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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
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My Mochi. hey weirdos i'm ash and i'm elena and this is morbid you've seen it you know it it's us you've at least heard it yeah you yeah yeah yeah yeah you know you've done all of that It's like, what time is it?
I was going to say it's late, but when we say it, it's not going to seem late.
Yeah, well, it's late. It's like 8 o'clock.
It's pretty fucking late, guys. It's late, especially today.
It's just been a long day. It's been, you know, long day.
Long day. But you know what? Here we are.
Here we be. I told you we were going into part two of the Maybrick saga.
And we are here. Yeah. It just made me want to say Maybach music.
And I don't think you'll get that, but somebody will.
But I like that you said that. I don't know what it's for, but it works.
You know how rap songs have the openings to them?
Where it's like, damn, son, where'd you find this?
Sure. You've never heard a damn, son, where'd you find this song in my car before?
No, I don't think I have. Or I haven't heard that part of it.
There's a Maybach music one, too. Well, there you go.
Maybach music. So that's exactly like this.
And... We talked to you in the last episode about Florence Maybrick and her, in my opinion, very wild conviction for murdering her husband through poisoning that they could never prove he even died of.
Pour one out for Miss Flo. Here's the thing.
Maybe she could have. I don't know if she did because we can't even prove that he died of poisoning.
So I really think it's a moot point. He just died of...
Now, I told you we were going to get a little more into James Maybrick.
We're going to get into a weird part of James Maybrick is what we're going to do.
Because he is listed among the suspects of Jack the Ripper.
In a lot of places. Yeah. And he's on every list.
I keep seeing him. I kept looking into him.
I'm like, why though? And it seems to mostly be he's a rich guy.
He was kind of an asshole. And he was around the area at the time.
That'll do it. So when I first saw him on there and I was reading about him, I'm like, well, you're not a good suspect.
That's not compelling at all. I really liked the ones that had like something else to it.
Yeah. Anything else. Yeah. But then in 1991... a man named Michael Barrett, and I meant 1991.
I really thought you said the wrong date.
I know, Ashley looked at me like, you're saying the wrong date.
I was like, I think you meant 1891. I did not.
I mean, 1991, a guy named Michael Barrett, who was a scrap metal merchant by trade, came forward with a truly magnificent discovery.
He came to a British pubbler, Publer. What's a publer?
I've never heard of those. It's been a long day.
A British publisher. Publer, I don't really know.
He went to a publer. He went to a publer.
It's like a publisher and a cobbler. They do both.
Get you a tradesman who can do both. So he went to a British publisher and he said, hey, I have this diary.
And he claimed that this diary was written by none other than Jack the Ripper himself.
Doubt it. This would have been astonishing by itself, if that's all it was.
But this diary also hinted, but never explicitly states the name, but it's very, you'll see why, that Jack the Ripper was actually none other than James Maybrick.
Also doubt it. So this is Jack the Ripper's diary, and in it, it is very clear that Jack the Ripper is James Maybrick.
So already it's like, whoa. The thought of Jack the Ripper keeping a diary is just like, kind of lol.
Exactly. And don't you worry, I'm going to go bit by bit.
You know I wasn't going to let this slide without really picking this apart.
I feel like he didn't go home after like brutally murdering people and write like, there's a diary, today was a day.
Oh, trust me, that's not what he wrote. Yeah.
In case you guys don't remember, I'm a full-blown ripperologist now.
How could you forget? I'm going to get a certificate to go on my wall because that's how bad it is.
Is that a thing you can do? I honestly don't know, but I just want to make one.
I'm good at word. I have been driving John crazy for literally months at this point.
John? Just John? Do you know why it's just John?
I'm just kidding. No, it's not just John, but you know why I say John?
Because he lives with you. You get to escape.
I leave. And at night while we're in bed, I'll just be like, But, you know, it doesn't make sense because blah, blah, blah.
And he's like, oh, my God. He's like, Elena, I'm sleeping.
He's like, I literally can't. And the other day I was like, can we go to London?
And he was like, that would be wonderful someday.
Like, let's go to London someday. And I was like, can we go to follow the path of Jack the Ripper so that I can solve the case once and for all?
And he was like, that's not exactly why I want to go to London.
But like... I feel like all three of us want to go to London for very different reasons.
Very different reasons. I'd like to go because fashion.
You'd like to go because Ripper. And John would like to go.
Because the Beatles. Because the Beatles.
That's why. Andrew's just coming to be there.
Just to love him. Just to be Drew. Just to be Drew.
But either way, this diary is saying, hey, this was written by Jack the Ripper.
And Jack the Ripper happens to be James Maybrick, our cotton merchant friend who died of some kind of illness that could have been maybe arsenic poisoning, but probably wasn't.
It more likely was just an accidental overdose of some kind.
Yeah? Yeah. So in fact, the diary tells a harrowing tale of madness, depravity, anger at his unfaithful wife, and then suddenly redemption and remorse.
Redemption for Jack? Oh, yes. It ends with a Jack the Ripper sign-off, Eight days before James Maybrick's death.
Weirdly, it had to be in the room with him when he died, if that's the case.
Because remember, he was really sick, bedridden for at least two weeks before he died.
So we're claiming in this diary that he was writing this in the room where all his staff and his wife and doctors and nurses were all around him.
In the room where it happened. In the room where it happened.
I was so excited to be the one to make that reference.
Thank you for that. So we're saying that he's writing this in that room with all these people around where he is supposedly delirious at times.
Yeah. Like he's going to be able to hide this from people in that state.
He did a little like misery business. Yeah.
And then on top of that, we're claiming that this happened and then he was able to hide it.
And then he died in that room. Someone else bought that house.
And we didn't come across this till 1991.
Me thinks not. It's almost like it didn't exist at the time and was made later.
You know? Is that what happened? Weird. I don't know.
But Michael Barrett first said that he changed this story quite a bit.
He said, first he received this diary from a friend who just gave it to him in a pub one day. what luck here would you like jack the ripper's diary yes sir thank you sure would oh but that friend died so no you can't confirm or verify this in case you were wondering that that friend is dead curious of course then he was like oh no you know what it was um it was found during a house renovation okay yeah it was found in the wall in the wall it's always found in the wall so of course the publisher was like um That all sounds a little too good to be true.
And when he was asked more questions about it, he admitted that he actually received the diary from his own wife, Anne.
Thanks, Anne. And Anne had told him that it was actually a family heirloom of hers.
Jack the Ripper's diary is an heirloom. Literally next sentence I wrote, Jack the Ripper's diary was a family heirloom.
Like, what? I just, what? Passed down amongst generations.
Imagine being in that family and you're like...
On your 16th birthday. It's now your time.
To read Uncle Jack's diary. What the fuck?
Your family might be fucked. I would literally be like, has anyone thought to go to the police?
