In August, the murderer entered the cottage of Rebecca Ramey, just one block south of where Eliza Shelley had been murdered three months earlier. Approaching her bed, he knocked her out, and then abducted her daughter Mary. The 11-year-old was taken outside, raped and murdered. Again, there was no axe; the girl was stabbed through both ears with an iron rod. When she regained consciousness, Rebecca Ramey, a black servant of a man named Valentine Weed, remembered nothing of use.
The following month, the killer gained entrance to a servants’ cabin behind the house of Major W. D. Dunham by climbing through a window. Stories about the night in question are varied and confused, but all agree that the first to be attacked was a man named Orange Washington, whose skull was caved in by a blow from an axe. Washington’s common-law wife, Gracie Vance, was dragged out of the cabin and raped outside. Her friend, a visiting servant named Lucinda Boddy, received an axe blow to her head and was also raped.
The assaults ended when Major Dunham realized the noises were something much more than a domestic dispute, as he’d initially thought. Gun in hand, the major rushed outside, and the murderer fled. Gracie’s body was found in the stables; her head had been beaten in with a brick. In one hand she clutched a gold watch, presumably torn from the killer during the struggle. Also present was an unidentified horse, saddled and tied. Both appeared to be excellent clues as to the identity of the assailant, and yet they proved to be of no use.
After detectives were brought in from Houston to assist in the investigation, two black men, Oliver Townsend and Dock Woods, were arrested. The evidence used against the two was less than compelling: a comment someone had overheard in which Townsend had told Woods he wanted to kill Gracie Vance.
In attempting to extract a confession from another suspect, a private detective agency resorted to torture and was discredited. Grasping at straws, the marshal arrested Walter Spencer, the husband of Mollie Smith. His trial, based on the most improbable of theories, took just three days and resulted in an acquittal.
There can be little doubt that in the midst of all this horror, some residents of Austin took comfort in the knowledge that all the Annihilator’s victims had been black and were either servants or their close relatives. All this changed on Christmas Eve when a middle-class white man, Moses Hancock, awoke to find that his wife, Sue, was missing. He soon found her lying behind their house. An axe had been used to split open her head, and a thin rod had been pushed into her brain. She had also been raped.
That same night, the body of another white woman, Eula Phillips, was found pinned under lumber in the alleyway of one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Her husband was found unconscious, having been hit on the back of the head with an axe.
The next day, hundreds of Austin residents left their Christmas festivities to attend an emergency meeting. A variety of initiatives – from increased lighting to early closure of taverns – were undertaken in the hopes of preventing further attacks. While the effect these moves had can be debated, the fact remains that the Servant Girl Annihilator never struck again.
Among the great mysteries surrounding the Annihilator is his change in victim type. What might have caused him to switch from poor, black female servants to comfortably-off white women? In 1885, some thought the answer obvious: Sue Hancock and Eula Phillips weren’t victims of the Annihilator, but had been killed by their own husbands. Though it would appear unlikely that two men who did not know one another would think up the same idea and act on it during the same night, both were tried for the deaths of their wives. While Hancock was declared innocent, Phillips was found guilty of murder in the second degree. The verdict was later overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals for lack of evidence.
JACK THE RIPPER
His crimes have been investigated more than those of any other murderer. A whole field of study, Ripperology, is devoted to puzzling out his identity. And yet, 12 decades after his last murder, Jack the Ripper remains an elusive and mysterious figure.
Even the number and names of the victims have been the subject of considerable debate, though the majority of Ripperologists believe there to have been five victims, the first being Mary Ann Nichols. A 43-year-old alcoholic, she had much in common with the victims who would follow in her wake. Nichols was estranged from her husband, and struggled to support herself through a variety of means. Indeed, at least four of the five women had been pushed further into poverty through the disintegration of their respective marriages. Nichols had been employed in workhouses, had worked as a domestic and had, on at least one occasion, resorted to stealing. She also tried to make ends meet as a prostitute, an occupation which, it seems, made her a target of the Ripper. Her body was discovered by two workmen in the early hours of 31 August 1888 on a back street not far from the London Hospital. Nichols had had her throat cut. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and her abdomen had been cut open.
