WEBVTT 00:00:00.780 --> 00:00:03.919 Imagine holding a piece of mail that basically 00:00:03.919 --> 00:00:07.160 single -handedly invented the modern serial killer. 00:00:07.290 --> 00:00:10.429 Yeah, and we mean literally no weapon, no DNA 00:00:10.429 --> 00:00:13.990 or anything, just a standard 1888 postcard. Right. 00:00:14.070 --> 00:00:17.089 Smeared with red ink, featuring just a few scribbled 00:00:17.089 --> 00:00:19.410 words that, you know, managed to terrify an entire 00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:21.969 nation. And totally derail a police investigation 00:00:21.969 --> 00:00:25.750 for well over a century. It's just wild. So welcome 00:00:25.750 --> 00:00:29.109 to this custom tailored deep dive crafted specifically 00:00:29.109 --> 00:00:31.530 for you. Glad you're here with us today. We are 00:00:31.530 --> 00:00:34.409 pulling all our insights entirely from a really 00:00:34.409 --> 00:00:37.119 comprehensive Wikipedia article. Yeah, it details 00:00:37.119 --> 00:00:40.439 the history, the text and the massive controversy 00:00:40.439 --> 00:00:44.359 surrounding the the Saucy Jackie postcard. And 00:00:44.359 --> 00:00:47.000 our mission here isn't just to recount some gruesome 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:49.380 historical event just for the shock value. No, 00:00:49.420 --> 00:00:51.219 definitely not. We're going to examine how a 00:00:51.219 --> 00:00:54.859 simple handwritten taunt became this huge cornerstone 00:00:54.859 --> 00:00:57.439 of true crime history. Exactly, because it really 00:00:57.439 --> 00:00:59.820 blurred the lines between a killer's authentic 00:00:59.820 --> 00:01:03.000 communication and, well, a highly calculated 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:05.840 media hoax. OK, let's unpack this. To really 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:08.400 grasp the gravity of that little piece of cardboard, 00:01:08.819 --> 00:01:10.939 we have to look at the mechanics of London's 00:01:10.939 --> 00:01:13.799 communication network back in the autumn of 1888. 00:01:14.040 --> 00:01:15.959 Right, because it wasn't just dropping a letter 00:01:15.959 --> 00:01:18.780 in a local mailbox. Exactly. The central news 00:01:18.780 --> 00:01:21.400 agency, which is who received this postcard, 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:24.719 wasn't just a local newspaper. It was a major 00:01:24.719 --> 00:01:29.090 wire service. Oh, wow. So like. A huge hub. Yeah. 00:01:29.430 --> 00:01:31.689 If a piece of sensational news landed on their 00:01:31.689 --> 00:01:34.349 desks, it was immediately telegraphed to daily 00:01:34.349 --> 00:01:36.930 papers across the entire country. I mean, that 00:01:36.930 --> 00:01:39.090 structural detail really changes everything. 00:01:39.250 --> 00:01:41.689 It does. The sender wasn't just hoping to spook 00:01:41.689 --> 00:01:44.829 like a local beat cop. They were broadcasting 00:01:44.829 --> 00:01:47.390 to the entire British empire. Yep. They understood 00:01:47.390 --> 00:01:50.129 exactly how to get maximum amplification. And 00:01:50.129 --> 00:01:52.629 to understand why this specific broadcast was 00:01:52.629 --> 00:01:55.590 so incredibly effective. I want to read the verbatim 00:01:55.590 --> 00:01:58.150 text from our source. Yeah, lay it on us. So 00:01:58.150 --> 00:02:00.989 the postcard was postmarked October 1st, 1888, 00:02:00.989 --> 00:02:04.349 and it reads, quote, I was not cutting dear old 00:02:04.349 --> 00:02:06.430 boss when I gave you the tip. You'll hear about 00:02:06.430 --> 00:02:09.169 Saucy Jackie's work tomorrow. Double event this 00:02:09.169 --> 00:02:11.710 time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn't finish 00:02:11.710 --> 00:02:14.389 straight off. Had not time to get ears off for 00:02:14.389 --> 00:02:17.090 police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till 00:02:17.090 --> 00:02:19.610 I got to work again. It is so chilling. And then, 00:02:19.629 --> 00:02:22.009 you know, it has that infamous signature, quote, 00:02:22.469 --> 00:02:25.680 Jack the Ripper. The syntax itself is just incredibly 