Pushkin. It's one am and Louis deem Shuts, a jewelry seller, is on his way home in his horse and cart. He can barely see his way through the dark. As he turns off the street, his pony shied at something which was lying in a heap in a corner of the yard. Newspaper reports say that deem Shuts assumed that a passed out, drunk or homeless person was blocking the way and scaring his horse. He looked more closely into the matter and then found a woman lying on the ground, dead,
with her throat cut clean to the vertebrae. The body was quite warm and blood was still flowing freely from the throat. Elizabeth's Stride has died recently. It seems curiously, her injuries differ from those of the rippers previous victims. While Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman suffered abdominal mutilation as well as slash wounds to their throats, Elizabeth was killed by a single cut. Few expressed doubt, however, that Jack
the Ripper is to blame. Elizabeth's death prompts myriad eyewitness accounts. Whitechapel locals report where Elizabeth went before she died, and with whom they described the men she had met, and a picture of a suspect emerges. Jack the Ripper now has a face. These descriptions will shape the case for decades to come. But did any of these eyewitnesses actually see Elizabeth's stride that night, let alone her murderer. I'm
Hallie Rubinholt, you're listening to bad women. The Ripper retold a series about the real lives of the been killed by Jack the Ripper and how we got their stories so wrong. One side, money plenty and friends too by the sky. Then fortune smild upon me. I now one pass my dome. Aloney, I'm not with her, seems to larn me. I'm come for me for rockcount Elizabeth strides early life took her from Brual Sweden, were prisoned like
syphilis hospital. She came to London, married a carpenter and ran two coffee houses, both of which failed and closed. Then she became a fraudster, hoodwinking Londoners with tales of family tragedy. We left her in September eighteen eighty eight. Elizabeth's final day began like any other. She cleaned rooms at a Whitechapel lodging house, earning a meager sixpence wage about ten dollars today, and then she went to the
pub for a drink. The lodging house manager noted that Elizabeth wore neither a coat nor a bonnet, a detail that some have pounced upon as proof that she'd returned to selling sex, as she had done briefly in her native Sweden. Women out soliciting which surely tried to show off their faces and bodies as much as possible. Of course, wearing a hat was equally argued to be the sign of a prostitute. Remember the conclusions drawn about Polly Nichols
in her jolly bonnet. If Elizabeth Stride was still selling sex, she didn't have much lucks listing clients. She walked back to her lodging house alone at around six thirty pm. Only a handful of facts are known about what she did in the hours before her death. She ate some potatoes, bread and cheese. She likely had a few drinks as well. At some stage in the evening she acquired a corsage, a single red rose tied together with some maidenhair fern,
which she attached to the bodice of her dress. Elizabeth asked a friend to mind a length of green velvet she had in her possession. She was about to go out for several hours, and perhaps she wanted to make sure that no one stole and pond it before she stepped out the door again. She sought to smarten herself up, borrowing a brush to clean the muck from her only set of clothes. Just as the newspaper reports and Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman's last movements are riddled with contradictions
and inconsistencies, the same is true for Elizabeth. Some say she had paid for her bed at the lodging house that night in advance with that sixpence she'd earned. Others state the opposite. If she had indeed already paid, it would suggest that her intention was to return to the lodging house later that evening, but where she planned to go when she stepped out that night is unknown. Elizabeth avoided telling her neighbors about her current or past life.
No one knew her typical habits, regular companions, or usual haunts. Perhaps she went out to socialize or to meet someone. She may have left her lodging house with the intention of soliciting, or of finding a long term partner, or both. Whatever Elizabeth's planned that night, she never returned. According to the coverage of the autopsy, 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. The obvious inference, said one newspaper, was that this was the work of Jack the Ripper. The thing is, the darts just don't join up that easily. Elizabeth was killed with a single cut, and her body wasn't otherwise mutilated. Her injuries were therefore quite unlike those of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman. She was also killed near a busy men's club, whereas Polly and Annie were murdered in quiet places with fewer passers by.