Eight days later, the Ripper claimed his second victim, a 47-year-old named Annie Chapman. Her body was found at about six in the morning. Like Nichols, Chapman’s throat had been slashed. Completely disembowelled, her intestines were thrown over one shoulder. Her uterus had been removed and was never found.
At approximately one o’clock on the morning of 30 September, the body of Elizabeth Stride, a 45-year-old Swedish immigrant, was found. She, too, had had her throat slit open. However, apart from an injury to her ear, Stride’s body bore none of the butchery suffered by the previous victims. It is generally believed that the Ripper was interrupted before he could proceed any further.
Presumably dissatisfied with having had to leave his work on Stride’s body unfinished, the Ripper struck again on the same evening. The second victim, 46-year-old Catherine Eddowes, had been picked up for public drunkenness the previous day by the Metropolitan Police. She was released at about the same time that Stride’s body was discovered. Eddowes was last seen alive at approximately 1:30, talking to an unidentified man. Just 15 minutes later, her body was discovered. Working with great speed, the Ripper had cut her throat, sliced open her abdomen, thrown her intestines over her shoulder and removed her uterus and left kidney. He had also mutilated her face.
Following a relatively long period of inactivity, the final murder took place on 9 November. It is tempting to say that Mary Kelly was quite different from the other victims. She was, for example, at least two decades younger than the others. However, very little is known about Kelly and, as a result, many fanciful stories have been created about her life. In death, she stands apart from the others in that she was not killed in a public place, but in her own home. This gave the Ripper a great deal more time than he’d had with his previous victims, and it showed. Kelly’s body was found naked, lying on her bed. The throat had been slashed and her face mutilated. The entire abdominal cavity had been emptied of its contents. Her breasts had been cut off – one had been placed under her head, the other by her right foot. Her liver was found between her feet. Some of the flesh removed from the abdomen and thighs had been placed on a table. Her heart was never found.
Though the number of victims claimed by Jack the Ripper pales when compared to those of Mary Ann Cotton, he has become a legend in a way she has not. While the butchery that accompanied his murders provides something of an explanation for this discrepancy, the role of the media cannot be ignored. Jack the Ripper killed at a time when inexpensive mass-circulation newspapers were in their ascendancy. News of the crimes spread rapidly through Great Britain and elsewhere. Some papers sought to exploit the crimes by reporting other murders as the work of Jack the Ripper. There is even a debate among Ripperologists as to the validity of the Jack the Ripper name, first used in a letter dated 25 September 1888, which was received by the Central News Agency. Some have argued that it was a hoax created to sell newspapers. Shortly after its publication, the Metropolitan Police were inundated with hundreds of letters bearing the epithet.
There were, of course, other factors which made the case of Jack the Ripper intrig
uing. His savagery appeared to escalate, reaching a crescendo with the murder of Mary Kelly. He appeared to have some education in surgery, most evident in his ability to eviscerate Catherine Eddowes in a matter of mere minutes. Above all, he was never caught, hence the speculation which continues to this day as to his identity.
Police officials at the time named six suspects as possibly being Jack the Ripper. The most interesting of these is Montague John Druitt. A barrister and assistant schoolmaster, Druitt committed suicide by drowning shortly after the murder of Mary Kelly. A coroner’s jury concluded that he had been of unsound mind. Much of the contemporary interest in Druitt rests on statements that investigators had ‘private information’ which led some to conclude that he was the murderer.
Among the most cited suspects is Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria. One theory has it that the prince suffered from syphilis and was driven insane by the disease, but this is countered by royal records which show him to have been away from London on the dates when each of the murders were committed. There are other theories which place the prince in a supporting role, most notably as the father of a child placed under the care of Mary Kelly. According to the most common version of this theory, Kelly was one of several women murdered by the physician Sir William Gull in an effort to suppress a scandal that would have jeopardized the future of the monarchy.
