THE ATLANTA RIPPER-Jeffery Wells

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Each murder attributed to the killer occurred on a Saturday night, and for one terrifying spring in nineteen eleven, a fresh body turned up every Sunday morning, amid a stifling investigation. Slayings continued until nineteen fifteen. As many as six men were arrested for the crimes, but investigators never discovered the identity of the killer or killers, despite having several suspects

in custody. Joined local historian Jeffrey Wells as he reveals the case of the Atlanta Ripper, unsolved to this day. The book they were featuring this evening is The Atlanta Ripper, The Unsolved Case of the Gate City's most infamous Murders, with my special guest, historian and author Jeffrey Wells. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Jeffrey Wells, glad to be here. Thank you so much.

Tell us a little bit briefly about your background and how you came to be the author of this book.

area where I was teaching mostly American history courses. And in one of the courses, we were talking about twentieth century American history and we were focusing a good bit on race relations in the progressive era, and I brought in Rebecca Ann Burns's book Rage in the Gate city, which, as you know, is about the nineteen oh six race riot, and I was making some of the race relations the problems we had in the nation in the early nineteen high it's more local looking at it through that lens,

and so I talked about crime, a little bit about crime, and I shared with my students how much I enjoyed looking at the history of law enforcement and crime in the country. And after class one day, a young man said, Hey, I was perusing the internet and I found this, and I thought that you might enjoy it. And it happened to be Steve Fennessy's article in Creative Loafing magazine there in Atlanta about the Atlanta River murders, and we read

it together very interested. I shared it with my class and showed them that, you know, even though it didn't spawn from the nineteen oh six race riot, that it was somewhat there were nuggets of wisdom in there and information about the race relations that existed in the city

at that time. So I taught school for high school and then college for some years, then got into doing this kind of research, and then eventually the History Press asked me to publish it after they saw an article I posted on my own blog site entitled the Atlanta River. So that's kind of how the story was born.

started out as terminus in Martha'sville. As Atlanta was founded, it blossomed into what we know as a railroad town. And there were lots of slaves in Savannah and Mecon

and in various parts of Georgia. Atlanta began to be a destination eventually for slave holders and there were slaves in and around the city of Atlanta, but the commerce, they are mainly focused on the railroad because Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River runs through there, but it didn't service the city nearly the way that the Mougi River in Macon did and the Savannah River did in Savannah. So you've got some differences in the nature of the cities in Georgia.

And then, of course Atlanta becomes a very big city in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. But by eight around the eighteen eighties, Atlanta began to grow. It began to be the hub of more of an economy that we would know as a regional economy. About nineteen hundred, you have about ninety thousand people in the city, and then well, actually you have about one hundred and fifty

thousand people. It eventually went from about ninety thousand before that, blossoming into a bigger metropolis of about one hundred and fifty thousand between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten. Of that population, about a third were African American. Inside the African American community in Atlanta at that time, you have a burgeoning black elite leadership class and there was some tension between them and the black working class, which, as you know,

Dan was also the black working class. Was the field, if you will, that the Atlanta Ripper, the Ripper murders happened. Then the black working class, of course, the women who were murdered were in that class. Well, there's tension between them and the black elite who sought to separate themselves

a bit from the black working class. And then of course the pressures on the black community in Atlanta from the white community who sought to separate themselves and segregate the classes, keep them separate and oppressed in the black community. Those are all the struggles that black Atlanta's had to deal with that time, most specifically the black working class.

Clark Howell, who was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Well, in that gubernatorial election race, relations and the burgeoning black community, the growth of the black community in Atlanta, and also the emergence of the black upper class, was very much

front and center in that campaign. As a matter of fact, I would say that Clark Howell and Hoak Smith were trying to out racist one another, if you will, especially in twenty first century terms and terms like in their place stay on that side, and those were terms that were actually used in that race. Now, Tom Watson, who was a populist and ran for vice president as a populist in the eighteen late eighteen hundreds, endorsed one of those candidates, and that was Hoak Smith, who eventually went

on to win that election. Clark Howell did not win. But the Ventriol and the language people think that presidential elections in the twenty first century can get bad. These gubernatorial elections in the Deep South at that time were really bad, and very much so in the case of the effect on African Americans and the African American communities.