I have strong doubts about whether Elizabeth Stride was a victim of the Ripper at all. The traditional narrative claims that the killer was disturbed before he could carry out his trademark butchery. It further maintains that, with his blood lust unsated, he dashed across Whitechapel in search of another woman to murder. That very same night, but that's a story for another episode. This all strikes me as a
bit far fetched. Elizabeth could have fallen prey to some other unknown attacker, a victim of one of her fraudulent tricks. Perhaps it's even possible that she was killed by her partner, Michael Kidney, who was known to be physically abusive. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Stride is still counted among the five victims, perhaps because her death adds so much color to the Ripper myth.
It was only with Elizabeth Stride's death that I witnesses began to come forward to report actual sightings of a suspect. For example, a laborer saw a man and a woman in close conference just before midnight on the street where Elizabeth was killed. He believed that woman was Elizabeth's Stride. I was standing at my door, and what attracted my attention first was standing there sometime and he was kissing her. I heard the man say to the deceased, you would
say anything but your prayers. He was mild speaking and appeared to be an educated man. Not long after that, Israel Schwartz, who gave a statement through an interpreter, noticed a man and a woman having a disagreement on the same street. Their argument became increasingly heated. The woman was thrown to the ground, letting out a scream. Schwartz was then startled by a second man who had been standing
in the shadows. Feeling menaced by this figure and unwilling to intervene in some kind of domestic dispute, he took to his heels and fled. Other neighbors chimed in two. One woman saw a young man with a black, shiny bag who walked very fast, but had it noticed anything else unusual. That night, and in the daily news, a man named Albert asked recalled a conversation with a suspicious stranger. He asked me questions which now appeared to me to
have some bearing upon the recent murders. He wanted to know whether I knew what sort of loose women use the public bar at their house, when they usually left the street outside, and where they were in the abbit of going. He asked further questions, and from his manner, seemed up to no good purpose. He appeared to be a shabby, genteel sort of man, and was dressed in black clothes. He wore a black felt hat and carried a black bag. Such descriptions are the bedrock of most
Ripper theories. The trouble is none of these eyewitness statements have ever been submitted to real scrutiny. Under close examination, they don't hold up well at all. The Ripper he told will be back In a moment, from the cacophony of witnesses, a portrait of Elizabeth Stride's killer began to
take shape. The following description has been circulated of a man said to have been seen in the company of the deceased during Saturday, age twenty eight slight height, five feet nine inches, complexion dark, no whiskers, black diagonal coat, hard felt hat collar. It's not much to go on an average size Victorian man who was neither very old nor very young in average Victorian dress. Still, over the years, these statements, no matter how vague, have crystallized into the
supposed facts of the case. Every Ripper book or documentary you've seen will build on these shaky foundations. There was at least one, maybe two copycats involved in these five murders. Take Jeff Mudget, a descendant of Herman Mudget, who was also known as H. H. Holmes. That's pretty much where my theory has gone okay, and I know a lot
of people disagree with that. A notorious American swindler and serial killer Holmes trapped his victims and what became known as his murder Castle, a Chicago house he built to include soundproof chambers and shoots to move body parts for disposal. I put some research into this evil man and became somewhat obsessed with knowing the true story about him. Holmes lived and killed in Chicago, but Jeff is convinced that he also crossed the Atlantic to satisfy his murderous impulses,
that he was also shack the Ripper. The more I dug in, the more the angle started lessoning, and the chances became greater and greater. Jeff has gathered evidence about handwriting and passenger lists. We've done quite a bit of research into passenger lists on liners from New York to London Southampton, and we found some of the aliases that Holmes used. He also thinks physical descriptions link Holmes and
