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Speaker 1: brought to you by The Snowman. See it only in
Speaker 1: theaters on October. It's presented by Universal Pictures. It's a
Speaker 1: new film based on its terrifying bestseller. I don't like
Speaker 1: scary movies, but this movie looks amazing. I cannot tell you.
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Speaker 1: I think as looking. Hi there, welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, as always, by Devin and Steve,
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk about another really fascinating
Speaker 1: little mystery. Uh. This is a series of really grewsome
Speaker 1: serial killings that took place in London in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about Jack the Ripper did that already, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did that already. This is this guy is actually
Speaker 1: worse than Jack, I believe it or not. And the
Speaker 1: reason I'm doing this is well, of course this is
Speaker 1: October and this is a Halloween month, as you know,
Speaker 1: and so we decided we're going to talk about mysteries
Speaker 1: that are gory, creepy or scarier Queen style mysteries absolutely
Speaker 1: because Halloween, right, Yeah, lean into our true time crime
Speaker 1: nature exactly. I want to give a shout out first
Speaker 1: to our listener, Mary, who I think suggested this back
Speaker 1: in Mars. I'm not sure, but she said that we
Speaker 1: should do a story about the Torso and the Thames.
Speaker 1: I did a little checking on the interwebs. And there's
Speaker 1: another more recent one, like in two thousand and one
Speaker 1: they found the child's torso floating in the Thames River,
Speaker 1: and it was a big story in the US. That
Speaker 1: wasn't the one she was suggested, you'd rather talk about
Speaker 1: this one than not. No, it is a better one, yeah,
Speaker 1: so Mary, I think you suggested it, so thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also first a warning, this is a very gruesome tale.
Speaker 1: Would you guys not agree? Yeah? Yeah, some listeners may
Speaker 1: find it disturbing, because well it is disturbing, so you
Speaker 1: listener discretion, and if you decide to turn off your
Speaker 1: iPod not listen, we won't take any of less of you,
Speaker 1: and we won't make fun of you. So let's get
Speaker 1: on with us. Not that they turned it off, Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is the London Torso murders of
Speaker 1: the late eighteen eighties. These are also known as the
Speaker 1: Thames Torso murders and more less often as the embankment
Speaker 1: murders that take place right around the time that Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper was making a name for himself. And as
Speaker 1: I said before, in my opinion, they were kind of
Speaker 1: more heinous than Jack the Ripper's work. But for one
Speaker 1: some reason or another, Jack the Ripper is a household name,
Speaker 1: and nobody's heard of the Torso murderer. Why why Well,
Speaker 1: I have series about that. I'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little later, I guess. But but you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Jack had a better publicists, perhaps, yeah, or
Speaker 1: maybe the press could just only focus on one heinous
Speaker 1: killer at the time and so they up the coin.
Speaker 1: Actually that could be so let me get into the
Speaker 1: murders real quick. There weren't near There weren't quite as
Speaker 1: many as Jack, so that might have count for some
Speaker 1: of it. The first murder took place in what's called Rainhom.
Speaker 1: It's spelled rayn Ham, and I think it might be Rainhom,
Speaker 1: but knowing you know your friends, the British is probably
Speaker 1: pronounced rum, so I'm gonna go with Raynhom. I guess.
Speaker 1: Our first body was found in eighties seven in Random,
Speaker 1: which is on the Thames on the eastern outskirts of London,
Speaker 1: and it's now part of Greater London, But in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties seven it was actually a separate town with a
Speaker 1: lot of major cities. Nowadays, Yeah, they've absorbed the suburbs,
Speaker 1: so it might be more appropriate called these murders the
Speaker 1: Thames Torso murderers, but I don't know. I kind of
Speaker 1: like to London Towardso murders better. What do you guys think, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't really care, stick with it. I mean anything
Speaker 1: that says Torso murders and let's frankly, let's let's you
Speaker 1: know that's standard there on end. Right. Well, so they
Speaker 1: found a body. What they found was a tors of
Speaker 1: a body which was wrapped in a bundle as found
Speaker 1: in the river. I was just gonna ask Joe, I
Speaker 1: you what it was wrapped in? No, I don't actually,
Speaker 1: I mean some of them they actually said, like that
Speaker 1: one that was like wrapped in black cloth, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, and that's that's why I was asking,
Speaker 1: because suddenly I realized I can't remember what this particular
Speaker 1: one was wrapped in, just cloth of some sort, but
Speaker 1: continue on, sir. Yeah. And then over the next several weeks,
Speaker 1: other body parts kept showing up, and the police just
Speaker 1: kept on collecting them, and eventually they were able to
Speaker 1: piece together on almost complete body. The other things missing
Speaker 1: were the head and the uppard chest, so like the
Speaker 1: shoulder area. Yeah, naturally they were not able to determine
Speaker 1: the cause of death. I mean, jeez, maybe it was
Speaker 1: being like sliced up in Yeah, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: were no actual signs of violence apart from being chopped up.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, chopped a body. There's some signs of violence
Speaker 1: right there. There is kind of that. Yeah, And of
Speaker 1: course the victim was never identified because the head never
Speaker 1: turned end up, and of course they didn't have DNA
Speaker 1: or fingerprinting back. Yeah, and I've been soaking in the
Speaker 1: river for a while. That probably didn't help things too much.
Speaker 1: I don't know of any attempts to make that were
Speaker 1: made to length the body to missing person reports, because
Speaker 1: I don't even know what they had in terms of
Speaker 1: missing person reports in those days in London, because it
Speaker 1: was even that in those days a huge, sprawling city
Speaker 1: with it had been going through a huge period of urbanization.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were flooding from the countryside into
Speaker 1: London and a lot of other major European cities at
Speaker 1: that time, and a lot of them were also shipping
Speaker 1: out for other kind of work. Absolutely, so it was
Speaker 1: so somebody advantaged so that it didn't necessarily mean anything.
Speaker 1: I mean great times if you're a serial killer. I
Speaker 1: mean like that's why there are two of them, yeah,
Speaker 1: or three or who knows. So obviously this person was
Speaker 1: never identified, It didn't really go anywhere. It didn't become
Speaker 1: a huge story until a little over a year later
Speaker 1: when the second Torso was discovered. And this happened in
Speaker 1: the White Hall and this happened that the body was discovered,
Speaker 1: or the tour so was discovered or no, excuse me,
Speaker 1: the arm was discovered September eleven. You know that they
Speaker 1: ever forget? Yeah right, arm and a shoulder were found
Speaker 1: on the shore of the Thames in central London. This
Speaker 1: is in the Pimblico neighborhood, which I'm sure you will know, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, for our London, for our our London listeners.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do this every time, but between
Speaker 1: Victoria railway station and the Thames west of Vauxhall Bridge,
Speaker 1: there wasn't much to be done with the arms since,
Speaker 1: as I said, already a finger putting in DNA didn't exist.
Speaker 1: I assume they either tossed it or maybe they kept
Speaker 1: it on ice for a while. They had to have
Speaker 1: kept it somewhere based on what happened afterwards. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would think that. I assume they didn't just pitch it.
Speaker 1: A police surgeon named Thomas Bond did take note of it,
Speaker 1: which came in handy about three weeks later when the
Speaker 1: tours so that went with the arms showed up, which
Speaker 1: it did, and this this new tour so that was
Speaker 1: found in the seller. This is a funny part. Well
Speaker 1: some people find a little ironic. Anyway, It was found
Speaker 1: in the seller of a new bill thing that was
Speaker 1: being built by the Metropolitan Police Service, but we also
Speaker 1: know as Scotland Yard. Yeah. Yeah. They had outgrown their
Speaker 1: old headquarters and so they were constructing a new headquarters
Speaker 1: building on what's called the Victoria Embankment. I don't have
Speaker 1: an address. You can find the coordinates if you guys
Speaker 1: are interested. You want the latitude and longitude. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The building is still there, apparently, it's called the Norman
Speaker 1: Shaw North Building and Scotland Yard has long since moved out,
Speaker 1: although apparently they have plans to move back into the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They're going to move back into the building next door
Speaker 1: sometime soon. Yeah. Apparently the Yaraties like to move around
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, yeah, well, they get I think they
Speaker 1: get tired of people walking into report crimes and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, so every now again they just pack up
Speaker 1: and moved. Yeah, I know, so they're they're they're moving around.