Then there were things that were said that demonized black men, made them look to the white community as if they were nothing, the predators, that black people could not be trusted, they were thieves and vagabonds, that they were less intelligent than the white community, so therefore they had to be managed and kept in their place, otherwise they would threaten the white community. So that's the backdrop of the race riot.

And in September of that year, nineteen o six, the Atlanta newspapers vote that I just mentioned and a few others actually reported for possible assault. And the bad thing about this is is that over time and even in that time, they could never substantiate that the assaults actually

took place. But what they said was that there were four black perpetrators who assaulted local white women and Mayor James G. Woodward was mayor of Atlanta at that time, and he had a mess on his hands because and these politicians in the middle of this gubernatorial campaign and all of this stuff that was going on in Atlanta whipped the community into a frenzy, and eventually black businesses were burned, White mobs took to the streets, Black people

were trying to defend themselves, and it became basically a free for all in Atlanta for that time period, and the black leadership of Atlanta was crying out for help because number one, no one could ever proved that any of that happened and that it was that any any crimes were perpetrated, but there were certainly crimes being perpetrated against the black community as a result of all that hype.

Brown gunshot wound. Next day a woman named Mattie Smith gunshot, and the next month Lavigna Austin, and still in May, another woman named Sarah Dukes a gunshot, as well as Francis Lampkin, and near labor day Eliza Griggs, and then October Maggie Brooks. Now tell us about this what predates this in terms of Jack the Ripper, which was in

eighteen eighty eight in London. What's the effect of Jack the Ripper and the story nineteen oh nine and then eventually the reporting and the term coined for this assailant, The Atlanta Ripper told us a little bit of the background of Jack the Ripper and his story and its effect on the community before nineteen oh nine.

began to use terms like ripper, like murder. The effect that Jack the Ripper phenomenon had on these on the publications at the time and the mindset of the community. As these stories rolled out of the major newspapers in Atlanta and around the state was it hung like a pall. And it was a dark cloud that hung over all of this because even though a lot of society at that time, particularly in the Deep South, was illiterate, people knew about Jack the Ripper. That has become a phenomenon,

almost a cultural thing. Anytime you mentioned serial killer today, people will go to they'll talk about Jack the Ripper, even if they don't study the history of crime. And that's also Jason that day and age as well. And so the modus OFFHANDI that Jack the Ripper murders was slitting the throats, disemboweling, basically, if you will, mangling the bodies of the women. Certain things were removed from their bodies,

body parts. It's almost as if the ripper himself in the West end of the Whitechapel district of London was taking a prize. And you do see some evidence of that here too with the Atlanta ri But that story began to kind of hang over these murders, and so naturally It just makes a lot of common sense to me that eventually journalists would call this ripper like murders,

and then eventually the name the Atlanta Ripper. And of course the Atlanta Ripper prayed on young women, young African American women they called the mulatto women, and so the ripper in London prayed on white women. So there are some similarities in the murder in the murder spreees.

Constitution and the Journal were separate newspapers. What was the treatment initially from the two different newspapers in terms of what was happening in terms of black women being brutally killed in atlant.

It could also be described as, you know, fodder for sensationless writing, because it's there, there's such a lot of graphic details, and the murders themselves were quite a cob But unfortunately from nineteen o nine, you know, the early twentieth century in the Deep South, and I would argue the early twentieth century, in a lot of places in America, what was happening in the black community in the way of crime did not go as highlighted and heavily reported

as say, if this had happened in the white community. The fact that these were also young women, and as I told you earlier, there's tension between the black leads and the black working class, and then there's a lot of tension between the two races period. The fact that these are black working these are dynastics. You know, for example, a lot of the women who were walking home or walking to their places of employment were walking to homes

of white Atlanta's where they worked as domestic servants. There was a lot of tension in the black community between the upper class and the working class. So you know, those race riots also had painted black people, as you know,

black men, particularly as predators. This plays into that narrative, if you know what I mean, in the white community, that had been spun for the white community and spun by the political leadership and even journalists at that time and corpuses at that time about the black community in Atlanta or the black community in general. So when you see the press treat these stories. They treat them very mildly.

A lot of times it's just one column, it's not a very large Later on that does change, and that would be insufferable. Today, we would immediately have a public outcry if something like this happened in the community and it was not highlighted or the media did not focus on it. But they certainly did not do much with it in the early years of this phenomenon.

the perpetrator after death. There's no weapon left the behind, but the left side of her head is crushed with a blunt instrument, stabbed in the jaw, and again her throat cut. In this particular case, they do arrest somebody for this murder, Who did they arrest and what happens as a result.

