Last Podcast On The Left - Minisode: The Thames Torso Murders

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

Join us on this minisode as we extend our Jack the Ripper episodes past the official five Ripper victims to six mysterious headless torsos found around London between 1873 and 1889, pointing towards the possibility of a second unidentified serial killer apart from the Ripper. Brought to you by TNT's: THE ALIENIST. Shadowlands 3 - Machine Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

There's no place to escape to this is the last on the left Let's do it up. All right So do I say this like it's a normal show? Well, it's a mini episode. It's a mini episode. It's a mini episode It's a tiny nice little episode. It's like, uh, it's kind of like what the cheap parents give out on Halloween Welcome to the last podcast on the left everyone. I am Ben Kissel and that's Marcus Park. That's me. It's mini so pretend we're small Second of all, yes, I am completely dressed up as Gary. I am wearing I don't know if you can can you see this? It is a podcast. He saw it. We did. Oh, yes. We did you he is showing us his underwear his bright red for some reason tidy No, well not tidy white speedo the speedo. That's what I am getting very

You're a sequence in your pretty face is going to hell when I am off completely fully body sprayed including up to my nutsack. Oh Which they love to do. I'm sure they do Love it. Oh, what am I getting on a segue? You're talking TV shows So today's episode Marcus, what do we got going on here this show the alien? Yeah, we got paid so you guys get extra content That's pretty no, this is just it's like a regular episode about 30 minutes long But this is brought to you by the alienist on TNT What's the alienist all about our aliens involved? No, no

Okay, that's no it is confusing. I'm gonna straight up say on the on the out the gate. It is confused All right at the same time. Thank you for your money So what's this thing all about? Well today we're in honor of the alienist It's like set in Victorian times, but it's in New York, but we're gonna go back to London If I was in Victoria times at Victorian times, I'd get caught wearing corsets Fun that would be to crank it up. It'd be real fun. Oh my god. You would look like such a big Drunk screaming cannoli in a corset But at the alien is like here. It's starring Daniel Brawl aka that's the guy who played the sniper and glorious bastard

And it's created by Kerry Fukunaga. Who's the only reason why true detective was good in the first place? Yeah, I did not realize absolutely. I heard time is a flat circle That is funny. It is very fun. Time doesn't exist. It's a construct Oh, it's a long thing times a flat circle technically doesn't mean anything, but it's a true detective It was fun. It was fun at the time. We all had fun at the time. It all sounded good. Cool. That's what mattered I like Matthew McKenna. Hey Well, what we're gonna be covering today We're gonna be covering the multiple unsolved murders that surrounded the Jack the Ripper mystery and we're ultimately

Overshadowed by the more compelling news story all these stories were found in the Jack the Ripper casebook the best resource on the internet for Jack the Ripper information located at casebook.org. All right. Thank you. Yeah, good plug good plug You see what I also understand these crimes are more interesting to me than the Jack the Ripper crimes What made the Jack the Ripper crimes fun was the letters But in the end the press just sort of what we learned at the end of our longest series ever Was that they they essentially asked for Jack the Ripper letters and they got them Well to give you a little bit of a refresher Jack the Ripper the most notorious Unidentified serial killer in history murdered five women in 1888 in London

But the five canonical victims Mary Ann Nichols Annie Chapman Elizabeth Stride Catherine Eddow's and Mary Kelly were not the only women to meet a gruesome end in London in 1888 they weren't even the only ones to die horrific death in the year surrounding 1888 from 1887 to 1889 the torsos of six dismembered women were found in various locations around old London town Oh my goodness gracious. That's a lot of torsos. It wasn't a good time No for anyone. It wasn't a good time for feet. Never mind. Just live So you imagine just living just having shoes on was bad in 1888 I can't imagine being a lady when it's still hard to be a woman in 2017. There it is. That's well good thing

It's 2018 now. Oh Man, did I miss a whole fucking year? 16 days of one. That's not a big deal. I'm sorry I'm just sitting here with my tiny little sugar packet dick and balls out and he's a little underpants. It is a little distracting I have to admit Well, those torsos that were found between 1887 and 1889 Don't even count the torso found on Tottenham Court Road in 1884 or the torso found in the Thames in 1873 and the other one found in

1874 and to this day we have no idea who the perpetrator or even who most of the victims were It was just torsos. We got to look for someone who was in need of a torso Maybe a torso-less person possibly trying to replace and wanted to use their torso September 5th 1873 saw the discovery of one of the worst murders the city of London had ever seen The whole thing started when just the left quarter of a woman's trunk was fished out of the Thames River by a patrolman Well after they found that torso later that day a different policeman found the rest of the woman's torso Floating off Brunswick Wharf

