S2 E9: The Blackout Ripper on the Run

but is there extinguished. As the teenager draws closer, the light comes on again and illuminates the legs of a woman lying on the ground. The person holding the flashlight drops something and disappears. Around a corner. Shine lights a match. What's wrong, he asked the woman sprawled at his feet. Gretta Heyward has been choked into unconsciousness. As she slowly comes round, she tries to talk, but no words come out. Well,

anybody help. Gretta's face is bloodied and dirty. Her clothes are ripped, her buttons torn away, her skirt pushed high up towards her waist. Answering Shine's cries for assistance, a passer by with a flashlight arrived. I just saw her drinking with an erman. Shine helps Gretta to her feet, still unsteady, he leans her against the wall. He again asks how she is, but she seems not to comprehend him.

My bag hit done. Wanting to get her to a police station as quickly as possible, the young night porter scans the ground around them for Gretta's handbag that sees only her gloves, and an airman's have a sack containing a gas mask inside. Scribbled in indelible ink is the owner's service number five two, five nine eight seven, and the number of leads to a name. The Blackout ripper

is twenty seven year old Gordon Frederick Cummons. Barely thirty minutes after Gretta Hayward was forced into that darkened doorway, detectives are calling the nearby Royal Air Force Base and demanding that Cummings be arrested on site, But the airman isn't headed back to barracks. His night on the town has only just begun. Hello, would you like to go

with me? Yes? For two pounds exactly. This is the seldom told story of women in World War Two who were killed not by the enemy, but by husbands, lovers and strangers wearing the uniform of their own side. It's also the tale of a particular string of murder victims that history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Rubinhold and I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad women. The

Blackout Ripper. Greta Hayward's welts and contusions were still forming as doctor Alexander Baldy appraised her injuries at west End Central Police Station. As the Metropolitan Forces Divisional Surgeon for the area, Doctor Baldy was called on to examine all of Cummings victims. He remembered vividly the icy cold of the bleak air Raid shelter where Evelyn Hamilton lay in

Evelyn Oatley's gloomy subdivided room on Wardour Street. Baldy had needed a flashlight to help him determine her time of death. Margaret Lowe's body was awaiting discovery in her flat on

Gosfield Street. The doctor would attend to that soon. In Greta Hayward's case, doctor Baldy was able to match testimony to Bruce's and abrasions on living flesh her left eyebrow and cheek were injured, but it was the redness and discoloration across the left side of her neck that pointed to the blackout ripper's telltale preference for strangling his victims. The police surgeon judged that Greta's marks were consistent with her allegations of being grasped by the throat. Greta shared

her story of meeting Comings at the Brasserie Universal. She told of his insistence that they head outside to another venue and his persistence that she relent and allow him to have sex with her. She recalled how in the blacked out streets he'd forced her into the doorway and begun to sexually assault her, how he'd counted her attempts to resist by grabbing her throat and squeezing tighter and tighter. It was saying something all the time, but I can't

remember what it was. I do you remember that? Some of the words were you won't, you won't. Gretta's next memory was of regaining consciousness with young John Shine standing over her. The teenager had not been able to find Gretta's handbag, but a police constable returned to the scene of her ordeal to retrieve it. I had attentionally note and about five shinings in silver. I also had my Russian book, keys and letters in there. The handbag when

it was returned to Gretta was empty. Cummings delighted in robbing his victims, taking money to add to his already bulging bank roll, but also seeking out trophies to keep mementos of his murders. Had Cummings been ransacking Gretta's purse when John Shine disturbed him, had the Airman's greed momentarily diverted him and stopped him, finishing Gretta off. Whatever happened in those few moments between Gretta passing out and John Shine scaring comings away, the attack was a breakthrough for

the police hunting the Blackout Ripper. The havasak he'd left behind revealed his identity. It had a serial number inside, but it also linked comings to other crime scenes in the police laboratory. Dust and dirt residues from the air raid shelter where a pharmacist, Evelyn Hamilton was killed, were compared to traces on the gas masked bag and found to have a similar appearance and the same characteristics. Unlike the women killed by Commings. The police did little to

