honest, that would be pretty nice. Remember the only lie is the truth.

Stay present, stay informed, stay up to date on mini-sodes and fuck you. Beautiful bespoke pieces of exclusive AI humiliating hand drawn art by Studio Molektro. Painjohn.com slash IlluminatiPod. Cool, glad I read that what a wonderful bit of wisdom from the department of wisdom yeah please check out the patreon it keeps the show going by the way mark one of the fun little quirks about the show as I mentioned before is that anytime I might turn to one of my codes with some outrageous passage passage or sus quotation which they will then read aloud for the listeners in

some poor approximation of the way, say, Ken Burns employed Keith Carradine as shoeless Joe Jackson in Baseball, a film by Ken Burns, which always helped to bring our story to life for the listener, like history getting up and walking right off the page, like I said. But anyway, speaking of being long-winded for very little payoff, today's episode has been slated on the schedule for months now, as Jack the Ripper, The Canonical Five featuring Mark Mir, where I go into a very straightforward overview of the near mythical, but very real Victorian era serial killer and media sensation, Jack the Ripper, aka Zodiac's great grandpa. But in the last like several weeks, a story has once again,

appeared in the news, which has been going around for like 10 years now, in which the very same like, quote unquote, ripperologist, which is what these people call themselves, expert and forensic geneticist, the same ripperologist and the same forensic geneticist, two guys, claim to have tested the same garment for DNA, that definitively again points to the same suspect that they've been saying now since about 2011. And once again, all the sites, all the USA Today, everybody's picking it up, celebrating like this thing's finally solved. So now before I even go into the crimes details and finer points, let's get the bit about

Catherine Eddow's shawl handled right out of the gate. She's one of the victims. And I want to give a shout out to Edward Stowe at the House of Lechmere on YouTube for all this great info. He's one of these people that I found out about in doing research for this, who are like part of this tradition, I would call it almost like a community or like small, fun mafia of Ripper tour guides that's just like been there since the 1890s, right? So like this tradition of being a Ripper tour guide, there's all these little like, it's almost like being a cabbie in London where there's like all these little things that you pick up from doing it for a while and little things that come with the territory that you got to know. So he was really,

he's a really cool guy. You should check out his YouTube channel, Edward Stowe, the house of lechmere. I think that's his pick for the for the suspect. But there's a link to an hour long version of his video about this thing that I'm about to talk about in the show notes. So give it a shout. First of all, the shawl that we're talking about today, kind of looks more like a table runner than an actual shawl, which is, you know, one of those things that goes in the middle of a table long ways to make a table look sexy. But it was nice. It was silk. There

were flowers on it. It was fancy stuff very fancy for a prostitute to have. It's been cut up. If you see it, if you have a chance to look at this shawl that we're talking about, it's been cut up for various reasons, including his memorabilia. It's heavily stained, supposedly has never been washed. And that's because what it is supposedly is it's the bloody makeshift shawl of a 46 year old prostitute named Catherine Eddowes, who I just said, who was murdered by Jack the Ripper, and who we're not going to go any further into now. Besides to say that this thing, the thing about Jack the Ripper is that he violently murdered probably like five women. Some people say 11, but if you want

to know broad strokes who Jack the Ripper is, he's a dude from 1888 who killed like five British women. He also loved to collect stones and put them in the formation of Stonehenge at the crime scene. Okay. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole today. But real quick, let's go down another rabbit hole instead. How old was she? 46 and the average lifespan at in the 1880s was 43. Dude, that was 1880s was 43. We'll talk about, we'll tie. This is in,

this is in London. So, so, so first things first, you gotta remember this. 1888 London for the most part, is probably the center of the universe. Like this is probably the biggest city in the Western world. So in the world of like what her life was like compared to ours, like I could see her getting to be 46. I'm like, in fact, you're like the concept of a 46 year old prostitute out there in the 1800s

doing her thing. Like I wanna know more about her life story. You want to ask me crazy? The other thing you have to remember, of course, is like with life expectancy, the reason it was so low is because so many kids died when they were very young. So that really brought the average down. That's another statistic about. So there were lots of people in their 40s and 50s that were alive, but it's just like if the average got brought down because so many people died in childhood. All these the youngest prostitute that was murdered by Jack the Ripper that we're going to talk about today in the canonical five, which is the name of this episode, was 44. She was like the young one. So kind of interesting to think about.

But wasn't the very last victim she actually like in her 20s or so? Yeah, she's a little younger, but that's a little bit different of a situation. So we'll get into that. Yeah. I did not know that age played a factor in this. I just thought he was picking women off the street. I didn't know they're all 40 plus. I don't think he knew these.

I don't personally think he knew these women, but like the moment we start talking about Jack the Ripper himself We go straight into crazy town because you can't you can't even imagine the like breadth of Like not just not just like cuckoo bananas theories Serious theories like they feel like they're from like a fucking tabletop RPG the plot points. It's crazy. Uh, but Yeah, so back to the shawl. Apparently, acting sergeant Amos Simpson of the London Metropolitan Police found it at the crime scene in 1888. On that day when Catherine Eddowes was

murdered, and he saw it and he thought, Oh, my wife might like this. It's made of silk and she makes dresses. And he brought it to her house. And she was like, No, no, no, no, that's fucking gross. What the fuck are you talking about? So he held onto it, never washed it. He was like, it's because, you know, after that, because Eddowes was like the third victim. So like, Jack the Ripper was already popping off by this point. So he knew it was memorabilia for a famous murder when he had it, theoretically, if he ever had it. And so he said, according to him, he held on to it till 1917 when he died, left the shawl with his sister Mary who

died nine years later in 1926. Her daughter Eliza had it till 66. Her daughter who was also called Eliza had it until 86. And then in 88 during an investigation of the 100th anniversary of the murders, which is already suspect, because like, wouldn't it be great if you solve stuff 100 years after it happened, it was discovered that the shawl had been lent by Eliza's antique dealer son David, to another antique dealer. So this the owner's son was an antique person who worked in like prints. And he lent it to another antique dealer who

literally cut and kept two pieces of the different like fabrics in the shawl before returning. This evidence is already so goddamn fucked. Yeah, exactly. Everywhere. Do you think they were like, hey, do you think they held off on the investigation because the 100 year anniversary was coming up? Or do you think because the 100 year anniversary was coming up, they started thinking about

reopening the investigation? I'll tell you. Well, I'll say this. I mean, if my, my study of Scooby Doo has taught me anything mysteries are often solved 100 years to the day. Yes, that's true. That just makes it easier. It just makes it easier because all the things line up so ritualistic writers know that's a good time. Yeah. But so the writers of the simulation can

fuck themselves. The person the person who cut the shawl that while they were borrowing it made like a framed thing out of the two pieces that they cut from the shawl and then they sold that. So that's another part of this. That's like a fucked up thing. Like if this was a historical item, if this was like George Washington's jacket or some shit like that, that was like definitely his jacket and somebody was like cutting up the jacket and selling it in pieces in the 80s, that seems crazy to me. Well, I got to admit that the chain of evidence here seems like pretty shaky. It does remind me a little bit of Catholics because one of the big things in Catholicism

is basically a lot of the fuck tabernacles as things are called, if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I've gone to church, has like a piece of a saint in it. And they would hack when saints would die, they would hack off pieces of the saint and sell them off. That's a whole other like idols, icons, all that. It reminds me of that, of like hacking up this like, something that should be just like left alone and just selling it off.

Man, capitalism knows no bounds, baby. Right, right. So the show goes back to David, who leaves it with Scotland Yard. Because if you don't know this, in Doctor Who, there's this thing called the Black Armory or something like that in Scotland Yard that they like, there's a famous scene where they forget

which one's the real one and the fake one, and they cause world peace in this room. It looks actually quite a bit like that. It's called the Black Museum or the Crime Museum inside Scotland Yard. And it's like the most similar thing that I can think of in real life to Batman's cave when he has like the Joker's crowbar

and all this other shit that he like just keeps. The giant coin. Yeah. The dinosaur, the big robot dinosaur, the card. Yeah. One uniform in a glass case. Yeah. Do you ever think to yourself like, what does he do with that shit?

Does he just stand in front of it and just have PTSD flashbacks behind you, dude? And yeah, but this brings me joy. Do you think that's the weapon of like Joker? Like, enjoy? Dude, no, Jason lived. You got to remember that. That's true. He didn't live. So it's like kind of like a celebration. If you know, it's not. Yeah, I mean, all of those, you know, super villain trophies are like, yes, that time I finally put away the the Riddler for like, three weeks until he broke up. Yeah, exactly. So and I enjoyed those three weeks.

So the thing that's crazy about this is that that shawl was at this crime museum. But David, the owner of the shawl, found out that they weren't even putting it on display in the museum. They were just keeping it in the back because they couldn't prove, as we've kind of established, its historical legitimacy. So he was like, this is doing nothing here. It's gaining no reputation by being in the Scotland Yard Museum like I want it to. So he takes it back.

But not before Scotland Yard also cuts a piece of it off to keep, which is insane to me. And a piece for everybody. This thing is like fucking mangled. If you see it, it's like it looks like a third of what it was. It's pretty a curse. And if you touch everybody. This thing is like fucking mangled. If you see it, it looks like a third of what it was. It's crazy. It's like a curse. And if you touch it, you must keep a piece, else you die.

Like imagine if somebody did that to the Shroud of Turin. Like it would be insane. Like if somebody was just like, I just cut a piece for myself to keep here. I mean, how many? This guy's strand of Jesus's hair in there. Yeah. I'd wager people have.

Yeah, you know. I'm sure like a little. But when you see the shit. I mean, if they they do it to Saints like they literally hack up the Saints and just like, okay, take this here. Take this here. It's not like historians. St. Bernadice. They wouldn't do that at a museum. They did that like at a church with a dirt floor in 700 years ago. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. They did anything. They still have Saints, man. They still like there's the most

modern Saint is an e-sports kid whose body is on display and preserved within one of their temple, the internet. Oh, they still have Saints, man. They still, like, there's a, the most modern Saint is an eSports kid whose body is on display and preserved within one of their temple, uh, the churches. I'm sorry, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's the most profane thing that I've ever heard in my life. You did not know this? eSports Saint. Hang on one second. No way.

What qualified this, was it, was it like a high score that qualified him? Yeah, what miracle did he, Katie was just a miracle. It was insane. Like, canonize this guy. Canonize this kid now. He won 1v5 in the mid miracle. It was insane. This guy canonized this kid now. He won one V five in the mid lane. It was crazy. No one knows how he did it. He said he was going to do it.

Nobody believed him. And then he did. Yeah, then he did. First millennial saint, a whiz, who is the early odds internet to spread awareness of Catholic faith, God's influence, or patron saint. The good is the patron saint of the internet. Oh, wow.

There you go. No, Carlo cuteness. I'll copy paste it. Carlos, like I can get a Saint Carlo like a little thing to hang around. He's a saint. Yeah. Is he officially a saint or is he just like you're on deck to be a saint? No, no. He got announced as a saint by the Vatican. He had a couple of miracles that were attributed to him. One of the miracles was a girl from Costa Rica suffered a serious head trauma after falling off a bike

in Florence, Italy, but recovered against the odds after her mother prayed at his tomb in Assisi, because that's where his body is, is in Assisi. That's amazing. Yeah, so you know, there you go. So wait, he's got a, so obviously he did very well on eSports because if he's got a tomb, that's... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can even see like you know pictures of it like it's just in yeah go here this is no don't come cheap i'm just picturing like a gamer like completely enshrined in amber like just look look you're not far off that's absolutely fucking insane it really is just a kid in a wow. That he just looks like my my dead grandma or something. It's absolutely insane. Yeah, you know, they're still happening. Saints still exist and they're still using them for miracles, baby. Can I light a candle to him and put it on my desk whenever I stream?