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:27.659 jarring. Yeah, it's so casual. Right. The author 00:02:27.659 --> 00:02:31.819 uses this breezy, almost jovial, tone -like dear 00:02:31.819 --> 00:02:34.400 old boss and saucy Jackie. While discussing the 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:36.759 brutal murder of human beings. Exactly. It mimics 00:02:36.759 --> 00:02:40.280 the cadence of a coworker casually updating you 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:43.120 on some mundane office project. That's a great 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:45.360 way to put it. And the impact of that tone was 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:48.939 really amplified by the... totally chaotic environment 00:02:48.939 --> 00:02:50.680 at Scotland Yard at the time. Oh, right. Because 00:02:50.680 --> 00:02:52.819 they were basically dealing with the 1888 equivalent 00:02:52.819 --> 00:02:55.280 of an unmoderated internet comment section. Pretty 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:57.719 much. I mean, they were receiving hundreds of 00:02:57.719 --> 00:03:00.060 letters from random people claiming to be the 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:02.620 killer. A total Victorian spam filter nightmare. 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:05.819 Yeah. You have this mountain of trolls fighting 00:03:05.819 --> 00:03:07.699 for attention right in the middle of the biggest 00:03:07.699 --> 00:03:11.199 story in the world. But this particular postcard 00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:14.819 somehow bypassed that filter. It did. The investigators 00:03:14.819 --> 00:03:17.259 deemed it so potentially authentic that they 00:03:17.259 --> 00:03:20.139 took the incredibly rare step of publishing a 00:03:20.139 --> 00:03:23.280 facsimile of it, which was huge. They literally 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:26.120 printed copies of the killer's handwriting and 00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:29.259 distributed it on broadsheets all across London, 00:03:29.419 --> 00:03:32.379 just desperately hoping like a landlord or a 00:03:32.379 --> 00:03:34.300 sibling would recognize the script. They were 00:03:34.300 --> 00:03:37.360 really grasping at straws, but their desperation 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:40.520 was fueled by a very specific operational reason. 00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:43.259 The text itself. Yeah. The postcard referenced 00:03:43.259 --> 00:03:46.539 keeping the quote last letter back. Right. This 00:03:46.539 --> 00:03:49.240 was a direct allusion to the Dear Boss letter, 00:03:49.759 --> 00:03:51.460 which is another piece of correspondence they 00:03:51.460 --> 00:03:53.819 received just days earlier. And the key thing 00:03:53.819 --> 00:03:56.699 is, at the exact moment this postcard arrived 00:03:56.699 --> 00:03:59.500 at the Central News Agency, the existence of 00:03:59.500 --> 00:04:02.360 that previous Dear Boss letter was a closely 00:04:02.360 --> 00:04:05.419 guarded police secret. Right. So the author knew 00:04:05.419 --> 00:04:07.379 about a piece of evidence that hadn't been leaked 00:04:07.379 --> 00:04:10.000 to the public yet. Which, I mean, that alone 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:12.080 would make any detective sit up in their chair. 00:04:12.340 --> 00:04:14.319 Absolutely. But that takes us into the physical 00:04:14.319 --> 00:04:16.839 crime scene itself. Yeah. Because the postcard 00:04:16.839 --> 00:04:20.019 goes way beyond just referencing other male. 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:22.540 Yeah, it gets a lot more gruesome. It mentions 00:04:22.540 --> 00:04:26.339 a double event, which we know refers to the murders 00:04:26.339 --> 00:04:29.160 of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Both 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:31.740 killed in the early morning hours of September 00:04:31.740 --> 00:04:34.560 30. Right. And then there is that incredibly 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:37.250 macabre apology. The author claims they didn't 00:04:37.250 --> 00:04:40.050 have time to, quote, get ears off for police. 