Original subtitles

a serial killer who haunted

chicago during the eighteen ninety three world's fair

now modern science

will try to determine if he pulled off the greatest con

in history

so right from that edge

i think it's nine feet

all the way to the headstone we measured earlier

if he's not here

then i've got circumstantial evidence

that he may indeed be jack the ripper

i am really dumbfounded

but i think the bastard might have walked away

i am the descendant of the devil

my great great grandfather

h h holmes was america's first serial killer

a con man and an evil genius

he engineered a death factory in the late eighteen hundreds

that claimed an uncountable number of lives

at the very same time

another killer was slaughtering victims

on the streets of london

he was never caught or identified

but you may know him as jack the ripper

i believe my ancestor h h holmes and jack the ripper

are the same man

imagine knowing you're related to someone who brutally

murdered dozens

some say hundreds of innocent people

twenty years ago my grandfather

revealed that his grandfather was the con

man and serial killer h h holmes

uncovering this dark family

secret drove me to find out more about the man

and his unprecedented crimes

hh holmes outsmarted the law for more than ten years

he lured victim after victim

into his murder castle on chicago's south side

where he conned them out of their money

property

and ultimately their lives

i've talked to experts and historians and

combed through libraries and archives

searching for the truth

and i believe

that by assuming the identity of jack the ripper

h h holmes pulled off one of the greatest cons of all time

the killer we know as jack the ripper

terrorized london in the summer and fall

of eighteen eighty eight

committing five gruesome murders

and then disappearing without a trace

his identity has remained a mystery

for more than one hundred and twenty five years

proving this has become an obsession

i'm no conspiracy theorist i'm a retired trial lawyer

i've been trying to compile

all the evidence i need to build my case

but i've taken the investigation as far as i can on my own

i need a fresh pair of eyes to help me look for

clues and patterns that i'm not trained to find

my name is amaryllis fox and i'm an xcia operative

i've spent my career tracking

international terrorists

based on their networks and their psychological profiles

i've uncovered the identities of russian arms dealers

south american kidnappers

and the leaders of international terror

cells from afghanistan to iraq to yemen

when jeff first reached out to me i was skeptical

but the more i delved into

h h holmes the more intrigued i became

and if we can prove jeff's theory

we'll have solved

one of the greatest cold cases of all time

this is holmes memoirs and confessions

that he was paid to write

while he was in prison this was holmes's own copy

as you can see holmes took the time

to meticulously tape in

newspaper articles

writing about this horrible

monster that had lived in chicago

under everyone's noses

the best place for us to start

is for amaryllis to hear my great great grandfather's words

as he stated them in his memoirs

understanding what this man was capable of

is going to be a critical part

of proving he was jack the ripper

do you know if there are any um personal markings

if you open the book to the first page

in his hand was a letter to the judge on his case

one of holmes's last acts before his execution

was to give this book

to the judge who had presided over his trial

i take pleasure in addressing to your honor these lines

to which i append my at present very unenviable signature

i am sir very respectfully yours

h w madison md alias h h holmes i mean

right off the bat we understand

we're dealing with a very charming man

the page you're turning right now it's a schematic

of the murder castle

the building that the press dubs the murder castle

is the secret of holmes's evil ingenuity

a hotel he engineers as a death trap for guests to enter

and never leave features of the deadly design include

a maze of sharp angled dead end hallways

intended to disorient

walls lined with asbestos to muffle screams

a walk in steel

vault where victims are left to starve or suffocate

and gas chambers disguised as guest rooms

with vents to pipe in poison gas

to dispose of the evidence

a hidden chute transports the bodies to a secret basement

where holmes melts tissue off bone in a pit of quicklime

strips flesh off skeletons at a dissection table

and incinerates any remaining traces in a high heat furnace

a precision operation that lets holmes escape detection

while carrying out his dark deeds

under the perfect cover

does he run through each of his killings

it goes through quite a few here

i'd love to hear his descriptions

my second victim was doctor russell

a tenant in the chicago building

recently renamed the castle

during a controversy

concerning the non payment of rent doomy