Like, can we you should get one of those little those little coins like like St. Francis that you hang on your monitor? I mean, if he's official, then he obviously will have merch. Yes, absolutely. The Vatican does not sleep on that. So we got to figure that out. We got to get this guy. We got to make this guy.

We got to become a we need like a patron saint of like the unknown. Does that exist? Anybody want to get real religious patron saint of the unknown? There's no way that exists. That's like the opposite of like like stuff that's in the unknown. There's no way that exists. That's like the opposite of like, like stuff that's in the Bible. Yeah. No, I'm not seeing it.

Go ahead. Anyway, it's not like the Shroud of Turin, the shawl of Catherine Eddowes. It might not even be her shawl, but that did not stop him from rescuing it from obscurity in Scotland Yard and taking it on tour, you know, doing some TV shows and stuff with it. He'd show up at the fucking ripper sites and just holding it letting people

touch it, which is insane. Handled by hundreds of randos. Yeah, so how can any DNA evidence from this be even remotely? Right, right. So it was swabbed and tested a first time in 2006 for a ripper documentary with inconclusive results, obviously, surprise, surprise. But then something amazing happened, which is that David sold the shawl to a businessman and amateur investigator slash ripperologist person called Russell Edwards in 2007, who was contacted in 2011, after kind of building up the legend of the shroud a little bit himself, by a production company making a

jack the Ripper documentary who wanted to run another DNA test on the shawl, except this time they wanted to do it at Liverpool John Moores University, to see if it linked to a different suspect. It did not. But it did introduce Russell to the forensic geneticist Dr. Yari Luhelinan, who is a Finnish scientist who is at Liverpool, John Moores, and his thing he's a forensic geneticist. And his thing is that and the reason that he's kind of like excited about this as a topic is that his whole deal is that he makes

new methods of testing DNA in things that are ancient. So for him, he doesn't really care about Jack the Ripper. He didn't really have any knowledge of him. Like I said, he's like a Finnish national. It's not like the biggest case in Finland. But he heard about that this guy was testing the shroud and he was like, fuck yes, I need to like get involved in this.

And he has this thing called vacuuming that he does where he has this like chemical that he made, where he injects the fabric with it, it like hardens and enshrines the DNA but loosens it from whatever it's attached to don't know how it works. But that happens. And then he sucks it up by vacuum and test it seems to me, like this actually works. Just based on like this actually works. Just based on like what I know about this guy.

And you're a scientist. And you're a scientist. I've just been reading about this for a long time. It's not the method that is quack. Like this is a real thing that you could do tests on anything with that would yield accurate results. Let's just say that at the top. But by 2014, when Edwards published the book yield accurate results. Let's just say that at the top. But

by 2014, when Edwards published the book naming Jack the Ripper was his name of the book, it also names Jack the Ripper, but it is called naming Jack the Ripper. He was pretty sure he had this shit narrowed down. He began to report that all these markers he was finding were denoting a Russian Jewish ancestry for Jack the Ripper. They found a descendant of Edo's. They found a descendant of their star suspect, dark hair, all this stuff. It points to Aaron Kosminski, who is a very,

like if you know the Ripper legend, Kosminski is one of the ones who is like always mentioned. He's not a crazy suspect. I wouldn't say too much. But the TLDR on him is he's a Polish Jewish immigrant. He had a history of violence. He spent some time in an asylum for quote unquote. This guy was the barber, right?

Like he was. Yes, he's like a barber. Yeah. Which if you know about barbers in England at the time, they were under the purview of the surgical guild because a barber wasn't just a barber who cut your hair. If you got like the shit beat out of you or something and your face was fucked up, the barber could like

give you stitches, the barber could, you know, stuff like that. Two for one deals of haircut plus a little blood letting was common. Real talk, like you could like do little surgeries with the barber. That's real. And he, at the time of the murders,

he hadn't done anything like that for five years. I'm not gonna go deep into Aaron Kosminski today, but he is the person that they fingered with this method. And he'd been displaying some sort of like insanity type behaviors since 1885. And he actually died in a sanitarium after like being sent there for holding his sister at knife point or something like that.

But here's Mathis with a quote from the doctor, Dr. Leinhein, how do I say his last name? I just want to say Lou Hellhainen. When I tested the resulting DNA profiles against the DNA taken from swabs from Catherine Etto's descendant, they were a match. I used the same extraction method on the stains which had characteristics of seminal fluid.

Dr. David Miller found epithelial cells which line cavities and organs much to our surprise as we were not expecting to find anything usable after 126 years. Then I used a new process called whole genome amplification to copy the DNA 500 million fold and allow it to be profiled. That's probably what the aliens use. Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kuzminski's sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA

swabbed from the inside of her mouth. The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2% match as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8% fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved the perfect 100% match because of the genome amplification technique. I was also able to ascertain the ethnic and geographical background of the DNA extracted. It was of a type known as the haplogroup T1A1, common in people of Russian Jewish ethnicity. I was even I was even able to establish that he had dark hair.

Now that it's over, I'm excited and proud of what we've achieved and satisfied that we have established as far as we possibly can that Aaron, Aaron Kuzminski is the culprit. And again, I want to say I don't think the suspect himself is necessarily a ridiculous pick for who could be Jack the Ripper. I don't. But very shortly after this report about the shawl was published, it became very clear

that not everything was airtight about this case. Namely, and I'm not an expert in this topic, but he made a mistake and I'm going to have Mark read us a little quote about that mistake from the independent. This DNA alteration is known as global private mutation, and is not very common in worldwide population, as it has a frequency estimate of 0.0000003506, ie approximately one over 290,000. You said that I probably would have been easier. That means that that's how many people have it in the world.

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. I will say I may have read one or too many zeros, but this figure has been calculated using the database at the Institute of Legal Medicine, GMI, based on the latest available information. Thus, this result indicates the shawl contains human DNA, identical to Karen Miller's

for this mitochondrial DNA segment, he says. But experts with detailed knowledge of GMI's MTDNA database claimed that Dr. Lewidan made the error of nomenclature because the mutation in question should be written as 315.1C and as 315.1C and not 314.1C. Had the doctor done this

and followed standard forensic practice, he would have discovered the mutation was not rare at all, but shared by more than 99% of people of European descent. So basically, he misunderstood which genetic marker, like mutation marker it was. 3, 3 1 4.1 C, there's like 200 people in England who have it. So if it matched and everything lined up, extremely likely. You can't really use mitochondrial DNA to identify someone.

Right? That's not really how mitochondrial DNA works. Sure, sure, Dr. Allen. Whatever you say. Truly, it's just like common amongst everyone. Like a lot of it's very common, the DNA and mitochondria. But you can rule people out with it. And that's what he was trying to do to a final effect by getting that extra DNA

confirmation from Kosminski sister, but it wasn't real. It was all a mistake. Also, these results were never submitted for peer review, which is kind of odd when you're going this hard on publicity for a book that you're about to publish. And they still hadn't really explained why they were even 100% confident of the shawls provenance, when even Scotland Yard wasn't willing to display it in a museum that wasn't even open to the general public, especially because there was some serious inconsistencies with acting Sergeant Simpson, who the cop who originally found the scarf at the scene, who would have had to have been somewhere outside

his jurisdiction on special assignment, because it was actually the city of London police force that had jurisdiction, not the Metro Police, which he was part of in that area. And if you know about London, the city of London is like, this really bizarre. I mean, it's just ancient London in the center of London, it's like a tiny little area of London that's still called the city of London, and they have their own police department. I think to this day, they still do. But so it's

weird. Like, so that's one part is that he shouldn't have been there based on what his jurisdiction was. And the chatter about the shawl not even being listed among the victims belongings at the scene was also important. So there was lists of what was found with Catherine Eddowes and there was no Shawl. Obviously to his credit, Russell Edwards does have some explanation

for these inconsistencies in his book, but it was strictly on a trust me, burrow basis, unverifiable stories from family members. And I would say without fear of too much outrage among Ripperheads, that it was flimsy. Ripperologists, sir? No, Ripperheads are just the fans. Ripperologists are people who are the fans have a separate name.

No, I'm just saying I'm just calling them Ripperheads because I want to distinguish them. Now they do. And I think they should take that story. Good. Yeah. Do you think the Ripperhead was responsible for that fish and chip place that we saw? Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack saw Jack Jack the chipper. Yes, Jack Jack the chipper dude It's a real place. We walk like every day for the clipper and Jack the ripper or Jack the the Chip chipper chipper Jack the clipper, which is a barber and Jack the chipper, which is a fish and chips place are both

Within a quarter mile of a murder site. And there's another fish and chips place, which we'll actually talk about in this episode that now stands at the place where a piece of evidence was found. So there's a whole tradition, like I was talking about these tour guides, they like take you around and you get to have lunch. It's a crazy little time.

It's a crazy little thing to go do a tour in White Sheep. I've actually done it. I've done it both as a child and as an adult. I wonder if one of the two very famous guides that I looked into for this episode like gave you your tour, I don't know. I'm not sure. And of course, if you go to London and you go to,

for example, Madame Tussaud's wax museum, there's the Chamber of Horrors there, Jack the Ripper is a big part of that, the London dungeon, another tourist attraction. So yeah, it's not just Whitechapel that cashes in. Yeah, it's like a whole big part of the tourism industry in England in general. And it's kind of cool. London in general as well. I'm not going to say just London. I'm sure that there are other parts of England where you can go see a Jack the Ripper exhibit. But yeah, so that was in 2014. That bit now in 2019, after being laughed out of the clubhouse, basically, Edwards came back with a peer reviewed paper of his findings, which was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is a real journal. He doesn't mention 3151C or 3141C at all.

Mostly, it's just him trying to assert again that somehow the same chain of custody he's been sticking with since 2011 is still definitely enough to connect the shawl to Catherine Eddowes. But the main evidence that he provides to show this is just a letter from that dude David in 2007 saying, trust me, bro, it came from here to here to here to here to here to here. So, I don't know, he even says in the letter, if you want to know more, ask the Metropolitan Police records. He was like, it letter, if you want to know more, ask the Metropolitan Police records. He was like, it's there if you go look, but he didn't include any of the.

I hate that shit. I hate when people are like, no, no, it's there. You just got to look yourself. Yeah. So more importantly than that, extremely qualified experts had problems with the way it was all being presented as well. And here's Jesse with a quote about that from Smithsonian magazine. As Hasani,issensteiner, a mitochondrial DNA expert, points out, mitochondrial DNA can't be used to positively ID a suspect. It can only rule out since thousands of other people could have

had the same mitochondrial DNA. Additionally, experts have critiqued the way the results were published, as some of the data is shown as graphs instead of actual results. Forensic scientist Walter Parson says the authors should publish the mitochondrial DNA sequences. Otherwise, the reader cannot judge the result, Parsons says. Beyond the results, there's an even bigger obstacle afoot, the provenance of the Shaw. For the conversation, McReed explains, the Shaw's origin story is full of problems. Was the Shaw even picked up by Metropolitan Police Officer Amos Simpson at the crime scene that night? Even if that were true, whether this scarf

is the authentic one is up for debate. The cloth was previously dated to the Edwardian period from 1901 to 1910, as well as the early 1800s. It could come from anywhere in Europe. All right, I just want you to take a moment and for this next couple minutes, I want you to think of me like a parent. All right, you can even call me daddy if you want to. And daddy says, you should go to the doctors. Thank you so much to Zoc Doc for sponsoring today's episode. Listen, I don't want to hear any excuses young man or young lady or young lady or who you know whatever you identify as.

