Thank you Stephen for joining me. I can't wait to speak to you about
your new book. I've been talking to a lot of people about it over
the last couple of days, especially who are also really excited about it as
well. It's really interesting. Before we speak about that, I just wondered
if I could get, like know more about you and how you got where
you are now, including your roles within the police force as well. Yeah.
Well, first off, thanks for having me on, Kerry. I
really appreciate that. So you my life story so long long time ago,
like probably before you were born. I'm so open now. Yeah. I
joined the police in nineteen ninety one as a youngster and I worked in southeast
London, and I quickly realized that what I really enjoyed doing was arresting people.
I like putting, I like going after bad people. So that kind
of dragged me down being a detective because if you want to go after bad
people, you become a detective. So I started doing that. That would
have been around two thousand, about two thousand and then in two thousand and
two I went to the anti terrorist branch that dealt with terrorists for a few
years, got promoted and went back to a local police station in East London,
that's Tower Hamlets, so I covered Whitechapel, which is obviously relevant to
chat The Ripper. Did that for a few years, and then in two
thousand and nine I went to a murder team and never left. I loved
it. I just enjoyed investigating murders. It was like and that sounds,
but I found my calling. I really really enjoyed it, and I got
promoted there from DS to D and then I retired from the police in twenty
twenty one, and my life has taken a direction I wasn't expecting. I
wrote a book, my first book, and originally i'd written that in order
to support business, going into companies and training them around skills that you would
use in murder investigation. But then I'm dragging me down a route I never
expected. And now kind of I'm immersed in true crime and going to crime
con and I do lots of TV things like going on to true crime documentaries
and talking about police procedure, etc. I've got an exciting project coming up,
but I can't talk too much about next year, which will involve me
on the screen a lot more. Yeah, I'm I'm just going with the
flow. And then my second book came out a couple of weeks ago,
about Jack the Ripper, and I'm just enjoying it because that's where I actually
first met you. Obviously I was aware of some of the work you did
before, but I would I come and see your your panel work at crime
Com and watch the COVID and domestic violence talk. I actually spoke to you
afterwards. Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah, So before this was like
lots of humble beginnings, isn't it. So I did a little bit of
reading and you as accountant before this, So did you ever? Is that
what you wanted to do? Did you know that you wanted to be a
police officer or is it something that, like the rest of your story has
just taking all these just going with the flow and seeing where it took you.
Is that what happened? Did I did accountancy at school. I did
a level accountcy and I quite enjoyed it. And I come from a sort
of background that you don't go to university. So for me from my from
my background, someone going into account and see you thinking all money, that
that will be good. And dad was a bus driver. I'm worked in
bakers and we didn't come from money, so I thought, I'll go be
an accountant. But money doesn't motivate me at all. So when I was
there, I was just so bored. I was so bored doing it like
it was. It was quite was it in the late eighties, early nineties,
and most of it wasn't on computer. It was in books. I
spent most of my time trying to work out why two columns didn't add up,
and it's like mine numbing. But my offices were right in the back
of the old bailey, and I used to see the comings and goings from
the court. It was like we literally overlooked where the prison vans would come
whizzing in with blue lights and sirens. And when you sat there all day,
bored out your brain and you see when these people going around with his
blue lights and sirens, and it all looks really exciting. I was saying,
God, that's that looks like a better life than than what I'm doing.
And I enjoyed watching as a program at a time called the b or
I'm watching that, and I thought, you know what, And it was
weird because I mean, my family and everything more likely to go to prison
than being the police. I had cousins and to all sorts of stuff.
So I was definitely the first person. I think I'm the first person in
my state that I'm the first person in my family to join the police.
But once I did it, I never looked back. I loved it.
It was like the better best decision I've been made. And I say,
I'm not motiv by money. So at the end of my life and I
look back and I think, right, I could have had a few noughts
maybe in my bank account, or I can look back and think about all
the things I've done, and to me, that's more important. The amazing
experiences you've had so far, fantastic opportunities and stuff. And so when we
talk about your journey and your career as a police officer and building up towards
that, is there anything Because when we go forward and we talk a little
bit about the book, a lot of it is about like a comparison.
There was a there's a narrative in the story of comparison of the investigation back
then and how we do things or how the police force does things now.
Did you see changes in your time that you think, how did we cope
without that? Before? Or any kind of adaptations and processes that kind of
really support investigations. Now, yeah, hugely so. I mean when I
first started, we didn't we didn't use computers. They didn't they didn't exist
within the police force. The only computers that we had were when they weren't
really computers as such. So you know, when the calls came in nine
nine nine calls and whatever, it was called a CAD system and that was
kind of like a computer and that was literally the only one then you could
do like vehicle checks and name checks and stuff on it. And then they
started so every every crime report would get put on paper. And then they
started bringing in computerized reports around ninety four ninety five something like that, So
that massively changed things. It made it a first off, you don't we
don't like it. I just I like doing things on paper. But so,
for instance, if I was investigating a crime now and with computers,
I've got so much information, more information I can search on where people stopped,
where they were searched by police, crimes that reported, et cetera,
et cetera, and all that was very very difficult to do back then.