explore the background of Gretta Heyward. Her witness statements off a few biographical details, save that she was married but living apart from her husband, and that her date that evening was an army officer she'd been meeting by appointment since before Chris. Detectives seem to have thought it wasn't worth finding this captain or delving into Gretta's marital problems, and other official records shed precious little light on the

life of Margaret Mary Teresa Heywood. Gretta's marriage certificate suggests that she was born in nineteen oh seven, that her maiden name was Keen, and that her father was a dancer. No other trace of her exists in the records, not of her birth nor of her upbringing. However, Gretta's marital troubles can be pieced together from archival fragments. Her husband, Henry A. Bank Clark, seems to have been residing with a woman in her early twenties, a full decade younger

than Gretta. The couple had not wed, but were living as man and wife and already had a baby girl together. Cumming's attack on. Gretta had been vicious and determined, and as she at with police detectives, she admitted to feeling very bad. Sitting across from Greta that night was Detective Sergeant Amy Eetridge, one of the most senior women in the entire London force. Back in the nineteen twenties, Amy had swapped a bank position for a job that would

offer her the open air life. Her days as a beat cop were far behind her, and now she investigated some of the most serious crimes in the West End. The newspapers called her a heroine who gently outwitted the bad men of the district. Is not unusual for me to be working all night, said the detective, and that

night seemed to be no exception. The Blackout Ripper was somewhere out there in the dark, still at large, still a deadly threat to women, but the police now had a name, and thanks to Gretta a fulsome physical description. I'm sure I should recognize him again. Gretta recalled the man's height and slim build, his light blue eyes and sharp features, but his voice was what stood out. He was very well spoken. Hillare Cummings held up a lit cigarette to illuminate the face of twenty five year old

Katherine Mulcahy. They stood in the darkness outside Ordnino's, a hotel, a few hundred yards from where the airmen had just throttled Gretta into unconsciousness. Would you like to go with me? Yes? For two pound? Catherine described herself as a married homemaker, but on occasion she took men back to her flat for sex, perhaps once or twice a month. She estimated that apartment was a little way distant from Piccadilly, too

far to walk. Catherine tentatively raised the prospect of hailing a cab, hoping the extra expense wouldn't scare this client off. Exactly Southwick Street, driver number twenty nine, Yeah right, indigate. Perhaps impressed by the airman's posh accent and his willingness to stump up for the taxi fair, Catherine openly mused about the two pound fee she'd negotiated in haste. I

wish I could do five pounds tonight. As the taxi motored west out of Piccadilly and towards the dark expanse of Hyde Park, Cummings couldn't resist once again bragging about his fat bankroll. Don't worry, I have thirty pounds on me. He peeled off three more pound notes and handed them to Catherine. This woman was now bought and paid for. He immediately knelt at her feet, pushed her skirt up,

and forced his way between her thighs. The young woman protested she wanted him to stop, now, would be there in a moment, Please stop, But Cummings continued his assault, and the taxi driver likely didn't even turn around to check on the commotion. He's learned to look kind of permanently look the other way with issues like that. Historian Julia Late is an expert on the wartime sex trade.

As mentioned in previous episodes, the police were cracking down on brothels and women were increasingly forced to work out

of rented rooms. For those with a clientele of trusted regulars, this arrangement worked well, but if a woman was meeting a churn of servicemen on the streets, then the inconvenience of shuttling back and forth to a flat if an affordable one could be leased close to Piccadilly, was a headache, and so women would pick up clients and get into taxi cabs with them, and the taxi would drive around the block while they had sex, and then they'd get

out again. The use of cabs by sex workers had been part of London life for centuries, but the introduction of sweeping emergency powers at the outbreak of the war gave the authorities new tools with which to tackle this phenomenon. They knew they couldn't call them brothels, and so they went after them with a defense of the realm AC regulation for wasting petrol. It's just the sort of eternal game of cat and mouse, and the war really puts

