# Two Disturbing True Crime Mysteries: The Atlanta Ripper and Jane Smith

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 21 Aug 2025, 19 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4523753725.mp3

Two cases. Two eras. Two disturbing mysteries that remain unsolved. In this episode, we investigate the terrifying story of the Atlanta Ripper, an unidentified serial killer who terrorized Atlanta in the early 1900s, leaving behind a string of brutal murders that shocked the nation. Then we shift to Northern Ontario in 1975, where Jane Smith mysteriously vanished from Sudbury, leaving her family and investigators grasping for answers that never came. If you're drawn to unsolved murders, cold case disappearances, and the dark history of crime, this episode will keep you hooked until the very end. Chapters: 0:00 Atlanta Ripper 11:55 Jane Smith 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 atlanta ripper murders, atlanta ripper mystery, atlanta ripper cold case, atlanta serial killer, jane smith disappearance, jane smith cold case, jane smith missing 1975, sudbury missing woman, ontario cold case disappearance, canadian true crime mysteries, disturbing unsolved murders, historical cold cases, true crime podcast 2025, unsolved murders podcast, cold case mysteries, disturbing true crime stories, mystery crime podcast, canadian missing persons cold cases, atlanta cold case murders, unsolved serial killer cases

## Transcript

[0:01] In the summer of 1911, on a warm Saturday night in Atlanta, GA, a
[0:07] young woman named Emma Lou Sharp went out to look for her missing
[0:10] mother. 20 year old Emma Lou was worried as she walked the dark
[0:15] streets, knowing a dangerous menace lurked in the city's
[0:19] black neighborhoods. Sure enough a tall, broad
[0:23] shouldered stranger in a wide brimmed hat appeared out of the
[0:26] darkness. He spoke calmly and told Emma
[0:30] Lou she had nothing to fear, he didn't harm girls like her.
[0:35] Then in an instant the man lunged and stabbed her in the
[0:39] back before disappearing into the night.
[0:42] Bleeding and terrified. Emma Lou managed to stagger away
[0:46] and survive, but not far from where she was attacked, her
[0:51] mother, 40 year old Lena Sharp, lay dead, her throat cut so
[0:56] deeply that she was nearly beheaded.
[0:59] Atlanta had a serial predator on its hands. 1 so brutal and
[1:03] elusive that the press would soon dub him the Atlanta Ripper.
[1:10] Atlanta in 1911 was a booming southern city, proudly
[1:13] advertising itself as the capital of the New South and
[1:17] effectively the business capital of the South.
[1:21] Notably, black-owned businesses and colleges catering to black
[1:25] students were growing at a rapid pace, but for most black
[1:29] residents, life was harsh and segregated.
[1:32] Many members of the black community in the city were also
[1:35] recent arrivals from rural regions and were far away from
[1:39] their family and the rest of their social connections.
[1:43] In this fraught atmosphere, crimes against black people
[1:47] often didn't receive meaningful attention from the authorities
[1:51] or media. The first slaying that drew
[1:56] notice occurred on May 28th, 1911, when a woman named Belle
[2:00] Walker failed to return home from her job as a cook.
[2:04] Her body was found the next morning near her house, her
[2:07] throat slashed by an unknown assailant.
[2:11] The gruesome slaying got only a brief mention in the city's
[2:14] newspapers. Two weeks later, on June 15th,
[2:18] another black woman was brutally attacked. 22 year old Addie
[2:23] Watts was struck in the head with a brick and left in some
[2:26] bushes with her throat cut. This second attack in such a
[2:29] short span set off alarm bells, and a local paper published a
[2:34] story claiming there was a quote butcher stalking the streets.
[2:40] The article claimed a quote insane criminal might be
[2:43] prowling the city and drew a direct comparison to Jack the
[2:46] Ripper. The idea seemed implausible at
[2:50] the time, but as more victims surfaced it began to seem more
[2:54] likely. Over the next several weeks, one
[3:00] Saturday night after another brought news of another slain
[3:03] woman. Nearly every victim fit a
[3:06] pattern. Young black or mixed race women,
[3:10] often in their early 20s, attacked while walking alone at
[3:13] night. Each was found with her throat
[3:16] viciously slashed and some victims bodies showed signs of
[3:20] horrific mutilation. By early July 1911, at least
[3:25] eight women had been slain in this manner.
[3:30] The attack on Emma Lou Sharpe and her mother Lena on July 1st,
[3:34] 1911 finally convinced even the skeptics that a serial predator
[3:39] was likely on the loose. Newspapers that had earlier
[3:43] downplayed the crimes now featured them prominently,
[3:46] perhaps in hopes of using lurid stories to sell more papers.
[3:51] Significant pressure on the police mounted as prominent
[3:54] wealthy white families exerted pressure on them to solve the