i struck him to the floor with a heavy chair

when he with one cry for help ending in a grown of anguish

ceased to breathe

the third death was due to a criminal operation

i cut his body into pieces that would pass through the stove

and by the combined use of gas

proceeded to burn it with as little feeling

as the it had been some inanimate object

that's as clear a self diagnosis of psychopathy

as any human being could make

like any good con man

holmes is a master manipulator even to his final moments

while he confesses to killing twenty seven people

five of the twenty seven he named were later found alive

leaving us to question what's true and what's invented

and why he'd want to keep us guessing

the idea of really messing with his audience this

creation of illusion

inside of illusion inside of illusion

and it's that type of person that maybe

would enjoy playing with identity so much

that he would commit the ripper murders in london

the greatest con of his career

yeah i'd really like to go to chicago and see the

stomping ground where this story unfolded

the hunt for evidence begins at the chicago cultural center

an archive

that houses a collection of rare documents and artifacts

that date back to the city's founding in eighteen

thirty three can you tell us a little about what

chicago was like for homes in the eighteen eighties

sure well it's a city that was trying to prove itself

before the world

i mean you think chicago was like a mud hole

but it was a perfectly located mud hole cause the country's

moving west and water and rail was

eventually the way that everything would move

so chicago became the funnel

in the late nineteenth century

chicago is one of the fastest growing cities in america

the link between east and west it's a vital

transportation hub for the country's major railroads

and home to america's first skyscraper

in chicago slaughter is big business

the engine that runs the nation's meat packing industry

processing as many as nine million cattle a year

by eighteen eighty eight

the city is home to more than one million people

all potential victims of h h holmes and his murder castle

we really want to get a sense of where

holmes's murder castle would stand

in today's landscape there's really good documentation

that pins it down

beyond a doubt we have these sanborn atlases

that were created to document property

i can't believe i've never seen these before

well here's eighteen ninety five and here is the castle

right here

the castle was at the southwest corner

of sixty third street and wallace

and they later then built a post office

people say oh the castle is on the side of the post office

not quite

here is the site today

so if you put the two of them exactly together

and line them up

here's the post office here

that overlap would be about four feet wide

the majority of the castle is now what's the parking lot

excellent all of this time i'd assumed that the post office

had lined up with the footprint of the murder castle

and that any trace of homes was lost for good

this new information changes everything

the physical evidence connecting h h

homes to jack the ripper could be buried under that ground

jim in your opinion

would it be worthwhile to conduct an excavation

on the grounds we're talking about

the one area which i would say

is the prime location to new an investigation

would be the lawn in the front

and if anything remains underground

that's where you'd likely find it

even potentially human remains

former cia operative

amoralist fox and h h holmes descendant jeff mudge

are working to uncover the truth

behind one of history's greatest

unsolved mysteries

so this is the spot huh

on the hunt for evidence that america's first serial killer

h h holmes

is also the notorious jack the ripper

they meet with chicago area

detective ray johnson

an expert on eighteen nineties police history

i still can't believe this this is the place

that evil man built that factory for murder

they've come to the site of the murder castle

which is now lost to time

but rare blueprints reveal an unexpected lead

most of the building's footprint remains exposed

and largely untouched

since the eighteen nine if holmes

left behind any evidence that links him to jack the ripper

it's most likely to be at this spot

so it's critical we find out what's buried here

ray will you frame it up for us

for the most part the castle

occupied this area that's now

the parking lot and a little grassy

area that's just on the other side of the sidewalk

the outer edge of the building

would have been just about where the tree lines up with

the triangle of the bridge

right down the line yeah

and so this area here is really ripe for our excavation

there's a strong chance

that there's some human remains that

are underneath that soil

with a case this cold it's hard to even

dream that you would find an untouched piece of land

where most of the murders were committed

but underneath this lawn

could be anything from human remains to murder weapons

