Speaker 1: Pushkin. Susanne Blamire's left school with good grades in psychology,
Speaker 1: sociology and English literature. Her mother took great pride and
Speaker 1: how bright and articulate she was. When she wasn't studying
Speaker 1: or horseback riding, Susanne worked in a care home. Her
Speaker 1: duties there and the people she helped inspired her to
Speaker 1: train as a nurse, and she enrolled in college. But
Speaker 1: a drug habit and the constant need for money to
Speaker 1: feed it pushed Susanne in a different direction and to
Speaker 1: adopt an alter ego that she hid from her family.
Speaker 1: She became Amber, a sex worker. I hated her being
Speaker 1: a prostitute, said her boyfriend. I turned a blind eye
Speaker 1: because we needed the cash. In twenty ten, age thirty six,
Speaker 1: and years on from her own college studies, Susanne was
Speaker 1: approached by a graduate student. He was pursuing a doctorate
Speaker 1: in criminology at the nearby university, but he seemed to
Speaker 1: have a special interest in the women who worked in
Speaker 1: the red light area near his home. He'd photograph them
Speaker 1: for an exhibition, he'd explain. Susanne accompanied him back to
Speaker 1: his apartment. As they approached his door, they chatted amicably,
Speaker 1: perhaps He was telling her about his studies, his PhD thesis,
Speaker 1: and his focus on homicide in the Victorian era. As
Speaker 1: Susanne entered the flat, she would have seen a large bookcase,
Speaker 1: shelf after shelf of true crime and book after book
Speaker 1: about a man. Her host seemed to genuinely admire Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, and then behind Suzanne, the apartment door shut.
Speaker 1: I'm Halley Rubin, hold, you're listening to Bad Women. The
Speaker 1: Ripper retold a series about the real lives of the
Speaker 1: women killed by Jack the Ripper and how we got
Speaker 1: their stories so wrong. One side, money plenty and friends
Speaker 1: too by the score. Then fortune smiled upon me. Now
Speaker 1: one pass my dome, aloney and not we Harne seems
Speaker 1: to line me. I'm co Susanne Lamiers entered the apartment
Speaker 1: of Stephen Griffiths in the early hours of a Saturday.
Speaker 1: On the following Monday morning, the building's custodian sat down
Speaker 1: to review the weekend surveillance camera footage. It was a
Speaker 1: routine chaw checking for minor antisocial behavior, but what he
Speaker 1: saw unfold on the screen would sicken and appall him.
Speaker 1: A terrified Suzanne fled from the apartment just Minutes after
Speaker 1: her arrival, Griffiths pursued her, and then, well aware that
Speaker 1: he was being filmed, he brutally murdered Susanne and dragged
Speaker 1: her body back to his flat to carry out yet
Speaker 1: more unspeakable acts. The custodian hurriedly called the police. Griffiths
Speaker 1: was waiting when they arrived, and was only too happy
Speaker 1: to brag about other similar murders he'd committed. Reading true
Speaker 1: crime books certainly doesn't make you into a murderer and
Speaker 1: orders embarking on a PhD in criminology. But Griffiths and
Speaker 1: violent men like him often don't just study the likes
Speaker 1: of Jack the Ripper. They celebrate them, venerate them, and
Speaker 1: just occasionally emulate them. When I began researching the victims
Speaker 1: of the Whitechapel murders, I had perhaps naively underestimated the
Speaker 1: depths of some people's interests in serial killers, and the
Speaker 1: breadth of books, online forums and podcasts eager to service
Speaker 1: this demand for gore. Some of what I've seen and
Speaker 1: heard since is deeply troubling. Nor was I quite prepared
Speaker 1: for where I would encounter some of the most disturbing content,
Speaker 1: content that elevates the killer and denigrates his vict tis.