extra pressure on both sides of that. Stop it's not decent. Sit back down beside me. The cabbies of Piccadilly were accustomed to their role in the sex trait. They kept their eyes on the road and their ears tuned to their meters, clicking up the fair not in front of the driver. What will he think? Cummings finally returned to his seat beside Catherine, just as the driver took them past Hyde Park, acre upon acre of shadowy open ground,

tank old bushes and thickets of trees. The airmen suggested halting the taxi so that he could take Catherine into this black void in the heart of the city. The prospect made Catherine afraid, very afraid the Blackoutripper will return in a moment. On especially cold nights, women congregated outside

the famous Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. They came not to catch a glimpse of its celebrity guests, nor to sample its lavish amenities and the fabled Turkish baths, but for a warm air vent around the back that they nicknamed the hot Plate. Legs off, anything to take the chill from their bones before they crossed the road back into high hands, high blocks of ice. Oh my feet just can't fail them Anymore's horrible in it's so cold

bloody here. And the reason they're there is because they can't afford to pay for the inside accommodation, so they're using the park as a place to have sex. London's green spaces had for centuries been associated with illicit liaisons and the professional sale of sex. You're walking the park. On the eve of war, one hotelier on the edge of Hyde Park complained in court that women selling sex outside of his establishment were scaring away guests. No I'm

in a little chat, is there? Look at in. Come on, let's get in. Do you want some comp As many as twenty women had gathered nearby, and there were even going as far as to grasp at the lapels of passing men. Get your hands off me, this instant have a good mind to call the constable, But what bloody good would that do. Police efforts to crack down on the sex trade only pushed these women from bustling and well lit areas towards the unfenced and deserted park land.

Bad women, said one senior officer in charge of policing Hyde Park, often migrate to hear from other districts in the hope of carrying on their immorality undetected. The blackout made detection even more unlikely, and the decision of America's General Eisenhower to set his headquarters up right beside the

park flooded the area with potential clients. The women frequenting this quarter, the women who availed themselves of the hot plates occasional warmth, became mockingly known as the Hyde Park Rangers, sisters and neighbors of the Piccadilly Commandos. Not everyone viewed the situation with levity. One scandalized London newspaper dispatched a team to the park to carry out a census of the nightly activities. Within one hour of dusk, they witnessed a dozen layers ons get in the night for mate,

swing your bleeding or kuperbet. Couples were lying on the grass, visible to anyone walking by. I'll pass around the air, I begin to walk taking a lathe pie and the ages of some of those involved shocked these observers. Most of the young girls described as amateurs were between fifteen and sixteen years of age. Of particular concern was the number of girls orphaned or living apart from their families who had swapped group homes or other public institutions for

the excitement of Piccadilly and its environs. So these are what we would now call juvenile delinquents who are running away from the residential schools that they've been stuck into, hitchhiking down to London and hooking up with soldiers, maybe

for money, maybe for just a good time. The local elected official, a former fighter pilot called Captain Cunningham Read publicized one particularly disturbing case of a vulnerable fifteen year old girl who'd fled a grim government run hostel where she was sick of being exploited for long hours of unpaid scrubbing and cleaning. There go Love. She was found drunken and capable in Hyde Park at one am. He's certainly knocking back for a young and surrounded by a

group of soldiers. You'll be top top safely in big Darling. Nah. She didn't do much more fun out in the park. It was into dark and cold and lawless Hyde Park that the black up Ripper hoped to take A petrified Katherine Mulkahi. Don't be silly, She told the airmen they should stay in their taxi and keep to their original plan. Soon be in my room. The inside of the room

at twenty nine Southwick Street was dark. The electric meader needed feeding, though Cummings claim not to have a spare coin, despite his protestations that they didn't need light, Katherine lit a scrap of paper. She didn't want to be in the pitch black with Cummings. Something was very wrong about this man and this transaction, and it frightened her. He'd given the money over too easily, almost as if he'd

thought he'd soon get it back. Catherine's life up to this point might well have taught her to be on her guard. Those who knew her talked of her deep reserves of strength and resolve. She was born in Penny Greig, one of the famously tough coal mining communities clustered along the rendezvo Alley in South Wales. Her father had worked at one of the village's deep mines, crouching in the gloom to hack and hew away at a shining ribbon of coal, but he'd probably missed the arrival of his

daughter in nineteen sixteen. On her birth certificate, he cited as a private soldier in a local Welsh regiment, likely posted far from Ronda as World War One raged. On returning to the pit in nineteen nineteen, Thomas wasn't the same man who'd left to fight in the war. He was awarded a partial pension because of a dilated heart, which had been aggravated by his time in the service.