So in terms of the intelligence, we had these cards with a photograph on
and it was someone's job just to write on these cards when someone was stopped
and searched and intelligence on them. So you can imagine if to search that
you'd have to physically go to the room, go through all these files,
be lucky that. First of you gotta be lucky that someone's actually written it
down. Then you've got to be lucky enough to find it. Whereas now
the database is intelligence databases you can search are brilliant. So but what that
does mean is detectives spend a lot of time sitting on their backside compared to
before because they're in front of computers and stuff. So computers have massively changed
things. DNA wasn't about when I first joined. I mean it was it
was about, but it wasn't really regularly used and we slowly started to get
things through for burglaries and stuff. To now it's obviously some major part of
crime investigations. Phones. Telephones were just like I mean, back then,
it might have been like the yuppy with like a big huge brick phone that
they wander around with. So people didn't have telephones. But now every single
person's got one. That's massively changed now we'll do investigations. So the technology
has changed a lot, but the actual detective work and being a police So
being a detective right on, the most important thing about being a detective is
communication, and it's about how you get information from people, how you come
across the people and without getting their backs up, and you have to you
have to be able to talk to people. You have to be able to
get information out of people. Sometimes they don't want to talk to you.
Sometimes they want to talk to you, but they don't know, like it's
in their brain and you've got to get it out. So commut unication.
And so that wouldn't be any different to back in eighteen eighty eight with the
investigation into Jack the Ripper, So when I joined the police to now,
so that that hasn't changed, and the basic skills of being a police officer
hasn't changed. It's just the technology around it, okay. And when you
talk about keeping how people keep a document interactions and investigations. When we look
back at cold cases, even as backers like forty years ago, a lot
of the ones that are unsolved, it's really difficult to move forward with those.
In particular, I did some work a little while ago about Bella who
was an unsolved case over Birmingham, who was found inside of a tree inside
of Hagley Woods, and there was so much media coverage with it, but
there was not a lot of documentation most because of the war and stuff.
So going forward and trying to find out who people are victims and those that
cause the problems, the murderers and stuff, it's really hard to move forward
now, isn't it? Because of what kind of when you looked back at
your research, when you were doing your research with your book, how did
you overcome that? How did you move forward with that? And could you
I love that. So my book isn't about trying to find new information.
That's that wasn't what I was trying to do. It was my modern day
approach and mindset to the information is already there, and there has been some
fantastic work done by researchers around the Ripper and everything from the crimes themselves and
the victims and scenes the area. So I had the luxury of being able
to go to two, three, four books where all that information was there,
all that work's already been done, so that I wasn't I wasn't trying
to find new stuff. I was just trying to bring a modern detective mindset
to what's already there. So I cheated. Basically, someone had already done
it for me. I love that, and I think, you know,
students do that all the time, the university students. We do that all
the time. So why Jack the Ripper? Why why him? Why did
you choose his case? So where retired? I've been stumbling around doing various
things. I started a YouTube channel and it's still there. And when I
first started doing it, I did it with a view too, could could
I make something of this? And it got a little bit of traction and
had a few thousand followers of what they call subscribers, and a lot of
them were American, and they kept asking me about Jack the Ripper. It's
probably as popular over there as is over here. So I thought I'd have
to do some work, and I do some. I look into it and
I realized that actually I didn't really know an awful lot about it. I
knew I knew the area that it was in. I knew it was in
Whitechapel. I knew he killed some women. It was said to be prostitutes.
I didn't even know how many had actually killed everyone I really know at
about it. But when I started digging into it, there was one thing
that jumped out of me that really sort of really dragged me into it and
really piqued my interest, and that was the lead investigator was a man by
the name of Frederick Aberline. And when I started looking at him and his
background as mirrored each Our careers mirrored each other so much so. For instance,
so earlier on I said, so my career, I was on the
Anceros branch dealing with terrorists. Then I went to Whitechapel and then I did
murders, and that was the same path he had. So he investigated terrorists,
so where mine was mostly Islamists, his was Feenie and Irish terrorists.
Then he went to back then it was called Whitechapel h Division. For me
it was called Tower Hamlet's but the same different name. It changed, it's
the same area. And then he went to Scotland Old and Best to getting
murders, and that's what I did, and that naturally led me on to
start to think, right, well, so our careers have mirrored each other
so much, what would I do differently if I were in this position,
and I was presented with those murders, with the problems that he had to
overcome. How would I do it? How would I do it differently?
And that that's what really led me to write in the book, and I've
just found it a fascinating I write about this in the I think even in
the introduction to the book about it being a journey and it's a journey,
that there was a journey for me. And unless you unless you know that
the Ripper inside out, which obviously some people do, but I wasn't.
I wasn't writing the book for them. I was writing the book for people
that didn't were like me, that didn't know all about all the crimes and
the victims and everything. So for me, it was a journey. I'd
like to think for most readers that aren't sort of sort of well well into
the Ripper, it'll be a journey for them, and also as well as
the book is a journey for me and the journey for the reader, but
what you see is the journey of the people involved in it as well.