Then came the legs at Old Battersea Bridge then the day after that back in the Thames They found only a face detached from the skull. Oh my god, and you know, they had to fight a seagull for it Yeah, most likely do you think what happened? Maybe a tear in the bag and then the person got home He said where are all the body parts? Oh my gosh, and then he had to go retrace his steps Oh, you know, I knew I should never let old slippery Greg handle the goddamn body, baby He snort me full go his bone with the slime on me Then they found the right thigh then the right shoulder then the right breast then the forearm then the pelvis until finally Police had enough parts to put together an entire body. Wow. Yeah, and put it together

They did in an attempt to identify the woman the acting chief surgeon for the Metropolitan Police Dr Thomas Bond Recommended that they try so when the body parts together Of course showcasing the body to the public to see if anyone recognized and that body became Giselle Bunchin She was made in a lab made by science. Can you imagine Dr. Thomas Bond being like wouldn't it just be like? The creepiest fucking thing in the world to just show these people people be freaked out, right? Yeah, it's a great idea. It makes more jobs for police officers if people are scared Also, when you say acting chief surgeon for the Metropolitan Police, it just sounds like he played by like a Hugh Dancy

Yeah, so maybe entertaining for the people, huh? Perhaps entertainment now Thomas Bond is interesting in that he was the chief surgeon for almost all the torso murders We're talking about today in addition to being chief surgeon for the Jack the Ripper case Is he a surgeon though? I mean, they're already all passed away, right? What are you talking about? Yeah, he was doing the autopsies Yeah, I mean, I guess they call him coroners now. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean he used to do regular people surgeries, too I imagine. I don't know. I should have looked that up. Well, Alienist. Well Thomas Bond was also the person who put together the first Ripper profile making him one of if not history's first criminal profilers But in the case of this murder, all Bond could do was say stitch her up and see what happens

Oh my goodness. Does she come alive? Let's just let it see how this plays out. I'm curious. Yeah, it reminds me of that movie I believe it's called May which was a good film. Yeah. Yeah girl makes her best. It is really good It's scary and I don't want to ruin the end, but it does do what I just said. Does it do come alive? It does. Well the person in charge of putting her together was the local police surgeon Dr. Kimster He estimated that the woman was about 40 had a burn scar on her left breast and was most likely killed by a head injury You like how I put her together? The Alienist, check out the show. TNT, it's dynamite Now after she was all put back together best they could they made a general call to the public to see if anyone could identify the

Remains, but since they didn't have a skull the best they could do with the face was to stretch it over a butchers block Oh, that's not the best they could have done. They could have gotten a rock They could have gotten some kind of basketball. They had basketball. I think in the 1880s Now this may sound crude, but it is actually among the first times a forensic facial reconstruction for the purposes of Identification was ever attempted even if it was horrifically ghoulish and unsuccessful. Okay. Yeah, they're just wiggling around a bunch of skull It's sewed together body parts at random human beings, but what if you recognize this? Of course no one recognized a disembodied face on a piece of wood, but Pliny got an eye fault specifically the local Horror dealers who wanted to take a look so they could sketch the remains and sell little cards on the street

Oh, okay. That's the business inside the business. I would have one of those I would I would have one now Oh, I mean if you look again a lot of the Jack the Ripper murders these guys would go they'd take a look at the crime scenes They'd sketch it out and then they just sell them to people they were huge sellers These guys made a kill in selling this stuff So pretty much the only thing they could glean from the body was that it was dismembered by someone who obviously knew what they Were doing the joints were opened and the bones were Disarticulated with the only sawing being the hip joints and the shoulders so a surgeon again

Like we're looking at the same thing like in Jack the Ripper where you basically it's like someone like that or someone who's a butcher Or someone who's worked with meat before more likely a butcher Okay, but from the way either a butcher or a knacker. What's a knacker knackers someone who just Disposes of dead animals not necessarily for the purpose of Butchering not necessarily for the purpose of meat. They're just like say a dead horse. Say a horse dies You're calling an act you call in an hacker and the knacker Rips it apart and makes it all neat and then ships it off to wherever I'll get rid of it for you. I don't like you knacker

But I don't understand is that also that that's not really a job. That's more of like a horrible hobby Yeah, I guess you could make a job. I think they did. Yeah, yeah, and most people assumed it was a butcher But one of the working theories at the time was that the whole thing was a prank by medical students Who thought it would be funny to carve the face off a cadaver and throw it in the river? Well, I do get how that could lead to a laugh. Yeah, some hijinks. Yeah, it's definitely the 1880s version of the movie Porky's Doctors are weird demented people. Yeah, let's be honest here. However, since there were no pimple popper By the way, I watched that show. You're disgusting. I hate people popping videos I know some people like them, but I do not like them. There's a show called doctor pimple popper