Speaker 1: But the tourist that was found in a vault in
Speaker 1: the cellar, I'm not sure exactly how much construction have
Speaker 1: been done the building as far as I know, it's
Speaker 1: far from complete, but they had at least done the seller,
Speaker 1: and in the seller was a vault and they founded
Speaker 1: this torso in that vault on October two. Apparently nobody
Speaker 1: had been in the vault for about three days, but
Speaker 1: somebody had been in it three days before, and there
Speaker 1: were no corpses or body parts at that time. Are
Speaker 1: you sure about the Okay? I want to ask, because
Speaker 1: I've seen this too, and I've seen it a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways, is how far the construction had actually
Speaker 1: gotten Because it is possible to, you know, make a
Speaker 1: basement and pour the walls and have an area that's
Speaker 1: going to be the vault, but it's still open on
Speaker 1: the top and people could chuck stuff in. So that's
Speaker 1: why I'm asking, do we have any sense of how
Speaker 1: complete it is? Because, like the reading is they chucked
Speaker 1: it over the fence and it went in, and like,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder, It's hard to say. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they if they had actually gone along
Speaker 1: and actually roofing over the whole thing. I sort of
Speaker 1: got the impression from reading it that the killer would
Speaker 1: have had to actually enter the vault to leave the
Speaker 1: body there. But I'm not a hunder percent sure about that. Okay.
Speaker 1: Other way, it's pretty cheeky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So our
Speaker 1: body or excuse me, our torso was wrapped in cloth,
Speaker 1: tied up with the string, and our police surgeon Thomas Bond,
Speaker 1: remember him, He remembered the arm of the shoulder and
Speaker 1: realized that the arm of the torso were a match.
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time picturing the way that these
Speaker 1: torso torsos are cut up. Was it consistent every time
Speaker 1: they were bisected? It sounds like it sounds like it
Speaker 1: wasn't totally consistent. Now, okay, so on this one, it
Speaker 1: was what the cut was like around the shoulder, just
Speaker 1: the shoulder, yeah, I think that, like, yeah, the shoulder
Speaker 1: joint and stuff. Yeah, and then legs, you know, right
Speaker 1: at the hips and then and then maybe chopping at
Speaker 1: some of them were like chopped in the quarters for
Speaker 1: this one. Okay, well, and and let's talk about this now,
Speaker 1: because there is stuff out there where people will say
Speaker 1: they will throw around the terms of surgical skill or
Speaker 1: knowledge of you know, dissection, like as a butcher. They
Speaker 1: make it out as if every cut was clean, But
Speaker 1: when you read certain sites, they actually kind of clarify
Speaker 1: there are certain joints that you simply can't just cleanly
Speaker 1: cut into. Like let's say, cutting a leg from the hip.
Speaker 1: You kind of gotta get in there to pry the
Speaker 1: hip bone and the is the top on the femur,
Speaker 1: the femur out of the socket. You know, you really
Speaker 1: kind of gotta get in and reef stuff apart. So
Speaker 1: it's not all smooth, beautiful cuts. There are times where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, there's somebody's cutting it and hacking
Speaker 1: it and reefing on it, but they didn't take a
Speaker 1: saw and cut parts of I will say, though, the
Speaker 1: example I'll use is like when Booth tries to when
Speaker 1: he because he knows how to do this really well,
Speaker 1: like cuts up a chicken, right, versus when I try
Speaker 1: to cut up a chicken. Right. Yeah, there are joints
Speaker 1: that you got to get in there. But there's a
Speaker 1: talent to getting into that joint versus like me where
Speaker 1: I'm just like gett. It's just like hack and hack
Speaker 1: and hack, and you can see it kind of in
Speaker 1: the bones and the rest of everything where it's just
Speaker 1: like get and then you like finally tear it off,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, so I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's kind of what they're referring to. Is like, even
Speaker 1: if it's not like pretty, it's still Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: somebody just took a saw to it through that portion
Speaker 1: of the I'm gonna start cutting out my chickens anyway sauce,
Speaker 1: so okay, but never like a chicken is the same again.
Speaker 1: But I yeah, I guess I just keep having a
Speaker 1: hard time because when you say, you know, like upper chest,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, is that from the waist up? Is
Speaker 1: that from the like know what? Yeah? Like that first body,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's like just under the like from like
Speaker 1: the nipple area. Yeah, I'm assuming, like like from the
Speaker 1: from the top off of the armpits across a straight line.
Speaker 1: That's a weird place to cut up a body. Yeah
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, because you you know, on either end
Speaker 1: of the rib cage. You would think you would drop
Speaker 1: the arms off and not do that, but apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: you cut the head off, keep the clavigal through the
Speaker 1: rib cage, all the ribs right, and then sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: I just it helps me to be able to picture
Speaker 1: these things a little bit or as gruesome as it is.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, but we don't know, unfortunately or fortunately, depending
Speaker 1: on the point of probably fortunately, there are no photographs
Speaker 1: surviving of the body. I know the bodies were photographed
Speaker 1: and they're reassembled state. Yeah, grizzly as hell, but yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so sorry I interrupted you. When we were talking about
Speaker 1: the surgeon foul. He remembered that the arm had existed,
Speaker 1: and he remembered that, and so they made that connection.
Speaker 1: They figured, okay, we've got a sicko on her hands here.
Speaker 1: And then and then an enterprising newspaper reporter whose name
Speaker 1: is lost to the ages apparently, but he got himself
Speaker 1: a dog and starting out at the at at the
Speaker 1: new Police building, sniffed around the neighborhood and they managed
Speaker 1: to find a severed leg, left leg, buried not too
Speaker 1: far from the New Scotland Yard building. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is weird because this is the only one that we
Speaker 1: know of it was actually buried. Yeah, I know, and so,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why that is. You know, it
Speaker 1: might have been if it was like on a construction
Speaker 1: set or something. It just got accidentally buried. Because it
Speaker 1: sounds like our killer was, you know, not asin tossing
Speaker 1: parts as you walk down the streets, kind of like
Speaker 1: you do when you've got the bucket of chicken wings
Speaker 1: and you're going on him and then just throw the
Speaker 1: bone and keep going. Okay, I made a chicken reference,
Speaker 1: and it was appropriate that that's exactly what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's walking down the street. I don't need this leg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the discreet way to disposed of the body, just like
Speaker 1: nobody's looking to flick, you know, and see people do
Speaker 1: it with gum all the time, cigarettes whatever. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we are not inferring the dead women. Yeah, I'm saying
Speaker 1: it was done yeah, similar to Yeah, so anyway, an
Speaker 1: interesting way to get rid of a body. I would
Speaker 1: rather just get rid of in one fell swoop. But
Speaker 1: maybe this guy was a little constrained. I don't know. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so it's a woman's body. The figure out. Yeah, data Sherman.
Speaker 1: There was an inquest and I'm not sure if this
Speaker 1: was before or after the leg had been found, but
Speaker 1: it was absolutely at the arm of the tour so
Speaker 1: that was found. The conclusion was it wasn't it was
Speaker 1: a woman's body, and that she was around four years old,
Speaker 1: well nourished quote unquote. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: She was like, you know, obeseir That just meant she
Speaker 1: was in good health general, wasn't I was going to say,
Speaker 1: wasn't the like late eighteen hundreds in London kind of
Speaker 1: a time of Yeah, so the fact that she was
Speaker 1: just was eating fine, Yeah, it was had a normal
Speaker 1: probably body, Yeah, that could be exactly be it what else?
Speaker 1: She was white, she had dark hair um and the
Speaker 1: body had had been dead about six to eight weeks
Speaker 1: when it was found, so fairly fresh corps but not
Speaker 1: quite as fresh as I won't anyway. The internal organs
Speaker 1: were all in good shape, exceptable left lung, which had pleurrosy,
Speaker 1: which is just that's an inflammation of the not easily
Speaker 1: a life threatening condition. Was is no longer isn't the
Speaker 1: plerosis is the like actual thing you have plerosis? Well,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, but it's a swelling of the lining of
Speaker 1: your lungs, so it causes shortness of breath. But she
Speaker 1: only had it one So that's what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: don't think it would have been the cause of her death.