But in any instances, you've got people like Henry Huff, who was you know, basically twenty seven years old, and did fit the description that that some of these women that two of the women gave, or fit the description that several of the women gave, and fit the description of those who saw a perpetrator running from what would eventually be identified as the scene of a murder. But there were there was eventually some question about whether or

not Henry Huff had committed any murders. You know. Interestingly enough, there was a young woman who was killed, Sadie Holly, and Henry Huff himself was was with her the night that she died. You know, it's to be honest with you, it is so it would really be so difficult to try to PenPoint any one person or any of the people they hauled in, people that we we've just now found out about in some research that was conducted after

my book was published. Recently a journalist has found uncovered where another individual was arrested, but he went almost unnoticed by He went unnoticed by me and other researchers until recently. It's it, you know, honestly, that's the hardest part of this whole story, man, it really is. We can tell I can tell you a lot about the murder victims themselves, but inside the story of the Atlanta Ripper, the men who are who are accused and eventually who are put

on trial, there's almost nothing about them. Almost nothing.

getting away and offering a description. And then we haven't talked about the point where even the constitution the newspaper agreed and gets on board that the term the Atlanta Ripper should be used and the murders previous from nineteen oh nine can be considered the work of the ripper, and they operate accordingly in the media in that way. So let's go let's go to that and discuss that.

in the head with a very blunt object. Now going back to someone like Todd Henderson, Todd Henderson was married, and one of the things that really was like a missile right at his chair was when his wife basically testified and told police that he was lying because Todd Henderson said, I don't even own a razor or a pocket knife. I've never even had one in the last few years, I believe, he said. Well, his wife said, well, no, actually that's not true. He had a pocket knife. I

just borrowed it and he did own a razor. Well, that goes back to the idea of these women. A lot of them were cut their throats were cut with a razor or knife, very sharp knife object, and you're going to see that also very similar to what you

saw in London with the Jack the Ripper murders. Now, some of the early, some of the murders that were earlier than this, before Henderson, Todd Henderson, and Henry Huff, and even when Jim Connelly becomes somewhat of a suspect because of the Mary Fagan and the Leos Frank episode. Some of those women before and after that particular timeframe were shot. So you do have some women I believe one of the early and you have to remember there's so many of these victims it sometimes is very hard

to keep up with them. But I believe one of your earliest victims was shot. And there was also some investigation that was done that kind of pointed fingers at the husband. But the basic gist here is that the brunt of these murders did not take place or they were not perpetrated with a shotgun or a pistol. They

were perpetrated with a very sharp blunt object. And so you've got guys like Todd Henderson, Henry Huff and then later Jim Conley accused, and they would say things and then someone else would come in and say, no, he did on this, No, we have seen him with this. So that is what makes it difficult to assign or to complete a list of murder victims and attribute them to the Ripper phenomenon, much less an actual perpetrator himself. If that makes sense.

Henderson was involved. I think sayd he Holly might definitely have been killed by Todd Henderson, But I don't think either one of these gentlemen killed all of these women. So it brings up the question of the was the Atlanta ripper. Do we have something here in the way of a copycat killing or copycat killing? Now, as I mentioned before, some of those early murders we think were committed by angry husbands, but you also have this going on in the press. People are talking about it on

the streets and in the black community. The ministers, the leadership in the black community, Henry Hugh Proctor, Alonzo Herndon, who was a black businessman and one of the members of the black elite in Atlanta, they were talking about it. And so your average African American denizen of the city of Atlanta knew what was going on. It was being

talked about, and it greatly impacted their community. So with that being said, you could certainly have the potential for an angry husband or someone who had a vendetta against a young African American female to have committed a murder, and then it be blamed on the Atlanta Ripper. It would be a great place to hide, if that makes sense, because the talk on the street was not just about the murders, but the talk on the street was also

how they were committed. And don't forget that the white leadership of Atlanta was also talking about this and pointing the fingers at the black community, say, see if we were right in the nineteen oh six race riots. They weren't, but they claimed they were. If they're willing to do if you've got black men who are going to do this to their own women on the streets, they'll do this to white women on the streets. So you couldn't possibly have an angry husband who hid under that cover.