Despite this ailment, the coal hewer had little choice but to return to that underground seam and resume his backbreaking profession. Catherine grew up amid bleak slag heaps, belching chimney stacks and whirring mine shaft elevators. The economic and political drop was no less grim. Poor wages and dangerous working conditions dogged, angry disputes flared, and bitter strikes were called. In nineteen

twenty one, Thomas was listed as out of work. Global coal prices had collapsed and collery owners had slashed wages in half, closed pits and sacked some rohnder Men were reduced to digging at any coal close to the surface, tunneling down to find fuel that might heat the family hearth. Thomas eventually returned to the coal mines, though at first as a mere laborer rather than as a coal hewer. It's possible that this job title reflected both a drop

in wages and in status. Nineteen twenty seven brought a double tragedy. In February, tuberculosis claimed the life of Catherine's thirty one year old mother, and in Thomas's heart finally failed. Eleven year old Katherine was an orphan aged nineteen, Katherine had left the Welsh Valleys behind and was living in London, married to Patrick mulcahey, a waiter. The couple set up

home north of Hyde Park, near Paddington railway station. There's no evidence that Katherine sold sex at this point, but such activities certainly weren't on heard of in the local, says Julia Late. So Paddington is it's sort of an offshoot of the West End sex trade in some ways, but it tends to be associated with what the police would call a lower class of prostitution. It tends to be associated with younger women, though not always with poorer women with lower prices. And one of the reasons for

that is because there's cheaper accommodation there. There's lots of cheap hotels, there's lots of cheap furnished rooms all around that area, and there's also a lot of sort of military barrack around that area, so a lot of soldiers to sell sex too. And finally there's the park. Katherine's marriage to Patrick seems to have been on again, off

again in character. During the war, she was living under an assumed name Kathleen King, and it's not clear if she shared her flat at twenty nine Southwick Street with her husband. Patrick certainly wasn't there on Thursday February twelfth, nineteen forty two, with five pounds paid and stashed away in her kitchen. Katherine now naked except for boots in her necklace, said she was anxious to get the business over. Cummins, also naked, made an odd request that Catherine lye on

the floor, which she declined. She instead got into bed, hoping the sex would be over quickly. The man pressed on top of her, but instead of caressing her, he clasped his hands around Catherine's throat. His two thumbs were pressing on my windpipe. I could not make a sound. I struggled and managed to loosen his grip on my throat. Not fighting for her life, Catherine screeched for help before Cummings again clamped his hands round her neck and began

to throttle her. I was still wearing my boots. I pulled my leg up high and kicked him in the stomach. Hard winded, Cummings fell off the bed, landing on his head. Catherine made a break for the door into the common stairwell. Please, Catherine implored her female neighbors to summon help, but initially they were too petrified to act. Finally, an elderly lady armed with a vase stood guard over Katherine until her client gathered his clothes. Counted out more pound notes by

way of compensation, mumbled about being drunk and made to leave. Katherine, now wrapped in a tablecloth, was in no doubt about what had just happened. You're the man who've been murdering women around here, she called out, as Cummins trudged down the stairs and out into the blackout, leaving the street door open behind him. Just a few blocks away, Doris Joanna was bidding goodbye to her husband Henri at Paddington

