# The Ripper - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 9/6/26

An episode of [The Best of Coast to Coast AM](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1206175991), 7 Sep 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/61c1535a-56bb-431a-ad6b-ae2b00350f5c/4dc67db6-566f-43ce-bf83-b4be009a5e3e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b95f0c24-c199-4939-b52c-ae2b00350f65

George Noory and true crime podcaster Joel Waldman discuss the mystery of Jack the Ripper and a current criminal case dominating the headlines. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Joel, as the Ripper started in 1888, when did he
[0:08] Speaker 2: purportedly stop, if he did stop?
[0:11] Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was a very short period of time
[0:14] Speaker 3: for the amount of attention it has gotten over the
[0:17] Speaker 3: 138-year period, but essentially from August 31st of 1888, and
[0:23] Speaker 3: it stops, I believe, on the last day of, or
[0:27] Speaker 3: at some point in November, So we go from August
[0:31] Speaker 3: into November. There is one other suspect who has gotten
[0:36] Speaker 3: a lot of attention. He goes by Montag John Druitt,
[0:40] Speaker 3: some say Montague.
[0:42] Speaker 4: Excuse me.
[0:43] Speaker 3: He's a very sort of different kind of Ripper suspect
[0:47] Speaker 3: from either of the two I discussed earlier, one being
[0:50] Speaker 3: Chaim Chaim, so this guy Aaron Kosminski. He is important
[0:56] Speaker 3: because a senior Scotland Yard official Later named him as
[1:00] Speaker 3: a suspect.
[1:01] Speaker 4: Even his family was suspicious of this guy. And he
[1:03] Speaker 4: was totally out of sort of the typical M.O.
[1:07] Speaker 3: This guy, John Druitt, who died at 31, taking his
[1:13] Speaker 3: own life.
[1:14] Speaker 4: He was educated at Oxford University.
[1:17] Speaker 3: He was an attorney and a schoolteacher born into a
[1:21] Speaker 3: very respectable upper middle class family. He did not come
[1:25] Speaker 3: from the Whitechapel section of East London. And he was
[1:29] Speaker 3: 31 years old at the time of these killings. And
[1:34] Speaker 3: what makes it him so significant, right after the alleged
[1:40] Speaker 3: final victim, we don't know if she's in fact the final,
[1:44] Speaker 3: final victim. But as far as reports go and how
[1:47] Speaker 3: the media has portrayed this, she is considered to be
[1:51] Speaker 3: the last of the five so-called canonical murders. And her
[1:55] Speaker 3: name is Mary Jane Kelly. Again, that murder was on
[1:59] Speaker 3: November 9th of 1888. And then in the following few weeks,
[2:05] Speaker 3: this guy drew it, disappears. His body eventually pulled from
[2:11] Speaker 3: the Thames River on December 31st of 1888.
[2:15] Speaker 4: And they say he took his life.
[2:19] Speaker 3: And all the killings that were at least of this
[2:23] Speaker 3: sort of butcher-type nature, they stopped. and then years later,
[2:28] Speaker 3: still within that time period, like the early 1900s, the
[2:32] Speaker 3: assistant chief constable, a guy named Sir Melville McNayton, he
[2:37] Speaker 3: writes a private memorandum, and he identifies this guy Druitt
[2:42] Speaker 3: as one of three men who he considered plausible suspects,
[2:47] Speaker 3: and he had actually went and spoke to the family,
[2:51] Speaker 3: to the Druitt family, and the Druitt's own family tells
[2:54] Speaker 3: this Chief Constable, he was the murderer.
[3:00] Speaker 4: He did it.
[3:02] Speaker 3: We have strong suspicions he did it. But why is
[3:06] Speaker 3: never really revealed. It's kept as sort of part of
[3:09] Speaker 3: the police record. So that is one of the real
[3:12] Speaker 3: kind of dangling threads of the Ripper story is this
[3:16] Speaker 3: family that comes forward, says we think our family member
[3:20] Speaker 3: did it.
[3:22] Speaker 4: And did he do it? I don't know that we'll
[3:25] Speaker 4: ever know, George, and I think.