And this wasn't a real for murder. This was just a copycat.

earlier on. But then there's some press that emerges, some articles that emerge, especially after the capture and arrest and incarceration of people like Henry huss and Todd Henderson, that it was very possible. It looked like the press kind of was open to the possibility that there may be

more than one. Now, what happens in Atlanta at that time is you also have some some people, some political leaders and some business leaders in the white community who take that and kind of push that forward and say, well, it may not be one. They're all susceptible to doing this, So what would make you think this would just be

one person. What I didn't get the impression of Dan when I read a lot of these articles was that there was some strange phenomenon at work, or there was this mysterious serial killer who was you know, in a black hat and a black cape and all black and you know, had a bandit's mask on his face and was lurking around black neighborhoods just ready to stab any young, nice looking, attractive black woman who passed by in the back or you know, rip her throat open. I didn't

get that impression from the press. They were, if you read it carefully, they were a bit mystified by this too, particularly after huss and Henderson were arrested, and then after Mary Fagan's episode, after the Leo's Frank Mary Fagan ordeal that begins, it begins to fade a good bit from public view.

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dollars off your first box at fabfitfund dot com. Use coupon code murder for ten dollars off your first box at fab fitfun dot com. Now we talked about the incredible situation and quandary that the media is in essentially and the police are in essentially, and the black community is organized to be able to pressure the white community

to be able to maybe hire black detectives. As you write to do something to offer a reward, offer a more significant reward to try to stem this panic and this this horror in the Black community especially and in the community of Atlanta itself. So what happens next in terms of this fight to be able to try to find the Atlanta ripper.

But as these murders begin to, as I said before, turn up almost night or almost weekly, and you know the bloodbath you see in nineteen eleven, it's very difficult for the black community to ignore this. Now, where the outcry came from was traditional, and this has been very traditional in the black community, and you see it even today,

was from the black pulpit. What eventually you see things like mass meetings at churches, you see business leaders begin to unite with spirit and religious leaders in the black community. As a matter of fact, there was one really big meeting that was advertised in the local papers that took place at Wheat Street Baptist Church, and it took place in the afternoon. It wasn't it wasn't even a traditional Sunday morning service, it wasn't a nightly speech. They were

very serious. They were out broadcasting and making a public statement in the middle of the day. And what they were doing was they were trying to bring attention not only to the problem you have. You know, Reverend Bryant, you have doctor P. C. Parks, Reverend Stenson, Henry Henry Rucker, who was a very prominent Republican and appointed to a high government position by I believe it was by President

McKinley in Atlanta. Were all there, and they were crying out for the Atlanta Police Department to take this seriously. And they were They were basically asking not only the mayor of Atlanta, but also the Governor of Georgia at that time, to further these investigations. And they were asking for resources, you know, to at least begin to stop

the murders on the streets. You know, at first, the temperament was not necessarily just to find out who was doing it, but it was let's do something to stop this. And as you mentioned earlier, yes, I did write about the pola from these black community leaders to hire a black detective on the Atlanta UH and and more black and black police officers on the Atlanta in the Atlanta Police Department. That's not something that would happen for a while a couple of more decades.

would pop up. As a matter of fact, one of the points I made in the book was that we go all the way into nineteen thirteen, nineteen fourteen, all the way in the nineteen fifties, and you have the newspapers in Atlanta who are reporting on Ripper like murders and still using the term the Atlanta Ripper even in

those years. Than eventually you see newspapers in the metro Atlanta what today would be considered the metro Atlanta area up in Gainesville, Georgia, Hall County, which is today a good forty or fifty miles from the center of downtown or the city center. They're murders that crop up their murders in nineteen twelve. So the Atlanta papers actually still continue to report on Ripper like murders even after those men have been apprehended, which of course brings on its

own discussion and its own talk. There could definitely be more than you know, our assumptions that there could have been more than one murder murder, there could have been more than one killer, and that these murders were not all accomplished by one individual. That's why I use the term potential copycat killers.