Speaker 1: If you were shocked that a major British university would
Speaker 1: sanction a man like Griffiths to indulge his warped interest
Speaker 1: in murderers, you may be as astonished as I was
Speaker 1: to learn that many children are being taught about Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper in school. This particular teacher very much had
Speaker 1: a very entertaining way of showing history. A little bit
Speaker 1: questionable afterwards, but at the time the issue never crossed
Speaker 1: my mind. This is Sydney. She learned about Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper in history class at an international school in France
Speaker 1: when she was thirteen years old. It was very much reiterated.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these women were getting drunk every night,
Speaker 1: and you know they were saying that if they were sober,
Speaker 1: they would have been able to escape the killer. At
Speaker 1: the time, Sidney didn't question her teacher's framing of the
Speaker 1: story with its clear victim blaming. Now understanding the severity
Speaker 1: of alcohol addiction and the negative effects of it, it's
Speaker 1: not really fair to teach children that it could have
Speaker 1: prevented these women from being murdered. If she didn't spend
Speaker 1: her last money on drinks, she would have made it
Speaker 1: through the night like it excused and was an explanation
Speaker 1: for the murders. Back then, Sydney was really into police
Speaker 1: procedurals like CSI an NCIS, so who'd done it? Approach
Speaker 1: that didn't reflect on the victims, just felt normal. We
Speaker 1: actually created an FBI type crimesying board which had pictures
Speaker 1: of rumored killers strings attached to maps, just how you
Speaker 1: would see it on TV. She was also unfazed by
Speaker 1: the graphic descriptions of the injuries too, but other students
Speaker 1: were rather more upset, like I remember even that some
Speaker 1: people are squeamish and they had to leave the class.
Speaker 1: I've heard similar things from former students around the globe.
Speaker 1: One art teacher at an elementary school would end his
Speaker 1: classes were stories of the murders, culminating in the savage
Speaker 1: mutilation of Mary Jane Kelly. A drama teacher staged a
Speaker 1: play depicting the killings year after year after year. But
Speaker 1: it's in history classes that most people have learned about
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, and what they were taught is completely
Speaker 1: divorced from reality and objectionable to the memories of the victims.
Speaker 1: Some history teachers plumped their classes down in front of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood film From Hell to Endure Johnny Depp's cockney accent.
Speaker 1: Thank he's taking more organists and swallow that totally debunked
Speaker 1: Royal conspiracy theory. Other educators create worksheets that dismiss the
Speaker 1: women as prostitutes and helpless alcoholics, and invite pupils to
Speaker 1: catalog the injuries of each woman to earn a good grade.
Speaker 1: And when I look and reflect on it now, I'm
Speaker 1: incredibly embarrassed about what I used to do. Simon Beale
Speaker 1: teaches history at a school in London, So what we're
Speaker 1: looking at here is how I originally taught. He's showing
Speaker 1: me the resources he once used in his classes. On
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, I'd get that cheap kind of paper
Speaker 1: tablecloth you get for parties, and I'd stretch it out
Speaker 1: all over it, put an outline of a body, a
Speaker 1: map of Whitechapel, and it would be a kind of
Speaker 1: two to three lesson investigation, where the first lesson would
Speaker 1: be about the killings, then it would be about the suspects,
Speaker 1: and they'd keep writing all over it. Pupils would then
Speaker 1: embellish these pieces of paper with bloody knives and very
Speaker 1: detailed imagery of who the killer was and things like that,
Speaker 1: and I was incredibly proud of it. What historically is
Speaker 1: there to be derived from that exercise? If you challenge
Speaker 1: me on it at the time, I would have said,
Speaker 1: I'm giving them a range of information. I'm getting them
Speaker 1: to draw conclusions, come up with theories, weigh up evidence,
Speaker 1: and then present it, which all sound incredibly useful in
Speaker 1: a history classroom. I could do that doing lots of things.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be about a brutal series of
Speaker 1: killings to do all the things I've just mentioned. Simon
Speaker 1: grew worried that the historical tale he was sharing was
Speaker 1: thin and threadbare. There are a few vigorously researched history books, remember,
