seeking Jack: Autopsy of a terrible allure

By Mark Roth

Jack the Ripper is dead.

This simple certainty may come as no surprise, since the prostitute killer raged in the Whitechapel slum in London more than 130 years ago.
But it never became quiet around the first serial killer.
And therefore the former investigator of the Scotland Yard, Frederick Abberline, came to look for the murderer of the women many years after his death.
He is accompanied by a mysterious stranger who is pretending to know the true identity of Jack.


Mark Roth adopted his analysis of Jack the Ripper, subtitled ambiguously as "Observation in nine Scenes", as a play.
Frederick Abberline meets a stranger who knows suspiciously much about the murders in the East End of London.
Together, the two dissimilar protagonists reopen the case, examine evidence, question suspects, and seeking for Jack.
Some of the murder victims are interrogated, either.

But this "Autopsy of a terrible allure" is far from being pure fiction.
The evidences and case descriptions mirror the current level of Ripper research and refer to well-known authors such as Begg or Sugden.
The perpetrators profile by the FBI of the 1980s is considered too.
Roth succeeds in preserving the historical authenticity, as well as giving an outline of what happened in London in 1888.
His dissolution of the Ripper's identity is consequently nothing entirely new - although it has never been told in this way before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Jan 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9783753428567

Mark Roth

Mark Roth, born in 1967, lives with his family in Germany.

Book preview

then?"

Scene 1

The truth, however, will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames.

Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten; Memorandum, Aberconway Version, 1894

He is off, only a vague silhouette is visible. Abberline alone in the spotlight.

Abberline:

"The truth lay at the bottom of the River Thames. This one statement legitimized suspicion of John Montague Druitt. Assistant Commissioner Sir Melville Macnaghten had mentioned it years after the Whitechapel murders ...

... but without knowing the details about Druitt comprehensively.

Druitt was 31 years old in 1888. He came from a distinguished family, had studied law and worked as a teacher. Educated, anchored in society, a bourgeois future in mind. If anything was true of Druitt: he was definitely not part of the East End milieu."

He, from the background:

Which doesn't relieve him yet.

Abberline, spicy:

Neither does it accuse him.

He:

Macnaghten certainly had reasons to associate Druitt's name with the Ripper.

Abberline:

There were shadows in Druitt's life. One is founded in the history of his family. Mental illness, presumably hereditary, occurred in the maternal branch. His aunt went mad, as did the grandmother. She even committed suicide. Druitt's mother was sent to an asylum after her husband's death. Druitt himself wrote in private records that he was afraid of … 'becoming like mother'.

He:

This would serve the public expectations that the Ripper could only be a madman.

Abberline:

... with a general interpretation of madness - maybe. But there was more to Druitt. While continuing study law, he worked as a private tutor at a prestigious boys' school. This employment ended unilaterally in November 1888. The reasons could not be determined even when the school management was interrogated. But the rumor of pedophilia quickly spread.

He:

"Which turns our young lawyer into a mentally ill pervert with a sexually abnormal disposition. I can well imagine that this pattern was a good match for the Ripper's phantom at the time - and not just in the imagination of the simple man in the street.

But was that really all?"

Abberline:

No. At the end of December the dead body of a man was found in the Thames. He was fully clothed, there were stones in his pockets, supposed to drag the body under water. But the putrefaction gases had finally prevailed. The time of death was estimated to be four, maybe six weeks before the discovery. This roughly coincides with the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper's last victim.

Abberline becomes silent, seems to be waiting for a response.

Druitt enters:

"The dark had reached for me long before the cold floods of the Thames did. Still, I wasn't prepared for it. I was a good athlete, young, strong, a good swimmer. That is why I used the stones. Because of doubts about my determination - like doubts have accompanied me all my life. The stones did their duty. The moment when the compulsion to breathe became unbearable, when the water filled my lungs, the horror ... I didn't want to die anymore. Not like that. I fought against it, wanted to go back to the surface. But I was already too deep, the force pulling me down was too