Legacy of the Ripper (30 page)

"The evidence we were seeking, when it finally presented itself, came in the most unusual fashion and I was fortunate to be there just a few days ago when it appeared. Fabian and I were in his office when he received a phone call from the head of the police department in the city of Lublin. Having received Fabian's circularised plea for information on any suspicious foreigners in their areas and also the photo and information about Cavendish, the head of the Lublin force had something very interesting to report to my new friend. Lublin is about one hundred and seventy miles from Warsaw and the city is divided in two by the Bystrzyca River. It appeared that there'd been a fatal car accident on the outskirts of the town, when a hired car had gone out of control due to what was subsequently discovered to be a completely accidental brake failure caused by poor maintenance. The vehicle had gone over the low parapet of a bridge and plunged down into the river below. Unfortunately, there were a number of large rocks waiting to cushion the car's fall and one of them must have punctured the petrol tank which ignited and the whole vehicle was quickly consumed by flames, the driver included. When the police arrived on the scene it was too late for them to do anything for the driver who was burned beyond recognition, and must have died a terrible death and only the fact that enough of the car remained to identify it and trace it back to the car hire company allowed the police to obtain the name of the man who'd hired it. He'd given his name as Joseph Barnett from London, having produced a passport with that name on it when completing the documentation. As I now know from all the knowledge I've gained on the Ripper case, Joseph Barnett was the boyfriend of Mary Kelly and was at one time interviewed by the police investigating the Jack the Ripper killings. It seemed to me that the man in the car had to have been Cavendish. Using the name of Barnett just added to his own twisted little game. Inspector Dabrowski in Lublin informed Fabian that there was simply not enough left of the driver of the car to even attempt an identification based on the photograph or description that had been circulated, but there was something else that was found, something that clinched it for me, at any rate."

Inspector Mike Holland now reached in to the file on his lap once again and withdrew a sheaf of what appeared to be old and weathered pages from a large book. He passed them to me. As I took them from him I realised they were copies of the originals which must still be in the hands of the Polish police. As I began to read the topmost page however, it became immediately obvious as to what I was reading.

"The journal," I gasped in incredulity. "It's real, it exists."

The copied page showed that the original had been damaged and it began,

"
1st October 1888

Two in one night! A glorious if unintended double. Tracked one whore, and tempted the bitch with grapes. What whore can afford grapes? She could not resist my gift, and I should have had great sport with her carcass but for interruption. I slit her easy enough, though in the dark used the shorter knife, not so quick or sharp, and saw the blood spurt in a copious river from her neck. Then, damnation, couldn't begin to gut the whore. Heard sounds outside the yard, and horses footsteps on the stones. Had to flee, and quick, kept close to the wall as a horse and cart came close by and slipped away before the man raised the alarm. Had no blood upon me, so slipped into the nearest tunnel and kept invisible, rising soon in Mitre Square. God Bless Mr. Bazalgette! Another whore soon made herself available to me, and this time I made no mistake. This one bled as a stuck pig would, and the blood gurgled as it left her gashed throat. I ripped her face apart, and gutted her as easy as you like. The street was stained fair red; even in the dark I saw it. I could swear she moved as I sliced her innards, poor bloody little whore! Maybe not. Took no time at all, and this time sliced the ear as promised. Used the whores' own apron to&the page was torn here.

There were other pages, damaged and in places obliterated, but they were there all right and I gazed in wonder at what I now held in my own hands and at what they signified. There was even the remains of what must have been a letter from Cavendish's great-grandfather to his own son, telling him of the sad tale of the journal and how he came to possess it.

"It's real enough, Doctor," Holland resumed his story. "The police in Lublin found these and a few more pages of the decrepit looking journal floating in the river, where they appeared to have fallen from a briefcase that the driver had been carrying in the vehicle, and which must have snapped open and discharged its contents as the car hit the water. After reading Fabian's information and request for help, Dabrowski had no doubt that the man in the car was the one Fabian was looking for."