these kinds of crimes that they do. You know, they always like there are a lot of them, like to take prizes, and we know that Jack the Ripper did that. We know that serial killers in the modern era have done that. And it looks like I would argue that maybe some of these murders were done There may have been copycats, but some of them were actually committed by

the same guy. And it's very possible that when those kinds of things happened and you, you know, a prize if you will taken or a memento as sick as that sound taken from the scene and from the body of the victim, that maybe that is probably the work or at least that individual had committed one of the murders previous for it, I mean just and then some of them were just bad to begin with, but they didn't go as far as removal of a breast or

something like that. But for example, there was about six miles from from the city of Atlanta, right not fought well, a couple of miles from the Chatthoochee River, a young woman had been murdered. And the thing that happened was he did this with two attacks. Her throat was slashed and also there was slashes and dash marks all over her body. And she had also been knocked in the head with some big blunt object and her head had

been bashed in. Well, what you got to understand there is think about that any one of those things probably would have caused death. You know, slashing the throat, hitting someone picking up something large and heavy and bashing someone in the head with it, those are two things that are going to bring death. But not only was one of those done. Two were done. And on top of that, this young woman who only weighed was like I think, less than one hundred and twenty pounds, was around twenty

twenty five years old. There were gashes and slash marks all over her body. That is sort of macabre and sickening of itself. And again that takes us back too, like Jack the Ripper who would not only remove body parts, but the matter of death was from gashing, bashing, and then later on the bodies would be mutilated. Because you know, we do have disemboweled bodies, we have the removal of body parts, very similar to what you see here.

American man, Okay. He was also described in the press as having eyes that dart about nervously, as though he were in what perpetual fear? Now, the interesting thing is is when finally when they bring him in, and you've got to understand your dan, what that tells us is that police brought him in partially because he looked guilty. Okay, he looked suspicious, you know. And also it's interesting because

they described him as being well dressed. Now, there was some turmoil and tension between the wealthier black community in the white community because at that time it was considered you know, out of character and somewhat of a disgrace for a black man to be wealthy and well dressed and on the same level as a white man. That was absolutely, you know, something that you couldn't get out. You just couldn't wrap your mind around if you were a white man in that frame of mind in the

nineteen early nineteen hundreds. And you're right, he did make a full confession. He claimed that he had killed a woman by the name of Eva Florence. You know, there's there's so many, so many things that were also brought up about that confession. I believe and that Lawton Brown is one of the potential murderers that I didn't focus

on as much. And he's not one that just jumps right out at me, not like Henry Huff and Todd Henderson, but they went so far as to actually hire a medical professional, I think his name was doctor Martin in the book, who evaluated his mental acuity, because Lawton Brown began to make First of all, he was brought in because he looked suspicious, but then they tried to pen twelve of the murders on him, and he was making a lot of weird statements. He was he was very erratic.

The confession. I think later on, I'll have to go back and check my notes, but I believe that the confession was even thrown out or was even challenged, because it was so strange. Now when doctor Martin, I believe that was his name, when he came in and evaluated Lawton Brown. One of the things in his report was that Auton Brown was a maniac and that he suffered And I don't mean that to be funny, but he

suffered from mania, right. And also it was kind of funny because they begin to they begin to really really, you know, call as police would call it, stick it to him, and really press down on him and bear down on him. And they noticed that he almost had he had a better idea, and he knew almost as much about all of the murders in the Atlanta area

than some of them did. Now, now that renews suspicion. Okay, a matter of fact, it got to a point where he could tell them where these murders happened, he could tell them their names, he could tell them, you know, how the women were killed. And strangely enough, if I'm not mistaken, he said something like he had been there and seen a couple of the murders happen, and then at that point he began to describe what was going on and how the murderer attacked and killed the victims.

Now you and I probably see you're sitting there thinking the same thing I did when I first read that. Well, if he was there and saw these things, number one, why didn't he try to stop it? Number two? Why didn't he ever report it? Those are strange things. The other thing is is, remember now this is from what I can understand. I can't prove this, but what I can understand is that, you know, Lawton Brown was not

a man who could read and write very well. I can't remember where I heard that, but I believe one of the articles mentions that he doesn't read and write very well, but he had an incredible memory, and it sounded like if you weren't the murder, he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge and details about the crime, spree about the killing. You know, he was probably the strangest. Now when you go back to Todd Henderson, who lied about not having about you know, I don't have a

pocket knife and I don't on a razor. That's logical. I would do that if I were accused, you know, and if I did have one, I would probably probably lie and say I didn't. Unfortunately, his wife contradicted him. But this is beyond strange. So there's some evidence there that he knew more than I mean, he knew more than the average bear. And then there's some evidence there that he could have suffered, as doctor Martin said, from intense mania, that he that he had some mental issues.

And that's what that's fawned from.