Has anyone through the generations thought to go to the police and say, I know who did it?
Yeah. So apparently, again, apparently no one was concerned that a family just had held onto this for decades and decades and never told anyone.
They were just like, yeah, that sounds right.
Apparently I'm concerned. Now it doesn't say in this diary, hello world, I'm James Maybrick, but it's pretty clear whoever wrote this is trying to point the flashing neon finger at James Maybrick.
There are a lot of entries that make reference to pieces of James's life and family.
Theorists that like this diary and like the conclusion that this is actually James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper also point to the idea that he must have been so enraged by his wife having that one affair.
Because remember, Florence did have an affair with Briarley there.
So the theory here is that James Maybrick was so pissed that she was having this affair that he took it out on sex workers in Whitechapel.
Question mark, question mark, question mark.
So we're just blaming the Jack the Ripper murders on a woman and on Florence, of all women.
The woman hasn't been fucking railroaded enough.
Now she is the genesis of one of the worst crimes in history.
I want to know whose Cheerios she pissed in.
Yeah, checks out. It was someone. We also remember that he had several affairs and fathered several children.
Yeah. We all remember that? This isn't like, okay, just making sure.
Yeah. So the diary is really... So I read the whole thing.
You can read it. It's like there's a book that was published where the author believes that it could be genuine.
I don't. But that's my opinion. And at the end of the book, they have transcribed the entire diary.
You can also see a nice picture of it, like the handwritten, because it's obviously handwritten.
But... The diary is really way over the top, in my opinion.
I'm surprised anyone fell for this. It's very... There's a lot of whores this and whores that every five seconds.
Very what you would expect from Jack the Ripper's caricature diary.
Like, very much... what a teenager would think Jack the Ripper speaks like, kind of thing.
Sounds like fanfic. Very much like a bad, bad fanfic.
He uses the words, I am so clever, a lot.
He talks about Aberline ad nauseum. He writes poems about Aberline.
It's very over the top. Yeah. It mentioned Battlecree's house, I believe twice, which remember Battlecree's house was what the Maybrick's home was called.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. That's another reason it's quite clearly pointing to James Maybrick because that's the name of his house.
Yeah. It's a very obvious nod. And it talks at length about how he feels like a fool because his wife is, quote, whoring herself out to a, quote, whoring master.
Whoa. I assume we are meant to believe this is Alfred Briarley, the whoring master.
This is also just not really in line with them, even like James Maybrick and Florence...
Even when they were fighting with each other... They weren't that nasty.
And that's the thing. Like, they had obviously some shit going on.
But even their staff, who admittedly seemed like they really didn't like Florence, never heard him call her a whore or anything really.
Never called... Like, he was never reported as using that term often.
By their own testimonies at the coroner's inquest after James' death...
Even the fights, like, right before his death, where they were, like, at their worst, he referred to her as Flory and Bunny.
Yeah. And now in his diary, it's things like, quote, I shall take the whore tonight, speaking of Florence.
That's terrible. Or, quote, the whore wants to come on the trip to see Michael.
Jesus. Yeah. We know James Maybrick at least once physically abused Florence.
So we can't absolve him of all possibility that he called her these things behind closed doors.
And in his diary where it's private. That's the thing.
So I'm by no means going to say that he didn't use those words.
He very well could have. Because if he is capable of punching her in the eye, he is absolutely capable of calling her a whore.
So there is that. You've got to present all the facts here.
But still... In the diary, it's just so over the top.
It feels very performative in the whole thing.
An entry reads, because I'll go through a few entries because I'm just, I, John was like, will you save this for the podcast?
Because I was just going off. He was like, get on the microphone now.
Let it out. The other morning when I came in, he was like, get ready, Ash.
She's on one. She is on one. Didn't he say like, you should just call Ash right now?
Yeah, he literally, it was like 1130 at night and I was still going through it.
And he was like, you should just call Ash and start recording now because this is too much for me to handle.
So an entry says, quote, received a letter from Michael.
Oh, look, it's James's brother, Michael.
Perhaps I will visit him. We'll have to come to some sort of decision regarding the children.
I long for peace of mind, but I sincerely believe that will not come until I've sought my revenge on the whore and the whore master.
This is thought to be one of the references to Florence and her paramour.
It lays the groundwork for this being Florence's fault.
Right. Which is nice. It mentions James Maybrick's children when it says, quote, What has the whore said?
Mrs. Hammersmith is a bitch. The fresh air and stroll did me good, for while I succeeded in forgetting the bitch in her whoring master.
Bobo is a nickname they very often used for James Maybrick Jr.
Little James. Oh, okay. bobo was like literally what they called him and then gladys was the daughter again we have a lot of bitch we have a lot of whore we have whoring master and then you get a lot of crime scene hot takes and emotions after the uh supposed ripper murders here like one of them says it has taken me three days to recover i will not feel guilty it is the whoring bitch to blame not i i ate all of it it did not taste like fresh fried bacon but i enjoyed it nevertheless the Okay, immediately wrong.
She was so sweet and pleasurable. I've left the stupid fools a clue, which I'm sure they will not solve.
Once again, I've been clever. Very clever.
I don't buy this. You can believe whatever you want about this.
Maybe this rings very real to you if you're hearing it or reading it.
And I'm not here to tell you that I know for sure what is right and what is wrong here.
To me, it's very Jack the Ripper. It's a character.
It's not the reality. It's not the real killer.
It's very Jack the Ripper. Mm-hmm. He also refers to his crimes as his campaign.
And he also says, like, my dirty deeds. Ew, bye.
Now, then he suddenly uses his noggin. Because I'm reading this, and I'm sitting there going...
So this guy's just going home and writing all this down.
He's getting away with everything, but he's just going to write it all down.
Like what? Yeah. But suddenly he starts using his noggin and he says, I'm beginning to believe it unwise to continue writing.
No shit. Clever. No shit. And then he says, if I am to down a whore, nothing shall lead the pursuers back to me.
Except this diary you're keeping in a home that will become a crime scene soon.
I am to believe a human who is able to leave no trace of himself at every crime scene did these things in the dead of night pitch black in minutes on crowded streets and then disappeared without ever being detective.
Detected. Is now writing this all down in an easily discoverable diary that is never found somehow.
And also now breaking the fourth wall, kind of, by questioning the logic of this very act that he is doing.
Yep. No. Yeah, no. Because now he's sitting there being like, huh, I wonder if I should be doing this.
I'm going to do it anyway. Well, and even when he just said, like, I won't feel guilty, I don't think Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, would have even spent a second even thinking about feeling guilty.
Oh, you have seen nothing yet. Wait until we get to the end.
Oh, God. So the other thing is, when we talked about James Maybrick and Florence Maybrick, A big crux of the issue was that the things that weren't being allowed in Florence's trial were the fact that James was heavily into medicating, like self-medicating, and using chemicals.
