Jane The Ripper

Note: Yesterday's post was so popular I had to play with the idea. This was just an option I came up with. Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!

Genre: Mystery/Historical Fiction

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Nari pushed open the trap door and climbed the last steps into the attic. Afternoon light filtered through one of the old windows, illuminating the inches of dust. The smell of mothballs assaulted her.

Ten years had passed since she’d last been in her grandmother’s attic. Nari had won a game of hide and seek with her cousins by sneaking into the forbidden area and accidently locking herself in. She’d been too scared of her grandmother’s wrath to ever return.

“How in the hell did I not fall through the floor?”

The attic had never been finished, with several floorboards missing and insulation exposed. Nari wiped her forehead. The cool fall air outside did little to cool the unsealed room.

She crept around the junk, hopping over the dirty insulation. The old chifferobe should be in the corner, unless one of her greedy cousins had already pilfered it. Nana James had only been buried a few days, and the twins were eager to snag everything they could before anyone could sort through Nana’s effects.

The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, and she didn’t see any footprints. Hers would be the first.

“Mom’s just going to have to deal with it. I’m not looking for shit to sell,” Nari muttered. She’d spent the morning reassuring herself she wasn’t like the boys—all she wanted was to find the thing that had haunted her since she was fifteen.

Still, she felt like a thief. But she wasn’t stopping. Nari had waited long enough.

A set of old, mahogany French doors lie in the middle of the room. From their faded appearance and the tarnished brass fixtures, Nari guessed they were original to the old farmhouse. She stepped around them. A black spider scuttled out from underneath the doors and scrambled to decayed cardboard box.

Nari shivered. God only knew how many of those little bastards were hanging out up here.

The dark corner was blocked by boxes and copious amounts of junk. Nari was amazed at some of the things her grandparents had kept: faucet fixtures, a worn out set of fireplace tools that still stunk of ashes, half of a Lionel train set. Grampy James had even stashed a rusted Radio Flyer wagon up here.

She began clearing a path. Within minutes her shirt was damp with sweat and her hair hung limp. The humidity was almost unbearable.

But she could see her quarry.

The chifferobe had been in Nari’s family for generations. Grampy had said it had made the journey from England with her great-grandfather. By the looks of the large piece, she could believe it. Made of solid oak, the chifferobe’s finish was faded. The bottom had several scuffs, and the wardrobe door didn’t latch.

This was the temptation that had caught her eye as a teenager. What sort of treasures could have been hiding in there?

Now she knew there were no treasures, just a frightening mystery. Or the ramblings of an old man.

Nari pulled open the sagging door, praying no creatures would emerge. The box of letters remained where she’d left them, the lid still on.

She knelt down and pushed it aside. Dust swirled in her face. Her eyes watered and she pressed her nose against her forearm. Last thing she needed was to sneeze all over the letters. They were yellowed with age and brittle to the touch. A sneeze would probably destroy them.

The thing she sought was all the way at the bottom, right where she’d stashed it. The leather journal had originally been at the top of the pile, but Nari had feared the twins would find it. They didn’t deserve to know the family secret.

“It’s probably bullshit.” She gently moved the letters aside and felt around for the journal. “Carson James was ninety when he died. His mind was probably mush.”

But she had to read more. The journal’s first entry had rattled in her brain for ten years. She needed to know why Carson had believed such a heinous thing.

Nari felt the soft leather beneath her fingers. She pulled the journal out and carefully opened it. Carson James had died in 1956; the journal was over fifty years old and the binding had torn.

She didn’t bother to read the first entry again. Nari looked only at the last sentence, the one she’d never forgotten.

My mother was Jack the Ripper.

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Was Jack The Ripper A Woman?

Last night I was surfing The Huffington Post and came across a story about an Australian scientist who performed DNA testing on one of the Ripper letters. For those who don’t know, several letters were sent to police during the time of the murders. Most are believed to be fakes, but a few are considered to be authentic. Scientists using technology that’s way above my head took swabs from the back of the stamps and the seal of the envelope to process for DNA. There’s a lot more to the science, but you get the point. Reports were inconclusive, but enough of a profile was constructed for the scientist to claim the Ripper could have been a woman.

Seriously?! Don’t get me wrong – there have been more female serial killers than people realize. Countess Elizabeth Batheroy murdered hundreds of peasant women in the Middle Ages in order to drink their blood and remain young. Some go so far as to suggest she may have been the real inspiration for Dracula instead of Vlad the Impaler. There’s also Amelia Dyer, a.k.a The Baby Butcher, who murdered several infants while “baby farming,” a practice in turn-of-the-century England for illegitimate and poor mothers. Aileen Wuornos is another notorious female serial killer, and many more paved the way before her.

Still, it’s just hard to imagine a woman could be responsible for something as heinous as the Ripper murders. At least five proven victims in Whitechapel (and likely more) were mutilated by the Ripper, their throats and genitalia slashed open. Could a woman really have done such a thing?

I have to admit, it’s possible. There’s all types of crazy in this world, and for all our modern advances, people weren’t that different during Jack’s time. I could see a religious woman with a crazy gene seeking to rid the streets of London from the filthy prostitutes.

Makes for a good story, doesn’t it?

According to history, the detective who ran the investigation thought it was possible the Ripper could be a woman because Mary Kelly was seen hours after her death, with the Ripper wearing her clothes. The only female suspect had a similar M.O. to the Ripper, so it’s impossible to rule out the option, especially with the new DNA evidence.

If this is true, no wonder the case has never been solved. The police were looking in the wrong place! Investigators leaned heavily toward the male suspects, and many believed the Ripper had some sort of surgical training or was a skilled butcher. Those theories have never been proven and are still argued to this day.

Jack the Ripper wasn’t the world’s first serial killer by any means, but he was the first to garner worldwide media attention. Reporters went crazy with their theories, and the investigation was tainted by their interference. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Now imagine if the Ripper had been a woman and the media frenzy that would have created.

‘Sweet, Victorian housewife slaughters prostitutes while her babies sleep.’

The press would have loved her!

We’ll probably never know the truth. Then again, genetic profiling and the science of DNA advances at the rate rabbits reproduce, so who knows what we’ll learn about the Ripper in a few years. Maybe the geniuses will come up with some trick to get a full profile from what little biological stuff is left.

I doubt it. Jack the Ripper will continue to live in infamy, the stuff of legend and folklore. Tourists will flock to Whitechapel to follow the trail of the murders, butterflies in their stomachs as they walk the streets. They’ll listen to the tour guides tell the story, all the while thinking what a hideous man the Ripper was.

But who knows? Perhaps Jack was a Jane, after all.