that we will need

to help us prove that holmes could have been the river

the other thing

that um you have to look at

is that when the police

investigation was going on and they were doing the digging

in the castle it was done by contractors

it wasn't done by forensics

people i mean the term forensics

wasn't even used at that time

they were done by workmen that were hired to dig

to how thorough and how meticulous

would it have been

in my experience it could be

hard to get permission to excavate on federal property

so i'm gonna reach out to some old

contacts and see if i can get some help

cutting through the red tape

you know no matter how many times

i visit this horrible spot

it's still the screams of the victims that i hear the most

okay so let's discuss game plan

i mean these cases are as cold as they get

and one of the reasons that they weren't solved

back at the end of the nineteenth century

is forensic science was in its infancy there wasn't

dna analysis there wasn't blood typing there

wasn't even fingerprinting in the way that we know it today

what makes this case even tougher is

h h holmes isn't even his real name

he was born herman webster mudgett

these are some of the known aliases that holmes used

that is gonna make him all the harder to track

this case may be a hundred

thirty years old

but that doesn't change

our strategy for running an investigation

our priority is going to be finding and stringing together

every piece of evidence we can

at the same time we'll also work to identify and decode

patterns of behavior that might link

the two killers

this includes analysis of everything from killing method

to motive

on the face of it these two killers are really

strikingly different

h h holmes is so premeditated that he's built a hotel

for the purpose of killing his victims

and disposing of their bodies

jack the ripper was looking for targets of opportunity

and leaving their bodies for anybody to find

so that's one glaring difference between them

but my experience

tells me you have to trust the process

and not let assumptions become fact

i've been debating critics for the past two decades

but it hasn't steered me away from my theory

because i know the evidence is out there to prove it

the most likely place

to find evidence would be his chicago

crime scene but i want to make sure we leave no stone

unturned

while we wait to get access to the murder castle plot

i need to go right the way back to the beginning

to his childhood

and piece together his timeline

i want to start at the beginning of holmes's life in gilbert

new hampshire

if we can get insight into holmes's

origins it might help us connect the dots to ripper

we have a great opportunity to step back in time

let's pack up here and get to work

muggets

they were some of the early founders of new hampshire

that migrated from england in the sixteen hundreds oh no way

yeah

h h holmes was actually born

herman webster mudgett in eighteen sixty one

he lived here until he moved away in eighteen eighty two

with his first wife clara my great great grandmother

where is his house is somewhere up here

dead ahead the one on the left

see the top window under the roof

that was the window from his bedroom

it's hard to believe that this is the very place

where my ancestor grew up

and this quaint new england town produced a person

capable of carrying out a murder spree on two continents

this is the building that

herman attended class in the gilmanton academy building

the gilmanton historical society houses

the earliest known records relating to herman mudgett

alias h h holmes

while jeff hunts down another lead

amaryllis is here to decode the killer's origins

this is a receipt actually signed by herman webster mudgett

for taking care

of the furnace

across the street

may i knowing

what we know about the basement of the murder castle

the fact that

holmes was doing maintenance work on his neighbor's furnace

sounds pretty sinister

but it could just be a dark coincidence

one important person

during herman's time was doctor white

he would have been the village

doctor in the town at the time

this was his office

right adjacent to the road

it was just a little ways south of the school

and within walking distance of where

herman's home was herman later h h holmes

develops an interest in medicine under dr white's tutelage

here in gilmanton

where he's exposed to corpses at an early age

this fosters a sinister passion for dissection

that will continue throughout his life

in the fall of eighteen eighty one

he secured a post to teach

the results from that were not good

what happened

the school superintendent wrote an assessment report

of how that term went can we take a look

i would very much like to see that it's in the vault

winter term herman w mudgett teacher mr m

commenced his labors in the school

with but little experience

we were fearful that he would not meet with good success

in so large a school

and with a feeling in the district that an old