When was the last time you needed to go to a doctor but you decided to push it off? Oh, too busy. Oh, it just heal on its own Even though it's been 17 years. Oh, I don't need help. I'll just crawl with my fingers when my legs are broken. We've all been there. Booking a doctor appointment can feel just so daunting, but thanks to ZockDock, there's no reason to delay. They make it so easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you. ZockDock is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000

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That's zocdoc.com slash chill zocdoc.com slash chill. Thank you again to Zocdoc for sponsoring today's episode. Yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't feel great to me. Lou Hellinen also said he didn't publish the direct data because of privacy, which is wild. Because like the article says, you cannot identify a specific person for mitochondrial DNA, just rule them out. So that falls flat immediately, especially since with these types of like

reopened crimes of antiquity, results like this, especially with old crimes, even in new crimes, results like this are published all the time with no legal issue of any kind. You know what I mean? Like if you, if DNA evidence ties you to a murder weapon, you can't be like, that's liable. Like, uh, so that's kind of weird. Uh, so then one more time in 2024, it's like every five years, it pops up. The most recent one that I think I'm aware of. This is the one that's like still resolving right now.

This time seemingly just to hype people up for his 2024. He did Ripper tours for Halloween in 2024. So that's when he first started talking about it. And he's republishing his book naming Jack the Ripper. But this time it has an AI image of Kosminski inside. Oh, excellent. That is based from his genes or something. And it's like, oh, it matches the eyewitness accounts.

It's crazy. And in the meantime, Russell Edwards, the guy who's doing all this, and he has his own Ripper shop down there in that Ripper area that we've all been to probably. And he had a pop-up shop there, just for Ripper and the tours, but he's in the meantime, also been trying to go solve other famous murders

in England. Like there's this thing called the Moore's Murders from 1964, and very famous case if you are English. And said he solved it using some sort of like theory about the victims being buried in like the formation of a swastika and that he went to the point in the swastika where he thought this kid, Keith Bennett was murdered or buried,

and he said he found remains. And so the fucking, you know, tax dollars went out there and did an investigation and found absolutely literally nothing. Oh, wow. And he was just like, I don't know, it was there when I went. And look, I only say all this to explain that whether it's because he got a financial stake in it, or he's just passionate or whatever, Russell Edwards just seems as if he's like, at this point just married to this specific explanation for Jack the Ripper at this point. He doesn't want to give up on it because it's going to invalidate his evidence. He spent a lot of money buying it. He's been in business as a Jack the Ripper guy now for years.

He's going to die on this hill as long as it takes. Yeah. Every year that passes, that shit compounds. And the more and the minute you give it up, the minute more of your life you have to admit was all fucking for a sham. Yeah. And beyond that, it becomes kind of hard to sell those Ripper tour packages and books. And he's still got some books left in his garage.

He probably needs to move. So his whole reputation is on this. He just printed a new edition. Yeah. You reputation is on this. He just edition. Yeah, have an AI book being written soon. Yeah. So the jeans of Jack the Ripper who would write it if I did it the Jack the Ripper case. I think that would work. Yeah. And in the end, in the words of Chiluminati department of lies, this this creates something called historical

friction, which is similar to historical fiction, but involves friction. I'm sorry, let me just get this. Hold on. Let me just get out my guidebook a little bit. I just hold on. It's just off cameras right here. I'm just getting out my guidebook really quick. If Mathis doesn't mind reading it for me, I'm just going to quickly type this up and give him a little piece of the handbook here to read. Here you go. This very specific for people watching on Patreon bit is great. We got a whole like we got it. We got like movement and a whole ad love that whole situation. Historical friction arises when what we wish to be true and what is in fact true are non-balance.

In times of elevated friction, the Department of Lies reminds you that technically, this is a lie can itself be a liberating truth. There's nothing wrong with choosing to give yourself a green light. Exactly. Which reminds us all, of course, that inevitably, naturally, comfortingly, when you do finally begin to blur the lines of truth and fiction, especially in England, all roads will eventually lead to comic book legend Alan Moore. And in this case, specifically to what might be honestly his true finest comics work from hell, which is even more specifically a fictional account of the Jack the Ripper murders and the motivations behind

them. Do you agree, Mark? Is that possibly his greatest one to you? Yeah, I mean, I'm a big Maladmore fan. I have pretty much everything he's ever written from the early days of Marvel Man, I guess it was called when it was published in the UK. And the early V-Film. Yeah, Miracle Man here in North America.

And early V for Vendetta stuff, like right up to all through Swamp Thing through Watchmen obviously through to his more recently League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Promethea Tom Strong. I like myself some Alan Moore and certainly I'd say most of my knowledge of the Ripper cases comes from from hell. Again, not the the film which really the screenplay did not be shit. I mean, classic Alan Moore situation. Yeah. Yes, of course. But on the whole Yeah. And that's the john gall angle

is the one that I'm most Yes, yes, exactly. But it is it is admittedly a completely fictionalized account. Well, it is fictionalized. But based on I trust Alan Word to do his research, but he also think he would probably pick the more narratively pleasing solution as opposed to course. Yes, yes, absolutely. And his version of the story actually borrows heavily from a real Ripper theory that is like so serious. The original version is from Stephen Knight and his book, Jack the Ripper, the Final Solution, bad title. But it was picked up again in another form by a very, very famous writer, Patricia Cornwall,

who was like. When was that written by the way? When was Final Solution written? 75, something like that. Nobody, no editor was like, hey man. I don't think that's what they were thinking. You know what I mean? I think they were just thinking like,

it's the final solution to who Jack the Ripper is. No, I get what they were thinking, but they should've been. You gotta remember, in the 70s, everybody was together on the fact that Nazis are fucking shit. Yeah, yeah. Different now. Yeah, very. But the name Walter Sickert is a big part of all these theories.

Patricia Cornwall's theory is all about Walter Sickert, and he's a big part of Alan Moore's theory. He's also a big part of the Final Solution theory. It has to do with a royal succession conspiracy that involves the Freemasons and all the murders occurring as part of a coverup orchestrated by Queen Victoria herself and her inner circle. And this is not a joke. Yes. Is this the, it's been so long. I used to know a lot more, but this is one where like it was a royal relative that was like doing the

killings. And so they were like, can't have that be found out. Not quite, but something like that. So with in Moors vision was particularly that, you know, again, the comic version, the graphic novel, it was most definitely tied to a Masonic ritual, a specific, you know, element in the Alan Moore about misogyny, like needing like a tulpa, like almost like a, like the whole point is like, it's a ritual to like ensure that men will always be dominant over women for all time. It's kind of like the basic, like, I mean, and when you get to know these murders a little bit more viscerally, which is an incredible pun that I just said off the top of my head. You'll see why maybe he said that.

But the TLDR of the actual theory that Alan Moore jumped off of is that in 1975, this guy who called himself Joseph Sickert, and who was supposedly the secret son of the painter Walter Sickert, went on to a TV special, told the story of how the Ripper murders were all staged as a means of silencing the people. His grandmother secretly married Queen Victoria's grandson. Queen Victoria's grandson is Prince Albert Victor, who was the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. And his mother Alice-

Is he the namesake of the Dick Piercing? I don't know. I think it might have been his father. Yeah, there's gayness. There's definitely gayness in this Prince Albert's legend as well. There's definitely like some penis on penis action going on in some versions of the story.

But his mother, Alice, according to according to him, is his right, according to Joseph Sikertert was the rightful heir to the throne. So Stephen Stephen Knight saw this special where that part of the story went down. He was fascinated by it. He tracks down Joseph sickert whose name in real life is actually Joseph Gorman. Legally, and he told him that the prince's mother Princess Alexandra had introduced him introduced the prince to Walter Sickert after he was kind of like not being super princely. He was like kind of like, and this is where the gayness comes in. He's kind of like, just not acting in a way that Victoria was feeling

great about. And so the plan was let's introduce him to this painter who will like take him in and like have him work under him for a little bit, learn from him, get him interested in art and get him on like some sort of socially acceptable, but still like appropriately holistic job. You know what I mean? Like a painter is kind of like a chill job for a loser who's in the royal family who's going to need to carry on the line someday. It's kind of like a cushy job and it was good for his sensibilities. But that backfired because he accidentally fell in love with one of Sickert's models, allegedly, a local shop girl called Annie Crook, and secretly married her and they had a child together called Alice. So now there's a shop girl slash like prostitute level person in Whitechapel who is married to the prince who is next in line for succession,

and they have a kid. So that kid is now in succession. Right? When Queen Victoria finds out about this, I don't know if anybody plays Crusader Kings three, but this is one of those situations where you assassinate the baby just killed baby move on. All right. That's exactly right. So when Queen Victoria found out, she supposedly was mechanic and Crusader King three, just don't worry about something happened all the time.

Babies happened all the time in royal stuff. But yeah, I see the House of the Dragon guys, I get it. Yeah, exactly. Correct. Exactly. No, you're going to, you know what? So she brings the Prince home after she finds out about this,

she brings him under the wing of the family again, back in like royal care, sends the mom Annie away to die in an institution where she does die and was content to let the child disappear into the background in the care of Annie's friends in the like hooker world, until Annie's friend, Mary Jane Kelly,

the final ripper victim, and three other ladies who were ripper victims decide to try and blackmail the government over it because they know, which inspired the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, and a royal physician called Sir William Gull, to conspire with Freemasons and police to stage the Ripper murders as an easy way of disposing the problem. And in Alan Moore's version, obviously, that Freemason angle is also because they're trying to make it a sensation so that this notion

of women being under men forever is like enshrined. And without almost any meaningful evidence to the to the to the conclusion that he's going for, Knight writes this book The Final Solution, he walks the classic UFO walk of there's no evidence because it's actively being withheld by forces beyond my reach. And though the book was an immediate laughing stock among people in the know, since there are all these problems with it, like the fact that there was no proof Gorman was Sickert's son, or that Albert Victor couldn't have been Alice's father because he wasn't in London at the time he was in Germany when she was conceived, or that under actual British law, any child of an invalid marriage with a royal, which definitely this would have been if it

actually happened because there was no efficient there to make an official royal marriage wouldn't have claim to the throne. So like the notion of this being a problem is not a problem. It's not a real problem. Um, you know, there's always drama that they don't want out. Sure. But dude, you don't need a real heir to the throne to do that kind of blackmail and you know, whatever. Right. But, uh, that's, right? But that's what happened. And none of the forensic evidence supported anything about the murders as described in the book

in which they go around, I believe, I forget who the murderer is, I think it's William Gull, goes around in like a, and sickered, and they go around in like a royal carriage and seduce the women in just like in the comic with like poison grapes and all this crazy shit. They murder them in there and then just like dump them out and take off. Right? Because it's like a privacy booth. If you have a royal carriage on the streets of London in the 1880s, it's basically like a private room that travels around. Right?

So the idea is they took them in, fucked them up and then put them there. But there's no around, right? So the idea is they took them in, fucked them up, and then put them there. But there's no support for that in the actual forensics of these women's deaths. And so that's, so that's another thing that's like against this. But nevertheless, the book was a runaway bestseller that not only got a movie deal, but also inspired other nonfiction's account about sicker or the masons, including Cornwall, or Cornwell, whatever her name is, and a couple others that are all kind of like not that legit. And it really just

makes it harder for things like actual facts and journalism to like shine through when there's all these like fake sensational versions that are saying that they're true, right? Alan Moore does not enter into this problem problem because his is a fiction. And almost magically, as Mark will read for us in this quote from Alan Moore, when you re-approach the same wrong story under the banner of fiction

while still seeking truth in a general sense, almost instantly there's a level of understanding of the event that appears in the fiction in a way most non-fictional accounts could never dare because you have to be accurate when you're doing non-fiction. So here's a quote from Mark. It was only toward the end of 1988 with so much Ripper material surrounding me in the media on account of it being the centenary of the murders that I began to understand that firstly, there were still ways to approach the Whitechapel murders that might expose previously unexplored seams of meaning.