Really? Yes, and in this episode she removed a cyst which isn't even a pimple But it was so disgusting. It's like the videos that you forced me to watch Marcus It really is but you're watching of your own volition now. It was on spectrum cable Oh, I accidentally watched a video yesterday of someone squeezing a dog whose belly was all full of worms The worms came out of its way to say accidentally. How do you stumble? Did you accidentally Google that? Well since there were no blood clots in any of the veins of the body and since the body was butchered before rigor mortis It set in it was deduced that the woman had died pretty close to the time of her post-mortem surgery Now even though the police offered a 200 pound reward and a pardon for any accomplice that might have assisted in the crime

There were no takers and the murder will likely stay unsolved forever Well, I'll tell you why it's because they offered such a heavy reward. It's a lot of money 200 pounds 200 pounds I had to think about it for a second and it was I was a little reader died a little reader's digest for everyone I understand. You're gonna walk me through that one. I don't even get that one What would they give them a big rock 200 pounds of weight pounds is what the British? Pounds if it wasn't money it could have been a big trophy You take the information you think about it and it's funny what you think about is funnier than any specific that I would do

the alienist TNT But the next year the killer struck again The this body had been divided down the spinal column and contained evidence that had been decomposing in lime for a time Before being dumped in the river But for some reason when the jury came back with whether or not it should be investigated as a murderer They left it as an open verdict meaning they admitted it was suspicious But didn't say it was an out-and-out murder. This is like if you're the serial killer like give me that jury I want that jury ten out of ten times. I don't mean it. I don't mean to hold up a gum up the work say

But it's quite possible. There's a shadow of a doubt that he had tripped and fallen on a lightsaber And just cleaved himself Deleted see information impossible. It just walks right through all the laser Well as we'll see throughout these cases neither of these women was ever identified. Oh, no heads and a wallet Think about that. No idea. They had to fight a dog for all these feet and hands and shit And they had to get to the tour and like oh Yeah, I was I went to the my my organ place yesterday where I like to eat like well two or three days ago I went to go eat organ meat and they had whole octopus, right? And so I thought it'd be a good idea

And it was like six. It was like a six pound. I don't like higher octopus disgusting And the waiter was like like they always do he's like you should eat the head because the head is special It's very special. It's very unique. It's very delicious and that people don't normally eat it So I was like yeah, give it to me And so I cut the top of the head off and all the brains and the guts were still inside of it It's cooked inside of it and when I ate it the texture of the guts and the brains and the taste was so peculiar and weird it was soft and it tasted kind of like cinnamon mixed with tuna that I almost Projectile

Why don't you yeah, there's no way you enjoyed eating that it was so wiggly and big and heavy Oh, it's like I was eating a baby's legs. You like Hannibal Hannibal The next torso murder came almost ten years later in 1884 this time the discovery of the torso came after that of the parts on October 24th citizens of London found a skull with most of the flesh stripped off along with a big hunk of thigh Left in the street. Oh Then came the arm someone had tossed it over a railing and with the arm came the only clue to her identity a tattoo Oh, and a tattoo meant that most likely the victim in this case was a sex worker. Oh, why is that?

Because back in those times they assumed if you had a tattoo you were a sex worker. You had to be doing some Yeah, yeah tattoos were not not high-class ladies did not have tattoos Everyone's got him now five days after the skull and thigh were found a policeman found a brown paper parcel wrapped up and left in front of 33 Fitzroy Square and this move was particularly ballsy as policemen almost constantly patrolled the area Again just like the last one the body was dismembered with a degree of skill And then just a couple months later police found the bones of a right arm wrapped up in a parcel with two full feet Wow, good Lord feet. Yeah, it sounds like just the beginnings of the bodies exhibit, right? The bodies exhibit is so rough They just I'm just it just the active. I know it's science and it's curiosity

But if you're slicing human bodies so thin, right? There's no way it's somewhere on deep inside You're a supervillain. I mean like you obviously you're you have a problem again in this one There were no suspects and no identification on the bodies for three years Whoever had murdered the first four women whether it be one man two three or four Stayed quiet or at the very least stopped displaying bodies in such an ostentatious manner But in 1887 a year before Jack the Ripper showed up The first of four torsos would be found floating in the Thames River The first was pulled from the waters near the village of Rainham. The remaining parts showed up here and there around London over the next