Speaker 1: and the details that were available centered on Gore, which
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly age appropriate. It he wouldn't have taught any
Speaker 1: other historical period in this way. What I find most
Speaker 1: shocking is actually the kind of maturity of the content
Speaker 1: we're using with pupils of kind thirteen to fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: who just aren't ready to see it. With those younger pupils,
Speaker 1: we're using crime scene photography and the autopsy reports, but
Speaker 1: we're not preparing them for it, or actually doing any
Speaker 1: duty of care afterwards about kind of their reaction to
Speaker 1: seeing these things. It's just often we've done and we're
Speaker 1: doing something else afterwards. God, I don't know if anybody's
Speaker 1: ever ready to see it, to be honest, No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and we're not giving them the choice. Quite often they're
Speaker 1: arriving the lesson not knowing what they're going to be studying,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly that's what they're looking at. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: teach about the Zodiac killings or the Son of Sam
Speaker 1: killings in your history lessons. You understand that that's for
Speaker 1: an adult audience, But there's something about Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: that has almost taken away any age rating and anything
Speaker 1: goes when discussing those killings, because it's in some way
Speaker 1: mythologized in the national, maybe even international consciousness. Simon was
Speaker 1: a s teaching the tired old Ripper myth that you've
Speaker 1: heard demolished bit by bit during this series. He began
Speaker 1: to fear his classes were just perpetuating falsities about Polly Annie,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Kate, and Mary Jane and teaching his pupils something
Speaker 1: dark and pernicious about how violence against women should be understood.
Speaker 1: Pupils only know about Jack the Ripper, probably because their
Speaker 1: teacher taught it to them. If they taught it to
Speaker 1: them as about them being these victims, they'll probably then
Speaker 1: go on to just see them in that lens. I
Speaker 1: can't say that there isn't someone that was in my
Speaker 1: lesson that saw it and thought, okay, this has always
Speaker 1: been going on, not that these are rare, extreme cases
Speaker 1: that really needs sensitivity. When they're covered. Boys may well
Speaker 1: come away with this idea that violent killings are something
Speaker 1: that men do and it gets lots of attention, notoriety potentially,
Speaker 1: And then when you think about the girls in your classroom,
Speaker 1: it really can accidentally lead into the eye that they're victims.
Speaker 1: And while you might want to show how the role
Speaker 1: of women in the Victorian period was difficult, if you
Speaker 1: do the Chat the Ripper killings in a certain way,
Speaker 1: If you just focus on the killings, all you're doing
Speaker 1: is women get brutally killed, and it happens a lot.
Speaker 1: Men are on top, they get to do what they want,
Speaker 1: sometimes they get away with it, and what happens to
Speaker 1: these women and their lives beforehand are incidental. So Simon
Speaker 1: has ditched dis old Lesson plan, and now he doesn't
Speaker 1: teach about Jack the Ribber anymore. Instead, he uses the
Speaker 1: lives of the five women do examine what it was
Speaker 1: like to be a poor Victorian. It's much more about
Speaker 1: their lives and much more about the various things pulling
Speaker 1: women down from being able to live in any way
Speaker 1: in equitable life compared to men. I'm trying to almost
Speaker 1: avoid even talking about their death in the resources I use. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just got the date of their death, and if
Speaker 1: people's notice it, we might have a conversation. But what
Speaker 1: I found is that they're so interested by their lives
Speaker 1: and the different interactions and the different opportunities each of
Speaker 1: them had, that it may never come up. Simon's experience
Speaker 1: shows that we underestimate our students if we assume that
Speaker 1: only blood, gore and police procedurals will get them excited
Speaker 1: about history. But individual teachers like Simon are just interpreting
Speaker 1: guidelines they get from higher up. Very broadly speaking, how
Speaker 1: does Jack the Ripper fit into the edexcel curriculum. He
Speaker 1: is part of the investigative policing content in the Whitechapel
Speaker 1: Historic Environment. EDEXCEL is the name of the body that
Speaker 1: sets and Mark's exams for many young people in the UK.