[3:26] Speaker 3: That's why people are so intrigued and a little bit
[3:30] Speaker 3: frustrated at this point.
[3:32] Speaker 2: Joel, I'm in St. Louis right now, and there was
[3:34] Speaker 2: a dentist from St. Louis that was accused of being
[3:36] Speaker 2: Jack the Ripper again. Francis, is it Tumblegee or something
[3:41] Speaker 2: like that?
[3:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, he was– it's a good call, George. Francis Tumblegee
[3:48] Speaker 3: was an eccentric American– back then they called him a quack.
[3:54] Speaker 3: He was arrested in London in 1888, and then he
[3:58] Speaker 3: gets out of Britain as soon as he's arrested. He
[4:02] Speaker 3: just jumps ship, so to speak, and he reportedly had
[4:06] Speaker 3: an intense hatred of women and attracted considerable attention from
[4:12] Speaker 3: some modern Ripper researchers. And like I said, there are
[4:16] Speaker 3: people that have literally dedicated their lives to studying this case.
[4:21] Speaker 3: but there is no conclusive evidence, no DNA evidence. I mean, George,
[4:26] Speaker 3: I don't need to tell you, but in today's day
[4:29] Speaker 3: and age, you really need some sort of, you know, tangible,
[4:34] Speaker 3: tactile evidence. Circumstantial evidence wins trials, but nine out of
[4:39] Speaker 3: 10 times in today's cases, you're going to have digital
[4:42] Speaker 3: forensics or you're going to have DNA or a combination
[4:46] Speaker 3: of the both that's going to sort of nail you
[4:48] Speaker 3: in these cases.
[4:49] Speaker 4: But here, It's still up in the air.
[4:53] Speaker 2: Would you call the Ripper a serial killer?
[4:56] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[4:56] Speaker 3: I mean, the definition, I believe, of a serial killer
[4:59] Speaker 3: is two or more killings. So this is five women,
[5:03] Speaker 3: and I mean in the most devious, horrific way imaginable.
[5:10] Speaker 3: I'm not going to share details because I don't want
[5:13] Speaker 3: people having nightmares as they drift off, but the worst
[5:18] Speaker 3: possible way. You can imagine a human taking the life
[5:22] Speaker 3: of another human is what Jack the Ripper did. And
[5:25] Speaker 3: he did it with incredible precision. The Black Dahlia, you've
[5:30] Speaker 3: had my friend Eli Frankel on, who wrote a book
[5:33] Speaker 3: called Sisters in Death. And in the Black Dahlia, there
[5:37] Speaker 3: was something called exsanguination, where the killer would drain the
[5:41] Speaker 3: body of all of its blood. Here, it wasn't quite
[5:45] Speaker 3: to that extent, but the precision with which he was
[5:48] Speaker 3: able to sort of carve body parts and leave them,
[5:52] Speaker 3: he would leave them either on top or underneath the
[5:55] Speaker 3: shoulder of his victims was just incredibly disturbing. I mean,
[5:59] Speaker 3: just imagine those police officers back in those days coming
[6:02] Speaker 3: upon these crime scenes and the poor people who saw
[6:06] Speaker 3: the aftermath of this. I mean, these are horrors that
[6:08] Speaker 3: live with the law enforcement and people who are victims
[6:12] Speaker 3: of crimes for the rest of their lives.
[6:14] Speaker 2: Do you think he killed them in a place like
[6:17] Speaker 2: an apartment or something and then brought the body and
[6:20] Speaker 2: the parts back? Or did he do it right out
[6:23] Speaker 2: in the open and extract the body parts and put
[6:26] Speaker 2: them all over the place?
[6:27] Speaker 3: Great question. The consensus is he just did it on
[6:31] Speaker 3: the spot. Everyone was murdered on the street and it
[6:36] Speaker 3: was done in a very quick amount of time for
[6:39] Speaker 3: what he did to these people. There was only one case,
[6:42] Speaker 3: and I believe it was either the fourth or fifth victim,
[6:46] Speaker 3: I want to say the fifth, who was actually murdered
[6:49] Speaker 3: inside of her apartment in Whitey Chapel in the East
[6:53] Speaker 3: section of London, the section of East London. So, yeah,
[6:58] Speaker 3: the consensus is that he was murdering these women sort
[7:01] Speaker 3: of on the spot, and it's a very busy section
[7:04] Speaker 3: of town. I mean, It was dirty. It was decrepit.