Speaker 1: Not probably not. Some people have speculated that that that
Speaker 1: is why she died. I kind of doubt it. I
Speaker 1: don't think the prosy killed her. Yeah, I think some
Speaker 1: dude killed her. I was just going to say, though,
Speaker 1: that it can it totally happen. I think it can't kill,
Speaker 1: but in this, in this particular instance, I kind of
Speaker 1: doubt it. Oh, one last thing, the uterus had been removed,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they determined I don't know how they determined
Speaker 1: this the victim and not been suffocated to drown. I
Speaker 1: suppose that was due to the state of the lung. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No stab wounds, no bullet holes, no other signs of
Speaker 1: violence except of course we're being chopped up, except for
Speaker 1: there was no head and there was no head right,
Speaker 1: All of these are like, there's no violence, but there's
Speaker 1: no headset. She could have been shot between the eyes,
Speaker 1: like you know how her head beat in Yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: what's probably what happened. Um, yeah, who knows. It was
Speaker 1: determined that the right arm had been severed by somebody
Speaker 1: with a knowledge of human anatomy, not just a random
Speaker 1: dude with an axe. There was no word on the
Speaker 1: left leg, but I'm not again, I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: they had been found at the time of the inquest
Speaker 1: or not. They did remark the police. They said that
Speaker 1: it was sort of a surgical skill kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but they said that it was not necessarily a surgeon.
Speaker 1: This might be a case of kind of covering for
Speaker 1: your own said, Oh, it could have been a butcher. Two,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody, somebody skilled in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And this isn't to mean either profession, but I would
Speaker 1: assume that being a butcher and being a surgeon are
Speaker 1: pretty similar. I mean, it's just about figuring out how
Speaker 1: bodies break down as well. I mean, you know, if
Speaker 1: if we're talking about somebody totally disassembling a body, right,
Speaker 1: a butcher and somebody who's trained to do it on
Speaker 1: a human seems like it would be about the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, a butcher trains on how to break down
Speaker 1: bodies of a lot of different kinds of animals and
Speaker 1: joints are kind of the same within like most species.
Speaker 1: So I think it's valid. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: covering for their own sort of a thing. I think,
Speaker 1: in fact, it maybe that a butcher might actually be
Speaker 1: even better taking a human body apart than acher gets
Speaker 1: a lot more practice, that's for sure, than a surgeon.
Speaker 1: Surgeons don't actually disassemble people. They disassembled with the idea
Speaker 1: is to get them back together. Usually that's the point
Speaker 1: that is the idea usually hopefully. Yeah, an early re
Speaker 1: animators what we're talking about here. Yeah, yeah, let's not yea,
Speaker 1: remind me not to get any surgery dudes. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that was about it. That was kind of a dead
Speaker 1: end for that body. But yeah, but no problem with
Speaker 1: third bodies showed up. So and this one showed up
Speaker 1: June nine, So this guy is like, it's three bodies
Speaker 1: in about a year, or I could say it could
Speaker 1: be it could have been a lady killer. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yeah, okay, good point. This new body
Speaker 1: was found on the south back of the Thames, opposite
Speaker 1: the Tower of London, so I know where that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been there, We've all been there. Other parts showed
Speaker 1: up later the left leg and thigh turned up the
Speaker 1: same day. Two days later in a different place by
Speaker 1: the way, and then two days later the upper part
Speaker 1: of the torso was found, and the neck and shoulders
Speaker 1: and the liver in three different places. The neck, the shoulder,
Speaker 1: and the livers in three places, that's what you're saying places. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then the day after that, the leg and foot were found,
Speaker 1: and the left leg and foot were found somewhere else,
Speaker 1: so the feet were apparently still attached. And then after
Speaker 1: that the left arm in hand and the lower part
Speaker 1: of the and the right thigh showed up in three
Speaker 1: different places. Wow, the whole body, Yeah, I got pretty close. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then last of all, the right arm and hand
Speaker 1: were found on June Towns. So the course of six days,
Speaker 1: this body was littered up and down the river. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if he dumped it all at once,
Speaker 1: you know, That's what I was, just like you actually
Speaker 1: going out every day and distributing some more parts around town.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what was what was the
Speaker 1: guy with the purple plastic bag that we talked about. Yeah, yeah, Peter, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that, you know, going out every
Speaker 1: day with the plastic bags right as it was a
Speaker 1: hacked up body, get in a boat, get in the
Speaker 1: middle of the river, dump it and slowly it makes
Speaker 1: its way to show. Yeah, it just did too well.
Speaker 1: And they, you know, would have probably traveled at different
Speaker 1: rates because they're different ease and sizes. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it's also a question of not just travel, but when
Speaker 1: somebody just happens to stumble upon it and actually notice it.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot of I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure the river was fairly filthy and have a lot
Speaker 1: of crap floating in it back in those days. So
Speaker 1: figurative and literal, yeah, you could easily have have a
Speaker 1: have a you know, a severed foot just float right
Speaker 1: past you and you wouldn't even notice it. Yeah. Uh
Speaker 1: So if you want to look at the interwebs, you can,
Speaker 1: and you really care about where all these different pieces
Speaker 1: and parts were found, you can find an information on
Speaker 1: the webs. I have it, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: borry with all these things that really won't mean much
Speaker 1: to you, so I'm not going to go into that.
Speaker 1: But back to back to this whole third body that
Speaker 1: was found. All I could say is just six six
Speaker 1: sick right, Yeah, I suppose it's possible somebody needed to
Speaker 1: get rid of a body and the most discrete way
Speaker 1: to do it was in pieces. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: in a crowded city like London, walking down the street
Speaker 1: with a corpse or even wrapped in the sheet, throwing
Speaker 1: over your shoulder is kind of like indiscreet, right, So
Speaker 1: that's not unheard of. The top up a body for
Speaker 1: that reason, it doesn't look good to the jury. Uh, now,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't, although there was actually a case in
Speaker 1: Portland where the jury actually did. By the story, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, this guy, and I can't remember his name,
Speaker 1: he meets the woman in a bar, takes her back
Speaker 1: to his place. His story, he murders her. His story
Speaker 1: was that well they were they were making love and
Speaker 1: all that, and then they had an argument. Things got
Speaker 1: out of hand. He went up strangling or he didn't
Speaker 1: really mean to. And then the problem was he didn't
Speaker 1: have a car, he only had a bicycle. This is Portland,
Speaker 1: this is the early sixties. And so he exanguinated her,
Speaker 1: exaguinated her in his bathroom and then cut her body
Speaker 1: up and distributed parts all over the place in in
Speaker 1: in southeast Portland and actually some of them were found
Speaker 1: like very close by where I live. Actually, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: but then he when he eventually got caught, and he
Speaker 1: did get caught. He he was unique in that he
Speaker 1: fled the state. And he was the first person and
Speaker 1: maybe the only person to ever be number eleven on
Speaker 1: the FBI's ten most wanted list. And they caught up
Speaker 1: with him in California and brought him back and put
Speaker 1: him on trial, and he told that story to the
Speaker 1: jury said, hey, you know, I know it looks kind
Speaker 1: of bad, but really that was just the only way
Speaker 1: to get rid of the body. I'm not a six psychopath.
Speaker 1: And the jury actually convicted him, but actually recommended leniency
Speaker 1: to the judge. Yeah, and so he got out after
Speaker 1: about ten years. And guess what he did it again surprise,
Speaker 1: But okay, that's what cyclists are like. So back to
Speaker 1: the back to London, away from enough of Portland. In
Speaker 1: the previous cases, of course, the head was never found
Speaker 1: the same in this one, but some of the body
Speaker 1: was identified as somebody named Elizabeth Jackson who was a
Speaker 1: suspected prostitute from Chelsea. And I don't know how they
Speaker 1: made the idea she must have maybe had a tattoo
Speaker 1: or some sort of distinctive birth mart. If she is
Speaker 1: a suspected prostitute, then people are gonna know what she
Speaker 1: looks like unclothed, and she's probably gonna have some not
Speaker 1: features like you said, there's a prince a scar or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, And so somehow they identified her and
Speaker 1: she was the only one whoever got identified. Again, the
Speaker 1: Corners investigation, who included whoever parted out the body had
Speaker 1: medical knowledge, and they said again at least an experienced
Speaker 1: busher and butcher, but they didn't think a skill level
Speaker 1: was at the level of a medical surgeon. Again, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say, because even a medical surgeon, if he's
Speaker 1: slicing you open with the intent of fixing you and
Speaker 1: put patching you back together, he's going to go about
Speaker 1: a certain way. If he's cutting you up because he's
Speaker 1: just gonna like cut your body up, then even a
Speaker 1: surgeon isn't necessarily going to be as as delicate and
Speaker 1: finesse well, there's no there's no incentive to be clean
Speaker 1: and delicate about yeah, And so it could have been
Speaker 1: a surgeon, and I still believe it could have been.