Speaker 1: Mark Antstein manages the history qualifications for fifteen to eighteen
Speaker 1: year olds. I wanted to know how much thought had
Speaker 1: gone into the Ripper myth and the curriculum, and the
Speaker 1: answer was not much. The body of material primary sources
Speaker 1: is negligible. That actually came as a surprise to me
Speaker 1: when I started doing my research in this, and I'll
Speaker 1: admit that's something I wasn't aware of either in terms
Speaker 1: of including it in future specifications. That's something that we
Speaker 1: could continue to look at. I think there is a
Speaker 1: value to looking at late Victoria in Whitechapel. I think
Speaker 1: it's a valid question as well to say do we
Speaker 1: want to continue to include the investigation of the Ripper
Speaker 1: murders within that content. Mark also agreed that where teachers
Speaker 1: still show their students graphic content or films like from Hell,
Speaker 1: they need to be invited to think again. I hope
Speaker 1: things have moved on a bit from that. Where they haven't,
Speaker 1: I think we need to do more to encourage change.
Speaker 1: So it's looking promising. And while we were making this podcast,
Speaker 1: the publisher of Edxcel's textbooks announced it would correct references
Speaker 1: to all the women being prostitutes. Thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: this to our attention. The firm tweeted, we plan to
Speaker 1: revise and update this paragraph to reflect Hallie Rubinholt's recent
Speaker 1: groundbreaking work. Change is underway in the world of education,
Speaker 1: but many of us still have our misconceptions about the
Speaker 1: Whitechapel murders. Force time and again in books, on TV
Speaker 1: and in newspaper articles. One of the biggest voices on
Speaker 1: the topic is Patricia Cornwell. Can she help change the
Speaker 1: way the old story is told and shift the spotlight
Speaker 1: away from the killer? Well, I'm finally able to ask
Speaker 1: her in person. The rippery told will return shortly. Anybody
Speaker 1: that thinks it's fun getting involved in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not fun. I can't check the rip off because this
Speaker 1: certainly lost me far more money than I ever earned
Speaker 1: to spending it on all the research and stuff that
Speaker 1: I had to do. But you should never stop trying
Speaker 1: to find a truth about anything. Patricia Cornwell's telling me
Speaker 1: about the millions of dollars she's spent employing experts and
Speaker 1: purchasing artwork and letters by Walter Sickard in her quest
Speaker 1: to unmask the painter as Jack the Ripper, Can I
Speaker 1: persuade her to concentrate her energies on the stories of
Speaker 1: the victims. I think you have to do both, because
Speaker 1: this is my opinion, part of the way that we
Speaker 1: honor the victims is you have to unflinchingly stare in
Speaker 1: the face what was done to them and why and how.
Speaker 1: You have to or you will never reconstruct their final
Speaker 1: moments when they were the most isolated and desperate they've
Speaker 1: ever been, and we need to bring them back to life.
Speaker 1: But you still have to deal with who's doing this.
Speaker 1: You still have to look at the one who's preying
Speaker 1: on these people and why. And I honestly think, whether
Speaker 1: we like it or not, the world's curious about that.
Speaker 1: We can't help but be curious about the monsters. And
Speaker 1: to face the reality that when you've marginalized and victimize
Speaker 1: any group of people or any individual, you make them
Speaker 1: vulnerable for harm because predators watch to see who is vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Patricia agrees, however, that will never truly know this predator's identity.
Speaker 1: That was the stupidest thing I ever did was to
Speaker 1: call all that first book about Jack the Ripper case closed.
Speaker 1: I was way to share myself back then? Am I
Speaker 1: younger salad days? As we say in the South, because
Speaker 1: it will never be closed that no matter what, what
Speaker 1: do you think that justice would really look like in
Speaker 1: the Jack the Ripper case, what's going to happen today?