[7:08] Speaker 3: It was a lot of poor people, a lot of
[7:10] Speaker 3: homeless people. How he got away with it is anybody's guess.
[7:15] Speaker 3: There were eyewitnesses, and that's why this one author believes
[7:21] Speaker 3: it was Chaim Himes because he was identified by some
[7:25] Speaker 3: eyewitnesses as having a strange gait and not a great
[7:28] Speaker 3: use of one of his arms. And that's very, very
[7:31] Speaker 3: specific in terms of the detail. And that's why this
[7:35] Speaker 3: particular author in 2007, I want to say, wrote this
[7:39] Speaker 3: book and said, hey, that's him. So she may have
[7:43] Speaker 3: written the book a little bit later, but forgive me
[7:45] Speaker 3: if you're listening. But in any event, it was all
[7:50] Speaker 3: very methodically done, done very quickly and generally right then
[7:55] Speaker 3: and there on the street.
[7:58] Speaker 5: And I know you're going to want some after hearing this.
[7:59] Speaker 5: This is an amazing story. We've got Stephen and Malachi
[8:02] Speaker 5: Gregory in Nelson, New Zealand. I understand that Malachi, who's eight,
[8:07] Speaker 5: almost nine years old now, was suffering with not just
[8:11] Speaker 5: one or two warts, but I mean a significant outbreak
[8:14] Speaker 5: of warts all over his body. So significant it impacted
[8:16] Speaker 5: his ability to to really function.
[8:19] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[8:19] Speaker 6: Yeah. He was having trouble even holding a pencil to write.
[8:22] Speaker 6: It was Ty's book actually that got me thinking about it.
[8:25] Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. It is an amazing immunomodulator. And so
[8:29] Speaker 1: I can see that it would work.
[8:31] Speaker 5: And so at what point did you see that there
[8:33] Speaker 5: was actually improvement is really going to work?
[8:36] Speaker 6: Well, look, we really started to notice it around 12 weeks.
[8:39] Speaker 6: You can see these things actually getting smaller and smaller
[8:43] Speaker 6: and then going down to the where they're just little
[8:45] Speaker 6: red marks, the whole things are gone. And we're talking
[8:47] Speaker 6: about one the size of a walnut.
[8:49] Speaker 1: I thought, no way that's going to.
[8:51] Speaker 4: Wow.
[8:52] Speaker 6: It's just been miraculous to see him get into a
[8:54] Speaker 6: pair of shoes. Yes.
[8:56] Speaker 1: How wonderful.
[8:57] Speaker 6: It's great to see him so happy and confident.
[9:00] Speaker 5: Absolutely wonderful.
[9:01] Speaker 6: Our friends that have seen it, they're just blown away.
[9:03] Speaker 1: Ty, this is awesome. Yeah, this is awesome.
[9:06] Speaker 7: Another amazing story.
[9:07] Speaker 5: Why?
[9:07] Speaker 7: We're talking about carnivora. Call them to awaken your immune
[9:11] Speaker 7: system and protect yourself now.
[9:12] Speaker 1: Call 1-866-836-8735.
[9:16] Speaker 7: That's 1-866-836-8735. Or visit carnivora.com. C-A-R-N-I-V-O-R-A. Carnivora.com.
[9:29] Speaker 2: I would guess most of the prostitutes would hang around
[9:32] Speaker 2: together as a group. You would think they would see
[9:35] Speaker 2: him with one of them.