00:04:40.290 --> 00:04:42.930 And that detail that is the mechanical linchpin 00:04:42.930 --> 00:04:45.480 of the entire investigation at that time. Because 00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:47.600 of what the medical examiners found. Exactly. 00:04:47.879 --> 00:04:49.779 When they assessed Catherine Eddowes at the crime 00:04:49.779 --> 00:04:52.759 scene, they documented these really severe facial 00:04:52.759 --> 00:04:55.079 mutilations. Right. And among those injuries, 00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:57.500 the lobe and the oracle of her right ear were 00:04:57.500 --> 00:05:00.220 completely severed. Oh, man. However, the killer 00:05:00.220 --> 00:05:02.920 had been interrupted, so they actually left the 00:05:02.920 --> 00:05:04.819 severed pieces at the scene. So the freezing 00:05:04.819 --> 00:05:07.500 on the postcard had not time to get ears off. 00:05:07.939 --> 00:05:10.500 It perfectly aligns with the physical reality 00:05:10.500 --> 00:05:13.620 of the crime scene. It's a perfect match. And 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:15.939 just like the previous letter, this gruesome 00:05:15.939 --> 00:05:18.639 detail regarding the severed ear had been completely 00:05:18.639 --> 00:05:21.040 held back from the press. Which, if we look at 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:23.439 standard investigative techniques, that is the 00:05:23.439 --> 00:05:26.379 holy grail. Oh yeah. Held back information is 00:05:26.379 --> 00:05:29.439 the ultimate tool to weed out false confessors. 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:31.439 Like if someone writes to you about a severed 00:05:31.439 --> 00:05:33.339 ear and you have a victim in the morgue with 00:05:33.339 --> 00:05:37.220 a severed ear, the case seems closed. It really 00:05:37.220 --> 00:05:39.360 does. But I have to push back on this conclusion 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:41.920 based strictly on the timeline our sources provide. 00:05:42.079 --> 00:05:44.519 Okay, let's hear it. So the double event murders 00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:46.959 happened in the early morning of September 30. 00:05:47.079 --> 00:05:50.319 Right. This postcard, however, was postmarked 00:05:50.319 --> 00:05:53.980 on October 1st. Ah. That is a minimum of 24 to 00:05:53.980 --> 00:05:56.759 30 hours after the killings. What's fascinating 00:05:56.759 --> 00:05:59.620 here is how that 24 -hour window completely changes 00:05:59.620 --> 00:06:01.819 the evidentiary value of the artifact. Because 00:06:01.819 --> 00:06:04.759 it's a huge gap. Right. You are zeroing in on 00:06:04.759 --> 00:06:07.819 the exact variable that shifts this from a definitively 00:06:07.819 --> 00:06:10.779 closed case to a massive historical quagmire. 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:13.500 I mean, a 24 -hour gap in a densely populated, 00:06:13.759 --> 00:06:15.680 highly agitated district like Whitechapel. That 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:18.259 is in eternity. Oh, completely. You have police 00:06:18.259 --> 00:06:20.660 officers, mortuary workers, medical personnel, 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:23.319 local residents, all just swarming the area. 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:26.920 The idea that a detail as sensational as a severed 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.579 ear could remain completely contained for over 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:33.259 a day seems honestly highly improbable. It's 00:06:33.259 --> 00:06:35.980 almost impossible. One mortuary assistant mentions 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:38.750 it at a pub. And by midnight, half the neighborhood 00:06:38.750 --> 00:06:41.829 is whispering about it. Exactly. If the postcard 00:06:41.829 --> 00:06:44.970 had been postmarked just, say, two hours after 00:06:44.970 --> 00:06:47.329 the murders, before the bodies were even transported, 00:06:47.709 --> 00:06:50.610 it would be ironclad proof of authorship. And 00:06:50.610 --> 00:06:52.790 some historical authors do argue the timeline 00:06:52.790 --> 00:06:54.910 is tight enough to support its authenticity, 00:06:55.170 --> 00:06:57.829 right? They do. However, the delay introduces 00:06:57.829 --> 00:07:00.170 a massive vulnerability in the police theory. 