And secondly, that the Ripper story had all the elements that I was looking for. Set during fascinating and explosive times in a city rich with legend, history, and association, the case touched peripherally upon so many interesting people and institutions that it provided the precise kind of narrative landscape that I required. You see, to some extent, the peripheries of murder, the myth, rumor, and folklore attached to a given case had always seemed more potentially fruitful and rewarding than a redundant study of the hard forensic facts at the murder sub. This traditional approach to murder might tell us who done it, which admittedly is the most immediate of practical considerations,

but it does not tell us what happened on any more than the most obvious and mechanical level. To find out anything truly significant, we must take the plunge into myth and meaning. And to me, a case with the rich, mythopoic backwaters of the Whitechapel murders suddenly seemed like the perfect spot to go fishing. And I do apologize for that. I should have done that in Alan Moore's accent. I don't think anybody's going to ding you for that one. Alan Moore sounds like the dude from Warcraft II. He sounds like this. And fish he did. And Fish Alan Moore did. And as the Department of Lies would like me to point out, it was by properly contextualizing

and deciding what lies to tell that the truth became clear. And for me, as annoyed as I am by the scrutiny, I tend to agree, especially when we consider the way in which I structure the episodes of this show, which I write. But rather than blather on and on about it myself, let's have Jesse tie it back to the subject at hand with a quote from From Hell's Wikipedia page really quick that I think is also very important at this moment.

From Hell also explores Moore's ideas on the nature of time. Early on, Gull's friend discusses his son's theory of the fourth dimension, which proposes that time is a spatial dimension. All time coexists, and it is only the limits of our perception that makes it appear to progress. Sequences of related events can be seen as shapes in the fourth dimension. History can be said to have an architecture, as Gull puts it. Gull's experiences seem to confirm this. He has visions of the 20th century during the murders, and as he is dying he experiences and appears to influence past and future events. Moore had earlier explored similar ideas in Watchmen, where Dr. Manhattan perceives past,

present, and future simultaneously and describes himself as a puppet who can see the strings. Critic Gary Groth says the most elaborate theme from Hell stems from Moore's statement that the Ripper murders happening when they did and where they did were almost like an apocalyptic summary of that entire Victorian age. Exactly. And Jack the Ripper being in the center of all that as the sort of unintentional or unintended sort of like ringleader of this change. If you can imagine like how the Manson murders were in the sixties in America, similar situation happened in the wake of this violence. And a lot of, I mean, look, we've called so many serial killers

on this episode, on this show. But, like, a lot of them are embodiments of the time in some ways. Like, the reason they got to get... Like, I think Dahmer, for instance, like, so much of the reason he could get away with it, who his victims were, what he... Like, how he perceived himself, how his family perceived him. All of that is an encapsulation of that time period in the inner shame. and he could get away with it, who his victims were, what he, like how he perceived himself, how his family perceived him.

All of that is an encapsulation of that time period and the inner shame, obviously the inner violence and all that other monster stuff that he did, but just, yeah, it's weird. It's like the worst parts of society kind of solidified in a horrible person. And regardless of the truth of the actual person who like killed these people, right? Which is often they're mundane and awful

and just not good at anything and not worth your time. Yeah, always disappointingly boring, terrible people. Yeah, like the monster, dark monster, like avatar of his age is kind of the main way people see Jack the Ripper now. In exactly the same way as Zodiac or D.B. Cooper, or like I said, Charles Manson, same thing. It becomes a huge problem for anybody

who ever wanted to figure out the true story when somebody like a figure like this evolves into like this sort of mythological figure. But if any of these crimes actually were carried out by a secret society that wanted to cover them up, this is pretty much exactly how I would imagine they would try to hide them by making them seem imaginary, dreamlike, unreal, and cartoonish in a way that almost elevates them out of reality. And as the British Jackson Ripper-

Very similar to what the government did to UFOs in the initial 40s and 50s. Yeah. What the government did to UFOs in the initial like 50s and 50s. Yeah, make like elevated out of the serious conversation and make it so bastardized that 100 years later almost they have to redefine them as UAPs. Yeah, or like the current government is doing with literally everything. But as you know, there's no, there's no evidence. It's already working as Edward Stowe as Edward Stowe said in his quote earlier, the tour guide, even the name Jack the Ripper comes from someplace entirely dishonest, which we'll get to in a minute. And while in a way that's fascinating, in a way that's fascinating. In another way, it's almost

like a kind of evidence of the power of words and belief, which is another thing that Alan Moore, as like this sort of magician wizard person who believes that written word is magic. He very much, he sounds like a student of Alastair Crowley. I'm sure he did a lot of reading about. He did. He's written about Crowley in the past. Okay. He openly worships a serpent. So that's the kind of guy he is. I don't know much about Alan Moore, but I know a lot about Crowley. Yeah. Alan Moore, if I'm recalling the interview correctly, at least claimed to worship a snake deity that he made up himself. So it's sort of like, I created this God and now I worship it. So yeah. Exactly. So that's the vibe, right? And it does, in another way, it does make things

impossible to understand on your own terms if you're just trying to go in and absorb it all. It's like trying to read Gravity's's rainbow and just like be an expert on it and never need to like look at it again. It's like impossible. And to me, that feeling is always been a part of what I read into as the main vibe of the Chiluminati show. Or and if not the entire secret organization, at least just the show, or at least my main vibe in writing scripts for the Chiluminati show. So anyway, more and more and more specific. Yeah. So anyway, in defiance of confusing non truths, here comes basic understanding with our top hat and cloak free

overview of the five murders at the heart of the story, with only as many truly definite details as I can find. No focus on suspects. Sometimes when there's diverging facts, I went with the one that I found more than once. And that's the best I can say about that. There's been no focus on suspects really in this in this episode that we're going to that we're going to go through right now. And nothing not even the popularity of a piece of evidence or centrality to any specific theory will be considered before whether or not

it's actually part of an actual crime that happened. You know, according to forensic evidence. So that's what we're going to try and do right now. We're going to look at the canonical five. And just in case you're wondering how I imagine this working, I think Jesse and Mathis are going to read all the modern day quotes. But the aesthetic of all primary source reading on today's program, I think should be entirely up to our esteemed guest marks,

artistic license. Does that sound good for everybody? Sure. So without any further ado, here is a nice serviceable overview to the story of Jack the Ripper, which you can use to begin to truly understand and contextualize many potential Ripper episodes I could potentially present to you in the distant yet very, very potential future if there's a significant public outcry. This bit of the episode is mostly based on the book, Jack the Ripper, the definite history by Paul Begg, really good book, very much mostly in the spirit of this no suspects till

the end, kind of looking at it. I'm also very much indebted to the various articles I've listed in the show notes, as well as an absolutely fantastic Jack the Ripper tour given by the guide who I only know her first name, it's Sinead for the channel Tours by Foot London on YouTube. She did like the tour she does in London, but it was during COVID, so it's like a pretty cool thing. It's like an hour.

And like I already told you, the tour guides for Jack the Ripper, it's kind of like its own culture. It's really interesting. So I recommend this link is also going to be the show notes. Give it a look. I tried to absorb some of that like tour guide flavor into the script if I could. But like I said, if you want to see the whole thing, there's no way to do it better than getting an actual tour and you should do that. And real quick, ladies and gentlemen, quick content warning slash reality check. This dude is called Jack the Ripper because he did some very brutal and nearly unspeakable

things to his victims. At my most polite, I would say that after reviewing the details, these crimes are almost certainly at least partially misogynistic in nature. And while I'm going to try and keep things as clinical as possible, unfortunately, I do believe that some of the more specific and upsetting details of this violence are actually essential for understanding proper context. And to understand the mindset and character of Jack the Ripper himself, as well as to authentically experience and understand this case as it unfolded at its most tantalizing and culturally potent. So rather than edit myself

or family listening very much, I'm just going to say there are more graphically gory things coming up in the next 30 or 40 minutes than we usually cover on the show, way more than JFK, way more than Zodiac, way more even usually than what Mathis gets into. And lots of it is of a sexual or at least NSFW nature. You've been warned, bang bang boom. Also there's no picture links in this week's episode because I'm literally not going to put fucking gore porn on this show notes. But if you really wanna see pictures of any of these

victims or these crime scenes or any of that. They exist. Especially the last one, which is still to this day described by the FBI as one of the most complex crime scenes ever found and was so insane that it actually inspired the first ever forensic photograph of any crime scene ever. You might wanna look at that photograph, but I swear to God,

it's one of the most fucked up things in the world. So please do not look at that shit if you cannot handle it. I really, really swear that it will fuck you up if you cannot handle it. So now here we are in London's East End, more specifically in the neighborhood of Whitechapel, which weirdly Jesse and I and our friend Davis have stayed in several times now.

Yep. To begin, we're gonna quickly discuss Whitechapel Parish in 1888 London's East End, where most of this drama plays out. I'm gonna go kind of quick through this because this is just basics. By the 1880s in London, there had been two huge influx of immigrants

that because of its cheap boarding low-class vibe had caused the East End to become kind of like a population overflow spot for a lot of different communities and people like kind of like knew that it was a shitty place to go if you had a shitty life and they kind of just ended up there. The first big group was the Irish who came in the wake of the famine because Ireland was just fucked at this point.

They had a really bad situation going on in Ireland right now, so they decided to come to London. And the other one was the Jews from like the Russian Empire because the pogroms, pogroms, pogroms were occurring at this time, nights of violence against Jews. And by 1888, the East End went from a few thousand people to 80 thousand people. Living conditions became shit. Most people didn't have a permanent place to live and had to pay rent every night. Robbery, violence and alcoholism were the order of the day. And according to a few sources, maybe this might have something to do with that life expectancy. 55% of any child in the East end at this time was dead before they were five years old. I mean, this is the time, like this is a transitioning period for like humanity in a lot of ways and like having some

amount of people live in that small space really wasn't done. Like we do not have the, the all space really wasn't done like we do not have the the cleanliness and ability to do that just ripped through people like a whole community so fast. Yeah, in a way like we're doing that now like I like where I live in Los Angeles, I have a pretty nice like small, modest apartment but like in my building, there's like eight other families, you know, across the way I can see like other buildings. Like, that's why how we still live sit sort of

this ventilation and like sewage systems that they did not have exactly. So they were headed towards like was being just dumb. Yeah, they were headed towards like city living as we have it today. But there was a bad over first is a bad issue. And just to give you an idea. Here's Mark to read from a normal amount of racist writer, a guy named- A couple neighbors carrying out their own shit, chatting day, how's your day, dumping poo, and just a couple feet away from where they sleep.

This guy was called T.E. Huxley. He was writing about East London, I believe, in a book called East London in 1901. So here we go. An evil plexus of slums that hide human creeping things, where filthy men and women live on pedo-earths of gin, where callers and clean shirts are decencies unknown, where every citizen wears a black eye and none ever combs his hair. I have seen the Polynesian savage in his primitive condition before the missionary or the blackbird or the beachcomber got at him. With all his savagery, he was not half so savage, so unclean, so irreclaimable as the tenant of a tenement in the East London slum. I hope I gave that asshole enough of a villain-sounding voice.