Speaker 1: Damn surgeons. Uh. Yeah, the similarity between this body and
Speaker 1: the previous two was obvious everyone. The surgical technique was identical,
Speaker 1: they said. But although in the case it's Elizabeth Jackson.
Speaker 1: The cause of death was still not determined. But at
Speaker 1: least by this time they were fairly sure they had
Speaker 1: a serial killer on their hands. Yeah, yeah, but still
Speaker 1: no head. But still no heads at all, So one
Speaker 1: would assume that the head was cause of death, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's maybe the head removal was cause of death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or a blow to the head or a shot to
Speaker 1: the head or something. Somehow, it is way more disturbing
Speaker 1: to me to think that like removal of the head
Speaker 1: would have been cause of death then like, you know,
Speaker 1: a bullet to the head or even like a bashing
Speaker 1: to the head, and then after the person had died,
Speaker 1: they got caught up. I don't know why that's so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think they're getting shot between
Speaker 1: the eyes is better than having your head chopped off,
Speaker 1: you know, slowly, especially slowly chopped off like you know,
Speaker 1: and one of those videos. Okay, next, alright, alright, and
Speaker 1: we come to our last known murder, which took place
Speaker 1: in September eighteen eighty nine, a police constable named William
Speaker 1: Pennett found a torso under a railroad bridge on Pinsion
Speaker 1: Street in Whitechapel. White Chapel. Yeah that's Hamburger place, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Uh yeah, Jack's stopping grounds. Um,
Speaker 1: it was different from the other ones, and that no
Speaker 1: other body parts showed up, And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that means that our perpetrator changed his routine app or
Speaker 1: if he distributed him all around like before, but they
Speaker 1: just weren't found for random reasons, which is always possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible he dumped him all on the
Speaker 1: river and there was just especially especially strong tide that day.
Speaker 1: He wasn't paid, he wasn't checking his tide tables, and
Speaker 1: they all just got flushed out its out. Maybe he
Speaker 1: actually did check his tide table this time. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: he did. Yeah yeah yeah. Or maybe they all got
Speaker 1: eaten by the fishes before somebody found them. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to say. And of course, as always,
Speaker 1: no head was found, no cause of death, and no
Speaker 1: identification of the body. So to sum it up, we've
Speaker 1: got four dismembered bodies, which is kind of a short
Speaker 1: run for a several killer. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they may have actually been more. I mean there's plenty
Speaker 1: of you know, if you're a killer, a serial killer.
Speaker 1: The slums of London must have been the happy hunting
Speaker 1: grounds when you think about it, because there's so many
Speaker 1: people you could disappear without a trace, and so there
Speaker 1: might have been lots of bodies that he that just
Speaker 1: weren't found. Um. And also there is a possibility that
Speaker 1: there was another killing, which was in Paris, which was
Speaker 1: the Montrouse Torso murder. Have you guys heard of that one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's not much information about that available really frankly.
Speaker 1: All it is is that in remember eighteen eighties six,
Speaker 1: which is a year before, not even a year, like
Speaker 1: half a year before our first body was discovered, a
Speaker 1: woman's tours that was found on the steps of the
Speaker 1: Montrouse church in Paris and uh, missing the head, legs,
Speaker 1: the right arm, left breast and here we go again,
Speaker 1: the uterus. So maybe the same guy, I mean, some people,
Speaker 1: some people think there might be a connection there. I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure, but you know, perhaps so maybe his
Speaker 1: career is actually so, maybe he had five deaths. There's
Speaker 1: another guy at one author named I think his arm
Speaker 1: Michael Gordon, and wrote a book about this called The
Speaker 1: Tampas Towards the Murders of Victorian london Um. They also
Speaker 1: thought that it was possible that a murder in London
Speaker 1: in nineteen two was related. I'm a little skeptical about
Speaker 1: that one. That's a pretty that's a long spell, you know,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of doubt that one. Thevntreuse one
Speaker 1: in Paris though that maybe because I mean Paris and
Speaker 1: London really aren't that far apart. If it's the timeline
Speaker 1: nicely about what maybe six months or so before the
Speaker 1: first London murder. You know. One thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind that might have been a motivator for whoever committed this,
Speaker 1: this Torso murder in France to maybe want to leave
Speaker 1: France is there was the I'm gonna I know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put your pronunciation that the Sino French wars which
Speaker 1: were in Asia, but of course the French aire shuttling soldiers,
Speaker 1: you know, which means the number of men in the
Speaker 1: area are going to be dropping, which means that it's
Speaker 1: more obvious when you're the lurker left behind, which would
Speaker 1: motivate somebody to either eight now want to go to
Speaker 1: war or be realized that they're going to start standing
Speaker 1: out like a sore thumb and motivate them to leave. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that these two were linked, but I
Speaker 1: could see a line between those. I can too, I mean,
Speaker 1: I definitely. Uh, it's it makes you wonder. I mean again,
Speaker 1: Paris and London not far apart. It's entirely possible, and
Speaker 1: there could be other murders out there somewhere else in
Speaker 1: France or over the continent. Uh. Well, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that later on when we start our our period where
Speaker 1: that part of the podcast where we talk about like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're responsible, little speculation and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does appear that that the same murder may
Speaker 1: have struck before in London in eighteen seventy three and
Speaker 1: maybe eighteen seventy four. Also, so as possible, maybe our
Speaker 1: purpose started his career in London, maybe headed off for
Speaker 1: the continent or somewhere and continue to murder people and
Speaker 1: then eventually came back to London, you know, years later
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen eighties. Is that possible? Maybe? So
Speaker 1: let's go back to let's talk about the eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: three murders, which were also grizzly and disgusting. So September five,
Speaker 1: seventy three, Thames police been found part of the left
Speaker 1: side of a woman's tour so in the mud in
Speaker 1: the Battersea area, which is I'm not sure that's where
Speaker 1: is that? That's a run of the tower kind of area,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Oh? I suddenly cannot think of where it is.
Speaker 1: It's in London. I don't remember exactly where one is
Speaker 1: a big town close enough, right Uh. And also I
Speaker 1: maybe I won't talk that much about the actual location,
Speaker 1: says They don't really mean anything to anybody aside for
Speaker 1: people who live in London, so maybe I won't do that.
Speaker 1: No one but listens to us lives there, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Uh. Same day another policeman found
Speaker 1: the right half of a woman's tour so floating in
Speaker 1: the Thames. Others found some human lungs in a couple
Speaker 1: of different places. Uh. Next day a woman's face and
Speaker 1: scalp were found. I know, no skull, just to face
Speaker 1: in the scalp. They've been peeled off. And then two
Speaker 1: days later a right thigh showed up in a right
Speaker 1: shoulder and part of an arm. So this is very
Speaker 1: similar to what we've just been talking about in terms
Speaker 1: of showing up parts and there was no pun intended
Speaker 1: in that, but in parts in different areas. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: said said, what's different about it as the face and scalp,
Speaker 1: you know, showing up to no skull, though no skull
Speaker 1: was never found. Police the body parts. First of all,
Speaker 1: we're all brought together somewhere police lab or something, and
Speaker 1: they put together like some sort of metal framework and
Speaker 1: reassembled the body on it. Yeah, and apparently pictures were taken,
Speaker 1: but I've never seen anything. I don't really want to
Speaker 1: sounds hideous. The police surgeon determined the victim was a
Speaker 1: warm and about forty years old, dark hair, short dark hair,
Speaker 1: burnt scarring or left breast. Cause of death Keeter Chrman
Speaker 1: was most likely a blow to the head in this case.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking and presuming that there was maybe some
Speaker 1: sort of contusion mark on the scalp, because they still
Speaker 1: had that. So maybe that or like we've been talking
Speaker 1: about before, the only part they really didn't get that
Speaker 1: didn't appear to have any wound on it other than
Speaker 1: hacking it up. Yeah, was the skull, well, was the skull?
