Legacy of the Ripper (25 page)

So it was that with just three weeks to go to Christmas Day, Jack Reid found himself in the dock. The trial commenced at ten a.m. on one of the coldest December days in recent history. A thick frost had descended upon the south of England that night. White tentacles of ice hung from the branches of trees, decorated bushes and hung from the window ledges of the courthouse itself as Jack was driven to court in a sealed van, and led up the rear steps of the building, to be held in a cell below the court until the time came for him to ascend to the courtroom proper where he would stand in the dock and face his accusers.

Chief amongst those accusers was the Queen's Counsel appointed to prosecute the case on behalf of the The Crown. Ingrid Hewitt Q.C. was in her early forties and rapidly building a reputation as an able and tenacious prosecutor. The Crown Prosecution Service had viewed her as ideal to carry out the prosecution of the Reid trial, as to them it appeared very much an open and shut case, with little chance of an acquittal. No need to wheel out the real 'heavies' then.

Unfortunately for Hewitt and the prosecution case in general, apart from the evidence linking Reid with the murder of Mandy Clark, there was no forensic evidence and certainly no witness evidence to place him at the scenes of the first two murders, a fact that Jack's own barrister Simon Allingham made much of in his attempts to deflect the jury from over emphasis on the Clark murder. This was, said Allingham, in his address to the jury;

"A case where the prosecution would have you believe that the young man who stands before you in the dock committed not one, not two, but three horrific murders. Where, I must ask them is the evidence that might even suggest that Jack Reid carried out the first two killings? There is none. Not one scrap of forensic or other evidence can be presented to link my client with those murders. Why? Because I submit that such evidence cannot exist because Jack Reid did not commit those murders. Also, in the case of the murder of Mandy Clark it is an undisputed fact that Jack was discovered walking along Hastings Close with the victim's blood upon him and that the murder weapon, once discovered, contained his fingerprints. That does not however make him the killer of that young girl. Could he not have been at the house, under the influence of drugs as has been confirmed by the police and the doctors who examined him after his arrest and merely woken to find the girl dead in the house and perhaps panicked when he saw the knife, picked it up and thrown it in the rubbish bin in his haste to depart the scene?"

It was an unlikely scenario and Allingham knew it, but it was his intent to do everything in his power to help Jack Reid. He was good at his job and though his case was weak, almost non-existent in fact, he believed that the prosecution case was equally weak, though of course the evidence such as it was tended to stack up in favour of the prosecution.

The trial itself was short by modern standards, lasting a mere four days. During that time, Jack's parents were called to the witness stand, where they were forced to confirm Jack's history of psychiatric problems as a child, and his strange behaviour upon receiving the odd legacy from his late uncle, Robert Cavendish. Of that legacy, the so-called journal of Jack the Ripper as Jack had described it, and which he'd insisted had caused his latest mental imbalance, no trace had been found, despite extensive police inquiries. Giles Morris appeared on behalf of the family solicitors, Knight, Morris and Campbell, to testify that at no time was any member of the legal firm privy to the contents of the package which had been let in their care until the coming of age of its intended recipient. Under questioning from Ingrid Hewitt he was forced to concede that the package may have contained nothing more disturbing than a family history, or a collection of letters from his uncle, or some such innocent content. Faithful to his clients as always, Morris countered his admission by stating, much to Simon Allingham's relief and no little amusement, that by the same token Miss Hewitt had no proof that the package did not indeed contain the very thing that Jack Reid said it had done. Giles Morris not only saved Allingham from having to ask that very question of him during cross-examination, but in arguing professionally and politely against Hewitt's accusation in the way he did from the witness box, he gave the defence a much-needed assist in their case. The prosecution had traced the girl who Jack had persuaded to impersonate the private investigator in order to try and trace Mark Cavendish. Hewitt made much of the fact that Jack could easily have made such inquiries himself and that the girl, Christine Carter had been an unwitting accomplice in his plan to avoid being identified by the family solicitors in his desire to trace his uncle. The prosecution, however, were unable to explain why, if Jack's tale were false, he would be looking for his uncle. Despite Simon Allingham labouring this point, the jury appeared to ignore the significance of this anomaly completely.