the man scene with Elizabeth Stride. Both were of average height and mustachioed, as was the fashion of the day. Jeff actually thinks that Holmes didn't kill all the women. His theory is elaborate and seems to suggest that H. H. Holmes was a copycat killer drawn to London after the
earlier murders. He gave a ted X talk where he presented his evidence, making much of a computer image, a facial composite based on the statements of eye witnesses that was produced by Scotland yard analysts for yet another TV show. Noticed the bridge of the nose, Notice the shape of the eyes, Notice the years, Notice the cheek bons. He compares it to a photo of HH Holmes. Just take a second to look once again the nose Holmes had a broken nose, the eyes, the years, and again the
cheek bons. Jeff, who incidentally is a lawyer by trade, show both of these images to two seasoned investigators, one from the FBI. Both said the comparison was the closest they'd ever seen in their entire careers. Jeff calls all this a remarkable piece of evidence, although many of the people that criticized me for using that thought it looked more like Freddie Mercury than it did H. Holmes. Jeff's theory is frankly baffling, and I had a bit of
trouble following the logic. During our conversation, it seemed to contain gaping holes and great leaps of imagination. I was surprised that someone with legal training would entertain this story for a second. Would I be confident proving that Holmes was Jack the Ripper and a court of log beyond a reasonable doubt. Now now, off the back of his ted X talk, Jeff made a TV show, American Ripper, where he teamed up with former CIA agent Amaryllis Fox in an effort to prove once and for all that
his great great grandfather was Jack the Ripper. I've talked to experts and historians and combed through libraries and archives searching for the truth, and I believe that by assuming the identity of Jack the Ripper, HH Holmes pulled off one of the greatest cons of all time. That show has been seen all over the world. In fact, it was on British TV again the very day I interviewed him. The Ripper's final victim is played like a piece of meat.
It makes me wonder how Holmes was conducting dissections and the basement of the Murder Castle in the years following The Ripper killings are you aware of any? Viewers are served up theories like this all the time. The same cast of former detectives, handwritting experts and police artists are wheeled out to explain the evidence and solve the crime. The issue here is that not all evidence is equal.
It has to be scrutinized and weighed up. I'd argue that little cited as evidence in the Ripper case would actually stand up in court. The idea behind the due process is that obviously we have these safeguards in place that ultimately those who should be convicted or convicted and where there's doubt they're acquitted. Ed Connell knows all about the problems that evidence can pose. He's a judge in the UK, presiding over criminal cases, and he previously spent
twenty three years as a trial lawyer. Eyewitness statements, he says, are notoriously thorny. Visual identification has been one of the real problems that the criminal justice system has faced. It's one of the main causes of injustice. In eighteen ninety five, a man named Adolf Beck was accused of swindling women in London. He'd approached them on the street, claiming to be an aristocrat and promising to whisk them away to
his luxury yacht and lavish them with jewelry. In fact, why not give me that old ring so I can have a new one made in exactly the right size for you. Beck was spotted leaving home by one of the women. That's him a rest back man. Several victims and other eyewitnesses also identified him as the con man, and he was sent to prison. The problem was Beck was living in South America when these crimes took place. It was only years later that the real culprit was
caught and Beck was freed. The case prompted the creation of the UK's Court of Appeal. Today, we issue guidelines about witness testimony precisely to avoid the kind of issues that consigned ad Off Beck to years in prison for someone else's crimes. A judge will say to the jury members of jury, they have in the past being miscarriager's justice. We have to be very careful. People who appeared to be compelling can be wrong. Honest people can be wrong.
