Free The Cases That Haunt Us by John Douglas, Mark Olshaker

frenzy was still intense. In addition to the stepped-up police patrols, locals had formed their own protective organizations. The most highly visible was probably the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, which was headed by George Akin Lusk, a builder who specialized in the restoration of music halls. Lusk attained a high profile for himself by writing about the case in the
Times
.
    On October 16, Lusk received a package in the mail: a small cardboard box wrapped in brown paper and bearing a London postmark. In the box was half a kidney, soaked in wine to preserve it. Wrapped around the kidney was a crudely written letter:
    From hell
Mr Lusk
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
    signed Catch me when
    you can
    Mishter Lusk.

    Lusk assumed the organ and letter to be a hoax, possibly by a medical student or group of students with easy access to an anatomy lab. But he was persuaded by friends to hand it over to authorities for analysis. Dr. Thomas Openshaw of London Hospital believed it to be human, and from an individual of about forty-five and suffering from Bright’s disease, not an inconsistent finding in a chronic alcoholic. A number of other experts had a chance to examine the kidney, with mixed opinions as to its authenticity in the Eddowes murder. That authenticity, however, has never been ruled out, and much of the scholarship over the years suggests that the kidney may actually have belonged to the victim.
    I can’t speak to the forensic likelihood of the kidney’s having come from Catherine Eddowes’s body, but the accompanying letter is certainly intriguing. Despite the apparent differences in handwriting (possibly attributed to an increasingly fragmented psyche), many of the Ripperologists and other students of the case who believe the “Dear Boss” and “Saucy Jacky” communications to be authentic believe the same of the Lusk letter, and vice versa. I’m not so sure. Handwriting experts are divided on the matter, so I can’t rely on them for help.
    I think it is highly significant that even after the frenzy created by the Jack the Ripper pseudonym, the writer of the Lusk letter does not use it. Even after he is tagged with such a “glamorous” title, he does not take it on himself. Since I believe the Boss and Jacky letters to be fakes, I’m intrigued by the possibilities for this one. Though I said I didn’t believe this type of offender would feel the need to communicate with the public, it is possible that the Boss letter, especially arriving so soon after the Double Event, may have compelled the disorganized killer to come out and “set the record straight,” to keep control, as it were. He may have sent the piece of kidney to authenticate himself after the ear mention in “Dear Boss.” In other words, he wouldn’t have felt a need to communicate until someone else claimed credit and tried to define his personality and identity for him.
    His own sense of identity and emotional orientation is more accurately portrayed by where he says the letter is coming from: “From hell.” The style of the writing itself is virtually an illiterate parody of the cleverer and more sophisticated style of the first letter, as if the writer is trying unsuccessfully to show himself equal to the wit and flair of the pretender. I might add that Donald Rumbelow, a former police officer, a gifted author, and one of the greatest experts on the case, agrees with the assessment that of all the communications, the Lusk letter is the only one likely to be genuine.
    Some of the letter’s critics claim that the spelling—“Sor,” “prasarved,” “Mishter”—suggests “stage Irish” dialect; in other words, an educated person’s attempt to sound colloquial. Although that’s possible, to me the spelling suggests someone not terribly familiar with English