Some Ripperologists suspect Joseph Barnett, once the live-in lover of Mary Kelly, the Ripper’s last victim. The thinking in this theory goes that Barnett committed the first four murders as a way of scaring Kelly into giving up prostituting herself to other men. When this proved ineffective, he flew into a rage and murdered his girlfriend. Thus, Barnett’s link with Kelly would explain why the Ripper ceased killing after her murder.
Among the more fanciful theories is one claiming that Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, confessed his crimes through a series of anagrams found throughout his work...
DOCTOR THOMAS NEILL CREAM
Doctor Thomas Neill Cream is thought to have been responsible for the deaths of at least eight women and one man, yet it is for something that may have happened during his last second of life that he is best remembered. Sentenced to hang for the murder of a 27-year-old prostitute, on 16 November 1892 Cream stood silent and calm at the gallows at Newgate Prison. Then, quite suddenly, he is said to have uttered: ‘I am Jack...’
His final words were cut short when the trapdoor opened and the hangman’s noose broke his neck. To some, Cream’s statement was a confession that he was the murderer known as Jack the Ripper.
Cream’s journey to justice appears long, twisted, and peculiar – even when compared to those of other serial killers. He was born in Glasgow on 27 May 1850, the eldest of eight children. Four years later, the growing family migrated to Wolfe’s Cove, a small community not far from Quebec City, Canada. There, his father, William Cream, worked at a shipbuilding and lumber company before establishing the Cream Lumber Mill.
As the years passed, all the Cream boys would work in the mill. But Thomas was different from his brothers. A handsome young man, more interested in books than business, he left the mill in September 1872, enrolling in medicine at Montreal’s McGill University. Montreal was then the largest, wealthiest and most powerful city in the country. McGill held a position of similar stature within the world of academe. It was considered Canada’s foremost institution of learning, with a faculty of medicine that ranked among the most respected in North America.
A studious, if unexceptional student, within four years Cream graduated with a degree in medicine from McGill. At his convocation, he sat and listened as the dean delivered an address entitled ‘The Evils of Malpractice in the Medical Profession’. Immediately after the ceremony, Cream was confronted by the family of Flora Brooks, a teenage girl he had been courting. Flora had been taken ill shortly after Cream’s last visit to the family’s hotel in the rural Quebec town of Waterford. She was then examined by a local physician named Phelan, who determined that she had recently undergone an abortion. Confronted, Flora confessed that it was Cream who had performed the operation.
Unwillingly, Cream was taken back to Waterford, where a hasty wedding ceremony was performed. Flora’s honeymoon, however, was brief. She awoke the next morning to find her groom gone. Cream left nothing but a letter in which he promised to keep in touch.
The doctor made for London, England, where he registered at St Thomas’s Hospital. Cream hoped to gain the training and experience required to become a surgeon, but failed to pass the entrance requirements for the Royal College of Surgeons. He achieved greater success at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, where he earned a licence in midwifery.
It had been over a year since Cream had left his bride. While he had broken his marriage vows, the doctor had kept his promise to keep in touch. More than simple letters, he had been sending Flora medicine – which she dutifully took. After becoming ill, she was again examined by Dr Phelan who, upon learning of the mysterious prescription, advised her to ignore Cream’s instructions. Although she rallied briefly, in August 1877, Flora Cream died of what was officially described as ‘consumption’.
One year after the death of his wife, Cream returned to Canada. He set up practice in London, Ontario, over 700 kilometres away from Montreal. But it wasn’t long before he was again involved in a scandal. In May 1879, the body of one of his patients, a waitress named Kate Gardener, was discovered in a woodshed behind the building in which he had his office. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the unmarried woman had gone to the doctor in the hope of obtaining an abortion.