So the police themselves, they were on a journey from how they dealt with
the first murders to where they got to and you see their journey of improvement,
of learning, of realizing they're making mistakes and putting them right the next
time. So you see that journey. But you also see the journey of
the killer. You see Jack the Ripper's journey through his murders and the escalation
and the violence. And because because of the because of what's driving it,
because it's being driven by emotion, is being driven by a desire and then
a desire. He keeps pushing himself and you see and you witness that.
So so the whole book is a journey. It's a journey for all of
us, us writer as the readers, and they're in it for me.
That's what that's what the book is about. It's a journey. One of
the things that I really enjoy the most is psychology, and there's and there's
elements of this in the book. So when you talk about the emotional drivers
that you talk about that because why people kill? Why do people? And
through your writing as well as for your police work, what have you?
What have you? What are your kind of conclusions or your faults on that?
So when I did when I write my first book, like I said
at the beginning, I was writing it for a business, but it kind
of what I was writing, it just wasn't working. So I was trying
to say that this is how murders investigated and this is how it can help
your business, and it was trying to be two different things. So I
decided I would concentrate on how murders investigated. But then it was like,
well, who's going to who wants to know about that? Who's who's interested
in that? True crime fans? So I went to a couple of true
crime Facebook groups, one here and one in the States, and I've introduced
myself and I said it would anybody kindly take part in this survey? And
I've got such a huge response. I've got six hundred and fifty I think
responses, And the number one question, without a doubt was why the people
killed? So I thought, well, I'm going to have to answer that,
and we have to think about that, not in a an obvious I
mean, I don't with so many murders and you think, you know,
you think, well you kind of get an understanding of why people kill.
But I thought that the way my brain work is quite quite logical, and
I think, right, is there a pattern? Is this something within the
people committed murders that is beyond what we love and jealousy and revenge. Is
this something deeper than that? Is this something? Is there some kind of
pattern? And then I said this as I'm doing that, And it took
me a while and going through thinking about the murders of investigated, looking at
other murders, and it just suddenly hit me. It was like what what
what I'm doing? And what everyone does is we try and we look at
murder as if it's something different, as if it's as if it's not so
as human beings, we were motivated to act by one of three things.
By what we're feeling, what we want to feel, and the benefit we're
going to get from it. And that if I talk about exercise, so
if you go to the gym, you're going to do it because of how
you're feeling. You feel, you're feeling the lethargic, you're feeling ugly,
whatever it is you feel. I want to go to the gym because of
how I feel. Or I want to go to the gym because actually it
makes me feel good, it gives me a bus, I get a rushing
dolphins, whatever it is, Or I want to go because I I want
to I want to lose weight, or I want to sleep better or want
to live longer. So whatever reason you're going to the gym, you're doing
it for one of those three reasons. I think what we do is we
try it and we separate murderers if it's something completely different. Why do people
choose to murder? Somebody choose to kill, Well, they're doing it for
exactly the same reason. They're doing it because of what they feel inside.
So when you're talking about revenge and jealousy and anger and fear, people kill
out of that, it's because they're being driven by what they're feeling inside.
Or if they kill out of a sense of power or control or sexual gratification
or enjoyment, they're doing it because they want to feel something. Or if
it's robbery or gang violence where they're about turf wars and all this sort of
thing, or terrorism, they're killing because of the game they're going to get
from it. And it was kind of a light bulb moment. It's like,
well, actually, every murder you can think of, apart from like
people that are properly meant toly ill, and they're killing because they're hearing voices
or their delusion or something. You can't really classify that the same. But
where people are of the same sound mind and they choosing to do something,
whatever murder you come up with, whatever motive you come up with, it
will it will fall into one of those three categories. And I say it
was like a light bulb moment for me. And I'm not an academic,
and other people may disagree, but I'm yectifying somebody or a murder that doesn't
fit in with one of those three things. And once I realize that it
was just everything else has become much more simple. So when I look at
the murder now, so I can I can understand and show I didn't know
that when I was investigate murders really, but but you kind of know that
you haven't labeled it. Do you think so when it comes to understanding behavior,
as humans, we try and understand behavior, do you think that we
create in trying to understand why someone does hurt other people do things that are
outside of our own being, our own ability to do something. Do you
do you think that that we create a demographic that kind of can create a
bias to who actually could be the person that's doing it. So, for
example, if someone created murders someone, then clearly that they're insane or there
is something seriously wrong with them that is apparent to us when we look look
at them. They don't look like a murderer. So do you think that
sometimes people can fall out for through the cracks because they don't fit that.
Especially when it comes to women, people perceive women as being maternal. So
even with the Jack the Ripper murder, there's that a sumption. We don't
know who he is or the fact that he's he. He had to be
someone whoever this was, had to be really strong to be able to witnesses
saw saw him. So I think we can get away from it potentially being
a woman because he was seeing with the victims. So it's a really interesting
point what you're making. And if I related back to the book, they
didn't catch Jack the Ripper. We know that it's a fact, and what
I think one of the issues they had was that they failed to recognize.