He was an arsenic eater. So in this diary, he mentions medicines too much.
Like, we get it. You're James Maybrick, the walking prescription medication wearing a human suit.
Like, we get it. Too heavy-handed. Someone read a lot about Maybrick's tendency to prescribe himself medicine and take, like, lethal chemicals, and they figured they should make sure to put that in the book.
Like, maybe just do a book report about it, essentially, because they mention it that much.
And... Again, who knows? I truly, my stance on this is this is complete bullshit.
This is not a real diary. But I'm also, and I think I know I talked about this in the five-part series we did on Jack the Ripper, I'm a staunch believer that the Dear Boss letter is a hoax.
Right. I don't believe it. It's the one I refuse to acknowledge or even entertain as possibly Jack the Ripper's.
I don't believe he named himself Jack the Ripper.
No. I don't think that ever happened. I don't think he looked at his deeds as funny little games, which is what he wrote in that letter.
And isn't it funny that, like, you look at that and you're like, no, funny little games.
That just doesn't ring true to me. But isn't it funny that in this diary, he writes...
I could not resist mentioning my deeds to George.
I was clever and brought up the subject by way of how fortunate we were not having murders of that kind in the city.
He agreed with me completely. Indeed, he went on to say that he believed we had the finest police force in the land.
And although we have our fair share of troubles, the women folk can walk the streets in safety.
And indeed, they can, for I will not play my funny little games on my own doorstep.
Ha ha. The ha-ha is also from the hoax letters.
Yeah. This is somebody who believes those hoax letters, or at least liked them, and decided to adopt the same manner of speaking.
Exactly. Now, he mentions coming up with a rhyme, and it's a rhyme about one of the victims.
It was like this really, like, crass rhyme that he came up with in the diary.
And then he's talking about it in the diary, and he says how upset he is that he forgot the chalk at the crime scene to write that poem down.
Oh, okay. Yeah. And I feel like this is all very taken from the well-known things about the Ripper case.
Right. One, he didn't leave any rhyming chalk poems anywhere.
Uh-uh. But we do know about the chalk writing that Sir Charles Warren erased himself because he couldn't wait for the crime scene photographers to come show up.
Mm-hmm. Idiot. But that's there. It's a big thing in the Ripper case.
I feel like that's a little nod. Totally.
Saying like, I wish I had the chalk with me.
And then he writes, I have read all of my deeds and they have done me proud.
I had to laugh. They have me down as left-handed, a doctor, a slaughter man, and a Jew.
Very well. If they are to insist that I'm a Jew, then a Jew I shall be.
Why not let the Jews suffer? I have never taken to them.
You just said that you would be a Jew. And if I wasn't already convinced that the author of this diary really loved that Dear Boss letter, this is pretty similar to when it says, they say I'm a doctor now, ha ha ha.
Yep. Like, can you be a little bit more subtle here?
He talks about the Mary Kelly crime scene in the diary.
He wrote, I left nothing of her face to remember her by.
Except her eyes. You distinctly left her eyes untouched.
Did you forget that? Right. Or were you just never at that crime scene?
He also never says what he did with her heart.
He writes everything in this diary, graphic details.
He relishes in talking about it, but no mention of the heart and what he did to it.
No bragging to himself here. Right. Is that because you don't know where the heart is?
Exactly. So he talks extensively again about whores and taking whores and how they're, he always says they open like a ripe peach.
Jesus Christ. That's the phrase he used.
And he talks about Aberline so many times.
Like I said, he makes rhymes about Aberline.
He refers to him thinking about his own children and how it distracts him.
And he wants to stop thinking about his children because it's ruining what he's doing.
That's dark. But then he talks about Florence as the whore and the bitch and is unflinchingly vile about her.
But then all of a sudden... So he's gone on and on, like...
Florence is the worst thing ever. She's a whore.
She's a bitch. She's this, she's that. Talking about this disgusting thing.
They open like a ripe peach, this, that, blah, blah, blah.
Then out of nowhere, he's suddenly having regrets.
Out of nowhere. It's this very, like a poorly, hastily written novel.
He's suddenly, things turn. Yeah. He has regrets.
He now loves Florence. And he wants to move forward with her because love has saved him from himself.
What? He literally writes towards the end, My God, I'm tired.
I do not know if I can go on. Bunny and the children are all that matter.
No regrets. No regrets. I shall not allow such thoughts to enter my head.
Tonight I will take my thinking knife and be rid of it.
Now, he said, throw it deep within the river.
So now this diary is allowing itself to say, oh, the reason you never found a murder weapon is because it's way deep in the river.
You'll never find it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Throw it deep in the river. I shall return to Battle Crease with the knowledge that I can no longer continue my campaign.
Tis love that spurned me so. Tis love that shall put an end to it.
No, bye. He then wants forgiveness. He says, quote, tonight I will pray for the women I have slaughtered.
May God forgive me for the deeds I committed on Kelly.
Probably not. No heart. No heart. Again, no mention of what he did to it.
Just no heart. It popped up in the paper and you saw it?
He's eager to talk about it in graphic detail throughout the diary, but now he's shy.
He doesn't want to talk about that crime scene anymore.
But then, the piece de la resistance. He weaves in a perfect explanation for his death at the hands of Florence.
He claims he told her the truth. In this diary, he says, I told Florence what I did.
So now he's claiming that James Maybrick told Florence he is Jack the Ripper.
Yeah. And he says, quote, the pain is unbearable.
My dear bunny knows all. I do not know if she has the strength to kill me.
I pray to God she finds it. It would be simple.
She knows of my medicine, and for an extra dose or two, it would be all over.
No one will ever know I've seen to it. And he literally, so he's saying with an extra dose or two when he himself was well known to dose himself over.
Exactly. An extra dose or two isn't going to do it for him.
And you know that. He's a known double doser.
Yeah. He's not going to, but I just love that it's, It's worked so perfectly in there that like, oh, so there was this big trial and Florence was convicted and almost hanged and then she was released.
And wow, okay, we can really weave this into the story, into the narrative here and say that actually James Maybrick told her he was Jack the Ripper and then told her to kill him.
And she only did it because he told her.
And that she had to. I do not buy it. So it makes this big legend with it that like, oh, she did kill him and it was because she found this out.
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Now he then signs off with the theatrical flair of like a Broadway star.
He says, quote, soon I trust I shall be laid beside my dead mother and father.
I shall seek their forgiveness when we are reunited.
God, I pray will allow me at least that privilege, although I know only too well I do not deserve it.
My thoughts will remain intact for a reminder to all how love does destroy.
I place this now in a place where it shall be found.
I pray whoever would read this will find it in their heart to forgive me.
Remind all, whoever you may be, that I was once a gentle man.
May the good Lord have mercy on my soul and forgive me for all I have done.