Speaker 1: I mean you still? I mean someboways said blow to
Speaker 1: the head, versus you have said some sort of brain injury,
Speaker 1: whether it's a bullet or a baseball bat or or unknown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again that's not totally proven, but that's you know,
Speaker 1: close to say. Ever came with most of these. Now
Speaker 1: the face, the face and scalp that was stretched over
Speaker 1: a butcher's blood right now, I know, apparently to make
Speaker 1: it a little more identifiable, I'm not sure. And the
Speaker 1: word got out that if you were missing a loved
Speaker 1: one you should come on down to the police station.
Speaker 1: There was no Netflix at the time, I know, so
Speaker 1: what's that. There's your entertainment, I guess, but apparently a
Speaker 1: lot of people did. You could go down there if
Speaker 1: you wanted to and have a look at this hideous
Speaker 1: face stretched over the butcher block. Yeah, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're squirming a little bit right now out there, listeners,
Speaker 1: I'd like to remind you this is Halloween months and
Speaker 1: we did promise you tales of the macabre, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't get much more of a cobb than this one, right,
Speaker 1: really really doesn't. There was one guy showed up and
Speaker 1: looked at the face and thought it might be his
Speaker 1: daughter who was missing, although he said that she didn't
Speaker 1: have a scar on her left breast, so maybe not.
Speaker 1: And I really don't know how recognizable your face would
Speaker 1: be without a skull underneath it to give it its
Speaker 1: normal shape. I have no idea. I don't think very recognizable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would be just like those movies you see
Speaker 1: where the bad guy peels off the mask to reveal
Speaker 1: who he is, and he throws the mask on the
Speaker 1: table and it's all wrinkly and no tension left to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's exactly what it would probably be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that, Yeah, yeah, But I imagine
Speaker 1: how weird, how oft it would be to go down
Speaker 1: there and see your daughter's face, you know, right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we can move on, okay, all right, okay. Meantime,
Speaker 1: some other body parts were showing up in the area
Speaker 1: of London Bridge. They found two lower legs, part of
Speaker 1: the right arm, and then left foot, which, of course
Speaker 1: we're added to the reassembled body on the mettle of framework.
Speaker 1: And eventually the police had everything accept the hands and
Speaker 1: the skull. Yeah uh. And of course the victim was
Speaker 1: never identified. Cause of death never dependitively found, but probably
Speaker 1: a blow to the head. And again it was determined
Speaker 1: that the killer had some surgical skill. Sounds a lot
Speaker 1: like our guide, doesn't it. Uh. And then that in
Speaker 1: June eight seventy four, another torso was found in the Thames,
Speaker 1: uh near Putney wherever that is Putney in London. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's close enough. The body in this case was a woman,
Speaker 1: once again missing the head, arms, and feet. The other
Speaker 1: body parts never showed up, and the victim was never
Speaker 1: identified as usual, head never showed up. It's a little
Speaker 1: different from the eighteen seventy three murdering that the parts
Speaker 1: didn't show up. But other than that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's pretty similar surgical skill, just remembering all
Speaker 1: that stuff. And again, just like in some of the
Speaker 1: other cases, maybe they were put out there, you know,
Speaker 1: at a certain time high tide and the tide flushed
Speaker 1: about to see. Who knows. There's a lot of similarity
Speaker 1: between these killings and the ones that happened in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven and eighty nine, I think anyway, not to
Speaker 1: mention the Paris one um, I think maybe our killer
Speaker 1: took a break, but that's hard to imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be that maybe he was in prison it
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps he got married and just tried to reform
Speaker 1: himself and then along came to divorce or something and
Speaker 1: he decided to ask for it. Could it be he
Speaker 1: just went off to the continent, went on the killing spreed,
Speaker 1: like I kind of mentioned before, And it's always possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be impossible to search all of
Speaker 1: the records. Oh yeah, across Europe. I mean, especially like
Speaker 1: if you went someplace like um, like Russia or China
Speaker 1: or one of those giant countries, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: you went to a small town, went to a colony
Speaker 1: and then you know, like a British colony and then left,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it be impossible. It would be well it's
Speaker 1: it's possible, but the records not by us, so hell now,
Speaker 1: but maybe somebody could do it. I've also wondered if
Speaker 1: maybe the killer was in the army or the Foreign service. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe you got shipped out to some British colonial possession
Speaker 1: like in Africa or you know, India, somewhere like that.
Speaker 1: And while he was there, we were just talking about yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, like apply kept cut on applying his trade,
Speaker 1: and there's some parts of the world where stuff like
Speaker 1: that it probably would attract less notice than it would
Speaker 1: in downtown London. Yeah. Well, there's parts of the world
Speaker 1: where when you throw those bits and pieces of a
Speaker 1: corpse around, the local animal population takes it out up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, it might be the earlier eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three or four killings were carried out by somebody
Speaker 1: difference than our our London Torso killer. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the similarities are just too much to ignore
Speaker 1: between those eighteen seventy three killings and the late eighties
Speaker 1: ones myself. But again, on the other other hand, maybe
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighty eight killer was inspired by the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three killer. Yeah, I don't know. It's always possible.
Speaker 1: It is possible. I mean, it's not like there's only
Speaker 1: a handful of people out there with surgical skill. There's
Speaker 1: probably plenty of people that had the skill to do
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, chers speculation. I don't know. I I
Speaker 1: think it was probably the same guy. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's quite the break, But like we said, I mean,
Speaker 1: they could have gone somewhere, could have been off having
Speaker 1: fun somewhere else, you know, so that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking. So unfortunately for this, this particular one, they
Speaker 1: it's unlike Jack the ripperd no suspects were ever identified
Speaker 1: at all. They never even had a clue as that
Speaker 1: who could possibly have done this? Uh, And so that
Speaker 1: makes our that makes sure it's kind of a thin
Speaker 1: theories section because we don't have any actual human beings
Speaker 1: that we could talk about the likelihood of them being
Speaker 1: the killer. But nonetheless, there are some interesting theories out
Speaker 1: there about this. But before we get into the series,
Speaker 1: let's take a break watching kitten videos, competing in a
Speaker 1: solitaire tournament, working on your coloring book, writing your true
Speaker 1: romance novel, twiddling one thumb at a time. These are
Speaker 1: all options. Is fulfilling your time over the next week
Speaker 1: until our next episode comes out? Because you guys complain
Speaker 1: about that a lot. Do you want something else to do?
Speaker 1: Check out this podcast. It's true crime. It's called Unsolved
Speaker 1: Murders True Crime Stories, and it's a great twist on
Speaker 1: true crime and cold cases. Unlike us, they have a
Speaker 1: staff of screenwriters and an ensemble of voice actors and
Speaker 1: a talented digital production team to work on every single episode.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's going to be great. It contains
Speaker 1: dramatized scenes that bring cold cases to life, alongside the
Speaker 1: hosts analysis of each case, which sounds pretty cool and
Speaker 1: we should probably think about doing that. At the end
Speaker 1: of each case, the hosts tell you who they believe
Speaker 1: committed the crime, similar to us, which I know is
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Speaker 1: So that's podcast with an R P A r C
Speaker 1: a st dot com slash Unsolved Because waiting is kind
Speaker 1: of like getting punched in the eye, and we're back,
Speaker 1: all right our first series. Of course, a lot of
Speaker 1: people thought this guy must be or might be at
Speaker 1: least Jack the Ripper. Of course, a lot about the
Speaker 1: time the second body showed up, Jack the Ripper had
Speaker 1: just begun his big killing spree, because what's his first
Speaker 1: killing that we know of for sure was August thirty one. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's like, what do they call those? The five
Speaker 1: canonical five took place in a very short period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there was obviously speculation about Jack being the killer.
Speaker 1: The police said there was no connection. I'm assuming because
Speaker 1: the details of the killing were so much different. Can
Speaker 1: you just sorry for those of us who aren't crazy,
Speaker 1: can you just quickly summarize what those differences were. No dismemberment.