So if we talk about those three categories categories of murder, I called them
push of emotion, pull of emotion, and gain. So push of emotion
is where someone kills as a result of triggered emotion. So a triggered emotion,
something happened that triggers something inside of someone. It's a jealousy, anger,
sense of revenge, whatever it is. And people back then completely got
that. They've completely understood why someone would kill because they're angry, because they're
jealous or whatever. They've got that completely. And the game one, they
completely got and understood why someone would kill because of a robbery, because they
were robbing someone of their money, whatever it is. They completely got that.
But what they what they really really failed to recognize was that that middle
one, the pull of emotion, where someone someone's killing someone, someone's hurting
someone in order to experience an emotion, because they couldn't because they didn't recognize
that, they didn't understand that. What they what they were then doing,
they were labeling Jack the Ripper as a lunatic and they got dragged down into
lines of inquiry where they're going into this is their words, not lunatic asylums.
That's what they call about that. So they go into lunatic asylums and
they and they're obsessing over people that they can't they can't be normal, can
you no normal person I'm doing Bunny is now. You can't see it.
But no normal person would brutally kill someone in this way, remove body parts,
take them away with and commit inflick wounds that went beyond the need to
kill. That can't be normal. That person must be mad. They must
be mad, They must be insane. But what we know, we know
better now, don't we. When you when you look at the last one,
the Long Island, I can't they give them the name of it.
I never remember these names. But the last one is in the news in
America. Completely normal, fella, completely on the face of it, respectable,
et cetera. I mean, when we when we look at our serial
killers in this country, they're not running around throfting at the mouth, aren't
they They're just they're just normal. Twenty years ago. It doesn't work the
podcast, does it. But But but the perceptions people that are around them
is that they're just they're just more people. So we know that now,
But back then, what you're talking about is exactly what they did. They
were, they were, they were They were making assumptions of the type of
person that must be committing these crimes. And if you do that, you're
looking in the wrong place, aren't you. You're looking for the wrong person,
and you're likely to to overlook someone obvious because they don't fit your your
stereotype of what this kind of murders murderer should be. So I think what
you say is acsolutely right. It's a really good point, and it's something
that I think we're better at now than certainly they were back then. Okay,
thank you. So when we look at the story of Jack the Ripper,
there is there anything? For example, I've always been aware aware of
five women that were murdered, but there is evidence or there's thoughts that there
was more. Is that something that surprised you? And how do you what
are your thoughts? Do you think there's more than five? So for me
that when when I wrote a book, that the main the main part of
the book is what happened in how was with the murder investigating in eighteen eighty
eight and how how does that differ to how it be investigated today? So
that's the main thrust of the book. So the difference between how we we
do it now and how were doing that. But during that what I've looked
to do is answer three questions, and one of them is why, why
did he do it? What was motivating him? I think if I think
you have a clue from what I've been talking about. The other one was
which crime did he commit? Because there is that there is disagreement, and
there's different views on the murders he committed, and and can I add anything
to who he would be? So why did he do it? What did
he do? And who was he? So there are the three questions I
tried to answer. So when I look at the crimes, the White Chapel
murders were eleven. There are eleven murders, all investigated in one file called
the White Chapel Murders, and the they were all investigated as if they could
be linked, they all could be by the same person. They weren't.
There was no way that Jack the Ripper committed all eleven of those murders.
It is known as committing five and it gets known as described as the canonical
five is what people call it. Now. I when I was everything I
did in this book, what I try to do is block out everything,
all the theories, all the conjecture, all the ideas that people have had
in the past, and included those five murders. So I didn't come into
it thinking, oh, he's committed five. I'll look at the other six
it was at eleven and make and try and bring a modern perspective to can
we say which ones it was likely to have committed? So what I do
is I use a method known as similar fact evidence, And what that is
you look for unusual characteristics within a crow I am that are common with with
with at least at least two of them. So between the crimes a characteristic
that isn't so, for instance, if you were talking about someone committing robberies,
the fact someone uses a knife, it is not is not unusual,
it's it's common. So if you've got robbery over here with someone whousing knife
and a robbery over here someone using knife, you can't say they're connected.
But if, for instance, during the robberies they stabbed the person in the
left buttock and they did that over and they did it over there, well
that could be used as a commonality and it's unusual that you could link the
two. Then if you add another one, so for instance, that they
were using specific words when they were doing the robbery, again you can strengthen
the idea that they're linked. So I use that same basis for the crimes
and what was going on, what was unusual in them, how do they
link? And by doing that, I personally have come up with a different
set of victims than these commonly accepted Okay, could you talk a lot about
all that. There's lots of different characters that you speak about in the book,
and you humanize them. What they all have their own their own persona
comes through in the way that you change a dialect, the way they speak,
and you kind of try and reflect how they were affected as well from
the murders that took place. One of the main characters, the main main
person that was interested in the way that you presented the way that he worked,
was Ablaine. Could you tell me more about the part he played in
particular? What I found quite interesting is the reluctance to work with the media
and stuff like that. What are your thoughts And yeah, he was the
lead investigator for you got taken off of it tools again. But certainly the
sort of the main murders that were most of us all were. He was
a very humble man. It wasn't It wasn't a lot of them post the
their police careers, wrote memoirs and talked about the murder investigations. He didn't
do that. And there's only really one time where we got a glimpse of
his thoughts and his his ideas of what might go on. And he got
interviewed by a newspaper and he it was shortly after there was there was one
of the people that gets closely linked with the murders is he took a name
of George Chapman, and he he killed his two of his partners or wives,
and he was like, it's women, women he was in relationship with.