Tout it. I want you to line that last passage up next to every single crime scene and every single morgue photograph of the canonical five and tell me if that's the same guy.
No. That's a hard no, my friends. That is a hard no.
And he literally writes at the end, I give my name that all known of me.
So history do tell what love can do to a gentle man.
Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. This was dated May 3rd, 1889.
He died, James Maybrick died May 11th, 1889.
So he wrote this while Florence was nursing him day and night.
And like about to kill him. Yeah. And here's the thing that really gets me.
You're telling me that the first fucking card Florence could have pulled when she was accused of murder was that James Maybrick admitted to being Jack the Ripper and also had written a detailed diary of the crimes that was in his room and she didn't pull that card?
Sentenced to hang and never said, hey, I don't know if this helps my case, but he was literally Jack the Ripper and I can prove it?
14 years in prison and she never said, hey, this sucks.
Would it help if I could prove he was Jack the Ripper?
It's astonishing that people believe this.
No, that's really insane. She never pulled that card.
Right. Never was like, hey... Did I mention that he was Jack the fucking Ripper and he has an entire diary of the crimes hidden in his room?
Right. Because I can see where she would have, if he was Jack the Ripper and had admitted this to her, he could have told her that, but she wouldn't have known about the diary.
No. Right. But it's like... You could literally be like, he's Jack the Ripper.
Right. And who knows? Maybe he doesn't say she doesn't know about the diary.
He could have told her. Yeah, he could have.
And either way, it's like, dude, he admitted it.
At least bring it up. Right. It would have been in the paper.
And she would have. Yeah, of course she would have.
Or she would have even said it later when she got out of prison and like talked about prison reform.
She'd be like, you know who should have gone to prison though?
Jack the Ripper, who was my husband. Who died.
So like, cool. But there's also a section where he talks about grabbing a drink after one of the murders or...
I don't even know if it was after one of the murders, but it's like when he was like scouting or something.
And he talks about having a drink at the Post House, which is a pub in Liverpool.
But at the time of the Ripper killings, it was not called the Post House.
It was called the Muckmidden. Oops. Oh, okay.
Hello. Yeah. So that's a problem. A lot of people wonder who believe this diary say that the way he writes it is the P-O-S-T-E house.
And it was actually called the P-O-S-T house.
And they think that like maybe he could be talking about the post office and that he had a drink and then went to the post office or he did something.
It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a reach.
It's like me fighting for Angel. It is. On the rewatcher.
A little too far on the rewatcher. Check it out.
Yeah, it's true. Ash went really hard. I respect it.
Thank you. But yeah, this is one of those cases where it's like... This we don't respect.
We don't. This is not okay. This is a bunch of shenanigans.
So all of that. So that's what that diary contains, like some of the really like juicy bits.
So this was brought to the publisher. All of that is in there.
And the publisher was like... No, I don't really know about that.
And I guess Warner Books, which was the US distributor that was speaking to the British publisher about actually publishing this with a wide release.
But first they were like, okay, this seems a little weird, but they were like, we really want to like authenticate this.
There's got to be a way to tell. So they spoke with Kenneth Rendell, who is an expert on manuscripts and historical documents like this one.
And he had actually been the one to figure out that the Hitler diaries were fraudulent.
Oh. So he was especially prepared to take on this kind of investigation.
So Rendell teamed up with Joe Nickel, who was the, he's an author himself, and they began investigating this manuscript.
So Joe figured out pretty quickly that he was like, this seems like someone who's really trying to prove they know things about the Ripper case.
Like this is just one of those like, hey, I know these weird little details.
And he said the handwriting was a problem immediately for him.
It didn't match James Maybrick's handwriting in any way, shape, or form.
Like, this would have had to be him disguising his handwriting to the fullest extent.
And for him to sit there and disguise his handwriting like that, well, supposedly right after he's committed these crimes doesn't make a lot of sense.
It's also supposed to be pretty hard to disguise your handwriting.
It is, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And what he said about it was, it was as though someone had tried to make ye olde antique-y looking writing by adding curly Qs.
And it really does. So it was sent for forensic testing.
And this is where it gets tough because there was no real conclusion one way or another.
Some tests said it was inconclusive how old it was.
Some said it was definitely not old at all, but they still couldn't tell by paper and stuff.
Three different experts said three different things about the ink used.
Even though it was thought that it could be mildly old, they were like, maybe it's in the last 20 years, we could say.
Yeah. Realistically, it was not the Jack the Ripper's diary.
Not the last hundred, though. No, definitely not.
So they concluded it was very likely a hoax.
And in 1993, there was a report created that said this is likely fake.
Warner Books was like, no, thank you. We don't want to publish this.
But Hyperion Books published it with author Shirley Harrison. who seems to sincerely believe that it could be genuine.
So, you know, there's that. In 1994, Michael Barrett then confessed that he had forged the diary.
Oh, okay. He said he used an old family scrapbook album.
And he bought ink and pen to make it look authentic.
And then he said he would type out the words and give them to his wife, Ann, and she would handwrite them.
Or he would dictate verbally to her and she would write it.
Okay. There are, I think, two affidavits that he signed explaining this.
Then later he said, just kidding, I didn't do that.
It's real. yeah I don't know yeah it's also believed again that the diary that the diary itself is older like it's an older album yeah that was used to create this forgery but definitely not from 1888 no Basically, it's a hoax, but it might just be hoaxing from like 1980 or something, you know, like not that old.
And again, Barrett admitted to doing it, but then took it back like twice.
And you said he signed something. Two affidavits that explain how it was done.
And then he said. Retracted. Not true. Retracted.
My lie was a lie. Yeah, just kidding about it.
But get this. James doesn't get off the hook yet, even if this is a hoax.
He's not off the hook yet. Okay. We haven't cleared him.
Sure, there is no actual evidence to say he's Jack, but that doesn't mean the Maybrick name is forgotten.
Actor and author Bruce Robinson believes that Michael Maybrick is the real Ripper.
He believes that Michael, who was actually a singer and composer, which I didn't know.
Fun fact. He believes that he killed people and sent the Ripper letters while he was on tour at the time.
Crickets. He has done a ton of research.
He truly believes these theories. I'm not here to say he's full of shit.
I don't agree with his theory at all, but I also don't have my own smoking gun evidence either to claim that I know who Jack the Ripper is.
Tobias does. Honestly, I'm kind of on the Tobias train at this point.
But he is really fired up about this. He has written things about it.
He believes it. Who am I to say? He's one of those theorists who are on the Freemason Jack the Ripper train.
You know how I feel about the Freemason theory.
Freemason. Freemason. The Freemason. You know how I feel about the Freemason theory.
The Freemason of it all. It's late. You know how... People are like, bitch, it's 8.
It's 8. I'm like, it's late. It is late.