Speaker 1: They were killed in semi public spaces, like in an
Speaker 1: alley just off of a street where there's traffic. The
Speaker 1: bodies were dumped because Jack apparently I think he got
Speaker 1: interrupted on one maybe two. But there were ones where
Speaker 1: the body was just found and it was cut up
Speaker 1: and like an organ or two had been removed, like
Speaker 1: the uterus again for some reason. But the bodies were
Speaker 1: not drug away or hacked up like the ms. Were
Speaker 1: very different in that regard. Jack appeared to just leave
Speaker 1: them where they lie pretty much. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the other things that was that was probably different too.
Speaker 1: It's just the spacing between the killings. Because Jack's the
Speaker 1: canonical five. Absolutely Porsure confirmed Jack the Ripper murders took
Speaker 1: place between August thirty one and November nine, which is
Speaker 1: seventy one days, for an average of about two weeks
Speaker 1: between murders, whereas a Torso killing is average about seven
Speaker 1: months in between murders. And uh, well and so of
Speaker 1: torsos showing up, well, that's true too, you know. Uh
Speaker 1: And this is I think possibly the reason that jack
Speaker 1: At wanted to be so much more famous than the
Speaker 1: Tamas Torso killer, which is killing every two weeks. It
Speaker 1: really keeps keeps your story in the headlines. It's easy
Speaker 1: for people to forget that there was a body or
Speaker 1: a series of body parts found on the bank of
Speaker 1: the river. Yeah, years by two years, a year and
Speaker 1: a half, six or nine. It's also scarier when you're
Speaker 1: just like when it's such a public m o. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're like, I'm just walking down the street and
Speaker 1: literally any of these people could just slash out at
Speaker 1: me and try to kill me or actually do kill me,
Speaker 1: And you know, that's way scarier than like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's no heads on those bodies. They don't
Speaker 1: there's not even you know, a personage that you can
Speaker 1: attach to that body. It's just a unfortunate Well yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like not even human at that point, I guess. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I have a head, she does not have a head.
Speaker 1: She does not have a head. I'm alive, she's not.
Speaker 1: We're different. But I guess that's also not to say
Speaker 1: that I would completely discount the Jack the Ripper theory
Speaker 1: in that, you know, it's certainly possible to me that
Speaker 1: those were just the ones that Jack got caught or
Speaker 1: interrupted on, or even that that was his part of
Speaker 1: his escalation. I don't know. I mean, trying to step
Speaker 1: up the pace and it was too fast. Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, the hard part is is
Speaker 1: that with the Jack the Ripper case, it's believed that
Speaker 1: he had encounters with these women before because they were
Speaker 1: known prostitutes. And yet with these women the Torso murders,
Speaker 1: there's no nobody knows who they are, so we can't
Speaker 1: draw that connection. So therefore, to me, it like it
Speaker 1: opens the floodgates for people. And I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want. I don't think it's Jack for that reason,
Speaker 1: just because of the rate. I don't I would agree,
Speaker 1: I don't think it is, but I don't think that
Speaker 1: it's a totally, wildly implausible theory, and I think it's
Speaker 1: one worth entertaining. It's definitely a question worth asking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that my feeling about Jack is that Jack
Speaker 1: was a man on a mission. He really, he really
Speaker 1: was killing a lot of people left and right. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Boys Our Torso killer was a
Speaker 1: little more methodical, littlethodical. Yeah, and he played games with
Speaker 1: the public and with the police. I mean putting put
Speaker 1: putting all the parts around for everybody to find on
Speaker 1: public display like that. He was playing games like kind
Speaker 1: of like leaving pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered around
Speaker 1: the town for people to find. Enough. Yeah, Jack didn't
Speaker 1: really do that. So a lot of differences. But although
Speaker 1: Jack Waite, Jack did mail some well supposedly mailed like
Speaker 1: a liver or something to somebody, remember that was last Victims. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again still that's that's kind of an outlier in
Speaker 1: his case. I don't think it links it to this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was not one of the canatical five to right.
Speaker 1: It could have been one of the it has been.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that with any certainty, Joe,
Speaker 1: because it's been so long since I've read about Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, and you know, the Ripper fans out there
Speaker 1: that are listening to just if we get it wrong,
Speaker 1: please don't cut me up. Okay, So probably not Jack, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's say not. Jack could have been another serial killer.
Speaker 1: And frankly, you know, obviously it was another serial killer.
Speaker 1: And you know, who knows. Maybe this guy was Jack's inspiration.
Speaker 1: Maybe Jack was reading the papers about this guy and
Speaker 1: the body parts and everything of that. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll give that a try, and he liked it a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a big town like London, you'd think they'd be
Speaker 1: at least one or two circulars at work at any
Speaker 1: given time, even back in those days, right, yeah, especially
Speaker 1: back in those days. Yeah, there was no TV or anything,
Speaker 1: and yeah, people are a little less squeaming back in
Speaker 1: those days too, you know. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: went out and got your dinner at the Butcher's, probably
Speaker 1: watched and kill something right in front of you and
Speaker 1: gout it. That actually makes me wonder about the Again
Speaker 1: we're going back to this, but the whole conversation about
Speaker 1: the level of expertise that the bodies were dissected with.
Speaker 1: If you go down and you buy a lego lamb
Speaker 1: or a hind quarters of an animal, and then you
Speaker 1: have to call you butcher it on your own at home,
Speaker 1: or you're just used to doing that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: to prep your meals. Again, there becomes a certain level
Speaker 1: of familiarity. Yeah, I mean there were a lot of people,
Speaker 1: not just butchers. I mean you know people who hunters,
Speaker 1: for example, they kind of rather good at at skinning
Speaker 1: and dressing out you know, animals that they've called. You know,
Speaker 1: you're cooking some house, you're probably cutting up the meat
Speaker 1: to a degree. I mean, there's all kinds of occupations. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Podcast hosts, Oh good point. Have I shown you my knife?
Speaker 1: That okay knife? Yeah, I'm a piano wire guy myself.
Speaker 1: You don't need to worry about me, devon. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: probably another serial killer, right, but but who was the killer? Again?
Speaker 1: Police never came anywhere you're naming a suspect, and that
Speaker 1: that's I'm thinking that might be another reason we got
Speaker 1: that just Jack the Ripper mystery here, which is why
Speaker 1: it is Jack so much more famous. The police never
Speaker 1: came anywhere close to naming anybody as a suspect. Nobody
Speaker 1: at all. And in the case of Jack, of course,
Speaker 1: there were some suspects that were out there fairly quickly,
Speaker 1: and the doors that gave people a lot of license
Speaker 1: to sit around the pub speculating, well, did you know,
Speaker 1: did John Doe over here? Was he really the killer?
Speaker 1: And there's in this case, there was just nothing much
Speaker 1: to sink your teeth into because he who knows, there's
Speaker 1: no suspects. And so even though obviously it was another
Speaker 1: serial killer, we'll never know who the hell it was.
Speaker 1: But here, you know, there's a few possible theories just
Speaker 1: to you know, why this person would do it. It
Speaker 1: could have it could have been maybe some John basically
Speaker 1: a guy who frequents prostitutes and who decided that, you know, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe this particular girl is like, you know,
Speaker 1: got the goods on me or whatever. He picked something
Speaker 1: up and from his encounters with her, oh, maybe that's
Speaker 1: it too. He was feeling a little baneful about the
Speaker 1: whole thing. But I didn't know which one it was.
Speaker 1: It could have been that or maybe somebody threatening with
Speaker 1: a little blackmail. Maybe it was actually somebody fairly well
Speaker 1: to do, and he decided to, you know, just kill
Speaker 1: her rather than get out. Yeah, Um, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you know, perhaps there was one person he killed
Speaker 1: who was trying to blackmail and and the other ones
Speaker 1: were kind of loose ends, people who knew about his
Speaker 1: association with this person. Um, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: a great reason to leave, cut off the heads and
Speaker 1: make sure they never turn up, because if if they
Speaker 1: identify that person, then then you could easily become a
Speaker 1: suspect because you're a known associate. Ever, so prostitutes customers
Speaker 1: just like Jack, Perhaps somebody patronized prostitutes. Another theory that's
Speaker 1: possibly out there is botched abortions. This one doesn't This
Speaker 1: one does not work for me in this particular. I
Speaker 1: mean explain certain things like like the unvers is being
Speaker 1: missing in at least a few cases. But I have
Speaker 1: a problem with theory too, which is that if you're
Speaker 1: an abortionist and you're trying to cover up your little
Speaker 1: medical misadventure, well this guy picked a rather great way
Speaker 1: to go about it, right, Yeah, so I think we
Speaker 1: can scratch There was the spot the botched abortion thing.