00:07:00.449 --> 00:07:02.689 It really opens the door to the possibility that 00:07:02.689 --> 00:07:05.300 the author was not the killer. Right. It could 00:07:05.300 --> 00:07:07.699 have simply been an opportunistic observer who 00:07:07.699 --> 00:07:10.060 heard a morbid rumor on the street and decided 00:07:10.060 --> 00:07:12.319 to weaponize it. Which requires a staggering 00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:15.180 level of cynicism. Oh, absolutely. I mean, someone 00:07:15.180 --> 00:07:17.540 hears about a woman being brutally mutilated, 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:21.120 and their immediate instinct is to write a taunting 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.980 letter to a wire service pretending to be the 00:07:23.980 --> 00:07:26.240 murderer. It's incredibly dark. But if we accept 00:07:26.240 --> 00:07:28.899 the timeline allows for a hoaxer, we have to 00:07:28.899 --> 00:07:31.660 look at motive. Who has the insider knowledge, 00:07:32.180 --> 00:07:34.660 the writing skills to craft this specific persona, 00:07:35.339 --> 00:07:38.100 and the direct line to the central news agency? 00:07:38.339 --> 00:07:40.699 And that points the finger directly at the media 00:07:40.699 --> 00:07:43.100 itself. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:07:43.339 --> 00:07:46.040 Yeah, because the landscape of the 19th century 00:07:46.040 --> 00:07:49.079 penny press was just fiercely competitive. We 00:07:49.079 --> 00:07:51.439 are talking about newspapers that relied entirely 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:54.060 on daily street sales. Right. There were no long 00:07:54.060 --> 00:07:56.319 -term subscriptions protecting their bottom line 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:58.740 back then. They needed sensational headlines 00:07:58.740 --> 00:08:01.839 every single day to survive. And an elusive, 00:08:01.980 --> 00:08:04.680 taunting murderer was basically the most lucrative 00:08:04.680 --> 00:08:06.740 narrative imaginable. And the police themselves 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:08.839 actually began to realize they were being played. 00:08:08.879 --> 00:08:12.040 They did. According to our sources, senior Scotland 00:08:12.040 --> 00:08:14.779 Yard officials eventually claimed to have identified 00:08:14.779 --> 00:08:17.720 a specific journalist as the author of both The 00:08:17.720 --> 00:08:20.920 Saucy Jack postcard and the Dear Boss letter. 00:08:21.199 --> 00:08:24.660 Yeah. In 1913, Chief Inspector John Littlechild 00:08:24.660 --> 00:08:27.040 explicitly stated that investigators believed 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:29.600 a journalist named Thomas J. Bulling, who was 00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:32.960 often called Tom Bullin, was responsible for 00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:35.299 the correspondence. And Bulling's employment 00:08:35.299 --> 00:08:37.899 makes this theory incredibly compelling. Because 00:08:37.899 --> 00:08:40.139 he didn't just work for any random newspaper. 00:08:40.360 --> 00:08:42.809 He works for the Central News Agency. the very 00:08:42.809 --> 00:08:45.970 organization that supposedly received these letters. 00:08:46.129 --> 00:08:47.750 It's like the call is coming from inside the 00:08:47.750 --> 00:08:50.129 house. Exactly. He didn't have to bypass police 00:08:50.129 --> 00:08:52.690 security or mailroom clerks. He was already inside 00:08:52.690 --> 00:08:54.529 the building. He had the perfect vantage point. 00:08:54.870 --> 00:08:57.230 He could monitor incoming police intelligence, 00:08:57.809 --> 00:09:00.509 intercept real news, and then just inject his 00:09:00.509 --> 00:09:03.350 own manufactured drama directly into the national 00:09:03.350 --> 00:09:06.139 wire. The audacity of that is just mind -boggling. 