You know how I feel about the Freemason shit, though, when it comes to the Ripper theories.
It just, it doesn't work for me. People thought that Sarah Winchester was also a Freemason.
And I was like, y'all, they don't love women.
Yeah, there's many issues with that one.
Y'all. But he believed, so Robinson believed that Michael and his brother James Maybrick were Freemasons.
But he was into the idea that this whole Ripper thing was a Masonic planned ritualistic crime and that it had to do with James's death and that people involved with Florence's trial and the investigation were all involved in the Ripper murders.
It was very deep. Okay. It's a lot. Okay.
I don't believe that. He says Michael hated Florence and was in the areas of the Ripper killings at the right time because of the tour.
He would hit the right places at the right times.
Why wouldn't Michael just kill Florence if he didn't like her that much?
Yeah, I wondered that myself. Yeah. But I don't know.
Like, if he's capable of killing five other women that brutally and he, like, really didn't like Florence and then he thought that she killed his brother, he wouldn't try to kill her?
Maybe he has an explanation for that. I have not found it.
All right. But he thinks Michael moved on from Whitechapel after the Mary Kelly murder and went to the Isle of Wight and then to the U.S.
And he connects these crimes with the Servant Girl Annihilator crimes.
That's what... I don't know much about those.
We are going to cover those eventually, but he believes that there's a connection.
Okay. So there's that. I don't necessarily believe that one.
You know, write in. Let us know if you do.
I don't believe that one. So I decided, you know, we got to close on something that like has some meat to it.
Because to me, those don't really have meat to it.
I don't feel good about them. I don't feel good about them at all.
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So I had said I would return to some Ripper theories and suspects after a short break from that five part series.
And here I am. It was a pretty short break because the Maybricks lead right into it.
Ah, so let's talk about Charles Leachmere or Charles Cross.
Now, this is the suspect that we spoke about on the Tobias Forge episode we did a few weeks back.
I'm really upset with myself that when you said, or Charles Cross, I didn't say, if you're nasty.
Oh, I love it. So I'm saying that now. There you go.
I like it. So Tobias is convinced this is the guy.
You know, our friend Tobias. Tobias. So I was compelled to look further into him because admittedly, I love Tobias Forge.
And also I do. I do. I don't know if you guys know this, but I had also completely passed over even looking into Charles Cross very much when we did our series because he wasn't a suspect mentioned a lot or with any real compelling evidence on the surface.
Right. So I just kind of like passed over him.
I was like, you know, whatever. Then I took a dive after this because I was like, well, I got to know because Tobias was very, I mean, if you listen to the episode, he's convinced.
And he had like backup. He had reasons. And I was like, oh.
His answer to that question was like 10 minutes long.
Yeah. I was like, wow. In a good way. Yeah.
And I was like, I got to know. So I took a dive.
He's actually kind of a decent suspect. You do be diving.
It really shows how this case is like a labyrinth of theories and evidence.
Like it's no wonder it hasn't been officially solved because the sheer amount of information is stunning.
And you can just keep uncovering and uncovering and uncovering.
It's wild. I love it. Now I know why people get obsessed with this case because it just never ends.
Now, when Tobias laid out his theory and the reasons for it, we were intrigued.
We were like, hmm, I remember that name.
Because it really does make sense that this guy is local.
He's unassuming. He said his mom lived near the crime scenes.
Oh, yeah. We're not there yet. I was asking.
Yeah, we're not there yet. We're going to get to it.
Don't worry. Okay. And he was someone that was likely looked at, talked to, or at the very least mentioned somewhere in the investigation.
And it makes sense that Jack the Ripper probably was mentioned in some report somewhere, like the real one.
Yeah. Because he was probably close to a crime scene or somebody saw him or something and we just don't know it.
I don't think he was some traveling singer like Michael Maybrick, some random cotton merchant who just rolled in like James Maybrick.
Yeah. Or a Freemason gang hellbent on ritualistic murder.
I don't think any of that. Probably not.
I do still believe medical knowledge is important here, but I'm willing to suspend that a bit to entertain this theory because it does fit very well.
So this man does not have medical knowledge.
Not in the traditional sense. Okay. Is there untraditional medical knowledge?
Well, yeah, because he's not a doctor. Yeah, yeah.
No, I was just kidding. Now, Charles Leachmere, or Charles Cross, as we know him, and we'll get to that.
There you go. And we're going to get to the reason why there's two names here, was never a suspect to the police.
The police never named him as a suspect.
He was never questioned as a suspect. Okay.
He was never even really thought of other than being the most unlucky witness ever.
Like, really. In case you don't remember who we're talking about here, you're like, why, what name is that?
He was the carman who came across Polly Nichols' body on the way to work early in the morning.
He was the first person to find her at like 3.40, 3.45 a.m. on August 31st, 1888.
And she was still warm when he found her.
Yeah. And it was astonishing that the killer had gotten away in time to not be seen.
So she was killed on Buck's Row, which if you look it up, you will see it's this very long line of housing and not like the winding alleys or streets you might be picturing like Mitre Square or anything where like Catherine Eddowes was found.
There wasn't a lot of places for this person who did this to run and hide quickly.
It's a pretty long street you're going to have to tear down.
So in 15 minutes before she was found, a police constable, a PC, had gone through there and seen and heard nothing.
Right. Because this PC was on his beat through Buck's row.
Now, there were a couple of other PCs that patrolled the routes at each end of Buck's Row.
No one heard or saw anything there either.
And initially, it was reported that PC John Neal found Polly Nichols while on his beat.
But shortly after this, a man named Robert Paul came forward and said, actually, no.
I was there, and so was another man before PC John Neal was there.
So, ha. So, what happened was at 3.40, 3.45 a.m., there is a lot of debate about the specific time that this happened.
Because no one had a watch, and we were not, you know, we don't have a time stamp anywhere of when this guy was finding this.
It is all kind of conjecture and different reports and...
You know, Robert Paul saying it was this time and Charles saying this time and the PCs saying it was this time.
It's very hard to piece those things together.
What we can tell is that it was sometime between 3.40 and 3.45 a.m. that Robert Paul was walking Buck's Row on the way to work.
He was also a carman. Now, he said he's usually very on guard along that area, especially Buck's Row, because people got mugged and assaulted there a lot.
That'll do it. And he's like, and at that time in the morning, it's really dark.
There's no lights there. Yeah. This is not a great area.
So he said people always had their guards up here.
So as he's walking down the long, dark row, he spotted a man standing in the street.
And he went to the opposite side of the street as he went to pass him because, like I said, people were wilding back there on the street.
So he didn't want to fight. He was like, I don't want to go near this person.
I'm just going to walk. Staying away from all that.
Yeah. But this man who was in the middle of the street saw him and approached him.
And he was like, and this guy came up to him and said, come look at this woman.
What a weird way to put that. And he was like, okay.