Speaker 1: The closest you could ever get is simply excavating for
Speaker 1: as much truth as you can find. That includes with
Speaker 1: the victims. Like you know, if there had been someone
Speaker 1: who thought they were a descendant of Mary Kelly and
Speaker 1: thought there was an exclamation possible and thought you could
Speaker 1: really find those remains and do DNA on it and
Speaker 1: maybe do mitochondrial and perhaps figure out who she really was,
Speaker 1: that is the beginning of justice, because you're restoring someone's
Speaker 1: identity to them. I've always thought the saddest thing in
Speaker 1: the morgue are the other people. We don't know who
Speaker 1: they are. I can't get Patricia to change her mind
Speaker 1: about continuing to hunt down the murderer, but what happened
Speaker 1: to the five genuinely incenses her. She's personally and deeply
Speaker 1: outraged by their is. I know you're not interested in
Speaker 1: who Jack the Ripper was, and you know this is
Speaker 1: why we make a really good harmony here because I
Speaker 1: go after the bad guy and you're going after the victims,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in them too, But I really want
Speaker 1: to nail this mother, you know what he because she
Speaker 1: shouldn't get away with it. First of all, let me
Speaker 1: just say this yet. People have known the names of
Speaker 1: these people for a long time, but what they've never
Speaker 1: had is a real historian like you to humanize them
Speaker 1: and to look beyond just the usual lore. These were desperate,
Speaker 1: homeless people who are just trying to survive under dreadful conditions.
Speaker 1: Patricia has always spoken about the women respectfully and with
Speaker 1: great empathy, but she's previously stuck to the idea that
Speaker 1: all five was selling sex on the nights they died.
Speaker 1: It seems she's now more willing to accept my theory
Speaker 1: that homelessness played a bigger role, and she also agrees
Speaker 1: that society failed these women and continues to fail them
Speaker 1: modern counterparts. I believe that nothing ever ends. These cases
Speaker 1: still go on today, and if we try to fix
Speaker 1: it as best we can, we are not re engineering
Speaker 1: life the way we should. Maybe we can prevent this
Speaker 1: from happening again. We gain more understanding not only into
Speaker 1: what can cause victimization, but also to get more insights
Speaker 1: into what goes haywire with people who might perpetrate things
Speaker 1: like this. We don't want those monsters among us. We'd
Speaker 1: like to fix that somehow. It's also about society taking responsibility.
Speaker 1: It's about like when we have people on the margins,
Speaker 1: when we have people who are not looked after, when
Speaker 1: we don't care about mental health, well, we don't care
Speaker 1: about people who are sick because we don't want to care.
Speaker 1: That's on us. That's right. I totally agree with you
Speaker 1: that we have to know what happened to people in
Speaker 1: order to understand how bad it was. But I think
Speaker 1: we can also tip over too far into a danger
Speaker 1: that we glamorize violence with focusing on Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1: How can we get this balance right? You are absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sorry, but I find the ripper walks offensive.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I really do. I find the commercial industry
Speaker 1: of this offensive. It's turned him into a comic book hero,
Speaker 1: and that takes away from the reality, from the pain
Speaker 1: and the suffering and the absolute terror that these victims felt.
Speaker 1: I honored them by trying to show the reality of
Speaker 1: what was done to them. You know, it's funny if
Speaker 1: you go to University College at Oxford, as I recall
Speaker 1: from long ago, there's this beautiful sculpture of Shelley the
Speaker 1: drowned poet, you know, all white and marbly and elegant,
Speaker 1: with his beautiful body dead on the shore. And let
Speaker 1: me tell you what. That ain't what he looked like
Speaker 1: when he washed up. That is not the reality of
Speaker 1: violence and death. And just like you don't like these
Speaker 1: prostitute quote sex workers depict it as these women in
Speaker 1: their fancied bustles and low cut whatever. I don't like
Speaker 1: victims looking like it was nothing. I just went to sleep.
Speaker 1: She's pretty disgusted by the market for ripper related items too,
Speaker 1: the mugs and the teddy bears and the shot glasses.
