RIPPER THEFTS AND ANCIENT CODES: Fodder for Fiction
By Katherine Ramsland Recently, I published a supernatural murder mystery, The Ripper Letter , based around items related to Jack the Ripper. It all began with a mysterious correspondence known as the letter “From Hell.” Let’s get some background first about the 1888 crime spree in London’s Whitechapel. Not everyone agrees on when it began, but officially, it was the end of August. Two prostitutes were murdered in two separate events a week apart before the so-called “double event,” two killed on the same night in September. Two weeks later, a letter came to the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, accompanied by a grisly trophy: half of a kidney, seemingly preserved in alcohol. There have been many stories about this kidney, from it being a practical joke by a medical student to being the very kidney that had been cut from one of the victims. The note's author indicated that he'd fried and eaten the other half, which was “very nise.” He offered to sen...