And he went with him and right across the street where he was looking at before was a body.
And it was so dark they couldn't see. It was a woman.
Obviously, they saw the dress. They saw the bonnet.
And they said they couldn't see how deeply her neck had been cut because it was dark.
And I think her clothing was pulled up pretty far.
And she was the one that was wearing everything she owned, I think.
No, that was Catherine Eddowes. Oh, okay.
But she was just, it was just kind of like pulled up over her.
And Paul said he, so Robert Paul said he put his hand on her chest.
And he initially said he could detect what he thought could be movement.
But this other man said her hands were cold.
Okay. Now, he did not feel movement, I don't think.
Like, I don't think he actually felt movement because her neck was cut down to the bone.
So, I mean, an attempt had been made to cut her head clean off, it seemed.
No air was making its way through that windpipe.
Could she have gasped for air one final time?
Maybe. But literally it had to have been like the last seconds of her body shutting down if he felt anything.
But then, because this other man who had beckoned him over here, this is Charles Leachmere.
Or Charles Cross. Again, we're going to get to why his name is two things.
But if that's the case, if he put his hand on her chest, if he felt some kind of movement, this really indicates Charles is in trouble here.
Because that would mean she was dying as this is happening, which would mean, why are you there, Charles?
Right. So they both didn't know what to do, apparently, but they were both late for work at this point.
And this wasn't the kind of thing you could use as an excuse, apparently, to be late for work.
Wow. What could you use? Not real sure. So they both agreed, but this was at Paul, at Robert Paul's suggestion, that they should tell the first PC that they came across on their route to work.
They were like, let's go start walking back to work, but we'll tell a police officer because we will come across one.
So they come across PC Jonas Meisen, and they told him what was going on.
Now, Meisen later testified at the inquest, according to reports, that the other man who wasn't Robert Paul, so this would be Charles, said to him, you're wanted in Buck's Row by a policeman.
A woman is lying there. Or in other reports, he said, you're wanted in Buck's Row and doesn't say the policeman thing.
Either way, he never said anything, according to Mizen, about murder or death, just you're needed in Buck's Row.
You would think you would tell him why. Exactly.
It's pretty urgent that you're needed in Bucks Row.
And, like, maybe tell him what he's about to come across.
Like, let him know you're going to go find a dead body there.
And you would even think that you would be so just, like, stressed out that you just saw that that you might just need to let that out in that moment.
Yeah, because there's a body over there.
Like, you need to. Yeah. Now, yeah, and it's just strange.
And also, if he did say a policeman wants you down there, why'd he say that?
That's not the truth. Right. That would be a lie, and that would be a weird lie.
So either way, we go back and forth about this a lot.
If you look any of this up, there's a lot of discussion about it.
A lot of people have varying opinions on it because Charles Leachmere, Charles Cross, did say to Robert Paul when he first brought him over to the body that he, or when they talked about it later, he said like he thought she was drunk and she had passed out.
Yeah. So I think it was Robert Paul who said that he believed that she had been basically she had been raped and that she had died in the struggle.
That's what he assumed because he was like, you know, she looked like she had been through it ravaged kind of thing.
So, P.C. Mizen asks the men what their names and addresses are for the report, because he's like, you witnessed this, obviously, like, please tell me.
And Robert Paul gives his name and address.
And the other man says his name is Charles Cross of 22 Doveton Street, Bethnal Green.
The thing is, his name is Charles Leachmere.
So he lied about his name to the police officer.
And did he ever go by that name other than that time or no?
So there is something that will connect here.
But no, he never went by that name. Oh. But there is something that can connect it at least to why he chose that name.
But he still lied. So what was that? So we're going to get to that.
But just a note, Charles is also, in case you start looking these things up in like newspapers and stuff, he is referred to in newspapers sometimes as like George H.
He's referred to as Charles Allen, which was his middle name.
Charles Andrew, which was not his middle name.
And in fact, according to one newspaper report, Meisen actually initially said at the inquest that this man stated his name was George Cross.
Why did it go from George to Charles? It's tough because sometimes these newspapers can get shit wrong and things are reported wrong.
It can be tough. But what we do know is that he said his last name was Cross.
Totally. That is what we know. That was confirmed by Mizen.
That's in the official report that he said his last name is Cross.
And he gave the correct address. So Charles actually also didn't reveal himself as the man who had actually found the body until the second day of the coroner's inquest.
What? And it was only after a newspaper had outed him, because Meisen had said, a man named Charles Cross told me, So he didn't come forward until it was in a newspaper and he had to.
That's weird. And he was like, oh yeah, like that's me.
Why did he wait? That's really weird. Right?
It's just like, that's a little strange.
Again, these are strange things and they can be pointed to as guilt, but you can also flip it the other way and be like, well, he had a family.
Maybe he was like, didn't want to get involved with this.
He didn't like that he was involved with this to begin with, but still strange.
There's like a whole ass inquest and you found the body.
You should probably be there. That's the thing.
Like you found the body, my dude. Yeah. So the theory here is that he was actually like the whole thing that this rests upon is that he was actually not just found to have found the body, but that he was interrupted by Robert Paul.
He was interrupted in the middle of his evisceration of Polly Nichols.
His choices were to run and possibly be caught or identified because that would be suspicious as fuck and there wasn't a lot of places to go.
Or he could stay and pretend that he had come across Polly's dead body first.
And also make sense for why her head was not cut clean off.
Exactly. And it was dark, which would cover his bloody hands and he could have wiped them on Polly's clothing really quick.
No one would have known. And he's also like a, wait, what does he do?
A Carmen. Oh, okay. But he was a carman for a meat place.
So he transported meat. Yeah. He worked with butchers.
He likely had butcher experience. Right.
He likely knew about butchering and slaughtering.
Yeah. That's when I said like traditional medical knowledge.
No. But he might have known what it takes to slaughter and butcher.
Me, I'm still hanging on to my... Me. Me.
I'm still hanging on to the idea that...
I think human anatomy and physiology is something this person needed to know.
So that is something that I haven't found with Charles.
So that's why I can't totally lay all my, I want to for Tobias, I do.
But I will say he is very compelling. Yeah.
But I'm not totally sold yet. Maybe something will sell me, but he's a very compelling, this is a very compelling suspect.
Yeah. So my question is, why wasn't he questioned or arrested at all?
Like, arrested I wouldn't say, but why wasn't he questioned?
Yeah, you found the body. He was the first one to discover the body, which at the very least means the cops have a duty to rule him out as the killer.
Mm-hmm. That's just standard practice. Like, he isn't automatically the guy who did it, but you have to kind of prove he isn't because he was the first one there.
They didn't do that. And she had been killed minutes before he found her.
Like, minutes. That's pretty fishy. Yep.
And no one heard or saw anything. Yeah. Fishy.