Speaker 1: What would she say to the people who buy this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's dangerous and it's offensive. Let me take that photograph
Speaker 1: of Mary Kelly on her bed, ladies and gentlemen to
Speaker 1: put it on an FFF and T shirt and say,
Speaker 1: you know, trick or treat, because that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're saying trick retreat. Well, it wasn't trick or treat
Speaker 1: for these people, and it wasn't trick retreat for the
Speaker 1: cops that were horrified and shocked and traumatized. It wasn't
Speaker 1: trick retreat for coroners who had to deal with these bodies,
Speaker 1: and those family members who to this day descendants don't
Speaker 1: know whatever happened to certain and her grandmother they had.
Speaker 1: So it's offensive. And what I would say is, I
Speaker 1: don't blame you for participating this ignorance, but would you
Speaker 1: step back for a minute and look at this realistically
Speaker 1: and ask yourself should you be doing this? The answer
Speaker 1: is no, you should not be doing this. Patricia is
Speaker 1: a writer of fiction and she's just published to twenty
Speaker 1: fifth thriller featuring heroine k Scarpetta, who first appeared in
Speaker 1: the book Post Mortem. But Jack the Rippa represents an
Speaker 1: unusual foray into true crime for her, and Bad Women
Speaker 1: is closer to true crime than any of my previous work.
Speaker 1: So I asked Patricia what responsibilities we have when it
Speaker 1: comes to representing real life pain and suffering. I think
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful. I'm very cautious about true crime.
Speaker 1: The Ripper is as much as I want to get
Speaker 1: into that, and to be honest with you, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I could and do it with abandonment is
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel that I was going to hurt people.
Speaker 1: If you have a mother who's been murdered in recent
Speaker 1: time and then you do an in depth thing on it,
Speaker 1: the people who have suffered through that suffered through it again.
Speaker 1: And while I'm not saying you shouldn't write about it,
Speaker 1: I'm saying for me, though, I would have a hard
Speaker 1: time doing that. I've talked to prisoners on death row
Speaker 1: before and that's not my favorite thing to do. I
Speaker 1: don't really like spending time with the darker side of this.
Speaker 1: It was a British person who said this many years ago,
Speaker 1: and I've never forgotten it. Of somebody who said we
Speaker 1: mustn't celebrate what should be condemned. So when I decided
Speaker 1: to write Post Mortem back in nineteen eighty nine, when
Speaker 1: I began that book, I said, and I was working
Speaker 1: in the morgue, I said, how do I do this?
Speaker 1: How do I tell a story and show what I
Speaker 1: know without it being prurient and maybe feeding the wrong thing?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, don't celebrate it. And the way
Speaker 1: you don't celebrate it is tell it completely from the
Speaker 1: forensic mythologist, the doctor's point of view because her empathy
Speaker 1: is with the victims and her outrages towards a piece
Speaker 1: of crap that did it. And that is my mathematical
Speaker 1: algorithm for what I do. And I would be the
Speaker 1: first to say that there are times when I feel
Speaker 1: like I've crossed that line. You think you're being so
Speaker 1: graphic because you should, and then in hindsight, you go,
Speaker 1: maybe I should have backed it down a little bit.
Speaker 1: And probably the last ten years I'm much less graphic
Speaker 1: about some things than I was earlier on because I
Speaker 1: just think it's too much. It strikes me that Patricia's
Speaker 1: books on Jack Thrippa are quite graphic in places, and
Speaker 1: to TV documentaries have shown horrific close up images of
Speaker 1: the dead women. Does she think she's crossed the line here? No,
Speaker 1: I don't feel as too graphic because I'm only portraying
Speaker 1: to you the anatomical and forensic facts. And if I
Speaker 1: talk about the way the incisions were made and Katherine
Speaker 1: Edau's body, I'm simply relaying to you reconstructing what exactly
Speaker 1: was there and what was done. That's different from fictionalizing
Speaker 1: that the person's walking down the sidewalk and the guy
Speaker 1: comes up behind her, and then next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're turning it into sort of violent pornography, and that
Speaker 1: I don't do, which is why for a brief period
Speaker 1: when I started writing Scarpetta novels from the third person
Speaker 1: point of view, where I had to show what the
Speaker 1: killer was doing and what the victim was doing, I
Speaker 1: had to get away from that because then I have
Speaker 1: to show those things that I just don't want to.