[9:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, you think there was one person who
[9:40] Speaker 3: could just give you like an amazing... sort of bird's
[9:45] Speaker 3: eye vantage point of who this was. But all these
[9:47] Speaker 3: years later and during those years, it never happened. And
[9:52] Speaker 3: I kind of mentioned this off the top, but the
[9:54] Speaker 3: amount he targeted working women. And sadly, we saw that
[9:58] Speaker 3: much more recently with the Long Island serial killer. I
[10:01] Speaker 3: mean they're a very vulnerable population. People get offended because
[10:07] Speaker 3: the term sex workers is sort of coined by the media,
[10:10] Speaker 3: but these are real women with families and children. parents
[10:16] Speaker 3: um and there's a lot of them are just down
[10:18] Speaker 3: and out on their luck but back then in 1888
[10:21] Speaker 3: uh 62 brothels just in this section of east london
[10:26] Speaker 3: and 1200 women working as prostitutes uh in white chapel
[10:32] Speaker 3: i mean georgia reminds me i was a kid uh
[10:34] Speaker 3: mainly in the 80s but i was a very young
[10:36] Speaker 3: kid in the 70s and i lived i grew up
[10:38] Speaker 3: in new jersey and i remember my parents taking me
[10:41] Speaker 3: into Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel, and there'd be the
[10:44] Speaker 3: squeegee guys, and then there'd be the working women on
[10:48] Speaker 3: the streets of Manhattan. And then it was all cleaned up,
[10:50] Speaker 3: and apparently, you know, some of that has come back
[10:54] Speaker 3: in recent years. But it sort of reminds me of
[10:57] Speaker 3: New York City in the 70s, which was incredibly gritty.
[11:00] Speaker 2: In another bizarre case, the judges declared a mistrial in
[11:04] Speaker 2: the case of Lindsay Clancy. Now, she's that Massachusetts woman
[11:08] Speaker 2: charged with murdering her three young children, five, three, and
[11:11] Speaker 2: eight months back in 2023. I believe they were strangled.
[11:15] Speaker 2: This came after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied the
[11:19] Speaker 2: request of Clancy's defense attorney for an emergency appeal. After
[11:24] Speaker 2: deliberating for six days, the jury told the judge they
[11:27] Speaker 2: could not reach a verdict because one juror did not
[11:30] Speaker 2: agree with the 11 others, and he declared a mistrial.
[11:33] Speaker 2: What does that mean? Did they let her go?
[11:37] Speaker 1: No.
[11:38] Speaker 3: She was sent back to Tewksbury Psychiatric Hospitals, and now
[11:43] Speaker 3: we're advancing 138 years from Jack the Ripper, and here
[11:46] Speaker 3: you have a mother. To me, this is maybe the
[11:51] Speaker 3: most fascinating trial I've ever covered. It started off about
[11:57] Speaker 3: six weeks ago, and it ended Friday. And when this
[12:00] Speaker 3: trial began, people knew about it, and they were talking
[12:03] Speaker 3: about it, but the defense attorney, Kevin Reddick, The prosecutors
[12:06] Speaker 3: never speak to the media, and I look at a
[12:08] Speaker 3: lot of this through the lens of the media because
[12:10] Speaker 3: I was in traditional broadcast news for all those years.
[12:14] Speaker 3: And when Kevin Reddington, who's considered to be a top
[12:17] Speaker 3: three criminal defense attorney in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, when
[12:21] Speaker 3: he walked.
[12:21] Speaker 4: Into court, there was one or two reporters.
[12:25] Speaker 3: If anyone saw the news footage on Friday … There
[12:30] Speaker 3: was hundreds of reporters, every media outlet you can imagine,
[12:34] Speaker 3: and from around the world. And I can tell you firsthand,
[12:38] Speaker 3: we typically on Surviving the Survivor will get 100,000 views.
[12:43] Speaker 3: For this case, for the last seven days, we averaged
[12:46] Speaker 3: like 650,000 views. I've never seen interest in a case
[12:51] Speaker 3: like this snowball in the way that it did. But
[12:55] Speaker 3: circling back to your answer, No, she was not let go.
[12:59] Speaker 3: It's fascinating from so many angles, but essentially she was
[13:06] Speaker 3: purported to be sort of the perfect mom. She always
[13:09] Speaker 3: wanted to have kids. She was a labor and delivery
[13:12] Speaker 3: nurse as a profession.
[13:13] Speaker 2: Who was the father?
[13:16] Speaker 4: What's that?
[13:16] Speaker 2: Who was the father?