Fishy. When Paul was brought over to the body by Charles, he said they couldn't see any wounds because they were covered by her clothing.
This is not Jack the Ripper's style. He opens them up.
He leaves them eviscerated for all to see.
He's never covered his crimes or the wounds he leaves ever.
So now, when he has clearly not finished doing what he intended to do here, the coroner also believed that this was the case, that it was interrupted.
Not necessarily by Charles Cross, but he believes that this Polly Nichols was not finished.
Yeah. Now he is. So he's not. So now he's clearly not finished doing what he intended to do here.
He's heard someone coming and took time to cover the wounds before running away.
He would not, like if this was another man, another Jack the Ripper, he covered up all the wounds and then got away?
Like remember, the body was fresh and investigators and coroner believe this murder had occurred minutes before she was discovered.
So he ran away that quickly, but for some reason took a minute to cover her up.
Like, that doesn't make sense. He wouldn't have had that minute to do so.
Yeah. It makes sense that Charles could have been in the middle of eviscerating.
He saw or heard Robert Paul approaching.
He saw him cross over to the other side of the street, and he thought, well, I can stay here next to the body and hope this man doesn't see and tell someone that something was suspicious or happening, or I can cover her a bit and tell him, oh, no, I found this woman.
Come look. He chose the safer option instead of hoping he wouldn't be identified later when he wasn't ready to be.
Right. Because he wanted to make sure he knew exactly what Robert Paul saw.
I can't let him leave without knowing what he saw.
Sure, he might have walked by. He might not have seen this woman because it's dark.
But I can't know that unless I bring him over here.
He was a control guy. Jack the Ripper was a control guy.
He liked to be in control of all the situations.
And even though this was a situation where he was not in control, like Liz Stride later, possibly...
He found a way to find control by pretending to be the unlucky working man who stumbled on this body mere seconds after Jack had absconded away.
Sure. Yeah. You can see that. But you can also say that this was likely the first of the canonical five, Polly Nichols.
And Robert Paul testified that her dress was up above where it should be.
And he pulled it down in respect. So how far up was it?
We don't know. We don't know if it was just a little bit up and he just pulled it down just to cover her up.
We know that later... Jack the Ripper would cut the dress open, like tear it to shreds and leave it all hanging out.
But maybe this was what he intended to do and he just got interrupted and ran.
Yeah. Like he didn't get to that part yet and he didn't actually cover her up.
He just didn't get to that part. The only issue there is that there was PC patrols at either end of Buck's Row and one that headed right through, I believe, every half hour.
So he must have timed it perfectly to be able to get out of there unseen by any police constable.
Also, we have the notion that Charles worked at Pickford's, like I said, as a meat car driver, which was on Broad Street at the time.
Most of the five canonical victims were found along the route he would take to and from work.
So that's just like what he did when he was going and coming from work?
This is pretty convenient. He is going at weird hours of the night.
Like, look, he's going to work at 3.40 in the morning.
Yeah. Yeah. And add in to this that his mother, like you mentioned, lived at Burner Street, right off of Dutfield Yard, where Liz Stride was found.
Oh. And you have some serious meat to this theory.
Kind of a pun intended there. Yeah, because I remembered Tobias being like, his mom was right there.
Yeah, and he said it so quick and he just kept going that I was like, whoa, whoa, I wanted to be like, wait, his mom lived where?
Like, what? I didn't know that. Well, now you know.
And I didn't. I had no idea that his mom lived there.
And I looked it up and that is true. His mom did live there.
And he had lived with his mom at some point.
And he visited her often. Huh. Now, the man who was last seen with Liz Stride, like last seen when she was alive, was wearing what people referred to as a deerstalker hat.
Any witnesses? Yep. Although Carmen and Butchers wear similar hats sometimes, they're more like scallycap-ish when I was looking at pictures.
I don't believe Charles was likely seen with his victims before his deeds.
It wouldn't have made a lot of sense. He wasn't pretending to do business with them.
Yeah, he at least wasn't pretending to do business out in the open, if he even was, I don't think.
Because one, I think he did them on his way to and from work because it was the wee hours and he could sneak up on someone.
Yeah, this is all hypothetical, allegedly kind of shit.
Yeah. Two, Charles was married. Oh. Although no one gave a shit back then, it seems like, when you really look into it.
Not at all. It likely wouldn't have been a problem, but it would have at the very least drawn attention if someone knew him and spotted him with a sex worker out in the open.
It would have drawn attention to him. Yeah.
And I don't think he was looking for attention here.
The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, and magic.
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So a little dig into his past told me something very interesting.
Oh? About him. Something I'm sure I was hoping I could be like, Tobias, do you know this part?
But I'm sure he does because it sounded like he was really into this.
You never know. But he, Charles, had been part of a tragic event before the Ripper murders in 1888.
So on Thursday, December 21st, 1876, in an area that is now called Cloudsley Place, it used to be called Elizabeth Terrace.
And on this day, December 21st in 1876, at around 4 p.m., Charles Leachmere was driving his wagon, the same Pickford's Meat wagon that he drove years later.
Everywhere. He was driving it along the roadway of Elizabeth Terrace when two small boys jumped out from behind something on the side of the road.
Oh, no. It would have blocked his view, like he couldn't have seen them.
Four-year-old Walter Williams wasn't able to stop.
His friend was and was able to pull back.
He jumped out in front of the wagon. Williams was run over by the wagon wheel, four years old, and later died of his injuries.
Oh, that's awful. When an inquest was held about the death, the boy's father, who was a jeweler at the time, said, quote, On Thursday last, I was told that my boy was run over and killed.
I made inquiries, and I have reason to blame the driver, as I believe that he did not exercise proper care.
We're talking about Charles Leachmere. Mm-hmm.
But when I first saw that, I was like, oh, what do you do?
Several witnesses who saw the actual event, which like, oof, I can't imagine seeing that, they all said that the driver, Leachmere, tried to pull back, like very much tried to pull back, tried to call out to the boys before it happened.
One witness said they saw the wagon going very slowly.
He was not going too fast. He wasn't careless.
It wasn't on purpose. He tried everything he could to not hit this child.
And it wasn't careless. It was just a really bad accident.
The jury also agreed after the inquest that this was an accidental death and that Charles Leachmere was not to blame.
How terrible. But he kept his job and he kept driving that wagon.
He was driving that wagon in 1888 when he came across Polly Nichols.
He was going to the job where he would be driving that wagon all day.
Mm-hmm. So nothing changed. But did it change him?
I feel like an event like that has an effect on you.
But do you think that it would have the effect where you feel so guilty and distraught about killing somebody that then you would go and kill more people?
I don't think it's a direct link. I think, did that change him fundamentally as a human being?
Maybe. Maybe that did. Maybe. Did this, in combination with other things, start turning into some kind of pathology here that would lead into this?
