Free A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper by kindels Page A

Chapman at the entrance to 29 Hanbury Street at approximately 5.30 a.m. If she was to be believed, it meant the Ripper had met, murdered and butchered Annie Chapman in less than thirty minutes, indicating either an attack of great frenzy, or an act of consummate skill. Close to the standpipe which served the backyard of the building the police discovered their first clue in the case, a neatly folded, but waterlogged leather apron. At last, they had something to go on!
    No-one had seen the killer; he'd disappeared like a wraith into the night.
    Those were the bare facts of the case as far as I could ascertain from my printed notes. Would the journal confirm any of the facts? There was only way to find out. I turned to the next page.
    8 th September 1888
    Another whore in Hell. Blood's still under my nails. Wash, wash, wash, it'll clean away soon. Vile, filthy, whore blood! My, but she bled a lot, fat, dumpy little whore. This one tried to scream, not a sleepy whore like last one. Had to silence the bitch first, took her breath away, haha. She sliced up well, bit too much fat though, or her head would have come right off. Now that would have been a sight! Oh yes, the blood would have really run then. Took some of the bitch's entrails and fed them to the street dogs near home, a feast, haha. Left something behind, the apron, not to worry, plenty more, and they'll never know it's mine, it's new though, such a shame, a waste, but had to go, there were people nearby, just made the sewer, my invisible shield. Didn't realize the blood would stick to the leather like that. They can scour the streets for ever more, they'll never find me, never take me. Wish I hadn't had to go without it, they cost good money. Good money better than whores. Won't be long until the next one, the voices are pleased, they want more. More headaches, more laudanum.
    So, he was celebrating the death of another poor woman while at the same time bemoaning the loss of an apron that had cost him 'good money'. The callous reference to 'good money better than whores' reduced poor Annie Chapman's life to less than the value of a cheap leather apron. As to the apron itself, this was the beginning of the police and public's fixation with 'Leather Apron', the name now given by the popular press and the people at large to the killer. The name Jack the Ripper wouldn't be given to the murderer until some weeks from now. How sad that the police of the day had no forensic scientists available to them. The apron, left behind in Hanbury Street would surely have yielded fingerprints, DNA evidence, and perhaps more clues to enable an identification to be made, if not immediately, then at some point in the future. The lack of scientific technology at the time of the Ripper murders was in itself one of the killer's greatest assets. As for the journal, well, I felt as I read the entry that the writer was becoming more and more disassociated with reality. He saw the act of killing as little more than a ritual required by his 'voices' in order to satisfy their need for blood. He was enjoying the 'slicing', and took some amusement from the fact the poor woman's head was almost severed from her body by his blade. True to his plans, he'd used the sewers as his escape route, taking some of the victim's internal organs with him, before feeding them to the ravenous dogs that roamed the streets of London by night. What an awful and terrible confession! It seemed so logical to me that he'd used those dank underground passageways to evade the police, and any potential witnesses; I couldn't think why the police themselves hadn't immediately thought of the sewers as the killer's possible escape route.
    There was the reference to his headaches again as well. Then even more laudanum. He was without a doubt hooked on the drug. It would probably have helped to anaesthetize him even further against the horrors of the deeds he was perpetrating.
    I placed the journal on the desk once more, and rose