I felt his very, very tight be-hole. So yeah, not the greatest. You said it. I mean, yeah, we've read some quotes the greatest. And not the greatest place to live. And people would get hurt and murdered all the time in this place. Violence was normal, and because there was so much butchering going on in the area for work,

for so many people, even seeing people on the street walking around covered in insane amounts of blood and carrying a giant knife all with them. Very, very normal. So you can imagine how wild these crimes had to be to like make a mark amongst that, which, you know, I'm thinking about is the cross contamination at those butchering plants would just be awful. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you this.

Most of the people living in this neighborhood did not have to worry about eating this meat anyway, because they could not afford it. And also just because just so we're clear, on the Wikipedia page alone, at least 11 murders are attributed to Jack the Ripper depending on what theory you subscribe to, which relevant facts you believe. But goddamn having to take it down to just the five and go from there is already rough. So let's just say before the canonical five, if you want to follow the whole story, there are two other murders that start this off that of Emma Elizabeth Smith, and that of Martha Tabrum, that you should look into if you want to go full top hat and cloak after listening to this, but I'm literally focusing only on these five murders and a few other things

that happened today, just so that you can have the very bare bones basic idea of what happened. Those murders happened starting in April, the ones that aren't part of the canonical five lasted far beyond our canonical end in November of 1888 all the way to 1891. Those are the Whitechapel murders as a whole, which are not necessarily just the Jack the Ripper murders. But for us today as beginning Ripperologists,

the story as we know it begins on August 2nd, 1888. And as all of these women, or I'm sorry, August 31 1888. And as all of these women worked at least part time as sex workers slash prostitutes. It's worth mentioning that of the 80,000 people that I mentioned a full 1200 were full time prostitutes. There's even a record of a six year old doing prostitution in the city. And it was fully out of desperation. I want to be clear. It was not just because you often had to choose between spending your four pence that you got on a

room or on a pint of paint stripping the strong gin, which is what everybody drank in the East End at this time, pints of gin gin by the pint cost the same as a night's rest. I don't think I've ever had gin. I love gin, it's my favorite drink to drink, but they weren't drinking my favorite drink to drink, they were drinking something that tasted like fucking rubbing alcohol.

And ladies were just like, there's no idea here that these ladies were irresponsible bad people that were just fucking their lives up by choice, though all of them were alcoholics. It was a bad situation. Yeah. And mentally during the time, like water wouldn't have been the safest bet. Yeah. These ones were doing their best. Most cases it was all they could do to survive. A lot of the times it was like they had a life and then it just

got fucked and there was no social services or anything to help them. Something people forget in general holster today. People don't usually as they usually because it's always going to be outlier do things that are considered crimes or desperate things or, you know, from robbery anywhere because it's a fun hobby. Usually it's because they are desperate. They have no, usually they're brought down to no choice and that's why they have to do. And I also want to say just because there's a lot

like specifically like, specifically in response really to Alan Moore's like sort of contextualization of this as like the misogynist like moment, which it kind of is, right? These women all died and because of them, the main effect of Jack the Ripper, I would say, was that it drew the global eye to how shitty these people were living. And it created like a era of social reform in London, which spun out of this going into the 20th century. So like, probably the reason that

East End isn't the way that it, you know, was at this time, for much longer after this was because of these women and what happened to them. So at least if we can just remember each of their names, the fact that they were all real people, and that they actually changed the entire history of England by being in this place at this time, I would appreciate that. But yeah, let's go to August 31 1888 and talk a little bit about Mary Ann Nichols. She was 43 years old. She married at 15. But by 29 was completely penniless. She was abandoned by her husband addicted to alcohol. And she was drinking on August 31 at the frying pan pub in White

Chapel. After a night of heavy gin, she walked down the block to a normal accommodation with zero money in her hands, and is turned away by the landlord because of all the money she owes him in back rent. He's not being a dick. She just owes him a shitload of money. She decides, Okay, well, if I don't have the money now, I'll just go get some real quick. I'll rustle it up because she's a prostitute. So she's going to go out and walk the street a little bit. And she has a nice

new bonnet on that's like nice and blue and stuff. And she's liking that. And she bet she can pull some serious peepee with it. So she's gonna go out there and like lock it down, come back with some money, sleep, no big deal. That's your plan. She walks up the street a bit to the high street of Whitechapel. She meets her friend Emily. She's Emily finds her this lady not not Emily, Mary was three sheets. She was fucked up, she was with some dudes,

and she was like, what are you doing? Like come home, and she was like, no, I've gotten my four pence three times, I'm gonna get it a fourth, I'll see you at home babes. Right, so she's like partying, and so she's like whatever, she's fucking off on her own thing. So she goes home, Emily even offers to pay for her room

and she says, nah, I got it, babes. And so she goes and handles it and- I feel like I'm there. She'll see you home, yeah. In the 1800s, when they were like- You're calling me by the base. I can smell the human feces and booze, pure alcohol. So a little bit later-

I can see your neon green top, everything, yeah. Yeah, it looks great. feces and pure alcohol. So a little bit later, two stable hands are walking by in front of a building. They see something on the ground that looks like a bundle of fabric that they can salvage and sell. But when they get closer, they realize it's a woman laying on the street with her legs open and her skirt over her head. And because they're worried about being implicated in a rape or a murder or robbery or whatever, they're just like two dudes on the street. If a cop sees them, they're fucked. So they peace out and start looking for a cop and be like, I found a body. Two minutes later, a cop comes along, tries to move her realizes that she's not not only

is she dead, not asleep, but that her throat has been slit in both directions, left to right and right to left, all the way back to her spinal cord becomes a murder scene. At the mortuary where they do the postmortem they find out that she'd also been stabbed twice in the genitals. Her lower abdomen was ripped open revealing her bowels and there were several heavy downward stab wounds in her sides as well. But there were no there's almost no blood around her on the ground and at first everybody was like what the **** is going on here? Is this some kind of vampire situation? What happened here?

That's right. That's right. There's still an era of like, yo, this could have been a werewolf or a vampire. Just keep that in your fucking mind. What happened was, but actually what happened was quite sad is that Mary, in not having an actual house to stay in, wore all nine of her outfits every day. Oh, whoa. In wearing those clothes, when she got murdered, all the blood that was pouring out of her outfits every day. Oh, whoa. In wearing those clothes, when she got murdered, all the blood that was pouring out of her body just got soaked back into her clothes

and pooled like matted under her hair and in her clothes. Absolutely insane. And as Mark will show us in the coroner's post-mortem, as he discusses some witness testimony, the killer's special skill with the blade was already gaining some notice. The murderer must have had some rough anatomical knowledge, for he seemed to have attacked all of the vital parts.

It was impossible to say whether the wounds were inflicted by a clasp knife or a butcher's knife, but the instrument must have been a strong one. When he first saw the body, life had not been out of it for more than half an hour. The murder might have occupied four or five minutes. Yeah. So he did all this like, sort of like delicate surgery, if you want to call it that. Yeah, he had knowledge of where to stay. And he was putting that knife confidently in her body.

You know what I mean? So that happened about a week later, September 8th, 1888. A 47 year old Annie Chapman was like Mary, short on money for the night and didn't have a place to sleep because she was like six weeks late on her rent or whatever. But unlike Mary, she was desperate for a place to stay, probably because during her autopsy,

it was found that the state of her lungs and brain would have killed her in a few weeks anyway when she was killed due to tuberculosis. So she was not in a good way. She ate some dinner. That night had a beer and a potato headed out around 2 a.m. towards Spitalfields Market to try and find someone to lay with and get her bed paid for. And after about 5 a.m., Miss Elizabeth Long started talking with a man in the back of a building, 29 Hanbury Street. Here's a quote from Mathis to read from Wikipedia about this man. Long described this man as being over 40 years old, slightly taller than Chapman, with dark hair and a foreign shabby genteel appearance. He was wearing a brown,

low-crowned felt hat and possibly a dark coat. According to Long, the man had asked Chapman the question, will you? To which Chapman replied, yes. So just so you know what a shabby genteel appearance is, first of all, foreign in this time means Jewish, which is unfortunate. But also Jewish just means like any person with a dark complexion who kind of looks maybe a little bit white, right? They just are like, Yep, you don't pass like you're Jew. Weird stuff. But shabby genteel means like you're a gentleman,

but you're a shabby gentleman. Like you're like, wearing like nice clothes, but you kind of look, you know, a little rough. And what I would have been back in the day. I had to wear a suit. Yeah. So at around 5 15 a.m. nearby resident Albert Kadosch heard someone screaming, no, no, no. And a hard crash or hit while he had been inside his building near the backyard where this was happening and he was taking a piss. But sadly, this did not seem abnormal to him in any way. And he did not even think that he would need to check on it because there was always somebody screaming, no, no, no, and hitting something heavily

outside of his house at five in the morning because he's in fucking the East End, which is insane. At 540, a man called John Davis, who's an older gentleman, hadn't been sleeping well and came down and found her on the ground near the door to the backyard. Her head was about six inches away from the door. And already, people were connecting the dots because of the similar injuries between these two murders. And here's Jesse with a quote from Wikipedia

that sums this up in a way that is as ungross as possible. Do I get to, oh man, if everyone else is doing accent, I'm doing accent. Just go, it's Wikipedia, but you know, it could be a British... Everyone's doing accent, so I'm... Here we go. Check my throat had been cut from left to right, so deeply the bones of a vertebral column bore striations, and she had been disemboweled with a section of the flesh from her stomach being placed upon her left shoulder, what the shit, and other section of skin and flesh,

plus her small intestines being removed and placed above her right shoulder. The morgue examination revealed that part of her uterus and bladder was missing. Chapman's protruding tongue and swollen face led Dr. Phillips to believe that she may have been asphyxiated with the handkerchief round her neck before throat was cut and that a murder, a murderer even held her chin as he performed this act. As there was no blood trail leading to the yard, he was certain she was killed where she was found. Yo, that's messed up. So this guy didn't just kill her, he like cut her up and strewn her about. He yeah, like this one, this one is like ripped her apart. Yeah. This one is like full on the Jack the Ripper MO. He pulled her guts out, put him over his shoulder, pulled her skin. He like basically bisected her body

and pulled it back. But like it is just, but this is supposed to be within minutes. Quick. Yeah. Quick. He did this every time. Five minutes. This man went chop. Like a pretty watch. He would have had need to have like a butcher's knife or a surgical knife. Like when you watch a really good chef cut up a chicken. Yeah, it's the same way. And it was exactly. That's exactly the vibe. Crazy. And again, according to this theory, put forward by a doctor at her inquest and which Mark will read for us now, popular thinking was that this killer, this killing did require require special knowledge just like you're saying. So here's a quote about that. The body had not been dissected, but the injuries had been made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There were no meaningless cuts. The organ had been taken by

one who knew where to find it, what difficulties he would have had to contend against, and how he should use his knife so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it, or have recognized it when found. For instance, no mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations. It must have been someone accustomed to the post-mortem room. The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing abdominal organ seemed overwhelming. Pretty creepy shit. Yeah, pretty creepy shit, because we're establishing this whole time, right? Like, this is a butcher neighborhood. There's people, they got knives everywhere.

This guy's like, no, this is this. This is the mark of a psychopath. You're like, oh, so that's what was actually happening. And during, after this murder, a leather apron was found in the backyard. And that was pretty quickly accounted for as belonging to somebody nearby whose mother put it there and was eliminated as evidence and the guy was eliminated as a suspect. It did not stop the papers from reporting that quote, a Jew known as leather apron was the one doing the killing, which is just insane.