He poisoned them. And shortly after that's a reporter from one of the
local papers went to visit him his home, and it was a one and
only time we really get a real insight into his feelings of what was going
on at the time and what he was doing. And that's how way end
the book. I in the book on the prologue is is that so the
words that you see him saying that his words, so his thoughts, his
ideas and what may have happened. He's got a suspect there. I'm not
saying that's the same suspect as maybe back then that's who he thought Jack the
Ripper was so yeah, And when I came across that newspaper interview, I
just faily and it was just it was so fascinating for me to get that
insight from the man that was central to the investigation that I had to put
in the book somewhere. So that's why it's there at the end. And
in terms of his work, do you feel like there might have been biases
that would have affected the investigation, how it was conducted, and the way
it was investigated as well? I think there definitely were mistakes, So Kerry,
I was if I were to ask you what Chack the Ripper looked like,
or if I was to ask ten people what Chack the Ripple look like,
I'm not saying you would do this, but amongst those ten, definitely
one hundred percent they would be mentioned in there of a black bag like a
doctor's bag. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's what people associateped Chat the
Ripper. But how that came about is such a fascinating and I find it's
such an interesting story. So what what the police did back then is and
this is this was a decision taken above aveline's head. It was senior officers
at the time. Maybe maybe even the commission, I don't know. There's
certainly senior officers. They made a conscious decision that they weren't going to engage
with the press. They had nothing to do with them. They weren't going
to tell them about the investigation. If they needed them for some reason,
they would go to them, and if it's an appeal about a suspect or
something, they might have gone to them. But in general they just kept
my arm's length and they didn't engage with them at all. And one of
the ladies that was murdered by the name of Elizabeth Stride, and she was
murdered on the same night as another woman, Catherine Eddoes, but Elizabeth came
first, and there was it was in Berner Street was where this murder took
place. And his name, though it's gone from my brain, what's the
name? There was a weakness Fanny, Fanny something anyway, so she's she's
come forward to the police and said I saw a man running past my house
coming from the direction of the murder, and he was carrying a black,
shiny bag. So the assumption was by the police and everybody that that must
have been the murderer who's running away black shiny bag. Of course he got
in it body paths and the knife who knows, And the press. Because
the police wouldn't engage with them, the press sort of they flooded the area
with their reporters, and a reporter or two spoke with Fanny. People can
read and missus Fanny Water, so they spoke with her. So that was
that was suddenly front page news, as it would be if someone's seen that,
someone's seen. He wasn't called Jack Ripper. Then he got his name
a bit later. But someone's seen this murderer. He's running around and he's
got a black shiny bag. So we've got a clue now is what he
looks like. So that was front page news. And some fellow was reading
all the newspaper and said to himself, oh dear, that's me. So
he's gone to the police station. He's gone to the police and said,
you know that man that was running past Fanny Morton was house. That was
me and in that black bag. I had some mental empty cegarette boxes.
And the police checked it out and they were happy, so they eliminated him
from their inquiries. He had nothing to do with it, so the black
shiny bag had nothing to do with it, but because they weren't engaging with
the press, they didn't tell them. So, not only even in eighteen
eighty eight, in twenty twenty three, one hundred and thirty plus years later,
people still associate Jack Ripple with this black shiny bag, when at the
time they could have shut it down and said, actually, look, we've
a limited we've identified this man, we've eliminated from his choirs, all the
usual police jargon, and they could have put that to bed, but I
didn't. They let it run. So still to this day, you go
go on the internet, you do a search Jack the Ripper, and there's
a black shiny bag and it was this fellow that was running past with eventually
cegrette boxes. And it's that kind of thing that if you're investigating a murder
and you've got the wrong description of the suspect out there, it can't help.
It can't it can't, it can't benefit your investigation. Are people ignoring
somebody else because he hasn't got a black shiny bag? He can't be Jack
Ripper, even even one of the victims, Oh, he hasn't got a
black shiny bag. I feel comfortable walking off of him. And you know
what I mean, So who knows what this decision and the failure to engage
with the media or the press at the time, what were the repercussions?
And it's those, It's little things like that you and bear in mind,
we've got very we haven't got a lot of the paperwork, so we don't
know an awful lot about the police investigation. But if you've only got a
little bit of paperwork and you see mistakes like that, you start to thinking,
oh, what else have they done? So when you're investigating murder,
now wet my job. And so during when I was investigating murders, I
had two different roles. I was a detective sergeant and detective inspector. Detective
sergeant was much more fun, how much I enjoy it so much more.
But I've got a bit more pension inspectors. I got promoted. Yeah,
I know, I said I wasn't votible on this one occasion I was.