Speaker 1: I'd rather see it through Scarpetta's eyes and fix it
Speaker 1: after the fact. So that is a struggle because, as
Speaker 1: Hippocrates basically said, do no harm, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to do harm if I can avoid it. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed talking to Patricia. There's still plenty of things we
Speaker 1: disagree on, but a commitment to the victims is impossible
Speaker 1: to doubt. She's also right on one big thing. True
Speaker 1: crime can do harm, but it can also be incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1: The genre of true crime starts with ripperology. It starts
Speaker 1: with Jack the Ripper. This is journalist Billy Jensen, whose
Speaker 1: work focuses on missing persons and unsolved cases. The worst
Speaker 1: thing to do is not tell a story. You know,
Speaker 1: if any of those stories can get us closer to
Speaker 1: the answers. If we keep on telling them, then let's
Speaker 1: keep telling him. I just wish that we told a
Speaker 1: lot more stories. Billy has a podcast series, The Murder Squad,
Speaker 1: Jensen and Holes, and he's developed his own concept of
Speaker 1: true crime. I think true crime two point zero is
Speaker 1: where people can get involved, whether it's just via social media,
Speaker 1: whether it's doing the investigations on their own. We're in
Speaker 1: a big crisis in America right now when it comes
Speaker 1: to our media because the Internet decimated newspapers. Every one
Speaker 1: of these stories that we see on true crime started
Speaker 1: with a newspaper article, so you're having less people out
Speaker 1: there covering these stories. It's going to be up to
Speaker 1: citizens to do it. You're not gonna make any money
Speaker 1: doing it, but it's going to be up to citizens
Speaker 1: doing it, reading police reports, digging into that because the
Speaker 1: newspapers just don't have enough people to do it, or
Speaker 1: the newspapers are completely gone. This kind of crowdsource crime
Speaker 1: investigation demands care be nice and use your head, you know,
Speaker 1: don't be an asshole. There are important rules, says Billy,
Speaker 1: and they're very similar to the rules of journalism, things
Speaker 1: like don't name names, publicly. Don't give out people's addresses,
Speaker 1: but you can get involved and you can do a
Speaker 1: lot of good work. And that's what we do on
Speaker 1: Murder Squad, and we've helped solve a couple of cases.
Speaker 1: And also getting loud on cases true crime can shine
Speaker 1: a light on cases that have been forgotten or overlooked,
Speaker 1: and citizen investigators can be a useful tool. Here no,
Speaker 1: we cover this case of this woman who was murdered,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Gould. You know there were probably a couple of suspects.
Speaker 1: We got really loud because we have a very popular podcast.
Speaker 1: We did a two parter this is a murder from
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. They arrested somebody in between the first
Speaker 1: and second episodes. But does Billy ever worry that they
Speaker 1: can turn crime solving into a kind of game the
Speaker 1: sort of past time I've criticized some repperologists for pursuing
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's in a game. If at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if this guy has caught
Speaker 1: in this guy's and cups the victims family doesn't care
Speaker 1: that there was somebody that was doing that and trying
Speaker 1: to solve the murder of their loved one instead of
Speaker 1: playing a video game. Author Gillian Lauren, who interviewed serial
Speaker 1: killers Samuel Little and has told the stories of his victims,
Speaker 1: feel similarly about the power of true crime. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of criticism around true crime that maybe
Speaker 1: I don't feel subject to because I actually am a
Speaker 1: victim and a survivor, so I think, don't turn away,
Speaker 1: deal with it responsibly. Crime is as much of a
Speaker 1: piece of humanity is love. Robert Kennedy said, every culture
Speaker 1: gets the criminal they deserve, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: was Samuel Little the criminal we deserved in a society
Speaker 1: that was dismissing women, dismissing the poor, dismissing the homeless.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's certainly a criminal that is gonna, hopefully,
Speaker 1: if dealt with responsibly in a narrative way, shed a
Speaker 1: light on that, not capitalize on it or exploit it.