Lots of honest people can be wrong. Mistakes are made, juries are often worn. To accept eyewitness statements with caution. What distance were they viewing the person from, was there anything in their way? What was the weather like, what was the lighting like? How long has there been from when they saw the persons or when they perhaps subsequently
identified them. Ed's examined some of the witness statements in elizabeth Strides case, and he says they contain inherent weaknesses, so it's difficult to really draw any conclusions from what these people are said. It's difficult to see how anybody could go away having read these statements and be sure of what's contained within them. One should take great care and caution before being able to say, yes, actually, any
of this stuff is fact. We can rely upon the ripper were told we'll be back in just a moment. Looking at, for example, the statement of William Marshall, it's a very limited use to you at all. William Marshall was a laborer. He believed he saw Elizabeth's stride the night she died, in quiet discussion with a man. Marshall thought he heard the man with Elizabeth tell her you
would say anything but your prayers. Marshall later went to identify Elizabeth's body and confirmed that this was indeed the same woman he had seen on the Street, he gave evidence at the coroner's inquest. I recognize it as that of a woman I saw on Saturday evening, about three doors off from where I'm living in Berni Street. I recognize her both by her face and dress, while she wearing a flower when you saw her. No, it is
wary of Marshall's testimony. Marshall didn't actually know Elizabeth, and how much real attention would he have paid to a couple he just saw on the street, Probably not enough for a detailed picture of them to lodge in his memory. He gives a very limited description as to what she was wearing. He says black jacket and black skirt, which I imagine was not particularly unique. And the other piece of him for mation is that he says that she was wearing a small black crape bonnet, which again I
suspect is probably not a particularly distinguishing feature. Curiously, Marshall didn't see the corsage that Elizabeth had attached to her dress. He told the coroner that the woman he saw wasn't wearing a flower. On the other hand, a police inspector who took a description of Elizabeth at the Moutree noted that She had a red rose tied with maidenhair fern fastened to her clothing. Again a sort of feature that an observant witness who could be deemed reliable would have spotted.
Even if this woman was Elizabeth's stride, Marshall couldn't have had a great view of the pair. For one thing, he was watching them from a distance. Can you describe the man? There was no lamp near, and I did not see the face of the man she was talking to. He had on a small black coat and dark trousers. Seemed to be a middle aged man. What sort of cap was he wearing? A round cap with a sort of peak to it, something like what a sailor would wear.
It's happening late at night, so it's dark. He makes reference to there being a light, but of course they would have been passing under the light. He describes that the male person had a brimmed cap on, so that would have cast the face into darkness. What height was he? About five ft six inches and he was rather stout. He was decently dressed, and I should say he worked at some light business and had more the appearance of a clerk than anything else. He gives a description of
a man wearing a small black coat, dark trousers. Again not unique. I wouldn't have thought for the time, middle aged and about five foot six and rather stout. It's not particularly sort of distinctive description that would only match maybe two or three people. It mats hundreds of thousands of people at that time. So again that sort of cast some doubt over whether or not he could be
relied upon his identification witness. But more important than that, there is actually no visual identification of the person because he doesn't see the face. And then the coroner asked a question latron or did he have any whiskers? And his response was born from what I saw of his face. I don't think he did. But he's already told them that he hadn't seen the face. So his identification evidence
is just really, it seemed to me inherently weak. Here Edie is convinced that William Marshall wouldn't be able to pick this suspect out of a lineup. A modern standard for reliable identification by witnesses. The whole idea of identification procedures. You arrange eleven stooges that look very similar facially to the individual and then you hope that the witness then picks the person out. But this witness, mister Marshall, seems wouldn't have even been able to do that at all.
So you're really left with a broad description of types of clothing of very limited value. Should we also ask questions of this witness such as why was he awake at that time of night? What was he doing? Was he drinking? Perhaps? Absolutely? I mean that's one of the things you often would ask a witness when they're identified someone involved perhaps in a pub fight, for example, at eleven o'clock at night, because it's a very good chance
that they will have been drinking. It's also worth remembering where the abundance of eyewitness accounts on Elizabeth Strides case came from. In the first place. Panic was gripping Whitechapel. These murders were all over the newspapers. It's unsurprising that people would then come for and say, oh, yeah, no, I think you know, I might have seen that night
as well. And of course they then want to believe that they're right about it, and no one's going to then go and look at the body and say, oh no, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. I've made a terrible mistake. They're going to want to insist that they've got it all right. Marshall's evidence wouldn't clear the bar for reliability that we
said today. His is just one example of witness testimony from Elizabeth Stride's murder, but it shows us that there are pitfalls when we take what people thought they saw in Whitechapel that night and on the nights of the other murders and portray them as facts. Because there was
never a trial, accounts like Marshall's were never discredited. Instead, they're out there in the ether ripe to form the foundations for House of Card theories, like Jeff Mudget's thesis that is great great Groundfather sailed across the Atlantic to
join the Jack the Ripper killing spree. The advantage of people have now looking back with the passage of time is that you can pretty much put a spin on anything you want to your advantage, because there's such limited information for you to tear and say, well, no, you've got that completely wrong. We're all just stuck with the minimum information we've really got from the coroner reports and what was reported at the time. Perhaps this is why
I'm viewed with such animosity by ripparologists. As a professional historian, I hunt for evidence, stress test the facts that I find, and cross reference them with other available sources. Ripparologists cherry pick, attaching huge importance to whatever supports their theories and ignoring what's inconvenient. All this reminds me of how conspiracy theories work. They too, are detailed narratives built around scant and disputed facts.