and experienced teacher was needed uh oh

and it is a fact

such a one was needed

he was enraged

by that and wrote a letter back to the superintendent

asking for a

retraction of that to which he never got a reply

wow well that's a statement of ego if ever i've heard one

this is exactly the kind of personal story

i was hoping to find here holmes

is only about

twenty years old

when this incident occurs so the assessment that he's

inexperienced

is probably fair

but what's interesting is his reaction

he's so enraged by criticism that he demands a retraction

this is an early

sign of a man who wants to control the world around him

that was his last experience teaching schools in gilmanton

across town jeff sits down with the bishops

long time residents of gilmanton

this farm goes back way over two hundred years old

and it was a mudjet property back then

when herman was a boy his cousins lived in this house

so he would have visited here often

the house's current owners the bishops

hold a private collection of town artifacts

that have been passed down through the generations

and are steeped in the local folklore surrounding homes

i wanted to ask you all about some of the lore

some of the legends

about herman

i'd heard about his proclivity for torturing animals

when did that start is early adolescence

at that young of an age he was already

comfortable taking a life

i believe he was and i think

this ties into mary much and also his cousin

mary was found in her nightclothes in the river

i believe sincerely that he is responsible for mary

mudgett's death

i believe sincerely that he is responsible for mary

mudgett's death jeff

mudgett and amaryllis fox are in gilmanton new hampshire

the childhood hometown of jeff's great great grandfather

notorious murderer h h holmes

hunting for evidence to prove he and

london's infamous jack the ripper

are the same man

the investigation into

holmes's youth turns up a long rumored piece of local

folklore he would have had to kill her in this house

and then drag her body and make it look like a drowning

herman mudgett alias h h holmes

is around eighteen years old

when his cousin mary dies under mysterious circumstances

nobody knew exactly how it happened but

hermit was right around there

where it happened and and he was the only one

that that fascinates me

all that we know is uh she was found

in the creek passed away yeah

alright it was there was no evidence of knife

there was no evidence of strangulation nothing no

alright that's where she was found alright

in his memoirs

holmes confesses

the details of

dozens of his murders at the chicago murder castle

but he never mentions anything about his first kill

is it possible

that his crime

started much earlier when he was just a young man

when was holmes' cousin mary killed

she was found

dead in the river just before he left for chicago

there's a large debate about

when he started committing crimes

mary mudgett maybe that bridge we needed

to start tying his childhood

to jack the ripper

some people said he was a little lazy but i think

he was lazy if he was bored but what

when he was actually studying he just worked like a dog

very smart guy the town

clerk's office houses

over a century of gilmanton's public records amaryllis

is here to search for evidence of unexplained

deaths that occurred during holmes's early years

i've heard legends about

kids who've died

from unknown causes right when herman was growing up

i'm trying to find real

evidence of what could have been his first murders

you may want to look at some of these books they give deaths

during that period

that would be perfect

so this looks like eighteen thirty five to eighteen

seventy seven

well that would have been his youth basically yeah

there were some young people who died

there's one

young fellow here austin bunker

there's no cause given for his death

he was twelve years old

nancy robertson she was also twelve years old

no cause given for death really

here's a small child

george george foss he was four years old poisoned oh

during h h holmes's lifetime in the mid eighteen hundreds

murder is exceedingly rare in america

accounting for less than one out of every

one hundred thousand deaths each year

at the time holmes lived here the population of gilmanton

was only about sixteen hundred

so the fact that there was this cluster of suspicious

deaths is really surprising

is there any mention of someone named mary mudgett

no that's strange

these deaths weren't all recorded

and also all births weren't recorded so

awful lot of missing things

this was an oland

budget this is here a cousin of herman himself

and uh he died

i'm drowning drowning

while we can't find

documentation of mary mudgett's death

local lore indicates she died by drowning in or around

eighteen seventy nine

around the same time

according to the record

there's another death by drowning in the mudgett family

how old was owen when he drowned

he was four years and ten months and how old