They just threw in the Jew thing out of nowhere. I mean, they're just like, hey, he's probably a Jew, and he is, what, they found a little apron? His name's Leather Apron, it lived in him. So that's fucking crazy. And so that went on, and you know, at this point, a million papers a day are being sold about Jack the Ripper. Like, this is a huge media sensation all over the globe.

New York Times is picking it up in America. Everything is insane. True crime has been popular since the dawn of man. And so, obviously, a picture of this person was starting to come into focus already. This weird expert surgeon murderer who seemed larger than life. But on September 27th, a few weeks later, the Central News Agency of London received a letter now known as the Dear Boss Letter, which Mark will read for us now.

This is where this shit got set off. Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I've laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron gave me real fits. I am down on oars, and I shan't quit ripping them until I do get buckled. Great work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now?

I love my work and I want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue, and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough, I hope. Ha ha. The next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off

and send to the police officers. Just for jolly, wouldn't you? Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work. Then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp, I want to get to work right away, if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don't mind me giving the trade name. P.S. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. So this relic. That was too good. Can we just say how good that was?

That was too good. That was too good for the show. It's solid because it's an important letter because what you just read are the words that birthed the concept of this motherfucker into the world. Alan Moore. Yes, this was the letter that was sent

to the central news agency. Yes, exactly right. And it just, it is, it set the tone, how British this man is, how like, he's a perfectly like sort of, his tone comes across in his writing, he has a sense of humor about it. They just created an incredible character right away. And then homerun at the end, naming themselves jack the ripper,

which is insane, right? One of the biggest memes that's ever been made. Letter itself failed to generate any useful leads, though it was printed in many newspapers, but it was the thing that stuck in and that gave him the name Jack the Ripper, like I said, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute, because three days later on September 30th, we had something occur that is crazy during this thing that I think not everyone knows about this, that this happened. This was called the double event. So the next two murders happen on the same night. On September 30 1888. In the early Sunday morning hours that day around

like, like just after midnight, Elizabeth stride, who was a Swedish woman from Gothenburg who came here when she was young and she was hot. And she married like an Englishman. And they had a shot that a coffee shop together and things were going great. And then he fucking died like, boop, and her life just like went to shit. Her. Her Her thing is called she's an unfortunate or something like this. I can't remember exactly what the word

is. But it means like, sometimes she had a job. Right? That's what it means. She's had a job, right? That's what it means. She's like not quite homeless like some of these other girls. Like sometimes she had a job, she was doing other part-time work, but sometimes she was a prostitute, right? So she was kind of like less of a like 10 minute kind of prostitute and more of a like evening kind of prostitute. Like an escort? Like still definitely a prostitute that was gonna have sex with somebody but like maybe you go have a couple drinks and have a good time out on the town because she's like not dying of tuberculosis seriously seriously

seriously like there's there's like a level of this that's like sort of outward with like people paying for women and having women around and then there's like I'm horny and I want for women and having women around and then there's like, I'm horny and I want to fucking you know, you get it. There's a difference between the two jobs. But because like I said, she only engaged prostitution, sometimes she had a little bit more flexibility what she got up to. She was out drinking with a couple of her clients this night. And here's

Mathis with a quote from Wikipedia about these accounts. The first of these individuals is described as a short man with a dark mustache wearing a morning suit and bowler hat with whom she was seen at approximately 11 p.m. at a location close to Burner Street. A second eyewitness account by laborer William Marshall places stride in the company of a man wearing a peaked cap, black coat, and dark trousers standing on the pavement opposite number 58 Burner Street at approximately 1145 PM. According to Marshall, Stride had stood with this decently dressed individual, and the two had repeatedly kissed before the man had said to her, you would say anything but your

prayers. Pretty solid. Pretty solid line, I gotta say. Smooth. Yeah, yeah, right before he's supposed to murder. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But later, at around 1235, a cop saw her standing with a dude in a hard-felt hat, carrying an 18-inch long package with him outside the Internet. It's not a penis, just a package. Outside the International Working Men's Educational Club, which was like this Jewish socialist pub. So it was like, kind of private, more private place that was like the sort of club for people with

those sort of leanings in Whitechapel, it was like a gathering place. She was also seen by a dock worker turning someone in a coat down for service that night around the same time. So she was up to her her normal stuff that she was doing at this bar at this time. At one which is very short time later, the club's steward, Lewis Dime Schultz arrives in front of the club with his horse cart, two wheel horse cart to drop some stuff off with his wife, who was also at the club that night. And here's Mark with what

happened in his own words. My pony is rather shy. And as I turned into the yard, it struck me that he bought too much toward the left hand side against the wall. I bent my head to see what it was shy. And I noticed the ground was not level. I saw a little heap which I thought might be some mud. I touched the heap with the handle of my whip. And then I found it was not mud. I jumped off the trap and struck a match. When I saw that it was the body of a woman. I ran indoors.

Now, Apocrypha wise, this tour guide Sinead that I saw told an sort of different version of the story where what happened was he thought that his wife was in the street and you know it makes sense that he wouldn't say that to you know an authority figure because maybe it's going to embarrass his wife. But according to this tour guide Sinead what happened here, very cinematic moment in the ripper lore this moment. One that is often described very poetically. But basically, everybody kind of feels like, well, first of all, this guy thought it was his wife in the street, because his wife was also drinking all the time. And he thought that she was like fucking passed out in the street when she was supposed to be waiting for him at the bar. And

he was like, muff. And he saw her out there when she was supposed to be waiting for him at the bar. And he was like, and he saw her out there and he was going to go inside and get his lantern and be like, get the fuck in here. And then when he came back out and saw that, when we got into the bar, he saw that it was, uh, his wife there in the bar. And so then he came back out to see that it was a dead body, right? And, and, uh, so when he strikes the match, he's not in a scary place, according to this tour guide. He's in a place of like, oh fuck, is this my wife?

And then he sees a woman and he's like, fuck, it was my wife. And that's like where his head was at. But because of like the fact that Elizabeth Stride when she was found, blood was still coming out of the wounds and her body was still warm. And due to the sort of manner in which the body was found

compared to the others, as Mark will shortly illustrate for us, many experts, including Sinead the tour guide, believe this murder may have been like interrupted. And that like, if the match had been a lantern, that Jack the Ripper might've been standing like 10 feet away from this dude. So that's a pretty spooky moment

in the Jack the Ripper lore. And I kind of wanted to make sure we got it cinematically, but here's the description of the body from Mark, from the time. The body was lying on the near side with the face turned toward the wall, the head up the yard and the feet toward the street. The left arm was extended and there was a packet of couture in the left hand. The right arm was

over the belly, back of the hand and wrist had on it clotted blood. The legs were drawn up with the feet close to the wall. The body and face were warm and the hand cold. The legs were quite warm. The deceased had a silk handkerchief round her neck, and it appeared to be slightly torn. I have since ascertained it was cut. This corresponded with the right angle of the jaw. The throat was deeply gashed, and there was an abrasion of the skin about one and a quarter inches in diameter, apparently stained with blood under her right brow. There was a clear-cut incision on the neck. It was six inches in length and commenced two and a half inches in a straight line below the angle of the jaw, three-quarters of an inch over

an undivided muscle and then becoming deeper dividing the sheath. The cut was very clean and deviated a little downward. The arteries and other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through. The cut through the tissues on the right side was more superficial and tailed off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. The deep vessels on that side were uninjured. From this, it was evident that the hemorrhage was caused through the partial severance of the carotid artery and a small bladed knife could have been used. One way that this evidence was interpreted was because the because the handkerchief the neckerchief that she was wearing was pulled so tightly that maybe what happened here was that this

jack had just made his play and had come up behind this woman and pulled her to the ground by her neckerchief and done what he always does which is immediately kill them by slicing their neck both ways down to the spine. That's his main thing. And it's very clear that he does it to like very, very kill them. Like, not just kill them, but like very kill them, absolutely quickly turn them into dead meat. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, no moving, no nothing. So he was what what what it's the way it's been described is that he pulls her to the ground and starts doing this just as the horse comes around the corner and it's just like, fuck and just has to go. And so that's kind of like the headspace that

people imagine that he was in. And then later that night, 45 minutes later, we finally catch back up with our supposed shell owner, Catherine Eddowes, who was found dead on the ground in the corner of Mitre Square in city of London, which also we walked through several times while we were there. I had no idea that it was this location because it looks like like it might as well be a scene from inception in an office park like it looks like nothing like old London anymore. Eddowes was 46. And after having spent the previous night in the drunk

tank, she was released around 1am. And upon leaving the station, headed towards Aldgate, near a place then known as church passage, I can't remember what the name of it is, it's a passage that's known today, but it has a different name. Now it's right next to the church there. And Aldgate, near a place then known as Church passage. I can't remember what the name of it is. It's a passage that's known today, but it has a different name. Now it's right next to the church there. And Aldgate, if you know that area, which is like a pretty well traversed area, that passage, where she was last seen alive around 130 by three witnesses on their way

home from a pub on Duke Street, talking to a man of medium build, with a fair mustache and a salt and pepper loose jacket or a trench coat, and they didn't look like they were unfriendly with each other. It looked like maybe it was a client situation for Catherine as well. Here's a modern day quote from the book for Jesse to read. Catherine Eddow's throat had been cut through to the bone, death being immediate and caused by hemorrhage. Hem? Is that just hemorrhage? hemorrhage hem is that just hemorrhage? following severance of the left common carotid artery carotid that's the word took me a sec post-mortem mutilation was extraordinary

her face was terribly mutilated her eyes nose, and cheeks ferociously attacked. The lobe and...oracle of the right ear cut obliquely through. A piece of ear dropped from her clothing when she was undressed at the mortuary, and the tip of the nose cut off. There were two inverted V-cuts under each eye. The intestines had been pulled from the body and placed over the right shoulder. About two feet cut away completely in place between the body and the left arm, apparently by design. The left kidney and some of the womb were missing. Question really quick.

So the assumption here is that the killer strangles them to death and then once they're dead, brutalizes the corpse. Like very quickly after they're dead, though. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure. Okay. Like the killing takes about a minute or or so in this like version of it. Serial killer parlance Jack Ripper is very much a killer, the frenzy killer,

but for like more interested in the body than the process of feeling can do. I mean, it's like wealth. That's a weird thing to say, but it's a well-thought out murder and that there's no, like he's doing terrible things that would cause screaming and he, there's no screaming because they're dead

before he starts this. The fact he does it so quickly is like crazy to me that no one, no one sees anything, huh? Yeah. So fast. Like, I mean, people heard stuff, but like everybody's wearing like their dress. Everybody is dressed like bloodborne. You know what I mean?

Like everybody's happening all over the place. Do you think it's like the reason why theories of it being more than one person are popular because it's so quick? Like you mean like a team of people? Like very much like, you know, I just don't know. It seems like a lot, like, like not just to cut a body up. I'd have to imagine if you're like, you know, into that, you could do it pretty, again, I've seen a man cut a chicken into pieces, right? And he did like 15 seconds. There's like a famous Yon can't cook episode where he just like destroys a chicken. It looks amazing. So I'm like, okay, I can see how it's possible. But the fact that things are, this was put here and this was placed

here and we put this here. It's to me that's like, okay, how are you doing that with that much time? But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like that's, that's kind of why it's kind of fascinating. This guy, because I think part of it is that he's like the first one, right? Like, so like he sets the tone for what this type of character is, like even like Dexter, right?