Speaker 1: True crime then can be a useful lens for understanding
Speaker 1: the lives of others and for looking at where as
Speaker 1: a culture we've gone wrong and must do better. But
Speaker 1: all too often it spills over into exploited of entertainment
Speaker 1: and tabloid clickbait. When murder obsessive Stephen Griffiths was arrested
Speaker 1: for the murders of Shelley Armitage, Susan Rushworth, and would
Speaker 1: be nursed Suzanne Blamire's. He perhaps yearned for the notoriety
Speaker 1: of the killers he'd studied. His choice of weapon and
Speaker 1: vile assault on his victim's corpses were awful enough, but
Speaker 1: he also hankered after a nickname to equal the rippers.
Speaker 1: When as to identify himself in court, rather than state
Speaker 1: his name, he called himself the Crossbow Cannibal, causing the
Speaker 1: victim's families to sob in the public gallery. Many newspapers
Speaker 1: were only too happy to keep using his self styled moniker,
Speaker 1: and it was seen in headlines around the world. So
Speaker 1: yet again, our fascination with the viciousness and cruelty of
Speaker 1: a murderer threatens to overshadow and obscure the women he killed.
Speaker 1: There are already teevy documentaries looking at his life and
Speaker 1: his motivations, and books listing everything from his taste in
Speaker 1: music to the depravity of his crimes. This is going
Speaker 1: to be a doucy of a case. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a lot. There's also no shortage of podcast episodes with
Speaker 1: his chosen nickname and the title the cannibal crossbow killing, Sir,
Speaker 1: the crossbow cannibal killing, which everyone feels right to you. Yeah, alliteration,
Speaker 1: you can do it. I hope neither of them feel
Speaker 1: right to you. But as for Suzanne, Blameyer's well, she
Speaker 1: fades into the background. She's just another bad woman. Like Polly,
Speaker 1: her marriage soured, like Annie, her comfortable life evaporated thanks
Speaker 1: to addiction. Like Kate, she drank, and like Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: Mary Jane, she fell back on sex work to make
Speaker 1: ends meet. When Susanne's killer was sent to prison for life,
Speaker 1: her grieving mother issued a statement saying that she too
Speaker 1: was serving a life sentence. She concluded by asking the
Speaker 1: public not to dismiss or judge Suzanne and the other
Speaker 1: dead women. At the end of the day, nobody deserves this,
Speaker 1: she wrote. All these girls were human beings and people's daughters.
Speaker 1: In the season finale of Bad Women, will return to
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight for one last time to look at
Speaker 1: the impact of the White Chapel murders on two families.
Speaker 1: We'll hear how Annie Chapman's brother was brought to his
Speaker 1: knees by her death, and will learn the sad story
Speaker 1: of butcher Jacob Levey, whose mental health problems nearly ruined
Speaker 1: his family but also saw him added to the list
Speaker 1: of men who were accused of being Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: Bad Women. The Rippery Told is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and me Hallie Ribbinhold, and is based on
Speaker 1: my book The Five. It was produced and co written
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton.
Speaker 1: Pascal Wires sound designed and mixed the show and composed
Speaker 1: all the original music. You also heard the voice talents
Speaker 1: of Soulboyer, Ben Crow, Sarah Bows, Melanie Gutridge, Gemma Saunders,
Speaker 1: and rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible
Speaker 1: without the work of Mila Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Jenguera, Heather Fane,
Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Maraino, The Talmulad, Eric Sandler
Speaker 1: and Dan Yellow look on with special things to my
Speaker 1: agents Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karen