Speaker 1: There was One of the speculations in the press was
Speaker 1: that it was kind of a medical school prank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these were possibly medical school cadavers which had been
Speaker 1: disposed of after dissection, and so I guess I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say there needs to be a prank involved there necessarily.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to me that sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: that was a thing, right that there were medical schools
Speaker 1: you like, you did the dissections, and there should have
Speaker 1: been an official way to dispose of said bodies. But
Speaker 1: not always, especially if you're like hair situation, you're trying
Speaker 1: to save some money, you know, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: you know, well, you probably hear some of the stories
Speaker 1: about the way they acquired corpses to dissect back. Some
Speaker 1: of them are pretty pretty maccabbin of themselves. They actually
Speaker 1: people would actually go out and steal fresh bodies out
Speaker 1: of graveyards and taking the medical schools and sell them,
Speaker 1: you know, and that would be sort of a wink
Speaker 1: weight nudge nudge. The guys at the medical schools knew
Speaker 1: had a pretty good idea where they were coming from.
Speaker 1: So maybe their disposal guy was trying to save I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it's proba, yeah, because yeah, that's the thing is, uh,
Speaker 1: you got this creepy hunchback that's delivering the corpses to you,
Speaker 1: and maybe you gonna like canut, Igor, would you mind
Speaker 1: getting word of the room mainsforce too? And he's like
Speaker 1: sure for a few bucks, you know, because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to bribe an undertake or to to basically stuff
Speaker 1: him into a coffin with some other body or something
Speaker 1: like that. And then and then Igor thinks, hey, why
Speaker 1: not pocket the money and just toss the stuff in
Speaker 1: the river. Maybe maybe the furnace was broke down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if that's an easy way, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that would explain why the bodies were cut into pieces,
Speaker 1: was to throw it into a furnace. Today, well, if
Speaker 1: they were cadavers, they could have been used to, you know,
Speaker 1: practice the section in the whole process of teaching anatomy, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of go up that way. It seems out of character,
Speaker 1: out of line, what with what I know of that
Speaker 1: even in that day and age medical students would be doing.
Speaker 1: It would seem they it would seem like you would
Speaker 1: maybe like be totally dissecting, like opening up the chest
Speaker 1: cavity and checking out the organs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But these bodies were treated more like crabs after you've
Speaker 1: cooked him and you're going to eat just broken and chunks.
Speaker 1: Then what a medical set of medical students would do
Speaker 1: unless they really really sucked, well they could it could
Speaker 1: have been that. Yeah, maybe they were teaching how to
Speaker 1: do amputations. Yeah they had an amputation has never been
Speaker 1: a real practice, So I don't know about that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: toy students, the amputation one oh one, get yourselves out.
Speaker 1: So you know, it could have been an eager just
Speaker 1: had a twisted sense of humor. Um. And again, as
Speaker 1: I said that, the one of time suggested that it
Speaker 1: might have been a medical school prank, and apparently people
Speaker 1: had a different kind of sense of humor back in
Speaker 1: those days. But there's another twist on it, which was
Speaker 1: that maybe Igor was our hunchback, was having a little
Speaker 1: way to dispute with his employers, and this is this
Speaker 1: way of sending a message to them, you know, um,
Speaker 1: the message being basically, hey, you know, you guys kind
Speaker 1: of like need me to keep my mouth shut because
Speaker 1: I kind of got the goods in using this blackmail. Again,
Speaker 1: could have been that could have been just you know,
Speaker 1: and then you know they said, hey, Eger, we're really
Speaker 1: really sorry, here's some extra cash for you know. And
Speaker 1: then next time thing, Igor gets his nose how to
Speaker 1: joint happens. Again, I don't know. I think that's as
Speaker 1: I mean, it's silly, kind of a stres. You didn't
Speaker 1: come up with it, so I feel comfortable saying that silly. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: actually I came up with part of it. I did.
Speaker 1: You're not the London Times though, Yeah, No, the medical
Speaker 1: school prank is they came up with, Yeah, you are
Speaker 1: having a way to speed. I did kind of come
Speaker 1: up with that one myself. But yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: It's just it doesn't quite make sense because again it's
Speaker 1: like Steve was saying, the it's not really the way
Speaker 1: they dissect bodies, or at least not in those days.
Speaker 1: I don't think. So. Yeah, alright, I could picture another
Speaker 1: game between medical students. They they finished dissecting this corpse
Speaker 1: and uh and at the end of it all the
Speaker 1: the professor says, Okay, you guys, now we gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of this body. So before you leave the class today,
Speaker 1: I want everybody to take one piece and throw it
Speaker 1: in the garbage. You know, I'm showing your way home,
Speaker 1: don't think so. Okay, that's a little weak too, So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's hard to say I'm thinking Process
Speaker 1: to its customer who for whatever reason was angry at prostitutes,
Speaker 1: or it could have been somebody who's never frequented a
Speaker 1: prostitute at all, maybe just to despise Process morally reasons
Speaker 1: did what they did. I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: there needs to be a reason to go to this
Speaker 1: level of cutting bodies up and then throwing those parts
Speaker 1: in the river. You've got to have some strong motivation,
Speaker 1: because there's not. But I I kind of think otherwise.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that if we're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: his motivation was he was he was angry at something,
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah, I would argue that this is
Speaker 1: like too far. Right. The Jack the Ripper reaction is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a dude who was automission and was like piste
Speaker 1: off at some people for whatever reason. Right, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is like a somebody whose brain works differently than
Speaker 1: the rest of the people. Is in my mind, it's
Speaker 1: just somebody who's just like an insane person. Not I
Speaker 1: don't even know what the correct term would be for that,
Speaker 1: but you know, not all I know, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the right one. There's one, but it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter some sort of just like crazy insane person who
Speaker 1: just this is like a pathological urge for them to
Speaker 1: be killing and cutting up because it just seems too yeah,
Speaker 1: cool headed, toolheaded. Obviously, this guy seems to be at
Speaker 1: least someone intelligent and you know, and clever enough to
Speaker 1: actually get away with this, I mean totally get away
Speaker 1: with him. When we think about it. He's not just
Speaker 1: dumping one body. He's dumping body parts all over the place.
Speaker 1: And you have what it being witnessed doing this by everybody.
Speaker 1: Nobody saw him. Ever, I guess that the guy was
Speaker 1: good at what he did. Somehow. That makes me think
Speaker 1: butcher more because if you see the local butcher walking
Speaker 1: around with you know, pieces of meat wrapped in you know,
Speaker 1: again wrapped in either paper or cloth, because they did
Speaker 1: wrap things in cloth and twine, you think there's a
Speaker 1: you hamhock, you know. And then over the edge local
Speaker 1: rug sales we know, there goes Tom and then the
Speaker 1: rug over his shoulder that was selling rugs down by
Speaker 1: the river. But I mean that would to me, would
Speaker 1: speak more to something like that. I don't know. So,
Speaker 1: you know the one thing that I've I've been wondering
Speaker 1: about is we've been going through. This is the state
Speaker 1: of the bodies is such that they were all in
Speaker 1: the water for at least several weeks before they were found. Well,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, Okay, not necessarily because the body like like
Speaker 1: the bodies were somewhat old, But as far as having
Speaker 1: how long they have been in the water, it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to tell. Me. I got the impression that
Speaker 1: they've been in the water for at least some extended
Speaker 1: amount of time. But where I'm going with this is
Speaker 1: that some of the damage or the dissection of the
Speaker 1: bodies that was done may not have actually been done
Speaker 1: by a person. I mean, the Thames is a very
Speaker 1: busy river even at that time. I mean there's not
Speaker 1: power boats, but there are gonna be paddle wheel boats,
Speaker 1: you know, steam power is a thing. At this point,
Speaker 1: coal burning boats are around. So it's possible that while
Speaker 1: not all of the cutting of the bodies was done,
Speaker 1: I mean, they could have been run over by ships
Speaker 1: and boats like that multiple times and that could have
Speaker 1: helped some of this along. So I don't I guess
Speaker 1: I just would say I would just go back to
Speaker 1: the corners saying like these were precise dissections. I don't.