Is Jack the Ripper, right? Like in a way. Sure. You know, and so in a way, this is like primordial. And the, even the attitude that we ascribe to him from his actions are like in a way, a postmodern reaction to the original like wave of ripple that he caused in 1888 by doing it this way that we interpret his actions in a specific way today. So it's really hard to- I mean the concept of like the less dead is still back then too like he was targeting people where the cops were not really going to put a ton of effort into if any into investigating. There's just no way you could do this that isn't in the middle of the woods today. Like, sure. You like it's so like,

you're so much less private than you were in 1888 where if it was dark, like people were everywhere doing weird shit, grunting and crying and drinking pine glasses full of gin and beating each other up and throwing up in the street and crawling around, nobody anywhere to sleep. So like the notion of somebody being like, it's like not weird. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's just weird. It's still weird. It's, but I'm telling you, like you'd get used to it and you wouldn't think twice if you heard another one happening after you just heard one that had nothing to do with a dead person. I'm just saying, the whole situation

of us imagining this people had to be in, out, quick, nobody see him. That is not even maybe true. He was probably quick and he was probably adept with the knife, but the pit crew speed that we're attributing the Yan Can Cook chicken theory of Jack the Ripper is is is correct. I think but not how you're imagining it how how coldly like Joker Lee like serial killer as you're imagining it. I don't think it was like that, but I think some of it also was his ritual. Yeah, the thing, and I think we touched on it briefly, is that there were probably a dozen other horrible crimes being committed at that exact same moment.

Sure, right there. Not nearly enough police. Yeah. Like, literally. I mean, even other serial killers. I don't know if we're gonna touch on this later, but they call this the canonical five. There's a bunch of other murders around the time that sometimes get attributed to Jack the Ripper, including, I can't remember

what the specific, it was something, the something place named torso murderers. Yes. And one of the torsos is like, this could have been a Jack the Ripper victims. Exactly. It's like, there might've been two serial killers operating at the exact same time in, in the same city, not in Whitechapel specifically. But yeah, right at the time we covered this guy too, but like maybe 10 years later, Albert Fish fucking arises and he's the guy remember the guy who would do like kill a little girl

in the apartment bodies like wrote wrote letters and shit like this, like Jack the Ripper. Like there was even some theories that Albert Fish was Jack the Ripper, but the timeline doesn't work out as much as some people would like. But yeah, like, this is a time where like horrible shit like this is just happening and nobody is stopping it. You got to think about cities, right? A little bit. Right. You think about this stuff. And these are like new ish in the modern and industrial era. Cities aren't a real thing. It's like, taking it's like, it's

not exactly like this. But it's like taking a dog from wherever and like making him like, sit at a desk every day or something like that. Like just forcing the dog not to like be human, not to like fully be human, but a dog like a domesticated dog that understands like they're already separate from their wildlife. You know, this is a human this is a human journey to cities. The dog is already separated from their life in the wild, they're already a changed organism from that time, right? The dog is a wolf in the wild here, we've already been changed so many ways by so many things outside of the dog's

understanding, right? So that's where humans are, then we get to cities and the dog has to sit at a desk now. And the dog is going insane, because the dog has nothing in his life that resembles running around and picking up sticks and shit anymore Because the dog now has to sit at a fucking desk and do his fucking taxes or whatever fucking dogs that work at desks do I don't think he's talking about dogs. There's ways that this dog There's ways that this dog is starting to act out and be crazy that dogs have never done before Because there was no need for a dog to go this insane because desks didn't exist. Right. So that's,

that's brutally murdered their enemies, you know, in many ways, not by design as this was described, not like with a butcher knife and not, not ritualistic ritual. That's what I'm saying. There's something happened to us also, like as humans. Yeah. I'll tell you what happened. And not just confined to cities. I mean, there's also like, that weird cabin where that's your real killer, you know, or a sunny bean, for example, you know, just like. And Dean in particular was lived way out and like away from the city. Experiences are viral. They spread like the new mindset spreads, you know. I just mean like there's an evolved mindset that it comes with living in a modern society going from like an agrarian society to like a dystopian society, slowly over a couple hundred years.

Industrial era with the explosive growth, like we had to learn the hard way how to handle that shit. And it caused, there was a lot of sickness and death. And so just a lot of the conceptions of what violence is in a city setting come from this and things like this, this one being the main one. So like something like Alan Moore saying like, you know, misogyny in its modern form can be traced back to Jack the Ripper. Like that's literally like true kind of, you know, because in the actual zeitgeist, this motherfucker is the one who made up grizzly murders that take the world by storm.

So it's something we're thinking about. It's really crazy. Think back to like when we were talking, we've talked a lot about wild west stuff and they were very violent and like criminal back then, but it was like expected in the more it was more. This is a sensation of the mythology of mythologize mythologizing of them rather later like Bell Star, for instance. You know, she was very famous for killing and robbing all the stuff, but all that shit was made up and there was not a lot of evidence back then. Like you said, with Jack, the first time they photographed a crime scene because of this dude, which in and of itself is like immortalizing this kind of crime

in a way that hadn't been done before, which is kind of ritualistic in and of itself is all I'm kind of saying. You know what I mean? It's kind of fucked up that we're even like talking about it like this. If you wanna like- Yeah, now we're doing a stupid comedy show where we're talking about

this kind of nonsense and it's crazy. We just had Commander Shepard be Jack the Ripper. And important to keep in mind that perhaps on a sort of meta-textual level, this encapsulates, the Ripper murders encapsulated the misogyny of the era, but I think there was plenty of misogyny to go around in just big heaps and piles. Yeah, absolutely. This is just about the aesthetics of misogyny. This is like this defined, like what we think about as like our like expressions of misogyny.

Never mind. Point is, the aesthetics of misogyny is 100 percent a book. Clip that. A book. That's a Trent Reznor. That's a Trent Reznor. Like an album. Joint. Like, yeah, a movie. The aesthetics of misogyny. Like, yeah, a movie. This woman got really messed up by Jack the Ripper.

And about an hour later, a ways away on Gulston Street, a fragment of her apron was found at the bottom of a common stairway of a tenement building. It was a Jewish tenement building, mainly. And on the wall right next to it in chalk was a little confusing graffito, which isn't even for sure related to the murders or the killer, but it was literally right next to this piece of Catherine Eddowes' torn bloody thing. So everybody kind of associates them. And the quote was, I'm going to put it in the box. You can read how like poorly written it is, but the actual quote is the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.

And very strange. J-U-W-E-S, man, that man sounded it out as he was writing it. And he was like, Yeah. So, and so I don't know exactly what that statement means. To me, like, it's obviously not written by a native English speaker, I think. But the two ways that I can interpret this statement are in my, and this is just me reading this as a guy who's been writing about Jack the Ripper for like two weeks. The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing could mean that if they're gonna be blamed then it's not gonna be for nothing so watch out. Or it's about we blame the Jews and it's not we're not blaming them for nothing it's real the thing that

we're blaming them for right so there's a way to read it that's kind of like anti-semitic and there's like a way to read it for me that's also kind of like anti anti-semitic and as forensics didn't really exist at the time because there was a certainly somewhat semitic message written on the wall whether pro or anti, they just decided it was more trouble than it's worth to keep it there. And rather than photograph it, they just washed it, wrote it down, what it said, washed it all away by the next day. And it just is gone. Nothing about that crime scene. Yeah, again, it's normal.

And of course, the sad fact is that this kind of graffiti would not have been uncommon for the time. So there's a chance that it was just like, ah, it happened to get started in a random place in Whitechapel and any random place in Whitechapel would have some racist things written on the walls. Right. Exactly. So it's like, does it mean anything?

I don't know. The tour guide, Sinead, that I watched the video of, she was like, it's called the famous non clue Because it is it's like it just is in and is in no way helpful because there's not even any sort of There's no way to know if that was there before the thing even what got dropped or right? Yeah, there's no way to know next day on October 1st after the double event Which is insane he got rousted out of that first murder,

and then 45 minutes later, another woman was dead and like completely handled. Is that the fifth one? No, that was the double event. The double event was four and five. So just to give you an idea of what that was, in one night, in about an hour, he like took this one lady down,

absolutely killed her, but didn't finish his little business. So he like went over and handled another woman like Quickly and left and the body was found So pretty insane. So I don't know how quick those murders were like Actually compared to each other But I think what yeah The theory was like the first one like he didn't get said, he didn't get to finish whatever he's doing.

He's like, oh my God, walked up on or somebody almost came up on him. So that's why he killed another one. The notion that a murderer that was hoping to get away with it could kill one person, not finish, run away and kill another person today is like so much more insane. Like on a city street in London is like

so much more insane, especially because in London, it's like big brother state almost like they every you're on camera like everywhere you are in the whole city. Just unthinkable today. That something like this could happen. And I do know that the the the sort of circumstance of these tumors is what you know, people have seized upon as in, oh, as Mathis was saying earlier, it wasn't about the killing so much as the, you know, being able to do this ritualistic thing. So it's like, if he hadn't been able to do that, then it's like, well, that one doesn't count. So I gotta, I gotta get, get my quota. I gotta,

you know, complete the ritual. He's not, he's not getting his release. Yeah, he's got a he's got to still get the the juice. And speaking of which, the next day is where we get the saucy Jackie postcard, which is part two of the Dear Boss letter situation, which is the like, Jack the Ripper debut letter, since most experts agree that these two pieces were written by the same person, just because of like, basic handwriting stuff. They're very clearly the same. And both arrived at the Central

News Agency in London. But this one was a postcard, which Mark will read for us now. I was not caught in dear old boss. When I gave you the tip. You'll hear about saucy Jackie's work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit, couldn't finish straight off. Had not time to get ears off for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back until I got to work again. Jack the Ripper. work again. Jack the Ripper.

Yeah, man. Yeah, this dude also named the double event. Named it. He also had a callback to saying to hold back last letter like there's Yeah, yeah. And can you not like, stop yourself from thinking about the zodiac just with like the things that he's concerned with the way that he talks about it. It to me is the exact same type of sociopathic tone as the Zodiac. There's two.

And I do believe that this is the one where they, you know, the handwriting experts of the time were like, yes, these two pieces, this the dear boss letter of this one were definitely written with the same hand. With the same hand for sure. Yes. But, but it also got some extra attention because he kind of so in the first letter, which, which is like the definitive letter. He says he's going to like cut some ladies ears off and hand them to the police or something like that. And in the Edo's

murder, he actually does like cut her ears a little bit. Right like that. And in the Edo's murder, he actually does like cut her ears a little bit. Right? Yeah. And so like, everybody was like, wait a minute. Maybe this because there were letters like all over the place from Jack the Ripper now, like the first one that said Jack the Ripper was this boss one. And then once that was there, everybody's writing letters from Jack the Ripper. But because this one is similar to the last one, and the last one claimed to cut the ears off and just had an essence of realness to it, and it caught on, this one had like power, right? And so they were like, maybe these are the real ones. But in 1931, a journalist called Fred best who used to be a writer at the star confessed to writing all of the letters

that were signed Jack the Ripper to quote, keep the business alive. And though both originals went missing for years, their actual the Dear Boss letter was found again in 1987. And it was an actual authentic, like relic of the time. It was just according to this man fake. But of course, the problem with a man confessing something 50 years almost after it happened, is that it's almost just as likely that this guy wants to be known as the guy who wrote the jack the ripper letter, and isn't the writer of

the jack the ripper letter. However, I know it's a stretch for comparison. But it reminds me of when we go to the crop circle episode, the guys who were like, pull the pole vaulting things, like, you know, they just kind of come in and claim a little bit of the fame of something else that might've been done, whether by, you know, somebody else or whatnot, that, that attaching yourself to something for whatever reason. Yes, exactly. For whatever reason today,

experts don't believe that either of those letters were real. And going back to what we were talking about the beginning of the episode, nevertheless, are probably the two most important pieces of correspondence. Well, I'll say the first letter is probably the most piece, most important piece of correspondence that there is with Jack the Ripper and it is not real. But probably the second most important happened on October 16, two weeks later, when another letter shows up. But this one, very different tone, was sent to George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. And it came along with a kidney, which was in brine or something like that preserved, which has convinced some people of its authenticity.