The defence called Sarah Cavendish, who confirmed that her late husband Robert had received a package himself sometime after his father's death, but she was also unable to substantiate what it contained. As for Jack the Ripper, she admitted that her husband had become obsessed with the serial killer after having experienced disturbing dreams and hallucinations during his time in hospital following the car crash that killed his father and that Robert had continued to have nightmares in the time leading up to his death. She had no idea what Robert had left to Jack, much less could she hazard a guess as to what such a legacy might have been. Her evidence, unfortunately, did little to support Jack's case and Hewitt was able to turn much of her statement against Jack by insisting that his uncle's own troubled mind showed the family propensity for mental instability, a fact that seemed to swing the jury towards the prosecution case.

Allingham also made the point that in the first two murders the police had found evidence to suggest that the killer had worn rubber gloves in order not to leave fingerprints at the scene. Why, he asked would Jack Reid, if he was indeed the killer have suddenly dispensed with such a precaution and left his fingerprints not only on the murder weapon, but all over the house as well? The prosecution merely countered this by suggesting successfully to the jury that Jack was so influenced by the cocktail of narcotics in his bloodstream that he'd been sloppy in his execution of his latest crime and the jury, only too willing to come down hard on the issue of drug abuse linked with murder, agreed with Hewitt's surmise.

In the end, Jack Reid's case foundered on the fact that no corroboration could be found for any part of his story save one. Carl Wright had traced the taxi driver who had dropped Jack and Michael off at the house on Abbotsford Road. At least, the driver testified that he dropped them off somewhere on Abbotsford Road and he couldn't describe the other man who had been in the cab. To him, they both looked like a pair of junkies and he took little notice of them apart from ensuring that he received his fare before they 'did a runner' as he put it. He had no idea where they went when they departed from his cab and the defence were unable to prove that Jack ever entered the house or that the man with him was the mysterious 'Michael' who had simply disappeared from his residence in town. Police inquiries had led them to believe that he'd left town some time before the murder of Mandy Clark and they'd managed to find nothing to connect him to Jack Reid, another fact which hampered Allingham's attempt to defend the young man in the dock.

Finally, the inability of the police to identify or even to substantiate the existence of 'The Man' as Jack called him weighed heavily against the defence. Simon Allingham was able to force a leading psychiatrist to admit that, if this man was figment of Jack's imagination it could be taken as a sign that he was indeed suffering from a psychotic illness whereby his mind had created an 'alter-ego' a fictional other-self on whom his rational mind could cast blame for his crimes on to.

It was perhaps due to that final admission from the psychiatrist that the jury, when they retired took little over an hour to return with their verdict. Jack Reid was guilty, but they considered him to be insane at the time of the killings and the judge, Chief Justice David Skinner had no choice but to commit Jack to a secure psychiatric unit, a 'special hospital' at Her Majesty's Pleasure. In other words, the young man who stood in the dock would be committed for the rest of his days, or until he was at least no longer considered a threat to society. From what the judge said in his summing up, that time would have appeared a long way off, if at all, to Jack Reid. Thus it was that Jack Reid received his just retribution from the law. His reign of terror was over and the people of Brighton could sleep sound in their beds once more.

As he was led from the dock to be taken to the cells below the court to await transfer to a secure unit, Jack waved to his parents who had sat through every minute of his trial, his face a mask of tears that mirrored those of his mother, Jennifer. Tom Reid tried to appear stoical and strong for his son and gave him a cheery wave in return, mouthing, "we love you" as Jack disappeared down the thirteen steps that led to the corridor housing the cells.