was herman at that time he would have been about fifteen

so his four year old cousin died

through drowning

in the middle of all of these other kids just

disappearing for unrecorded reasons

the rabbit hole just keeps getting larger and larger

the deeper we go inside

those kids are the same age as home

during the time that he's

in gilmanton growing up

and then you have the death of his cousin

so a lot of coincidences all piled on top of one another

assuming these stories

are true let's assume they were murdered by holmes

how do we use that knowledge

to make the connection between holmes and the ripper

if it is true that

holmes is responsible for the death of his cousins

then that means his killing style

evolves over time

from taking his victims and drowning them outside to

methodically

killing possibly hundreds in the murder castle in chicago

if this is the case

maybe the ripper

murders are part of holmes' evolution as a killer

are we starting

to build enough character traits of homes to understand him

former cia operative amoralist fox and jeff

mudge are hunting for evidence in one of history's greatest

cold cases seeking to prove jeff's theory

that his ancestor h h holmes is the man

who terrorized

eighteen eighties london as the notorious jack the ripper

here's a boy the town clerk describes as

really intelligent and yet he didn't excel at school

records uncovered in holmes's childhood town

reveal a string of unexplained deaths

including two of his own cousins

who may be the earliest victims of america's first

serial killer

there are kids dying of unexplained causes

those kids are the same age as homes

during the time that he's

in gilmanton growing up so a lot of coincidences

i really got this sense of him as a person of huge ego

who felt like

he was not being given the recognition that he deserved

in life what we don't know

is why that man

became a killer

was it to feed his ego

was it to derive actual pleasure

was it to derive financial profit or some combination

i know someone back in chicago

who could help us answer that question

there's a great treasure hunt aspect of finding home stuff

there's so much that is buried in newspaper archives

so much really good material

that hasn't really become a part of the story before

jeff and amarilis

meet with one of the foremost

h h holmes experts in the country

to pick up the killer's timeline

they're looking for details about

holmes's activity after leaving gilmanton

in the spring of eighteen eighty two

holmes leaves his childhood hometown and

after teaching didn't work out

holmes decided to go to medical school

first he went to

burlington which he thought was still too small for him

the main thing that survives about his time in burlington

is his landlady said he

beat up his roommate

for borrowing his mustache wax one time

would he have been

training on human cadavers in burlington i'm not sure you

i usually hear about him just attending

medical lectures of burlington

might not have been a lot of hands on work there

that might have been why he decided it wasn't good enough

for him he decided to go to university of michigan

which was much bigger and also had a real reputation

for uh trafficking

grave robbers in those days

hmm it's almost like a rite of passage

for medical students by then to go and

dig the corpse out of a grave and

provide it to the medical school for their anatomy lesson

yep save the school

a lot of money

so he was very desensitized to human corpses

oh certainly there

were a lot of anecdotes about

him like being all excited

to take the body of a baby

home with him to dissect over vacation hmm

do we have any sense of scams that holmes

conducted while he was in medical school

well he certainly claimed later that while he was in school

he got the idea

of using these dead bodies for insurance fraud

holmes's memoirs tell us that while attending medical school

at the university of michigan in eighteen eighty four

he stole cadavers from the school lab and the local cemetery

he then took out insurance policies on the bodies

turn them in as newly dead

and tried to cash in on the claims

these are the early outlines of the murderous money making

scheme he would later perfect in chicago

he actually enjoyed

making fools of people

we often see that kind of persona

really enjoy pulling one over on anyone

that ego boost of knowing someone's believing this con

is worth more in some cases

than the actual money that comes out of it right

when holmes left new hampshire did he ever look back to go

visit his family ever again

his wife clara came with him to michigan in the first place

they lived in a boarding house for a little while

but she kind of got fed up with him i think medical

colleagues at the school

talked about seeing her walking around with black eyes

uh she was still taking in dressmaking to pay all of his

bills you mean like abuse

yeah it was in

a letter collected from one of his roommates at the time