Speaker 1: That doesn't really happen. When I don't, I don't know
Speaker 1: how because we can't see any imagery. I'm gonna again
Speaker 1: question how true that statement is. Helped correct that statement
Speaker 1: is if it's if it's a piece of a body,
Speaker 1: let's just say it's an arm, it's been severed, has
Speaker 1: been floating in the river or sitting on the bank
Speaker 1: for a week or two. It's not in good condition anymore.
Speaker 1: But they did did say there were no signs of violence.
Speaker 1: So if something if a body has been torn apart
Speaker 1: because it's been run over by a boat, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be other lacerations, ands and stuff like that. So you
Speaker 1: would assume, yeah, that there would be some signs of
Speaker 1: some kind of violent trauma to the body. Well, there
Speaker 1: was those paddle wheelers that were going around with razor
Speaker 1: blades on the tips of each one, and that that
Speaker 1: could have been it. Yeah, the scalpel model, it didn't
Speaker 1: pass very long, didn't know, just enough to cut up
Speaker 1: about five bodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was discourage homeless
Speaker 1: people from trying to get a free ride. Those free riders,
Speaker 1: you know, pay up your Yeah, yeah, I don't think so,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know how long they were in
Speaker 1: the river to be, to tell you the truth, because
Speaker 1: I don't know that there are a lot of signs
Speaker 1: that they've been nibbled on with the fishes either. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. If you kept him around on
Speaker 1: ice for a while and then chopped him up and
Speaker 1: threw him the river, maybe who knows, Maybe it's such
Speaker 1: a six sicko six sicko that he just chopped him
Speaker 1: up and just sort of like kept him around and
Speaker 1: just that his work for a while, you know, for
Speaker 1: for a week or two. We keep going out here.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I would get off of it,
Speaker 1: but there are people like that, at least in the movies.
Speaker 1: There are. Of course, there's always possibility that he didn't
Speaker 1: murder any of them. Maybe for some reason they died
Speaker 1: of natural causes. He decided to part you chop them
Speaker 1: up and dispose of the body himself for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Well this is this is just a spur from your
Speaker 1: ego theory, uh not really even from igor. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of doubt this. I mean, but you know,
Speaker 1: some people have speculated that maybe he didn't actually murder them,
Speaker 1: they just chopped them up and got rid of the
Speaker 1: bodies for for whatever reason. I find it hard to believe.
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't see why the hell anybody would
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, I don't understand. I I also think
Speaker 1: the heads would have shown up. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no reason to Oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to withhold the heads unless you're trying to
Speaker 1: keep these people from being identified. Yeah, especially since we
Speaker 1: know that, you know, fingerprints and DNA weren't viable. The
Speaker 1: only way you were really going to be able to
Speaker 1: identify these people was yes, okay, if the whole body
Speaker 1: showed up, which you know obviously didn't happen that often,
Speaker 1: or if a head with a face on it showed well,
Speaker 1: you know, it could have been that the guy I say,
Speaker 1: let's say it was prostitutes. He detested prostitutes, and and
Speaker 1: I didn't like the idea of say this, this prostitute
Speaker 1: is identified and given a Christian burial, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: just sort of a final insult. He like, with holds
Speaker 1: your heads so and put your bodies on body parts
Speaker 1: on public display everywhere, kind of this final act of
Speaker 1: disrespect and seeing to she gets buried in an unmarked
Speaker 1: popper's grave instead of being buried in a marked grave,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of thing. But I still really
Speaker 1: really doubt that this means that makes as much sense
Speaker 1: as he was doing this just to make shrunken head
Speaker 1: to Yeah. Yeah, maybe I don't. I don't think this
Speaker 1: is true. I think obviously this guy did kill them,
Speaker 1: and otherwise he had or maybe he had a remarkable
Speaker 1: streak of luck and stumbling across people who just happened
Speaker 1: to I you know, yeah, there would have been male bodies,
Speaker 1: because here that's the key here. Yeah, that's true too.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a mortician who was an aspiring butcher's yeah,
Speaker 1: and they just you know, had the dead bodies, and
Speaker 1: he was like, well, this one won't be missed. It
Speaker 1: could have been it could have been the ones marked
Speaker 1: for cremation, unclaimed bodies that could have been you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we wanted to save on his fuel bills and
Speaker 1: so instead of cremating them, he just he just like
Speaker 1: emptied up some some ashtrays into an urn and gave
Speaker 1: them to the fence. And dude, we know that's happened
Speaker 1: in recent time. That does happen. I don't know why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just like throw full bodies into someone else's casket,
Speaker 1: you know, to to to do a casket or something
Speaker 1: like that. That seems much easier. It seems like the
Speaker 1: way to go. Yeah, I could. Well, that could actually
Speaker 1: explaining a long gaps in between. Though. It could be
Speaker 1: that just in these these crunch times that you got
Speaker 1: a body to get rid of and you've got you,
Speaker 1: only you don't have any actual bodies or coffins in
Speaker 1: your funeral home. Then it might be at that particke in. Okay,
Speaker 1: people were dropping like flies at that time in London.
Speaker 1: I don't think there was ever a time where there
Speaker 1: wasn't a body in a box. Well, yeah, that's such
Speaker 1: a thing as competition and stuff like that. It might
Speaker 1: be that, Or there's also those damned open casket funerals.
Speaker 1: You know, there's those things too. Yeah, and so, but
Speaker 1: that's a possibility. And all right now we're almost at
Speaker 1: the end here. This is the part where I usually
Speaker 1: blame Choopy Um. However, I recently got to pull out
Speaker 1: a firmly worded email from not other than the Choops
Speaker 1: Dre himself. You guys read the email I'm sure did,
Speaker 1: asking me to cease and desist. Um, he didn't mention lawyers,
Speaker 1: but that was kind of the unstated subtext. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave Cheapy out of this one. Besides, it's not
Speaker 1: really cheapis m O? Right? Yeah, alright, so cheapy You're
Speaker 1: off the hook on this one. I don't have a freeing,
Speaker 1: I don't have even a reasonable theory and we can
Speaker 1: who the hell knows I I mean neither. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it looks like the Torso Killer is Scott free. Al Right. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts about this, you want to
Speaker 1: send us an email. Our email address is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast at gmail dot com. Uh. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on iTunes, where you can, like you know, downloader episodes.
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Speaker 1: course the same thing. You can leave ratings and reviews
Speaker 1: those places too, so do that. We are on of
Speaker 1: course Twitter, where we are Thinking Sideways and Devon's out
Speaker 1: there updating and sending out fun tweets all the time,
Speaker 1: right literally constantly? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so constantly every day. Check. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh where else are Oh? Facebook? I forgot Facebook? Didn't that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are on Facebook where we have a page and
Speaker 1: we also have a group, So don't try to friend us,
Speaker 1: but like our page, join the group kind of almost
Speaker 1: the same as being friends with us. You. If you're
Speaker 1: part of the group, then you can like join in
Speaker 1: conversations and have all sorts of fun times. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on Reddit. We have a sub reddit our of
Speaker 1: our very own, and it's quite active, right devon Yeah,
Speaker 1: superci Yeah, all kinds of stuff going on out there.
Speaker 1: And last of all, you can find us on our website,
Speaker 1: which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Or you can
Speaker 1: also listen to our episodes and you can also buy
Speaker 1: merch inside I don't know, all kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: There's the episode list, which we can update. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is an episode list out there too, so that way
Speaker 1: if you're wondering. They talk about this trapper, the mat Trapper. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Rat River. Yeah, I love that name,
Speaker 1: the Matt Trap rat River. Well, you can look on
Speaker 1: the list and find it there. That's about it for
Speaker 1: this week. Happy Halloween mounts everybody. So all I kind
Speaker 1: of say is like, uh, say Anara, Yeah, we'll see
Speaker 1: you guys later. I guess go buy candy b