New York. And you do have a lot of Jewish people that do come South at the turn of the century during the Industrial Age to capitalize on the opportunity of diversification of industry and attempt to diversify the economy in the South. And he was one of them. And on April twenty sixth someone inside that factory he raped and murdered Mary Fagan. There was another man who was in the factory and was also accused of being an accomplice,

and his name was Jim Conley. He worked there and one person, actually or several people said that he may have definitely been involved with it or could have been the murderer himself, because he had bloodstains on his shirt and was seen washing them out. Strangely enough, Jim Conley, who was, by the way, a tall, slender African American man, he was questioned by police and actually confessed that he helped Leo Frank dispose of the body after Leo Frank

murdered Mary Fagan. Now where all this goes is naturally you can put two and two together. Many people began to think that Jim Conley, tall slender African American man was you know, if he if he helped Leo Frank dispose of the body, than that meant that, you know, he had the murder, He had the murder or an inclination for violence and murder in him, and he could easily have been either the Atlanta riffer or one of the murderers behind these episodes. And so that's bantered around

and thrown around a good bit. However, he's more associated with the Mary Fagan murder than the Atlanta Ripper murderers, and pretty much even the Pinkerton agents who were there and did an investigated they were helping to investigate the Mary Fagan murder even said, you know this, they didn't put any credence in that. They said, there's nothing there to prove that, and it's and it's highly unlikely. But he was fingered for that too. Now you've got to

understand something. Then that also builds into the narrative that's been stun about black men. If he was there, according to some white people at the time, he probably was involved. And if he's confessed that he helped Leo Frank, who was a New York Jew in their words, that was just a shade short, if you will, of a black man. I mean, that's their language, not mine. They can't be trusted any more than the you know, the black guy

can be trusted. If he helped him dispose of a body, then that just proves that these black men are predators and they're prom to violence, and they have some sort of genie inside of them that you know, pretty much pushes them to this what feeds into that narrative. But I think we can pretty much say Jim Connelly was just very much a lack of evidence that he was involved in any.

the gist of it? Before we talk about how he signs it?

But these you know, it was interesting because it was fire station House number two and there were these false alarms that went off and what they eventually feel figured out more than likely was going on with someone was pulling these fire alarms at fire alarm boxes that were placed around the city. Now, all of them on in that particular time frame, came from alarms there or were alarms on the south side of town. And they figured out that all three of the boxes were very close

to one another. I have in my notes Washington Street, Jefferson Street, Whitehall Terrace, Richardson Street, Love Street. These these are all areas where where they found where these alarms were going off. And then they find, you know, a card and it is signed very interestingly.

card and with the press. He told her that he was going to pretend to be or act like Jack the Ripper. Well, that's how this guy signed the card that they and of course that's also what the press was using. Then of course he began to assault his wife, Anna Drake. And I also want to go back to where I said that some of these men or some of these murders were committed they did find out by

men who were the husbands of the victims. And that's why it kind of feeds into the possibility that some of these murders were committed by angry husbands who were using this cloak, this covering of the Atlanta Jack the Ripper. And to be honest with you, it kind of looks

like Lewis Drake was doing that too. Now, one thing to point out that's very important for your listeners is the Atlanta police might have used that terminology to describe what happened, but they did not consider Anna Drake's assault, her attack and Lewis Drake. The attack on her by Lewis Drake to be a Ripper murder.

I won't even say that that one was as far away as you could get as far as the press tinting the murder or making it a Ripper like murder, because in nineteen eleven there was a murder in Waycross Georgia, which is down on the Florida Line near the Okeepanoki Swamp, that was ripper like, and the press said, while it was kind of unlikely that this was the same guy, that they still left the door open because they described the murder and it sounded a lot like what had

been happening in Atlanta. But going on into the early nineteen twenties, I believe there was even an episode, maybe even as far away as nineteen twenty two, where the press reports on details of a murder that they then say, you know, could easily have been a ripper like murder. So yeah, absolutely, the press doesn't give up on that, and it doesn't always it's not always Metro Atlanta where they pinpoint that these murders could have had or that these ripper like murders took place.