generally a psychopathic killer of holmes's intelligence

would be concealing that kind of abuse better

but if we believe the theory

that he drowned his cousins

during his youth

in new hampshire and now he's beating his wife

this may be a sign that he has rage

beyond what he can conceal

at this early stage in his career

and that might open up the possibility

that he's capable of the crimes

we associate with jack the ripper in london

jeff muppet and amorous fox

are on a mission

to unlock the secrets of a

one hundred and thirty year old mystery to prove

jeff's theory that two of history's most notorious figures

h h holmes and jack the ripper are the same man

they're building a timeline of holmes's activity

from his childhood in new hampshire

to medical school in michigan

and now his arrival in chicago

the city where he carries out his infamous deeds

for the most part we know he came here

sometime in eighteen eighty five

he set himself up as a pharmacist in the state of illinois

which would have been

really easy for him to do since he was a medical doctor

the hunt for evidence brings them back to chicago area

detective ray johnson

who's conducted extensive research

into the eighteen nineties homes case

we know he registered as a pharmacist under h h homes

so that's the first time we know that he's actually used

the name h h homes

he started working in a pharmacy owned by the holtens

as far as we know he befriended the holtens

i read about this

he went on to take over the pharmacy

then the owners mysteriously disappeared

so now that he has an income stream coming from the pharmacy

he uses that money to purchase the land

down the street in december of 1886

and eventually what it became

is what we now know as the murder castle

was this building there before

holmes came to chicago or

he built it from the ground up yeah

of course he was married to clara lovering

originally this would be your

right great great grandmother

and then when he left her

he met up with this woman myrta belknap

he married her while he was still married to clara

and so clara stayed back in new hampshire

yeah it's the family's understanding

that he deserted her and the child

after marrying clara levering in eighteen seventy eight

my great great grandfather

he went on to fraudulently marry at least two other women

in addition to taking on a slew of mistresses

he married murda bellnap in eighteen eighty seven

and live with her during his time in chicago

he also married

georgiana yoke in denver in eighteen ninety four

murder belknap came from a wealthy family

and he was using her money

to finance the murder castle

what do you think holmes's main motive was

for the murder council ultimately his motivation

more than the killing was to make money

typically what he would do is if you were a female

is befriend you and then she had some sort of maybe possible

romantic involvement

and then he would

convince you to take out an insurance policy on yourself

about ten thousand dollars roughly

two hundred and twenty five thousand by today's money

the elaborate insurance scam

holmes invents as a medical student

becomes his signature in chicago

the master swindler steals cadavers

burns them beyond recognition

and passes them off

to insurance companies to cash in on the policies

and sometimes he would use their actual bodies

he would kill them and collect

and then of course being an efficient murderer

he's gonna make money on

anything he can so the medical colleges

were looking for skeletons

they were really hard to come by

and so they didn't ask any questions

and sell them for about two hundred dollars a piece

and today's money

was probably closer to six or seven thousand dollars

there's a perfect solution you get rid of the body and

you make two hundred dollars in the process exactly

clearly holmes was motivated by money

but i'm beginning to think that he hatched these plans

not only for financial gain

but also for the

adrenaline rush about smarting all of those around him

when looking at

jack the ripper

it's gonna be important to examine how profit and ego

played a role in his crimes as well

so are there police records of any investigation

of the castle or of homes that survive

police records not so much

well there are plenty of records having to do with

bogus promissory notes

civil cases against him

leans on the property which is

legal troubles that are well known

so where would we find those documents

the first place i would start would be city hall

and in the basement of city hall is where

there you're gonna find a lot of the property records

that's so good to hear because if we can

pin homes down here

through one of these

promissory notes or lawsuits against him

for the summer or fall of eighteen eighty eight

then we know he wasn't in london sure case closed

on the hunt to prove a link

between two of history's most infamous murderers

h h holmes and jack the ripper jeff

mudge and amoralist fox