I don't think the two are directly connected, but it's a very massive, tragic event.
Like life-altering. Like he killed a four-year-old boy and then drove that same wagon.
All his life. Like, it's just like, whoa, that's pretty deep and pretty dark.
Yeah. Again, I don't think that leads him to being Jack the Ripper.
But it's like, that definitely could have changed him.
And we don't know a ton about his life after that.
Or before that, really, we don't know a ton.
But it's like, what happened after that?
Was everything okay? Did... a lot of these women were turning to drink because of their depression and because of their tragedies that happened in their life.
Did he start turning to that? We don't know.
I'm not saying that he did because I do not know.
It's just kind of theorizing. But also, again, it's tough to know a lot about him.
You can do a lot of digging, find some little transcripts and records.
We do know that he did not know his real father growing up.
His father left when he was young, so he never knew him.
His mother remarried twice, and one of them was to a police constable named Thomas Cross.
Ah, okay. That is where we get the cross, but here's the thing.
His whole life he went by Charles Allen Leachmere.
He did not use the name Cross. So he did give a false name, which, and it's weirdly the name of one of his stepfathers who happens to be a cop or happened to be a cop.
And maybe that's, and was, sorry, was he still a cop at the time of this?
Do you have any idea? I don't think he was.
I don't even know if he was still alive at the time, to be honest.
But he may have been known among the force at the very least.
And maybe that's why he did it. He was a police constable for sure.
Either way, that's not his name. It was never legally his name.
He didn't go by that name. And it was a stepfather who was a cop.
And Jack the Ripper taunted the fuck out of the cops.
Right. Was this just another... Way of taunting?
Quick little, like, using your police constable's stepfather's name as your witness name?
As like a... I don't know. Could be. It's a thought, though.
It's weird that he didn't give that name.
It's weird. I know there's a few explanations for it, like...
You know, maybe he didn't want to be involved in this and he didn't want his real name in the paper.
But you're going to get caught anyway. Well, that's an inquest happening.
Yeah, that's that's like there's the rub.
Yeah. Now, also, just as a final little thought to this casebook, the Ripper casebook online is a very interesting site.
It's got forums and they have a lot of research there.
It's totally ongoing. They're always adding to it.
Oh, that's cool. You can really get lost in there.
I saw it happen. You saw it happen. Now, according to Casebook, Charles and his wife Elizabeth, he was married for quite a long time.
He never got divorced or anything. Okay.
They're buried in different cemetery plots, not together.
And his plot was capable and planned to have another person buried next to him, assumably his wife.
He died in 1920, and she in 1940. Neither one of them remarried.
Like, she did not remarry. And she was put far away from him.
Sorry, he died in 1920, and then she died like 20 years later.
She never remarried. Never remarried, but did not get buried next to him.
Yeah. So people are just like, why? And there was never any explanation as to why.
But it's like, did somebody know something?
But maybe not. That's the thing. I'm not going to, like, I don't know.
It's definitely weird. That's actually so weird that you say that, too, because me and Drew had, like, a weird conversation last night of, like, when we, like, die.
Like, do we want to be, like, buried with each other?
Or, like, because we were, like, talking about that.
So it's weird that you brought that up. That is weird.
Well, you better be, because otherwise people are going to theorize about what the hell's going on.
We're going to get cremated and sprinkled somewhere cute.
Adorable. Yeah. So, I don't know. But Charles Cross slash Leachmere is decent as a suspect.
Yeah. He really is. He is. I looked him over.
I looked him over real quick the first time around.
I didn't give him his due. Once I started looking into it.
We can't discount him. I'm not saying he's Jack the Ripper.
I'm not saying he's not. And I don't think anyone can say he's not.
Obviously, none of us can say he's not. None of us can really say he is either.
No, I'm not fully convinced yet. I'm not convinced by the DNA on that shawl that, you know, that Aaron Kosminski is the guy.
I'm not... No. I'm not convinced either way.
I would like to. I'm going to keep my eye on Charles.
I'm going to do a little more digging. Yeah, I'd like you to because I need a little more.
If I'm really going to be Tobias level confirming that it's definitely him beyond a reasonable doubt, I have many reasonable doubts right now.
Now I'd like to know what else he knows about this.
I'm like, do you have more? I want to know.
He definitely does. He does. He felt very confident about it.
I would think. I'm going to look further into it.
I'm interested. Yeah, I mean, you did a very deep dive on this.
I've watched you do this for the past couple weeks.
So you definitely did some digging. I'm going to keep going, though.
But guys, I'll get away from Jack the Ripper for a while now.
This was my last little toe dip into it for quite some time.
There you go. Definitely until the end of the year, I'm not touching it.
The end of the year is like literally two months away.
I know, so I'm not going to touch it for the end of the year.
Why don't you just give us like a year off?
Next year, who knows, but I'm taking a long break.
You're crazy. And you know why? I'm taking a long break so that I can thoroughly investigate and come back at you with like, I know who did it.
Dear God. And it won't be till like the end of next year or something.
God help us all. So I'm telling you, I'll stay away.
The last episode of Morbid, like God forbid, will be Elena figuring out who Jack the Ripper is.
Years from now. That's my plan. If I'm really like writing, manifesting here, then the last one will be me solving the Jack the Ripper case alongside Tobias Forge.
Should have done that the other night when it became the Aries full moon.
Set your intentions, baby. I'm setting them right now.
Too late. Those are my intentions. I'm manifesting.
You have to do it under the full moon, my girl.
I'll do it under the next one. I got it.
All right. We got to remember. You can always set your intentions under the full moon.
There you go. Or if you're Tobias, you could set them under the hunter's moon.
Exactly. So this was my Maybrick slash Ripper discussion.
It was your Maybrick music. There you go.
You're like, I won't say it. And I'm done now with Ripper for a while.
So everybody can breathe a sigh of relief.
And in the meantime. We would love to hear, though.
What do you guys think about Charles? Do you have any thoughts on him?
Send it to morbidpodcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear it.
With the subject line Charles Cross. Yeah, let me know.
I just want to know what you guys think.
If you think that the Ripper diary is genuine, please lay out a very detailed explanation for why you do.
Yeah. But I'm willing to hear. I'm an open book here.
She's an open diary. I'm an open diary on the Ripper case.
So let's go. Let's solve it together, everyone.
All I could think when you were talking about a diary was, these words on my diary scream.
I'm doing it to, like, the wrong tune, but, like, these words are my diary screaming out loud.
That's all I could think of. That's what it seemed like.
I was like, oof. Life's like an hourglass.
There you go. Wow. Bleak. All right. Well, we hope that you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weak. Weird. But not to read the ear later.
No. Don't keep it this weird, man. You can't keep it that weird.
Only this gal keeps it that weird. I'm on a space level.
Sorry for the Greeks. you If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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