Two months just like the first body found they were able to reconstruct it But also like before and with everyone to come after no head was found making it nearly impossible to identify Using Victorian forensic techniques They gotta find these heads and the next body part an arm was found on September 11th 1888 But this one was from a different victim. This was just a little over two weeks after the body of Marianne Nichols The Ripper's first victim was killed Now at this point the Ripper murders were not the new sensation that they came to be the dear boss letter in which the killer Dubbed himself Jack the Ripper was still 16 days away from being delivered and 20 days from being published

So this was not a copycat murder. I feel like was this getting enough press this it got no price Why was no press? I think this is press-worthy just a bunch of body parts being found for what over a series of years years Yeah, well, it's very similar to On the Vancouver side event of Canada these feet that keep washing up these like severed feet severed hands keep washing up And it's it sounds like someone's trying to just get rid of a body It sounds like there are many people either doing things out of crime Which we saw when we covered Pee Wee Gaskins is a lot of times It's people that are not were they maybe not were murdered for specific pleasure

But we're they were just trying to get they were either murdered for some reason and then the body was disposed of like this Well as far as these murders being connected to Jack the Ripper The murder MO has very little in common with the Ripper murders all this torso stuff That's not to say there are no similarities both were product killers Although Jack had a fair amount of process thrown in there as well. That's saying that Jack is again saying that Jack the Ripper was one person Yeah, which is probably was multiple people and it seems like there was many people in the 1888 especially in Whitechapel and the lesser The lower incomes area of London. There are a lot of people were bad shit was happening. Oh, yeah Now both of these men use the bodies in such a way that implies the kill itself was not the reason behind the murder all they wanted was the

bodies for example, let's take a refresher on the insane mutilation of Mary Kelly He skinned her thighs and hacked away at the muscle before mutilating her arms in the same way He opened the stomach and removed the intestines laying them to the right side of her body He took out the spleen and set it to the left with the liver being set between her feet He cut off her breasts and set one by her right foot the other he set under her head with her uterus and kidneys The Ripper then hacked away at Mary Kelly's face until she could only be identified by her eyes and her ears I forgot how brutal that one was right very very intense But a part of the reason why is and I think we you know what we've heard about with most people when they corpse is so

Violated is that it comes from extreme anger. Yeah, that that that sounds like something that is I mean you hate this woman Obviously, and you're just doing whatever it takes to degrade the body. Exactly. Now conversely, let's take a look at the torso murder Now while the skill level is that of a butcher or a knacker. Oh Each of these women were nonetheless dissected carefully and while Jack did at times exhibit the skills of a surgeon by the time He got to Mary Kelly this guy was in full berserker mode, right? It seems as if the torso murderer never quite made it to that point or if he did no one found the evidence But while there are differences, there are still other similarities both of them enjoyed toning authority

Although Jack was decidedly fancier. Oh, yeah, he wrote letters naturally. Yeah, dear boss from hell so on and so forth That's right But the tames truncator left something far more gruesome and primitive The worst Jack sent was a kidney the torso murder left actual bodies What was this? It was a strange time then Van Gogh. He was cutting off his ear sending that to people What's going on? It also seems like a like a fucking wear cat Like how like a cat leaves trophies for you almost where it's like cuz they're so big and I you can also imagine something like this would be a great side lateral plot to an Alan Moore like

Werewolf cartoon or werewolf comic book. Yeah, and the most daring of all these leavings was on October 2nd 1888 when the torso murderer left the full torso of a woman at the construction site where England was building the new Scotland yard Essentially police headquarters. Wow Whoever this killer was he managed to make his way onto the construction site and leave a parcel with the torso of a woman inside I mean, I mean that whole thing that had to have weighed at least 50 pounds. If not more, right? Yeah person's torso makes up about half of your body weight. Yeah, unless you're me Where my legs are probably about 15 pounds Small and I'm all torso. Yeah, you're in the the Robotnik. I'm all torso, too

Yeah, our legs are about the same height if you look at the pictures My question is is where does he get a bag so big? Yeah, cuz he didn't have Costco then I because really now is the only way I would use that is if I had the bag of one of those big like dog food bags That's really old thing. It could fit a torso one of those IKEA blue bags. Perhaps. I mean honestly, how the heck do you do it brown paper and twine? Ah, I forgot that more people were kidnapped by sack in that time period on paper and twine the killer or possibly the killer's hair helper made his way down to the basement and left the package in a vault that had Been left open the package sat there for three full days before anyone found her and medical examiners Reckon she'd been dead anywhere between six to eight weeks before that. So it's pretty decomposed at that point