I went on as an addictive detective inspective. One of my jobs was to
write strategies about everything about your house to house, CCTV, telephones, family
liaison. You'd write a strategy for every strand of an investigation. So the
people that were responsible for that strand were under no illusions what was being asked,
and they knew, they knew what evidence we were looking for and how
we were going to go and find it. And one of one of the
strategies we do now was a media strategy because we understand the importance of engaging
with the press, engaging with all sorts of media. Now it's not just
the press and the benefits that it can it can give give an investigation.
We know that now, we know we know how important it is. So
back then for them to just not engage with the press at all can't have
helped their investigation, and I think it positively hindered it, and we can't.
I've got a few questions, and I'm reluctant to ask them, because
obviously there's a lot of it's in the book, and we have some questions
on some people that I'm doing my interview this evening, and a lot of
it is looking at the comparisons between the investigative work that happened then and then
what would happen now. And we've spoken a little bit about that, and
I asked some people what would they have asked the detective in eighteen eighty eight,
and what would they ask the detective now if it was to happen now,
And a lot of it is who did it answer? Though? Yeah,
thank you, there was a couple that was interested to know if because
obviously Seventh Sanctum is the podcast that we're on. A lot of the work
we do is with paranormal and other nurse and true crime, and there is
a link to work with Robert Lee's. So do you know that if the
detective consulted with him more than he was a psychic medium at the time he
was consulting with the police, I honestly don't know the answer to that.
It's not someone I've come across before. He wasn't he wasn't within the what
I'm what I researched. So then, so are you saying, would we
engage now with psychic Well, yeah, maybe not. To my knowledge,
I've never never seen it. It's never been discussed. But that's not to
say as an individual it would be an individual decision by by by the investigators.
As a senior investigators, I've never come across it. I'm not aware
of it, but everybody's got their own thoughts and ideas. And I've been
in murder investigations where you become desperate because you want to solve it, because
it becomes personal. You want you want to get justice for the victim,
you want to get justice for the family, You want to get them answers.
So I can imagine, and I mean this is just a guest best
guess, I can imagine that at some point somewhere someone has approached a detective
and said, and they've probably either through whether what harm can it do?
Or actually, I'll try anything. At this point, I would imagine somebody
probably has and does. That's saying I've not seen it, and I don't
know if they did in eighteen eighty eight, it wouldn't surprise me, wouldn't
surprise it. And one of the things they did try in eighteen eighty eight,
which I find is fascinating, is right, I can't remember this word
even. I think it's called optomology. It might be optomology. I might
have made that up. It's got an opto something in it. So what
the the idea was? When a person dies, the last image that they
see is burnt into their eyes. It remains within their eyes. So what
they did was is they took photographs of people's eyes. Theyad people with a
view to blowing up the image so that so, oh, look we can
see the last thing they saw. We'll see, we'll see the murderer.
And you know, earlier I was talking about people did memo. Some officers
wrote memoirs, and one of the officers involved in his memoir said that for
the seventh murder, or the fifth of the canonical five Mary Jane Kelly,
that the police tried this and it was it was it was. Looking back
now, you think that's crazy, but back then they I would imagine that
they look, if there's any chance at all, we'll try it. So
if you've got that mindset, and the psychic was come up to you and
say to you, I mean, I don't know how psychic's work, So
I don't insult anybody, but psychic come up to somebody and said I've I've
got this information. I'm sure they would have listened. How they acted on
it, I don't know. I'm sure they would have listened. Okay,
And that's really fascinating. Okay, I didn't know that that they did it
with the eyes. Yeah, that's really fascinating. The crazy thing is that
was eighteen eighty eight and I put this in the book and I can't remember
all the dates now I should read my book more in the nineteen hundreds and
something about nineteen twenties, so it was quite a way after this. A
person was convicted in Germany for an axe murder where he killed eight people or
something and they used that as evidence against him. Really yeah, so crazy.