Though opinions are still divided, this letter, the From Hell letter, seems to have more people convinced that it is in fact actually written by Jack the Ripper. From Hell Mr. Lusk, Sir, I sent you half the kidney I took from one woman, preserved it for you. Tell the piece I fried and ate. It was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that I took it out. If only you wait a while longer. Signed. Catch me when you can, Mr. Lusk." Spelling in this letter is phenomenally terrible. This one, that's the whole thing. So this one is way worse written, definitely not the same guy, not the same funny sardonic

wit as the other guy. And that's why- And this one was not signed Jack the Ripper. Right. Exactly right. Yeah. Um, and, uh, so here's a quote, uh, for Jesse to read about this, uh, authenticity, the Austin, the authenticity of these, uh, pieces of this letter specifically.

Arguments in favor of the letters, genuineness sometimes state that contemporary analysis of the kidney by Dr. Thomas Openshaw of the London Hospital found that it came from a sickly alcoholic woman who had died within the past three weeks, which would be consistent with Edo's. However, these facts have been in dispute as contemporary media reports reporting at the time and later recollections give contradictory information about Oppenshaw's opinions. Historian Philip Sugden has written that perhaps all that can be concluded, given the uncertainty,

is that the kidney was human and from the left side of the body. A contemporary police lead found that shopkeeper Emily Marsh had encountered a visitor at her shop located in Mile End Road with an odd unsettling manner in both his appearance and speech. The visitor asked March for the address of Mr. Lusk, which he wrote in a personal notebook before abruptly leaving. He was described as a slim man wearing a long black overcoat at about six feet in height who spoke with a distinct Irish accent, his face featuring a dark beard and mustache. While the event took place in the day before Lusk received the From Hell message and occurred in the area in which it was considered to have been postmarked, the

fact that Lusk received so many letters during this time suggests that the suspicious individual may have been another crank. So yeah, who knows if it's real, but there's some evidence for and some evidence against and there's not a journalist claiming to have written this one. So there you go. But now we're going to go to the final murder, which happened on November 9 1888, to somebody called Mary Jane Kelly. She was the youngest. You're correct. You said she was 25. That's right. She was also known as fair Emma, ginger, dark Mary and black Mary. So there's some debate over what actual hair color she had. Some said she was blonde, some says she

was a redhead. Some said she had dark hair. But she did have blue eyes. And yeah, she just was about five, seven, kind of a like different victim for Jack the Ripper. Definitely a hot chick with big titties this time, a more seriously attractive young woman. Which if you're a serial killer, and like, considering yourself getting better or graduating or achieving more as you kill more things. Some people were saying maybe he thought this was sort of people consider this sort of an evolution of his methodology. And that's for one other very specific reason, which we'll get

to in a second. But she came to the East End after a while and ended up living with this guy, Joseph Barnett, who she stayed with in Whitechapel. And they lived together for like a year or so, and then got evicted. And they were like wasted all the time and they didn't pay their rent. And they ended up in Brick Lane. And then they ended up at Miller's Court, finally, which is off Dorset Street, which was a place in London at the time that was like,

according to historians, like probably the most dangerous place you could possibly be in the United Kingdom at the time. Like, it's like the type of street where like, you might just get killed or you might just get like totally mugged and robbed and your ass beat on the street. So this is a tough, like, even even in this area. This is like the mega

shitsville. So she and Joseph move into 13 millers court. And there's like a it's like somewhere that they were living like as their home and there was a partition between so it was a pretty small place it's like a 12 foot square room with a bed and three tables I mean three chairs and a table sorry tripping and it had like a painting and it was like little place. And one day, Mary Jane lost her door key. And instead of, you know, getting a, you know, waiting for somebody to let her in, she ended up breaking a window next to the door, and then like reaching through and unbolting the door that way. And that's like her story, her neighbor said that she was drunk and she broke the window. And so there was a broken window there all the time.

And basically, the way that she dealt with that was that she just like stuffed like a dude's jacket in there, or like newspaper or something in there. And like, you know, that was kind of like instead of the window pane just kept her warm at night and stuff like that. But that that that is a key point, because what happened was at the time, she had owed money to like her landlord, because Joseph had like lost his job, he was like a fish porter. I think he stole from the job or something like that. And so Kelly had to be a prostitute again. And because this was going down, things

were tension was rising. And there was like a rent dispute or money dispute. And the person who she owed the money to sent like a heavy buy to check on her. And like, you know, she basically like had come home that night and saw her drunk with a dude. And the dude had red hair this time and he was wearing a bowler hat in a thick mustache. He had beer. They were singing and laughing together, you know, classic like man and woman about to hook up behavior. And by 130, the singing and stuff that she had heard had stopped. And the next day, this guy who was the heavy came by and was gonna check and then went to the

place that he knew was broken because he had been tipped off that you could get into her apartment without having the key, right. And when he moved the fucking little thing, he like saw into the apartment and did not go in and did not return to the apartment and immediately went and got a got the police, is basically how it went. And so there is a lot of depictions of this body that you can find out there. There's a picture on the Wikipedia page that is pretty fucking graphic if you want to see it. But I want to tell you, you don't even want to look into this one. I'm not going to

describe this one detail by detail. I'm gonna say that as a human being, you could tell it was a human being, but it looked like she had been at by wild animals. There are parts of her body that are chopped down to the bone. There are parts of her body that have been delicately removed and placed in other parts of the room, neatly folded. Her face is not recognizable as a human face. There's

a lot of things that happened to this woman. She's destroyed. And the reason for that is because he was able to progress his crime indoors. And he, rather than having this short amount of time that we've been talking about to do just what he needed to do. This time, he had time and he had privacy and he had a whole stage to sort of like set it up on. And like I said, the the photography that was done in this room was some of the first crime scene photography ever undertaken. It's absolutely horrific.

And, uh, the Sinead, the tour guide really made it clear that the FBI in America, like still thinks of this as one of the most complex crime scenes. So pretty horrific. If you're squeamish or you're not desensitized by the internet like do not go look at that photo It's it's one of the most like Alex has said is it's Crazy, it's almost like you said it's also not looking like not looking at a human even though they you know that it was human One point it's it's not possible to connect with this human

But it's it's it's pretty fucked up and that's pretty, this blast burst of violence. One of the most violent crime scenes ever discovered is the end of the canonical five murders of Jack the Ripper. He was like breaking bad. He knew when to call it quits. He got to the peak and he walked out and retired. Yeah. And as for who it is who really did this, I don't think this is necessarily true for every crime, but for crimes like this, like Zodiac, like DB Cooper, like we were saying,

which almost completely eclipsed their own facts with like the legend and the speculation and all the different theories and their place in culture. Ripper tour guide Stowe had a great quote and I think, uh, Jesse will read that for us now. My personal take is that everyone's entitled to their opinion and their own suspects as it all adds the general popularity of the genre, even cranky, idiotic or dishonest theorizing is par for the course and has its place in

Ripperology. And yeah, Ripperheads and Ripperology. Yeah. Any divisible component within the Jack the Ripper phenomenon, the mythos, is that it has always bordered on the hurdy-gurdy showground barman-belly world of fantasy. It is a circus and always will be. This has literally been the case since 1888 with the letters that coined the name Jack the Ripper to the lurid newspaper headlines to sketches and the illustrated weeklies. There was even a waxworks display of the victim set up on Whitechapel Road. Fighting against this is as futile as commanding the Tides to recede in the manner of King Knut, allegedly. Knut, yeah. And to me, doing research to accurately capture the essence of something without having

to come up with a specific empirical conclusion to justify its worth in an actual historical way is kind of like an empowering thing to do, I think. And to me, especially since as somebody who does research into hugely popular topics all the time, Zodiac, DB Cooper this year even, or within the last year, there are little mistakes everywhere that I see between real sources and everywhere. And even in books like this book, I found like four things in this book

that like don't necessarily square with themselves or the things, but they're just, but because of that, they're just as true. You know what I mean? Because of that, they're Yeah, and it makes your job more difficult because you have to fucking figure out which one you're going to use to keep the narrative cohesive. Yeah. And sometimes that has more of an effect on reality than facts do these mistakes. So you got to try and hit a sweet spot

that doesn't lose steam regardless. And so to close this out, I'm gonna have Mark read us another great quote from Alan Moore about this exact concept from his from hell reading guide companion to take us out today. I was unnerved and amazed by the amount of confirming evidence that turned up to support my theory. Precisely because I knew it wasn't a theory.

It was fiction. I really didn't want to put a toe into the inviting pool of the truth, because truth is a well-documented pathological liar. Self-proclaimed fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. It says, I'm a liar liar right there on the dust jacket. If I read a biography of Tony Blair at the end of it, I still wouldn't know where I stood with him. I do, however, know where I stand with Hannibal Lecter in The Wizard of Oz. Love that. I love that quote. It's so good.

We are the Chiluminati. We lie in service to the truth. And if you don't get it, you're not being super chill right now. Mark, thanks so much for being here. It was such a pleasure to finally get to the truth. And if you don't get it, you're not being super chill right now mark Thanks so much for being here. It was such a pleasure to finally get to do this and writing this script Especially has been very enjoyable for me, but for the people at home besides cracked crown, which is very much ready to come back I'm hearing and should be listened to where do you want to send everybody for more dank mark mere content? Oh, well, let's see. If you're listening to a podcast about Jack the Ripper, you probably like the sort of horror end of the spectrum. So,

I will direct you towards bookshops of Arkham and graveyards of Arkham on Chaosium's YouTube channel. Those are two little mini-series that I did for Chaosium. They're obviously set in Arkham. mini series that I did for Chaosium. They're obviously set in Arkham. And yeah, Call of Cthulhu, a little Call of Cthulhu actual play, but with costumes and embodied NPCs and that sort of thing. So I think listeners of your guys might enjoy this. Absolute Venn diagram synergy going on for sure. Love it. And actually, I'll for those, if you happen to have any listeners who are in the UK, at the end of May in the beginning of June, going to be doing a little tour of Call of Cthulhu live with Chaosium. And we're going to be hitting several cities, Birmingham and Manchester and London and

others, we're going to we're going to many places. So you can just check those on the Chaosium socials and you can come see us Awesome, thanks so much mathis For joining us we appreciate you having you here. Hopefully we'll have you back sometime in the future We're off to do a minute sort of patreon.com slash illuminati pod as always. We'll see you next week. We appreciate you We love you. Goodbye. The killer clowns are coming. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the jilluminaughte podcast Goodbye, the killer clowns are coming. No! Neo and Trinity No! I don't understand and I probably never will.

Let me just tell you right now that there's two... Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos. Cheech and Chow. And it's just been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig deep. Which one of you is uh, Dick Powell?

Me? Your name's Jesse Cox! Hahahaha! I want to lose an audience. I want my mind back. I want to my baby I want your loving I want my my baby I want your loving I want your Illuminati I want your Illuminati

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Illuminati podcast. As always, I'm one of your hosts Mike Martin joined by Alex and Jesse like a shooting star across the sky that's actually a UFO Bye!