By now, I was so convinced by Holland's story that I had to ask the question that had been forming in my mind for some time as I'd listened to his telling of the events in Poland. "So, Jack Reid is innocent, then? The journal is real, so his story must be true, or how else did the man in the car come by it? It had to be Cavendish and he had to have stolen it from Jack."

"I know it all appears to support Jack Reid's story," Holland replied. "None of the things I've mentioned either by themselves or collectively actually clear Jack Reid or prove the guilt of Mark Cavendish, despite what we may believe, and in fact, know in our hearts to be the truth."

I really thought for a moment that Holland was about to leave it there, that he'd all but proved Jack Reid's innocence and his uncle's guilt but had failed to produce the solid evidence required by the courts in England to overturn Jack's conviction. Then, like a conjuror who'd saved the best of his tricks until the end of his performance, Mike Holland reached into the file once more.

"These, however, might just convince the courts that Mark Cavendish was the killer and Jack Reid nothing more than a dupe."

Holland reached across and handed me a tiny collection of photographs. I took them from him, barely able to prevent my own hand from shaking as I did so. There, in colour, was the evidence that proved that Mark Cavendish, aided and abetted by Michael, had been the true killer. The photographs, obviously taken by Michael, showed Mark Cavendish in the midst of his hideous and gruesome mutilation of his victims. Lying to one side on the ground in each case, was Jack Reid, appearing to be insensible and presumably in a drugged state. Another set of pictures showed Jack posed as though he were the killer, still drugged I presumed, but in a semi-conscious state, making it easy for Cavendish and Michael to control him. They would have been the photos that Jack insisted 'The Man' had showed him to prove that he'd killed the young women. It had been a fiendish plan and one that could only have been devised and executed by a seriously deranged individual.

I was about to speak when Mike Holland produced one last surprise. He reached across to where Carl Wright had been holding a canvas-wrapped package throughout our conversation, or rather through Holland's virtual monologue. Wright passed the package to his inspector who proceeded to unfasten the brown string that held the canvas wrapping closed. As the package fell open he revealed its contents. There, before my eyes was a black-handled, long bladed gleaming knife, of the type used by butchers in an old-fashioned traditional butchers shop to slice their way through the bones and sinews of the animal carcasses that would hang on their hooks.

"This," said Holland "was the clincher. It still bears traces of blood, and tests have already identified that blood as being from all three of the victims."

He smiled at me as he relaxed in his chair. Carl Wright and Alice Nickels also appeared to relax, as though they'd been holding their breath throughout Holland's long delivery of his evidence. Both exhaled simultaneously as if to confirm that they, and indeed Jack Reid, may just have reached the end of a long, hard road and were about to emerge from a tunnel into the light of day once more.

"Jack Reid never hurt anyone in Brighton," said Alice Nickels. "I presume that with this evidence to back up an appeal, you will support any campaign for his early release from Ravenswood, Doctor?"

"As I said the other day, Miss Nickels, Jack is still a seriously disturbed young man. He does suffer from a psychological disorder and could yet prove to be danger to himself and to others. Any decision to release him would have to take that fact into account."

"But he
is
innocent," she went on. "How can you justify keeping someone locked up who hasn't done anything, simply on the grounds that he
might
one day do something? Surely that goes against the whole system of British justice."

In essence, she was correct of course, though it would take a lot of hard work and effort by his lawyers to try and get Jack Reid released, presuming that the courts upheld the appeal which would now surely follow when the police informed his solicitors of the new evidence they'd obtained.

The interview with the two policemen and the solicitor/ripperologist took place in my office a little over six months ago. The course of British justice, though one of the fairest and most respected in the world, does have a habit of running about as fast as the proverbial slow boat to China. The appeal process took longer than any of us expected before reaching the panel of judges who would finally decide Jack Reid's future. I myself was called upon to give evidence in court, and yet I have to say that I was surprised at the end result of the learned judges' deliberations.