I don't believe that Lewis Drake was part of the phenomenon. I just think he was somebody who spouted off at the mouth and used this that was going on at the time as cover, or was possibly just kind of a mean guy who was trying to scare his wife at the same time he was doing harm to her. But even as far away as you know, nineteen twenty four, they're claiming that there was a ripper like murder in

the city. There was also another guy by the name of Claude Alexander who killed a woman, killed or was accused of killing a couple of women. And the strange thing about him, about Claude Alexander is he lived on Gara Baldy Street. Now I went to Geary Baldy Street and took some pictures for the book. But the interesting thing here is that that's where one of the first ninth or one of the earliest victims in nineteen eleven

happened to live and or happened to be killed. So there you have someone else that kind of emerges out of the shadows that leads me to believe that there were multiple murders. I believe that a lot of this kind of comes it comes out of the all of this hysteria, It comes out of the chaos that's going

on in Atlanta at this time. I believe that Black Atlanta is whipped into a frenzy out of fear because they don't know if they're being protected by the Atlanta Police Department and if any serious attentions being given to bring this murderer in and to stop these murders. And apparently there wasn't, and in their mind there wasn't because they continued, you know, to happen. There were men who

were brought in that looked guilty, that weren't convicted. There were there were people who popped up who were suspects, but yet when you looked at it, they only they were only being accused of killing one or two of the victims. You know, there are husbands who have been who killed wives, Charles McNeill and Lucinda McNeil, Charlie Owens and Alice Owens, you know Lewis Drake and Anna Drake. I mean then you and then you, but you do have you have a victim, mlu Sharp, whose mother, Lena Sharp,

was killed by the Atlanta Ripper. And then Sharp is actually able to she she's attacked by the Atlanta Ripper and lives to tell about it. So and she actually she she identified him. She she managed to get away from him, but he spoke to her and she was able to identify him. And later on I believe eventually ten points or fingers one of the suspects and says

eventually says, I think that's the one. You know. So the description we had on the description that's on the street is tied back to what happened to Lena and Emalu Sharp, by the way, that's another and daughter there. Can you imagine the horror of being attacked by your mother's killer. She went out on the streets to try to find her mother because she was basically she's been missing, and they and they find out she's attacked and she's killed.

And then later on EMAILU Sharp herself is killed. So we do know someone something was at work here. We do know that there was a tall African American man who did attack young African American women on the streets of Atlanta. Now Lena Sharp was a little older, Emilou was younger, so then there's another There's also other theories

that this was not even a black man. There are those who believe that this was possibly concocted by the white community in Atlanta to stir up the black community to also continue to whip the white community into a frenzy, to continue to spend the narrative that black men were predators and that the only way to keep white women on the street was to keep black men or to keep the black community in its place and continue to push toward or to continue segregation and the basic idea

of the Jim Crow South. Then, of course, of course you have the theory that Jim Conley was the Atlanta River. Again, there's very little bit. There's very little in the way of proof. You know, there was a detective by the name of W. J. Burns. You know, they just fell apart very quickly. Because another thing, too is Jim Conley was accused of participating in the murder of Mary Fagan,

who was a thirteen year old white girl. The Atlanta Ripper killed young women in their twenties for the most part that they were black, and they were domestic servants, they were part of the black working class. Now some of them and we really I didn't even get into this, but some of them were actually accused of women. And this is kind of the blame the victim mentality that

happens in a lot of instances. Some of them were accused of being ladies of the evening and you know what you would call call girls, or today we would call them sex workers. That wasn't true in every instance, and some of the people who made those accusations really

had no right to make those accusations. And it even got all the way up to Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor who made some of those accusations, and some of the black ministers began to preach sermons and make public statements that chided young black women for even being on the streets, and they began to attack the black community for being in the dives and the saloons, which there were a lot of in Atlanta along Peter Street and some of the places in the Old Fourth Ward where these murders happened.

So it got to be kind of a let's look inward and blame ourselves and what did we do wrong that contributed to this. But I just absolutely do not believe Jim Conley had anything to do with it. I don't know whether he had anything to do with Mary Fagin's murder or not. There's evidence to point that he did. There's evidence that points that Leo Frank was involved in some way, and then there's some credible evidence that he wasn't the murderer. It's a mess, it really is, and

these historical cases are are so confounding. I don't believe truly that there was just one murderer. It's to me, it's almost impossible because Henry Huff, Todd Henderson, these guys were and others that had been apprehended were locked up, but the murders went on. I believe there were some initial murders that were attributed to one person, and I

believe there were a series of copycat killings. And I believe there was also a lot of domestic abuse and violence that went all the way to the extreme under the cloak of the Atlanta Ripper phenomenon.

I get emails all the time about this and several other books I've written. Please feel free.