[13:17] Speaker 1: A single guy?
[13:19] Speaker 3: Yeah. So his name is Patrick Clancy. They were, you know,
[13:23] Speaker 3: according to everyone, happily married. He, by the way, since
[13:26] Speaker 3: this all happened back in January of 2023, he's remarried
[13:32] Speaker 3: and he's taken a lot of heat, especially in conspiracy circles.
[13:36] Speaker 3: But my thoughts on that are unless you have any
[13:38] Speaker 3: sort of evidence, which I don't think there is, uh,
[13:41] Speaker 3: he should be kept out of it. I mean, he's
[13:43] Speaker 3: a victim, but she gives birth to the third child
[13:47] Speaker 3: and just goes into a severe episode of postpartum depression
[13:52] Speaker 3: and what's known as postpartum psychosis and, uh, according to
[13:57] Speaker 3: her and her attorney, uh, heard a male voice telling
[14:01] Speaker 3: her that she had to take her life and take
[14:04] Speaker 3: the lives of her children. And she takes them to
[14:07] Speaker 3: the basement and she takes three different colored exercise bands.
[14:11] Speaker 3: If you've ever worked out with exercise bands, different ones
[14:14] Speaker 3: have sort of different thickness for different resistance. And she
[14:17] Speaker 3: takes Cora, uh, the oldest, she actually goes to her second.
[14:23] Speaker 3: She goes to the middle child, who's the most rambunctious, Dawson, first,
[14:29] Speaker 3: essentially strangles the life out of him, then strangles Cora,
[14:33] Speaker 3: and then goes to eight-month-old Callan, and Callan somehow survives
[14:38] Speaker 3: for a couple of days and then passes from the
[14:42] Speaker 3: extremely intense injuries. She then jumps out the window. And
[14:47] Speaker 3: when her husband, who she had sent out to run errands,
[14:50] Speaker 3: and he was gone for less than an hour, when
[14:52] Speaker 3: he returns, you know, it's a house full of three
[14:55] Speaker 3: young kids. He hears nothing. He's looking for his wife.
[14:58] Speaker 3: He runs upstairs. He sees the window open. He sees
[15:01] Speaker 3: his wife down below.
[15:03] Speaker 4: He runs out. What happened?
[15:04] Speaker 1: What happened?
[15:05] Speaker 4: Where are the kids?
[15:05] Speaker 3: The kids are in the basement. He goes to the basement.
[15:08] Speaker 3: He finds three lifeless bodies. They played the 911 call
[15:11] Speaker 3: in court, George. No one could hear it except for
[15:14] Speaker 3: the jurors and the people in the gallery. From what
[15:17] Speaker 3: I understand, it was horrific, like a life-altering 911 call.
[15:23] Speaker 2: Was he the caller or Lindsay was?
[15:27] Speaker 4: He was the caller.
[15:29] Speaker 3: There's varying takes on whether she could even talk. She
[15:34] Speaker 3: was paralyzed for life from that fall. She's in a wheelchair.
[15:39] Speaker 3: She was in a wheelchair, and she's a very good athlete.
[15:42] Speaker 3: She was a collegiate level cheerleader and a gymnast in
[15:45] Speaker 3: high school, but she now is in a wheelchair for life.
[15:48] Speaker 3: Some say that she was sort of in a coma
[15:51] Speaker 3: state and couldn't talk. And that's where people have this
[15:54] Speaker 3: conflict with Patrick Clancy, where he's relaying all this information
[15:58] Speaker 3: that his wife tells him and people are questioning it.
[16:00] Speaker 3: So there's so much intrigue with this case. And now
[16:04] Speaker 3: with a mistrial declared, this defense attorney wants to, he
[16:08] Speaker 3: has to retry the case starting a week from Monday.
[16:10] Speaker 3: He's a 75 year old man. I mean, at the
[16:14] Speaker 3: top of his game, but talk about energy. The judge
[16:17] Speaker 3: said no way, but they could retry this case as
[16:21] Speaker 3: early as this December.
[16:24] Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
[16:27] Speaker 1: 1 a.m. Eastern and go to coasttocoastam.com for more.

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