H.H. Holmes, though a serial killer himself, was not the Ripper. I’d read enough to formulate my own theories about the man known as the Whitechapel Murderer, and a recent documentary I’d watched all but confirmed my guess. Without forensic evidence, no one would ever truly identify the Ripper, but we could get close. I wondered if Bertha knew what I did about the killer, but I had to wait until the end of the tour to find out.
The group moved on to the second murder location, Hanbury Street, where Annie Chapman’s body was found in a backyard on September 8, 1888. Like Nichols, her throat had been slashed. Additionally, the killer had hastily removed her uterus from her body.
“Disgusting,” Evelyn muttered under her breath when Bertha announced this information.
“Brace yourself,” I said back. “It gets worse.”
At this location, Bertha proposed Charles Cross as the Ripper. Wrong again. Though four out of five murders occurred on Cross’s route to work and he was a shady liar, there wasn’t enough evidence to place him as the Ripper. At least, I certainly didn’t think so.
The next two locations were a fifteen-minute walk from each other. Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed on the same night, a mere forty-five minutes apart. Some believed the Ripper had been interrupted while he slaughtered Stride and, unsatisfied with his first kill, tried again with Eddowes. Others believed the Ripper wasn’t responsible for Stride’s death at all, as certain details of her murder didn’t match the Ripper’s modus operandi. Personally, I was in the latter camp.
“Aaron Kosminski,” Bertha belted out as the group followed her through Mitre Square. “He was a Polish immigrant who worked as a hairdresser in Whitechapel. A few years ago, someone extracted mitochondrial DNA from a shawl found at the site of Eddowes’s murder. It matched Kosminski’s. Was he our Ripper?”
“Nope,” I said into Evelyn’s shoulder. “That DNA study was never subjected to peer review. Besides, there’s no proof the shawl was ever at the crime scene, and it was handled by too many other people before it was tested. The evidence was contaminated, for sure.”
“Why are we here?” Evelyn asked dryly. “If you already know all of this stuff?”
“I’ve never been to the locations.”
The last canonical Ripper death was, by far, the worst. On November 9, 1888, Mary Jane Kelly had been mutilated and disemboweled in her private room. The entire surface of her abdomen and thighs had been removed. Her organs had been placed around the room—except for her heart, which had gone missing from the scene. The gashes and incisions the Ripper had made left her face unrecognizable. The Ripper had all the time in the world to do what he liked with his supposed final victim, and he sure as hell took advantage of it.
Evelyn’s face took on a gray tinge as Bertha described the murder. I slipped my arm through her solid one and pulled her closer to my side. Miller’s Court, where Kelly was killed, no longer existed, but the moonlight seemed eerier on this street.
“And for your final suspect,” Bertha said. “Mary Pearcy. My personal favorite. Some people believe Jack the Ripper could have been a midwife performing unsanctioned abortions. In 1890, Pearcey killed her lover’s wife and baby in a similar style to the Ripper’s. She was hanged for her crimes the same year.” Bertha clapped her hands together. “That concludes our tour and our suspects. Time to vote on the killer.”
I raised my hand. “What about Carl Feigenbaum? He confessed to the crimes, and there’s evidence he was in Whitechapel at the time of the murders.”
“That’s speculation,” Bertha said. “He confessed to the Ripper murders the day before he was supposed to be executed, hoping to extend his life.”
“Or he actually did it,” I suggested. “A retired murder squad detective reopened the case last year. He connected Feigenbaum to the murders. Feigenbaum was a merchant sailor, and he worked for a company that had two different ships docked near Whitechapel during the Autumn of Terror. The shipping records—”
“Went missing,” Bertha finished. I’d underestimated her. She did know about the Feigenbaum situation. “Yes, I’ve seen that documentary too. If the shipping records showed Carl Feigenbaum to be in Whitechapel during that autumn, I would absolutely believe he was Jack the Ripper. As it is—”
“It’s obvious his lawyer found and discarded the shipping records,” I cut in. “In order to separate Feigenbaum from the Ripper murders.”
“His lawyer was the one who outed him as the Ripper,” Bertha countered. “Why would he later try to conceal Feigenbaum’s guilt?”
The eyes of the tour group bounced back and forth between Bertha and me as we argued. A random teenage boy shouted from the back, “I think it was Carl!” His mother raised a hand and added, “I think it was Mary Pearcey. We shouldn’t underestimate women of that time period.”
“I agree!” Bertha bellowed.
I rolled my eyes. There was no arguing with a bunch of people who didn’t have all the facts. Evelyn nudged me.
“Don’t pout,” she said. “I believe you.”
Back at the ticket office, Evelyn got a call from work and took it outside for some privacy. While the other tour-goers either left or milled about in the gift shop, I walked up to Bertha as she accepted tips.
“Sorry if I put you on the spot,” I said, handing her five quid. “I’ve read everything about the Ripper, and it’s fun for me to hear other people’s opinions.”
She tucked the money into the front of her coat. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nice to get someone who knows about the Ripper every once in a while. Cheers for coming out tonight.”
I scooted closer to her and lowered my voice. “Do you know what happened with that body on Durward Street? Think it was a Ripper kill?”
Bertha glanced around to make sure none