Tube station. The couple had managed to spend part of the evening together there nearby flat, but an exhausted Ennrie was now catching a train to return to work at the Royal Court Hotel. The sixty sixty year old to have been enjoying a comfortable retirement, but the couple's finances had taken a battering. Reluctantly, on Ree was spending less time with his young wife than he thought. Wives Doris, he feared, had also returned to work, in her case

selling sex. This evening, Doris had wanted to get some fresh air, so she walked on Read to his tube stop. He fretted about her, and he wanted her to turn around and go straight home, but she didn't, and before reaching her front door at Sussex Gardens, she would encounter Cummings. The blackout Ripper will be back in a moment. Doris's story begins hundreds of miles from London, in a world that felt like it would never be touched by the

terrors of war. Indeed, December sixteenth, nineteen fourteen, began like any other peaceful morning. The people of Hartlepool, on England's northeast coast woke to the chill winter gloom, rose from their beds and sat down to breakfast, or made their way through the misty streets, children to the classroom, adults to their places of toil. The North Sea was still shrouded in dense fog. Then something unusual flashes of light way off in the distance, illuminating that thick curtain of cloud,

And was that thunder. White hot metal was raining through the air, screaming, whistling, fragmenting. As it met the wall or stone paved streets. The lethal shards sliced through brickwork, roof, timber and flesh. A single shell torn through four houses, wrecking the buildings, blasting the bodies of the people inside. One family was at their breakfast table when a shell

burst to the ceiling. Seeing their daughter instantly, Another man fleeing his home found the bodies of his two little grandchildren by the front door, crushed beneath the debris of their crumbling home. Other townsfolk met their ends sleeping in their beds and were atomized along with their furniture. The hometown of eight year old Doris Robson was being pounded and pulverized by the mighty guns of three German battleships.

The cowering locals feared that this was just a prelude, for the enemy was at that very moment stealing up the beach, ready to invade and capture the town. Britain had been at war with Germany for months now, but this bombardment was the first time that its civilians had come under fire, and the enemy did not discriminate little children. Doris's peers and playmates were struck down as holding hands,

they ran for cover. After forty long minutes, the onslaught was over Stunned, petrified, shaken, The men, women and children of Hartleypool began to emerge from their hiding places to peer at the wreckage on Doris's street. The row of terraced houses was battered and pop marked, jagged holes gaping where once there had been walls, windows and doors. Other dwellings said the papers had been completely ripped open, and

their interiors could be seen from the streets. A local gas works had also been struck and then exploded in the attack, plunging what remained of Hartlepool into darkness. That night, the Germans had not set foot on British soil, as had been feared, but more than a thousand shells had been fired. Over a hundred people were dead and hundreds more wounded, among them a large number of women and children,

mostly of the poorer class. The people of Hartlepool and of two neighboring towns had tasted the horrors of modern war. The fighting had seemed distant, relegated to the battlefields of far away France and Belgium, but now they were forced to confront the distressing truth that even the barrier at the sea and the walls of their own homes could

not protect them from the enemy. Recruitment drives capitalized on the devastation this bombardment had wrought enlist now and helped to avenge the murder of innocent women and children at Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby exhorted. The posters show the enemy that we will exact a full penalty for this cowardly slaughter. The men of Britain were being urged to defend a particular vision of the home, an idealized tableau of domesticity,

with mother and children gathered round the family half. In reality, not all families, and not all lone mothers were deemed worthy of protection. It was only those women married to absent soldiers, for instance, who were eligible to receive benefit payments in the form of a separation allowance during the war years, and even they stood to forfeit that payment if it could be proven that they had committed adultery

in their husband's apps. When Doris was born in March nineteen oh six, in the place on her birth certificate where her father's name ought to have been inscribed, there was simply a slash of ink. Her mother, Mary Robson, was unwed. There's a lot of prejudice against unmarried mothers. Doctor Ginger Frost is a research professor of history at Stamford University in Alabama. The assumption is that she's sexually incontinent rather than in a relationship and it failed, or

something like that. Given that Hartleypool was still a relatively small town, Ginger says that Mary Robson's community would likely have known that Doris's father was absent. Both mother and child would have been shamed. There would have been whispers in the streets. Slatton and Mary might have even found it impossible to secure a job. Some women in merry situation were cast out by their families and ended up in the workhouse. Others even drowned themselves when they discovered