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:08.899 It really is. And the theory doesn't just rely 00:09:08.899 --> 00:09:11.440 on the suspicions of a 1913 police inspector. 00:09:11.539 --> 00:09:14.320 No, the source material jumps forward to 1931, 00:09:14.679 --> 00:09:17.580 where we get an outright confession. Wait, really? 00:09:17.600 --> 00:09:20.240 An actual confession? Yeah. A journalist named 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:23.379 Fred Bess, who worked for a highly sensationalist 00:09:23.379 --> 00:09:26.700 paper called The Star, publicly claimed that 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:29.620 he and his colleague Tom Bullin wrote the entire 00:09:29.620 --> 00:09:32.759 Jack the Ripper correspondence. Wow. And what 00:09:32.759 --> 00:09:35.399 was their motive? To, quote, keep the business 00:09:35.399 --> 00:09:38.700 alive. That is a phenomenal admission of manipulation. 00:09:39.100 --> 00:09:42.399 Isn't it? They realized that a nameless, faceless 00:09:42.399 --> 00:09:45.100 string of murders would eventually lose the public's 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:47.159 interest. But a theatrical villain who writes 00:09:47.159 --> 00:09:50.279 letters to the police... mocks their incompetence 00:09:50.279 --> 00:09:53.320 and uses a terrifying moniker. That guarantees 00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:55.539 front -poached sales indefinitely. I just find 00:09:55.539 --> 00:09:57.759 myself fixated on the mechanics of how they pulled 00:09:57.759 --> 00:09:59.700 it off right under Scotland Yard's nose. Oh, 00:09:59.799 --> 00:10:02.299 the logistics are fascinating. If Bullen is at 00:10:02.299 --> 00:10:04.919 the wire service and Best is at the star, they 00:10:04.919 --> 00:10:07.000 essentially have a symbiotic loop. Yeah, think 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.379 about it. Bullen creates the letter and puts 00:10:09.379 --> 00:10:12.220 it on the wire. Then Best publishes it with massive 00:10:12.379 --> 00:10:15.759 Screaming headlines the public panics the police 00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:18.159 waste thousands of man hours hunting a phantom 00:10:18.159 --> 00:10:21.279 and then best writes an editorial Slamming the 00:10:21.279 --> 00:10:24.059 police for their failure. It's a completely self 00:10:24.059 --> 00:10:26.899 -sustaining Ecosystem of manufactured outrage 00:10:26.899 --> 00:10:29.259 if we connect this to the bigger picture. Yeah, 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:32.409 we are basically witnessing the birth of the 00:10:32.409 --> 00:10:35.230 modern true crime industrial complex. Exactly. 00:10:35.690 --> 00:10:37.889 The media didn't just observe and report on these 00:10:37.889 --> 00:10:40.570 tragic events. They actively shaped the historical 00:10:40.570 --> 00:10:43.009 narrative. They literally gave the killer his 00:10:43.009 --> 00:10:45.669 voice and his name. Right. Before those letters, 00:10:45.730 --> 00:10:47.710 Jack the Ripper did not exist. There was only 00:10:47.710 --> 00:10:50.149 the Whitechapel murderer. Best in Bowling constructed 00:10:50.149 --> 00:10:52.450 a mythos that completely hijacked the reality 00:10:52.450 --> 00:10:54.809 of the crime. It totally recontextualizes the 00:10:54.809 --> 00:10:57.029 entire case. But what's really incredible is 00:10:57.029 --> 00:11:00.230 that this narrative isn't just relying on a 1931 00:11:00.230 --> 00:11:02.409 confession from an aging journalist. No, we can 00:11:02.409 --> 00:11:04.970 actually test this theory today. Yeah. Our sources 00:11:04.970 --> 00:11:08.110 highlight a 2018 study by researcher Andrea Nini, 00:11:08.450 --> 00:11:11.850 who applied modern forensic linguistics to this 00:11:11.850 --> 00:11:14.269 19th century mystery. And the way this science 00:11:14.269 --> 00:11:17.350 works on Victorian text is wild. Wait, how do 00:11:17.350 --> 00:11:19.330 you even run forensics on text from that long 