are investigating legal records of holmes's many cons

their plan

is to use the paper trail to track the killer's activity

during his time in chicago

we're looking here for

any records that would involve

buying or selling the property that we know

h h homes built the murder castle

there's a chance

we could find

evidence in the public record

of holmes's presence here in chicago

during the time of the ripper murders

and if we do find documents that place him here

our work is done

case closed he couldn't have been the ripper

the first record that we come upon

is a trust deed which is a mortgage

that he took out in

eighteen eighty seven

so this looks to me like the actual document

that was used

to transfer control to homes of the land

where he would eventually build

the murder castle

and then it looks like the subsequent record is from marta

holmes's wife to lucy her mother

another interesting fact here

is that marta quick claimed it to lucy

in eighty seven

what does quit claimed mean quit claimed means that

i just exchanged my interest in a property to you

may not be any money exchanged

just that i don't want anymore i'm giving it to you

so they would take themselves off and quit claiming

to the other party

this looks like a deed august tenth of eighteen eighty seven

consideration of the sum of twelve hundred dollars

do hereby convey to

lucy belknap this seems like an unusual number of

transactions between the same group of people

around the same blocks of land

that's true and in a short period of time as well which

may also tip you off that there's something funny going on

for each of these plots many of the transactions

are actually homes with an immediate family member

just glancing down the page

lucy balknap lucy balknap

h h homes merda homes lucy balknap lucy balknap

i'd like to take copies of all of these records if we could

and begin to map them out i think it's gonna take us

some midnight oil to begin to actually untangle this

absolutely

we have an amazing opportunity to map out

holmes's whereabouts based on these legal transactions

and sort them into a timeline

it has the potential to nullify

everything i've been working on for the past twenty years

my heart's in my throat just thinking about this

okay let's start at the top what's the first document

this appears to be

the purchase of the lot

where the murder castle was built we're looking at

eighteen eighty six and

all of the many many agreements this was the first of them

between holmes and the many neighbors as he took over

plot by plot by plot in that neighborhood

the amount of paperwork that was generated

almost weekly by holmes's swindles

around the murder castle is staggering

now we have construction beginning

eighteen eighty seven

each deed transfer lawsuit or fine

creates a piece of paper

march eighteen eighty eight

that we can use to pin homes to a specific place

at a specific time

july of eighteen eighty eight he's in this lawsuit

with edna ironworks

july of eighteen eighty eight would be roughly

six to seven weeks before the first ripper murder uh huh

yeah when's the next document that we have in the chicago

record for him

april of eighty nine

so there's no

there's no

document in the chicago record

for homes

between

july of eighteen eighty eight

and early eighteen eighty nine it's an obvious gap

the documents down in the basement had records

weekly monthly for him

it is a big gap that gap

that's the exact period

that jack the ripper was committing his murders in london

uh it's definitely a marked gap in the records

i'm not saying that means he was there

it's good circumstantial evidence that

the possibility exists that he was in london

it's always the

minutia that solves the crime that's what i found

and there's so much

bureaucratic minutia around holmes

because he had so many scams and all of them are documented

i expected we'd have documents right the way along

that placed him here in chicago and we don't

so i'd like to get to work figuring out where

holmes was during this gap

this season on american ripper

i need to know everything there is to know

about these two men we have to go to london

once you get into the case it's not who was jack the ripper

it's why was jack the ripper

the fifth victim could in theory of being an animal carcass

you have a recording of my great great grandfather

it sounded like a man confessing

to killing twenty seven people

that lawn is the only

repository of holmes's victims well i wouldn't say only

oh wow wow wow

things have been dumped here so this is the sort of famous

dead boss letter oh boy

jack the ripper is that it whoa

she pinged on old human remains in this area yes

they took witness statements

we know from the report that an american was taken in

so there's no doubt we're gonna get dna oh yeah

if you took this to a judge

he'd issue a warrant

i would have never expected this when we started digging

if they find dna that's a match for jeff

we'll have solved the greatest cold case of all time