It's no coincident, but the Whitechapel murders spawned many crackpot conspiracy theories, with Freemasons, Jews, and Royalty all being implicated in plots to cover up the murderer's true identity. I find this aspect of the Ripper case especially maddening. It's bad enough that some people ignore the victims and spend an inordinate amount of time almost glorifying the killer's deeds, but to abuse the historical records so casually in the
process infuriates me. Further Still, it turns the grisly murders of real women into a silly who done it? Game. The megastar crime writer Patricia Cornwell, creator of the famous Scott Heatter novels, also has a very detailed theory Patricia links Victorian artist Walter Sickett to the Whitechapel murders. I've been reading up on her work and I feel it's
no more plausible than chefs. There's no statute of limitation on harmicide, and just because these cases have had her in fourteen years ago, the victims have a right to justice. My mind went back to her documentary, Patricia Cornwell's Stalking the Ripper. Patricia is clearly a thoughtful and talented person who speaks passionately about wanting to bring justice to the murdered women. But I cannot understand the path she has followed, and I fear she's falling into the same trap as
the most zealous ripparologists. I genuinely want to understand what's driving her, but getting in touch with Patricia was proving more difficult than I had anticipated. I write my agent, Sarah, hoping she might have some ideas. I mean, this is like contacting a superstar. Really, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to manage to help you with this. What are we dealing with it? I mean, Patricia Cornwell is like a kind of force of nature. How big is she?
I've never met her, myself, but she does. Her reputation really precedes her. She is a sort of action woman of the literally world. And that first case Scarpettiitt was the first bonfidi forensics thriller, which is extraordinary when you think about it. I mean the CSI Dexter. You can't turn on the telly without tripping over something, which is all about forensic detail, and she predated all of that. She started writing those books at a time where there
wasn't really any interest in that. Sarah said that she would reach out to Patricia's US agent for me. I was keeping everything crossed. Interestingly, she also thought that Patricia and I might have more in common than I'd imagined. She's very interested in victimhood. Her books are all about finding justice for people who've had terrible things done to them. Patricia's Walter Sickett theory, like the prostitute killer theory, wrests
on simplistic ideas of misogyny and sexual deviance. Patricia contends that as a child, Sickert underwent surgery to correct a fisture on his penis. The operation was botched, leaving him disfigured and impotent. As a result, says Patricia, he raged against women. None of this theory ry screams interest in the victims to me, certainly, not in who they were before their murders, or in the lives that they led, or the forces that put them into the killer's path.
I genuinely want to understand why people invest so much time, money, and emotional energy into thinking about Jack the Ripper. Maybe Patricia can articulate that for me, and maybe I can convince her to focus less on the psychology of a killer will never catch and more on the women that he murdered. Maybe I can convince her to finally call off the hunt. Bad Women the Ripper Were Told is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and Me Hallie Ribbinhold,
and is based on my book The Five. It was produced and co written by Ryan Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton. Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed all the original music. You also heard the voice talents of Soul Boyer, Melanie Gutridge,
Gemma Saunders, and rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of mil LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Jen Guerra, Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano and Daniella Lacan were special thanks to my agents Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karen