I'm going to do my nighttime reading on now book. I can't remember
which section it's in, but it's in the book. Well, yeah,
thank you. Another thing that keeps going. Another aspect that popping up is
the H. H. Holmes link. Obviously, I don't I know people
for people to read the book to no more. My information is that he
wasn't in the country at the time. That's my understanding. So so what
I've done so when it comes to suspects, you could you could throw fifty
names at me, and I was the same answer every single time. As
a detective, I look at evidence. I don't I don't look at conjecture,
theories, pine the sky ideas, which a lot of what I see
from the suspects, the reasons why people suspect them to me is pine and
the sky most of it. I look at evidence. So what is the
evidence to get in these murders? And essentially what the evidence is comes from
witnesses, and the witnesses of three of the murders, three or four have
four of them have seen the victim with another person, and they have given
descriptions that are quite vague to be honest, apart from one which is really
which is almost two too detailed that makes you wonder whether that's actually been made
up. But because you've got these vague, generic descriptions that could match basically
anybody and actually evidence that would link someone to to the murders, you can
come up with all these names. And my answer would always be, what's
the evidence, not not they were in they were in White Chapel at the
time, and they they they did some paintings that are a bit odd or
whatever whatever whatever these theories are, or they may have written the letters to
the press that named them miss jack Ripper, Well, what evidence is there
that they commit to murder? And they will always, it will always always
fall back to exactly the same thing. There is none even the DNA that
was said to have been on a shawl that there's no that that the continuity
and the provenance of this shaw is is non existent. So there's a garment
with some DNA on it, and using micro chondrial DNA, they believe that
it was linked to Cosminsky, one of one of the suspects. Well,
a load of rubbish, basically, an absolutely load of rubbish because there's no
evidence that this shaw is from the crime scene. So that's your first once
once, Once you say that, everything else that follows you just you just
you just fall falls down. So when it comes to the suspects, every
single one of them must say exactly the same. There's no evidence that links
them to the murder. So a lotant to spoil. But what I do,
what I do in the book is a comit a different way, So
I look at the most popular suspects. When we investigate murders, we have
a technique known as t I E. The what the t I E stands
will keeps changing, but at the moment, it's trace, investigate, evaluate,
So it's a it's a method. So you generate a list of people
where the suspect is likely to be on it. So it could be people
that somebody who has discovered the body, people that are in the air at
the time, people with a grievance against the victim, people that use similar
methods, People live in the area, has got intelligence that they might be
violent. So you generate a list and in theory, your suspect should be
on it, and then you use tie as a method of eliminating each suspect
that you can by the fact that, for instance, they were in a
different area at a different time, they don't fit a description, their DNA
profile doesn't match the profile we've got, whatever it is. You come up
with a criteria how you eliminate people, and the idea is you knock on
off and to eventually in an idea will joined up with one. In reality,
you probably end up with a few, and then you use different methods
to look at them. So you might do surveillance on them, you might
arrest them, search their homes or whatever. So that's the method that we
would use on some murders. So I've applied that method to the most popular
suspects and I've got it down to two, and of those two, I
favor one because if it's going to be one of those two, I think
it would be more likely to be that one. But that's as far as
I can go. I'm not going to in the very first chapter in the
introduction I say this isn't about solving the crimes, because I don't think you
can do that. Sorry to disappoint people, no, no, no,
So if you as to so, yeah, So I'm current in a little
book book club and we are currently reading your book and the moment so yeah,
so I haven't got all the information as we do an interview. I
wanted to kind of go in a little bit asking questions from of someone who
hasn't read your book entirely or at all. So I hope that I'll see
Kerry. I'll be very happy. This is an offer, and I'm not
if you if your book club will have a big will get together zoom with
me. I'll be happy. I'll be happy to do that and answer any
questions for you people in your book club, if you want to do it
afterwards, I'm happy to do that. That would be absolutely amazing. Yes,
please a few times now. I'm more than happy to give up now
all my time just people are spending their time reading my book. I'm happy
to do that. Definitely would arrange that. Thank you so much. So
I think my last question to you is if there is another case, Is
there another case that's picture interested you'd like to look into more? Not yet,
But one of the things writing a book is really hard work. It
takes up, it takes over your life. It's has a lot of hard
work. So if you were to ask me now, would you ever do
this again on another crime? The flaw answer is no. If you ask
me many years time and might I have changed my mind. But so funny
enough, you were talking about the narrative style. Where are you introduced the
witnesses in that way? And I did that for a very very some some
very specific reasons. So one of them is what you what you highlighted is
that these real people and murder for me is real. So a lot of
people that are in I'm not I'm not digging them out for this, but
a lot of people that are into true crime it's like a it's like a
form of entertainment and I'm not. I'm not that's not me having to go
to people about that. I'm involved in that now, so fine, But
for me, murder is real. It was about the crime scenes and the
victims and the families that are left behind. So it's all murder, is
very very It's not something that I read in a book. It's something that
I've experienced, so I didn't want to just regurgitate the facts. And funny,
when you're an author, you do you do read your reviews, and
every bad review actually be fair, it's all. There was one one who
was really bad, there was another which wasn't particularly good, and there was
another which was four stars. But but all of them are people that are
involved. They call themselves Ripperologists, and and they're very into into the Ripple
world, which I'm not criticizing. It's so fast that well, but none
of them like they don't like the fact that I've done that narrative style I'm
using. I've had two invents and diagleogue. Obviously I can't. I can't.
I don't know what the conversations are exactly between people, and they don't
like that. But for me, I wasn't, as I said before,
I wasn't writing a book for them. I was writing the book for people.