were to have a child out of wedlock. The unmarried mother was considered a deviant and feared. Social scientists held that single mothers were feeble minded and would create morally inferior offspring. They were influenced by eugenics, the then popular pseudoscience that preach that good and bad traits could be passed from generation to generation. There is evidence that such a child is more likely to become a criminal or

a prostitute than as the child born within marriage. Mary was not among those unfortunate women who were wholly rejected by their families. Prejudice against single mothers was widespread, but they weren't universally vilified. Here's historian Pat Thane, there's always a tendency for the kind of moralists who scream about things to be remembered more than ordinary people who don't

make such a face as that. There always were moralizers who were terribly star to single mothers and nun thought they were shameful and immoral, but also bob see plenty of other people who wore beard to support them and understood hi could come about that somebody might be raped or relationship might fail. Mary and her sister Isabella raised Doris together in a home near the sea. The women

were originally of working class stock. Their father had worked in the mines, but Isabella had a good enough level of education to become a school teacher. Mary meanwhile, stayed at home, tending to the household duties. Illegitimacy and its attendant shame often fostered secrecy. As a result, we can't be sure what Doris felt about that cruel slash on her birth certificate, or even what she knew of her

parent kitch. Some illegitimate children enjoyed happy childhoods, but others faced mercy, silis, bullying, ginger Frosts has read some first hand accounts of such cruelty. Usually started at school. Usually the other kids all know because their parents, so they overhear them. And then they kids use things right. If you've got red hair, they make fun of you for that. If you're wearing glasses, they make fun of you for that.

If you're too tall, if you're too short. It goes on and on, and that's the thing you pick on with those kids. And they would call them bassard to their face at times, and they hated hearing it. It shamed them for something they didn't even really understand. There's all kinds of prejudices like that that illegitimate children complain of growing up for something they didn't even do. And

some of them didn't know a lot and father. Grandparents were their parents, and it was other children who enlightened them because they overheard their parents talking about it. The label of bastage could cast a long shadow over not just the early years of these children, but their entire lives. Lots of them fantasize about rich, wonderful parents showing up and taking them away from All of this, of course, didn't happen, because most of them the fathers were just

as poor as their mothers. The novelist Katherine Cookson was born the same year as Doris, also in England's poor northeast. She too bore the stain of illegitimacy, and even as an adult, Cookson recoiled at the very word illegitimate, This frightening word, this word that had bred fear, that had brought shame into my life, This word that had started

all the trouble. The dictionary word illegitimate meant not authorized by law, improper, not born in lawful wedlock, bastard, wrongly inferred, abnormal. Mary and Isabella Robson managed their house alone. There was no father, no man, no patriarchal protector, their roof offering his stamp of respectability. All the same, Doris grew into a poised and collected young woman. Quiet, occasionally moody. She was said to carry herself with a certain elegance, to

have a refined bearing. Perhaps the Robson sisters encouraged aspiration in Doris and a sense of possibility, for she seems to have hungered for a world beyond the small port town in which she'd been raised, Or perhaps she simply wished to escape the legacy of her birth and the disapproving whispers. Either way, London beckoned with its bustle, bright lights,

and promises of prosperity. We'll hear more of Doris's story in our next episode, charting her transformation into Olga, a woman accommodating the niche desires of a high end clientele in the London Sex Trait. Will also learn about how she landed a rich husband thirty years her senior, allowing her to hang up her whips and retire from selling sex. But that is not the end of Doris's tale, for as on that December day in nineteen fourteen, the horrors

of war would come again. Her world of comfort would be turned on its head, and Doris would once again find herself on streets that were dark and dangerous bad women. The Blackout Ripper is hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold and me Alice Fines. It was written and produced by Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley, with additional support from Courtney Guerino and Offa Gomperts. Kate Healy of Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research. Pascal Wise sound designed and

mixed the show and composed all the original music. The show was recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith Tom Berry. You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Haaford, Gemma Saunders, and rufus Wright. Much of the music you had was performed by Edgachan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick

Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Tolliday mixed the tracks and you heard additional piano playing by the great Berry Wise Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical

Society and the Earbe Historical Society. Bad Women is a production of Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show and spread the word about what we do, and thanks for listening and H M H.