The Judgement

The three judges who sat to hear the appeal lodged by Jack Reid's legal team produced what I saw as a rather extraordinary final judgement in the case of the so-called Brighton Ripper. Jack's barrister Simon Allingham once more conducted a spirited and expertly constructed defence of his client, this time backed up by the information obtained through the diligence of the police officers who had originally investigated the case.

Jack's parents sat solemn faced throughout the proceedings, hoping that this would be the end of their own nightmare and that their son would be returned to them, mentally damaged and scarred perhaps, but physically fit and healthy nonetheless, ready to start a new life in the bosom of his family.

Alice Geraldine Nickels was called to give her evidence and the solicitor, at home as ever in the legal environment, delivered her own statement of the facts surrounding her involvement in the post-trail investigation into the case. She never wavered once, even when questioned deeply by one of the appeal judges, His Honour, Lord Chief Justice Roland Hume about her motives for becoming involved in the case.

"Justice, your honour," was her simple reply. "Everything about the original case against Reid seemed wrong to me. I knew the police had done their best but as someone who knows the original Whitechapel murders intimately you might say from my years of research into the case, the murder of Mandy Clark simply didn't add up. Reid was captured too easily and the Ripper, if that's who he was copying would never have allowed himself to become so sloppy in his execution of his crimes, especially when, in his mind, there was still 'work' to do in the guise of at least three more murders."

Mike Holland took to the stand and was quite blunt and succinct in his retelling of the original investigation, the doubts raised by his sergeant after the trial and his own subsequent belief in the possibility of Reid being an innocent man. He re-told the details of his visit to Warsaw almost word-for-word as he had to me in my office at Ravenswood and, of course, all the photographic evidence, the fragments of the journal and the knife used in the murders were all produced in evidence to support the case for clearing Jack Reid's name and laying the blame firmly at the feet of his uncle, Mark Cavendish.

Sergeant Wright basically backed up his inspector's evidence and spent the shortest time in the witness box of all the witnesses.

I was eventually called to the stand, but instead of being asked immediately to give my professional opinion on the state of Jack Reid's mind I was surprised when I was asked by Lord Hume to give my professional insights and conjectures on the reasons why the killer had carried out the murders and attempted to implicate Jack Reid as his means of escaping detection.

"Your honour," I began. "I'm a professional psychiatrist and conjecture about the state of mind of an individual I've never met, let alone had the chance to interview or form an opinion on, would be highly unethical of me."

"I understand your reticence, Doctor, but please, just for once, indulge me. If you were to be asked how you view the state of mind of the type of man who could have committed these crimes, in a hypothetical scenario of course, how would you reply?"

"Well, when you put it that way, I would have to say that we are dealing with a highly motivated, very intelligent but psychologically flawed individual. This man, if he was indeed related to Jack Reid, obviously had no compunction about attempting to lay the blame for his own crimes firmly at the feet of his nephew. That would indicate to me that he was probably a sociopath, one with no sense of responsibility or feelings of guilt regarding his actions. The condition known as Sociopathy is also known as Antisocial Personality Disorder and individuals with this disorder invariably have little regard for the feelings or the welfare of others. That would go some way to explaining this man's total disregard for the consequences of his own actions and the effect they would have on others, including his family. As a clinical diagnosis it's normally limited to those over the age of eighteen. Vary rarely it can be diagnosed in younger people if they commit isolated antisocial acts and show no signs of other psychological disorders. I should also mention that the condition is chronic and once begun, lasts throughout adulthood."

"And what would the symptoms be, Doctor? Are there any outward signs, things which are visible to the casual onlooker or at least to a trained psychiatrist such as yourself?"

"The usual symptoms, some of which could be detected in a psychological consultation include not learning from experience, the person having no sense of responsibility, an inability to form meaningful relationships or control their impulses, a lack of moral sense, chronically antisocial behaviour, emotional immaturity, a complete lack of any feeling of guilt and, of course, no change in behaviour after punishment."