Cream stated that this was true, adding that he had refused her request. He argued that her death, the result of an overdose of chloroform, was a suicide. A subsequent inquest disproved the doctor’s theory – no bottle containing the chemical was found on the scene, and Gardener’s face had been badly scratched, indicating a struggle. Although there appeared to be no evidence that he had committed the crime, suspicion fell on Cream, leaving his practice in ruins.
In the summer of 1879, he moved to the United States, settling in Chicago, where he was obliged to take the state board of health exam. The day after receiving his passing grade, Cream set up practice in an area just outside the city’s red-light district. As his practice focused almost exclusively on providing abortions, it was a most convenient location. Most of the illegal operations were performed in rooms rented specifically for the purpose by a series of midwives he had recruited. When one of his patients, a prostitute named Mary Anne Faulkner, died, Cream’s lawyer managed to convince a jury that the good doctor had arrived on the scene in an attempt to save the victim of a botched abortion.
Within months, Cream again attracted the attention of the authorities when another patient, Ellen Stack, died after being prescribed anti-pregnancy pills. The medicine, assumed to have been of the doctor’s own design, included strychnine among its ingredients. This poison also played a role in the death of his first male victim, a railway agent named Daniel Stott, with whose wife Cream was having an affair. When the husband came to suspect the infidelity, Cream added strychnine to the medicine he had prescribed for the man’s epilepsy.
Cream might have again escaped justice were it not for his fear that the man’s death could somehow rebound on him. Intent on avoiding this possibility, he wrote a letter to the coroner in which he accused a local pharmacist of having added strychnine to Stott’s medicine. However, after the railway agent’s body was exhumed, and the presence of the poison discovered, it was upon Cream that suspicion fell. He fled, only to be caught in the town of Bell River, Ontario, 30 kilometres within the Canadian border.
Betrayed by Mrs Stott, who testified against her former lover in November 1881, Cream was sentenced to life in Joliet State Penitentiary. As the years passed, his brother Daniel worked for Cream’s release, a job made easier by a rather sizeable inheritance left to both men upon the pas
sing of their father. Daniel Cream used Thomas’s share of the money to ingratiate himself with a number of senior Illinois politicians. The ploy worked and on 21 July 1891, Cream received a pardon from the governor of Illinois, Joseph W. Fifer.
It was an aged, weakened Cream who travelled back to Quebec in order to collect the balance of his inheritance. In September, he set sail for Liverpool. Cream arrived in London, very much a changed man from the handsome young doctor who had once walked its streets. He suffered from poor eyesight and persistent headaches, which he attempted to alleviate through the ingestion of low-grade morphine. As ‘Thomas Neill, MD’, he passed himself off as a resident doctor from St Thomas’s, the very same hospital at which he had practised some 14 years earlier. It was under this cover that his greatest string of murders began.
The first victim was Nellie Donworth, a 19-year-old prostitute who was seen with a man matching Cream’s description in the early evening of 13 October 1891. Before the night was out she would die an agonizing death from strychnine poisoning. Seven days later, Cream poisoned another prostitute, 27-year-old Matilda Clover, using gelatine pills containing strychnine. She endured a night of great pain before dying the following morning. However, her death was not recorded as murder; rather her physician believed she had died from a lethal mixture of liquor and a sedative he had prescribed to help combat her alcoholism.
In late 1891, Cream began a courtship with Laura Sabbatini, an attractive would-be designer of dresses. Their relationship endured a four-month separation, during which Cream was obligated to return to Canada in order to finally settle his father’s estate. Whether his murder spree continued in the Dominion has always been a matter of speculation. What is known is that upon his return he attempted to poison a prostitute, Lou Harvey, with the claim that his gelatine pills of strychnine prevented pregnancy. However, she grew suspicious of the doctor and only pretended to take the pills. Two other prostitutes, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell, were less fortunate. On 11 April 1892, both suffered painful deaths in the hours after Cream left their shared flat.
The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases Page 4