So most most people don't know about Jack Ripper, so I'm writing the
book for most people. And I think there's a good reason why people most
Jack the Ripper books aren't very popular. The ones that are, like the
Five by Hallie Rubyn Hall the book by Patricia Cornwall corn And I think it's
probably about it. I can't I can't think of any other books and they're
they're popular for a reason. One is because Hallie's written about the victims,
and the other ones because it's Patricia Cornwell and she's famous. Jack the Ripper
books are very hard to get into because I just just a list of facts,
essentially. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to just
I might as well just cut and pasted from someone else's book. I wanted
to make it real and also wanted to introduce a kind of idea and a
bit of atmosphere of what it was like in eighteen eighty eight at the time,
and the challenges and what it was like to live there. And so
as you go through you may not know it, but you're reading stuff that
is actually happened at the time, or it's facts about the time, and
so like one of the witnesses was somebody looked after one of the common lodging
houses and they had to do things on a certain day. They had to
do this every four weeks, have to do that after every day, they
had to open the windows and all that. So I kind of put that
in there because that's by law, that's what they had to do. So
I was trying to introduce an element of what it was like in eighteen eighty
eight. And I completely get that the people that used to reading Jack the
Book of Jack, the Book Jack the Ripper, books that are just a
list of facts don't like it. And I get that, but not wishing
to be rude, I'm not writing it for them. I'm writing it for
everybody else to make it more accessible and make it more real. And yeah,
I think that humanizing people it's victims goes a long way, because,
like you said, I go along to a lot of true crime things if
I can, I go and see shows, whatever, and you do get
lost in the fact that this is something that actually happened to an actual person
who's got actual family, and you're just in the moment of the facts.
But when you actually come away and think about, actually this is this is
this person and then understanding who that person actually was, it does change the
narrative a little or less about the person who did it, more about the
people that went through it and the ones that had to survive it as well.
It leaves the footprint, isn't it. That doesn't It's never gone to
weigh the footprinter jack, the rip's never going to wait in there. So
it kind of is a reminder. You went to Crime Call and one of
the I'm so my first book, I wrote about how murgers investigated and I
refer to some of my crimes that I investigated, but I don't use the
victims names and I don't use the suspects names, and it's really important to
me. I don't, I don't. I don't do that. I don't,
I don't, I don't. When I first left I kind of where
I was finding my feet, I said some things now that I regret.
I talked about crimes I wouldn't wouldn't now talk about. So when I got
involved with crime con it was very important to me that they're what is it
they stand for, and they're very much about the victims, and that's that's
I think sometimes that gets completely lost on an element within the true crime world,
and I think that that was really highlighted around the Nickel a bully case
and some of some of the some of the stuff I saw and read was
just just terrible. And it's like this is like it was like a game
to some people, whereas that that was a mum and a wife and a
daughter and a sister, and that that kind of get lost in some people's
minds. And as I say, and obviously if you carry you, you're
in the same mindset that it's a real thing, and it's real people,
and it's it's real lives are affected by it. Yeah, it's important that
we can look at these things and maybe learn from different perspectives, from a
police perspective or from just a human being understanding human nature and so forth.
But yeah, thank you so much. Is there anything that I haven't asked
that you feel it's a really important note in terms of your book and the
work you have done with Jack the Ripper. I want to make sure we've
covered everything. Yeah, no, no, I think I think we've covered
everything that that's important to me. And as I say, the most important
elements to me is always that these are real people. And and I know,
I know there's some controversy over whether they were prostitutes or not. The
victims that the evidence that I've seen is that they are. But to me,
it makes no difference. Does it matter if they're if they're prostitutes or
not. They're human beings that found themselves in the position where they ended up
turning to prostitution out of desperation, not because not because it was it was
it was fun and enjoyable, so so to to me that these were real
people. The witnesses were real people, the police officers and real people everybody.
If you see, if you if you are unlucky enough to witness be
a witness within a murder, any part of it, especially finding the body
that will live with you forever and ever. And I think that was one
of the things that I wanted to get across, is that they're not.
To me, they're not They're not names on a list of facts. They're
real people that had traumatic experiences and I think they deserve in my own little
way. And all right, yeah, I don't know what they said in
real life, but to me, it was important that we bring bring those
people to life. It's like this affected them, that this this really was
a big part of their life that they probably carried until the way they died.
And the truth is as well, these women were doing things that they
needed to do to keep themselves safe. They put themselves in a position where
they potentially be in danger to keep themselves safe at night, so they had
somewhere to stay, so they had somewhere to sleep, so they could eat.
So this wasn't something that it was life for them. It's how they
survived. The money they earned, got a roof over the head and maybe
some food on the table. It wasn't to get fancy clothes and whatever.
It was literally to survive. Yeah, well, thank you so much,
Steven, thank you for joining me. I'm going to share all the information
about your book in the bio as well, so people can go ahead and
catch themselves a copy. And yeah, we's sole out our book club meeting
and maybe we can invite some of the viewers along as well they fancy.
I don't know how to work technically, but technologically, but I'm very happy
even do it on my YouTube channel. I can do it on it.
I'm very happy to arrange something where we all sit down and people have read
the book and ask me questions. I'm very happy to do that. So,
yeah, just let me know but thank you very much for having me
on Carre. I love I love talking about this. I could talk about
it for hours and hours. I have to shut themselves up. No,
it's yeah, when you're passionate about something, Yeah, it just flows,
isn't it, Which is what It's good because you inspire and you educate and
you informed. So there's nothing it's only good things that are going to come
from having conversations like this, especially if someone so passionate. So thank you
so much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Gerri, thank
you. Well. I'm going to say goodbye to every one. Good evening,
good morning, good afternoon, whenever you're listening. Can as see you
next time? Thanke it