Yeah, pretty damn decomposed. Yeah, and of course she was never identified and again when the case went to jury The verdict that came back was just found dead. Well, that's we know that Yeah, they must have really used that stamp Quite a bit in 1888 Where are they getting these jerks? We found a date She was probably alive at some point and when we found her she was dead So yada yada yada, they're gonna use it later in a lovely show called Seinfeld

Case closed. Yeah, these jurors are not doing a very good job here. I guess it's not a lot to go with Well, I fear they were probably pushed into this because you know, this body was found in the new Scotland Yard And they didn't want that on the books because that would it would be on the books forever that you know A murder happened in the new Scotland Yard before it was even done being built, right? So I would imagine that found dead was pushed just a little bit. Yeah, they had a little Mud on their face a little bit of mud. Yeah Now after that the Ripper murders played out with the aforementioned murder of Mary Kelly, but the torso torpedo Wasn't done yet

Calling how'd you bury the lead on that Marcus torso torpedo does it go pro wrestler? Yeah, the torso torpedo Okay, I guess so He wasn't throwing the torso in a torpedo like he was killing people with torso. That's how that would call him the torso We'll give it to you. Thank you. He was not done yet as on June 4th The following year police pulled a section of a torso out of the 10s near horse Lee down then It's just like they just name these towns man. It's like what what's the thought process horse Lee down horse Lee down

technically Pulling a horse Lee down means sleeping while standing up horses do But then the left leg was discovered followed by the thigh abdomen Liver rest of the torso neck and shoulders right foot and leg left foot and leg and so on and so forth all in different Locations in the River Thames. I don't think anyone should go swimming in this thing. No, it's like go swimming in the East River No, but even back then. Oh back. I think actually was probably worse back I'm all the industry and whatnot. Okay. Yeah, they if I were to guess

I don't know this for sure, but I would guess that all the slaughterhouses and all that and London just dumped all their sluice over into the river Well, I'm just gonna all of the and all of the fucking dump pails. Yeah get dumped in there, too Yeah, I'll bet that there was one kid who loved swimming and we got to talk to that kid Yeah, the pig pen of 1888 which probably makes him the dirtiest human that ever live And in a bit of pitch-black humor one of the body parts was thrown over the fence of Mary Shelley's estate Possibly as a cheeky nod to her book Frankenstein, which was quite popular at the time. Okay, so it was a bit Well, at least that part of it was a bit. Yeah, I guess so at the same time

It just feels like someone who's willy-nilly tossing body parts about that isn't checking addresses Things over his shoulder like he's fucking Johnny But it's with fingers and fucking toes. I have no idea what they were thinking Then finally on September 10th 1889 almost a year to the day after the second body was found the rap torso of a woman was found under a railway arch on Pinchin Street like the others the head was missing But this time for whatever reason the arms were still attached to the body which somehow makes I don't know why that's the Creepiest one all for me. Yeah, just a torso with the arms still attached. Yeah. Yeah, that's really very creepy

They're all it's all pretty creepy. It's all pretty creepy, but for some reason. That's the creepiest one Okay, now out of all six of these women only the fifth victim was identified Her name was Elizabeth Jackson and that may be why these murders are known only do a few crude true crime buffs and Reparologists we don't have the names and we don't have the stories so we don't have the lives All we have are parts which unfortunately means most people will never know about the Tim's torso murders Wow until now they tried to roll some of these into Jack the Ripper, correct? Yeah, they tried I mean, I found all this stuff on the Jack the Ripper casebook It's I think most people most sane

Ripperologists believe that there was just another guy around it's just I dare you to do a mental survey of the main Ripperologists and find the most sane ones because I feel like it drives you crazy I went to the Jack the Ripper Museum in London over and the woman who ran it was Extremely nice. All right. She seemed very said she seemed very well balanced. They have to be nice They're trying to keep people in the fold. It's like people who work for steampunk outfit chops They have to be very friendly You better be well there it is fascinating stuff. Oh, yeah, you know what? I think what is not nice. No, it's not

It's not nice at all not at all my gosh What do we want to do here Marcus? I guess yeah, well, we'll be back with Jonestown part two This yeah part two this yeah this this Friday. Oh Yeah, it's a little little many thing for you. That's it. Yeah, it's not gonna fuck with the Release of episodes. You're still gonna get a full episode this week. So yeah I'm actually hoping we do a lot more of these. Yeah. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan again Help me. Oh, yeah, follow us on Twitter and all the bullshit Father Henry loves you at Marcus parks have been kiss'll follow us on Instagram

I talked about tasty at Marcus parks have been kiss'll the number one and follow last podcast on all of the bullshits at LP on the left Mahgoos delations. Mm-hmm. Oh