00:11:19.330 --> 00:11:21.549 ago? Well, forensic linguistics looks past the 00:11:21.549 --> 00:11:24.509 handwriting entirely. It analyzes the subconscious 00:11:24.509 --> 00:11:28.090 syntactic DNA of the text. Syntactic DNA, like 00:11:28.090 --> 00:11:31.070 the grammatical structure? Exactly. An algorithm 00:11:31.070 --> 00:11:33.570 processes the structure of the sentences, the 00:11:33.570 --> 00:11:36.490 choice of idioms, and the morphological quirks 00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:38.970 of the author. Oh, wow. It's basically comparing 00:11:38.970 --> 00:11:41.250 the architectural blueprints of how a specific 00:11:41.250 --> 00:11:43.980 person builds a thought. And NeNe didn't just 00:11:43.980 --> 00:11:46.399 look at the two famous letters, right? He ran 00:11:46.399 --> 00:11:49.980 this analysis across a massive corpus of over 00:11:49.980 --> 00:11:53.590 200 hoax letters from the era. Yeah, a huge sample 00:11:53.590 --> 00:11:57.250 size. And the algorithm found that the Saucy 00:11:57.250 --> 00:11:59.990 Jackie postcard and the Dear Boss letter shared 00:11:59.990 --> 00:12:03.370 incredibly specific, highly improbable structural 00:12:03.370 --> 00:12:05.330 similarities. Like what kind of similarities? 00:12:05.470 --> 00:12:07.570 Things like the use of certain phrasal verbs 00:12:07.570 --> 00:12:10.190 and identical grammatical habits. The algorithm 00:12:10.190 --> 00:12:12.750 clustered these two texts together, distinctly 00:12:12.750 --> 00:12:15.450 isolated from the rest of the hoax mail. So modern 00:12:15.450 --> 00:12:18.110 linguistic algorithms effectively validated a 00:12:18.110 --> 00:12:21.570 1930s journalist confession. did. The scientific 00:12:21.570 --> 00:12:23.610 corroboration makes the journalist hoax theory 00:12:23.610 --> 00:12:26.230 the most robust explanation we have. Because 00:12:26.230 --> 00:12:28.929 the linguistic fingerprint shows one author crafted 00:12:28.929 --> 00:12:31.970 the persona. Meaning the entire ripper correspondence 00:12:31.970 --> 00:12:34.389 was likely a singular coordinated fabrication. 00:12:34.690 --> 00:12:37.149 Which brings us to the most absurd twist in this 00:12:37.149 --> 00:12:40.090 entire deep dive. Oh yeah, this is the craziest 00:12:40.090 --> 00:12:43.509 part. We're using 21st century algorithmic analysis 00:12:43.509 --> 00:12:46.590 to study the phrasing of a document that Scotland 00:12:46.590 --> 00:12:50.070 Yard literally managed to lose. Yep. The physical 00:12:50.070 --> 00:12:53.070 Saucy Jackie postcard is missing. It just vanished 00:12:53.070 --> 00:12:55.850 from the police archives. The Dear Boss letter 00:12:55.850 --> 00:12:58.769 was also lost for decades before being anonymously 00:12:58.769 --> 00:13:02.309 returned in 1987, but the postcard remains a 00:13:02.309 --> 00:13:05.070 ghost. How does a police force just lose the 00:13:05.070 --> 00:13:07.350 most famous piece of evidence in their history? 00:13:07.509 --> 00:13:10.210 Well, the archiving standards of the 1880s metropolitan 00:13:10.210 --> 00:13:13.730 police were practically non -existent by modern 00:13:13.730 --> 00:13:15.990 standards. Clearly. There was no rigorous chain 00:13:15.990 --> 00:13:18.889 of custody. Crucial evidence was routinely pinned 00:13:18.889 --> 00:13:21.309 to bulletin boards. Bulletin boards. Yeah. It 00:13:21.309 --> 00:13:23.330 was passed around public houses by detectives 00:13:23.330 --> 00:13:25.710 seeking leads and frequently taken home by retiring 00:13:25.710 --> 00:13:28.509 officers as macabre souvenirs. That is unbelievable. 00:13:28.629 --> 00:13:31.070 So we are running advanced scientific diagnostics 00:13:31.070 --> 00:13:34.519 on photographs and facsimiles. Exactly. The only 00:13:34.519 --> 00:13:36.460 reason we can even analyze the text today is 00:13:36.460 --> 00:13:39.019 because the police were desperate enough in 1888 00:13:39.019 --> 00:13:41.899 to print the killer's marketing material in the 00:13:41.899 --> 00:13:44.679 Sunday papers. The irony is profound. It really 00:13:44.679 --> 00:13:48.200 is. The very act that amplified the hoax is the 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:50.700 only reason the artifact survived in the historical 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:53.539 record. So what does this all mean? Big question. 