Jack was transferred later that day to Ravenswood, where of course, my story began and where today I spend much of my time in the company of the highly personable and yet, according to the courts, criminally insane young man who so viciously slaughtered three innocent young women during that awful autumn in Brighton.

Under normal circumstances it is highly likely that my tale would end right here and yet recent events which have occurred far from these walls have led to the strangest and most baffling twist in the tale of Jack Reid. They have also led me to believe in the possibility that all may not be quite as it seems in the case of the young man with the fixation for blood and the odd tale of a mystery man in an empty house on a hill. I can only relate the facts to you as they were reported to me and allow you to share with me in the shattering and astounding conclusion to the story of Jack Reid and the case of The Brighton Ripper.

A Shadow of Doubt

So, here we are, almost back at the point where my recollections of these events began. I say almost, because the greatest mystery of all in the tangled affair surrounding the life and deeds of Jack Thomas Reid only truly began to unravel a few short weeks ago.

My own sessions with Jack had fallen into something of a routine. He would always be polite, deferent almost, as though respecting me a little more than he would someone who wasn't a psychiatrist. He often explained that my position put me on a par with his late uncle Doctor Robert Cavendish and his ancestors who had all practised the art of psychiatry. In some ways I'd begun to feel that Jack virtually hero-worshipped me. He wanted to please me, that much soon became evident in our meetings and he would do all he could to try and put me at my ease while I was with him. He assured me on more than one occasion that what he'd done in the past was literally just that, the past.

"I thought you said at your trial and under interrogation by the police, that you never killed anyone, Jack. Are you now saying that you did?" I asked him one day, following one of his assurances.

"Doctor Ruth," he replied. "I know I said I didn't do it, and I firmly believed that to be the truth, but the police, the jury, the psychiatrists, the prosecution and everyone else says that I did. Even you and Doctor Roper have told me that I can only begin to get better if I can admit to you and to myself that I committed the murders. I'm coming round to the belief that maybe I did do those terrible things, because it was all there, you see, in the journal, just as my uncle Robert warned me and I fell under it's spell and must have done those things while I was under the control of Jack the Ripper, or at least, under the control of the power of his words."

I still believed that the journal was a figment of his imagination, so I found his sudden admission to be a little confusing. Was he still mixing up the truth and the fiction of his situation? That's what I thought at the time, that this was part of Jack's psychosis, his inability to distinguish between the reality and the fiction in his past.

Things began to change quite suddenly one morning, when I received a telephone call from one of the detectives who'd investigated the Brighton murders. Detective Sergeant Carl Wright told me that he'd become aware of some facts that might throw new light on the case, and he and a 'consultant' as he described her, named Alice Nickels, needed to come to Ravenswood to speak to me and if possible, to Jack Reid himself. Wright assured me that he had the full backing and permission of his own superior Detective Inspector Holland, who would be happy to confirm the fact in writing, which I knew would be required in order for Wright to conduct any interrogation of Jack.

I was as anxious as Carl Wright to find out as much as I could about the case and about Jack in particular and I agreed to his request, making arrangements for him to visit me at Ravenswood three days later, allowing time for Mike Holland to send the appropriate paperwork, which duly arrived by first class mail the following morning.

I had the feeling that Sergeant Wright felt there were discrepancies in the case against Jack, not from anything he said directly to me, but simply from the tone of his voice. Call me psychic if you like, but I wasn't far wrong. Warm sunshine bathed the surrounding countryside on the morning of Carl Wright and Alice Nickels's arrival at Ravenswood. Barely a cloud decorated the clear blue sky and the singing of birds in the trees that gave Ravenswood an air of quiet tranquillity allowed for little thought of violent murder and blood lust and yet sadly, such thoughts were never far from the minds of many of the inmates at the facility, a fact that I and many of the staff were forced to face every day of our working lives. Ravenswood may look like a quiet country hotel from the outside, particularly on such days, but it is, after all, a secure hospital and in days gone by the word 'Bedlam' could easily have been applied to my place of work.