00:13:53.799 --> 00:13:55.860 We started by looking at a piece of cardboard 00:13:55.860 --> 00:13:58.740 that seemed to offer a direct window into the 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:02.360 mind of a monster. Right. But as we map the timeline, 00:14:02.620 --> 00:14:06.200 The 24 -hour delay in the postmark exposed a 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:08.899 fatal flaw. And then we uncovered the cutthroat 00:14:08.899 --> 00:14:11.320 mechanics of the Victorian penny press. Where 00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:14.419 journalists like Bullen and Best allegedly manufactured 00:14:14.419 --> 00:14:16.779 a supervillain just to keep their printing presses 00:14:16.779 --> 00:14:19.679 running. And we saw modern forensic linguistics 00:14:19.679 --> 00:14:22.399 cut through the fog of history to link these 00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:24.840 fabricated letters together. The Saucy Jackie 00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:27.720 postcard is almost certainly not a killer's confession. 00:14:27.980 --> 00:14:31.879 It is a masterful, cynical piece of media manipulation. 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:34.620 It serves as a stark historical precedent. We 00:14:34.620 --> 00:14:36.799 frequently discuss the modern crisis of viral 00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:39.440 misinformation and algorithm -driven clickbait. 00:14:39.720 --> 00:14:42.100 Which feels like such a new problem. Right. But 00:14:42.100 --> 00:14:44.440 this postcard proves that the weaponization of 00:14:44.440 --> 00:14:46.860 false narratives for profit is fundamentally 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:50.279 baked into media history. A fake news story in 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:53.980 1888 was powerful enough to permanently derail 00:14:53.980 --> 00:14:56.320 one of the largest police investigations in British 00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:59.440 history. The technology to spread the lie has 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:02.600 evolved, but the human susceptibility to a terrifying 00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:05.659 narrative hasn't changed a bit. This raises an 00:15:05.659 --> 00:15:08.100 important question, one that forces us to rethink 00:15:08.100 --> 00:15:11.580 the legacy of this entire era. If the famous 00:15:11.580 --> 00:15:14.360 moniker Jack the Ripper and the taunting persona 00:15:14.360 --> 00:15:16.860 were entirely invented by journalists trying 00:15:16.860 --> 00:15:19.820 to keep the business alive, Does that mean the 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:22.460 most infamous serial killer in history is, in 00:15:22.460 --> 00:15:25.139 a very real way, a fictional character? Just 00:15:25.139 --> 00:15:28.000 overlaid onto a series of tragic, unsolved murders. 00:15:28.259 --> 00:15:30.740 Exactly. I mean, our entire cultural archetype 00:15:30.740 --> 00:15:33.539 of a serial killer, the blueprint for over a 00:15:33.539 --> 00:15:35.919 century of true crime media, is based entirely 00:15:35.919 --> 00:15:38.340 on a fabricated character. We remember Jack the 00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:40.340 Ripper. We remember the Phantom villain, the 00:15:40.340 --> 00:15:42.639 catchy moniker, and the taunting letters. But 00:15:42.639 --> 00:15:45.919 in the process of mythologizing a piece of literal 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:57.240 junk mail, the actual tragic The true crime genre 00:15:57.240 --> 00:15:59.539 was basically born by erasing the humanity of 00:15:59.539 --> 00:16:01.720 the victims to make room for a fictionalized 00:16:01.720 --> 00:16:03.360 comic book villain. Thank you for joining us 00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:05.559 on this deep dive. Keep questioning the narrative.