[3:57] case. These families weren't
[3:59] necessarily upset about the crime spree, but rather the fact
[4:03] that their black female employees started to leave work
[4:06] early or refused to show up at night.
[4:10] Regardless of this apparent lack of altruism or genuine concern,
[4:15] they were able to pressure the authorities into taking the case
[4:18] very seriously. However, as I'll explain
[4:21] shortly, this pressure may have simply led to the cops
[4:24] attempting to close out the file, so to speak.
[4:29] On July 11th, 1911, just ten days after the sharp incident,
[4:34] the body of another victim, 25 year old Sadie Hawley, was
[4:38] discovered beside A streetcar line.
[4:41] The local papers weren't even sure how to number this attack.
[4:45] Depending on the source, Sadie was either the 7th, 8th, or 9th
[4:49] victim attributed to the Ripper. What was clear was that the
[4:54] perpetrator was growing bolder and the city's outrage was
[4:58] growing with each new body that was found.
[5:02] Under tremendous pressure, the police ramped up their efforts.
[5:07] Within a day of Sadie Holly's slaying, they arrested a 27 year
[5:11] old black laborer named Henry Hough.
[5:14] Hough had reportedly been seen with Sadie on the night of her
[5:18] death and when picked up he was found wearing bloody clothes and
[5:21] bearing scratch marks on his arms.
[5:24] The arrest was splashed across headlines and for a moment it
[5:28] seemed the nightmare might be over.
[5:31] However, the case against Huff was weak and he was held only on
[5:35] suspicion and investigators admitted they lacked solid
[5:39] evidence tying him to the string of attacks.
[5:44] Soon after Huff's arrest, another suspect was caught.
[5:47] A tip LED police to 35 year old Todd Henderson.
[5:51] Henderson, like Huff, had been seen around the area of one of
[5:54] the slayings. The police brought Emma Lou
[5:57] Sharp to the station to see if she could identify Henderson as
[6:01] the man who attacked her. Emma Lou was startled by
[6:04] Henderson's voice and thought he might be the same man, but she
[6:08] couldn't be absolutely certain. That lingering doubt meant
[6:13] Henderson couldn't be definitively pinned as the
[6:15] perpetrator. Henderson didn't do himself any
[6:19] favors. He made an off color remark that
[6:22] if he were Jack the Ripper, he would have eliminated his own
[6:25] wife first. The police ended up presenting
[6:30] both Huff and Henderson to a grand jury, essentially hoping
[6:34] the jurors might decide whom to indict for the slaying of Sadie
[6:37] Holly. Throughout August 1911, with
[6:41] Huff and Henderson locked up, the attacks unfortunately
[6:44] continued. In late August, another young
[6:48] woman was found with her throat cut in a rail yard on Atlanta's
[6:51] West side. Then in November 19, 1115, year
[6:56] old Minnie Wise was discovered slain in an alley in the style
[6:59] of the Atlanta Ripper. These attacks occurred while the
[7:03] two main suspects were behind bars, suggesting that neither
[7:07] Huff nor Henderson was the true Ripper unless a copycat was at
[7:11] play. Both men were eventually
[7:13] released without charge in early 1912.
[7:19] With the investigation stalling, some authorities floated
[7:23] alternative theories. A Fulton County grand jury
[7:26] concluded that the so-called Atlanta Ripper might be a myth.
[7:31] They speculated that each attack could have been an unrelated act
[7:34] of violence by different men, but many Atlantans doubted this
[7:38] explanation. The consistency in the crimes,
[7:42] the uncanny similarities in how, when and against whom they were
[7:46] carried out, was hard to dismiss.
[7:50] To the community and many officers, it still looked like
[7:53] the work of a single madman. Leeds continued to trickle in,
[8:00] and in April 1912, a man named Charlie Owens was convicted and
[8:05] sentenced to life in prison for one of the attacks attributed to
[8:08] the Ripper. It was never clearly reported
[8:12] which victim's case this was, and the secretive way the trial
[8:16] was handled left observers puzzled.
[8:19] Whatever the truth, Owens's imprisonment didn't halt the
[8:23] attacks that newspapers linked to the Ripper.
[8:27] That summer, police arrested yet another suspect, Lawton Brown.
[8:33] Brown's wife had gone to the police with a disturbing story.
[8:37] She said that on several Saturday nights matching the
[8:39] attack dates, her husband came home late with blood on his
[8:43] clothes. Under interrogation, Brown
[8:47] reportedly confessed to at least one attack and hinted at knowing
[8:50] about the others. It seemed like a breakthrough,
[8:54] but the manner of the confession raised red flags in court.
[8:58] It came out that detectives had beaten Brown severely to extract
[9:02] his confession. Brown recanted, claiming he was
[9:07] coerced, and he was acquitted in October 1912 when a jury found
[9:12] the case against him unconvincing.
[9:14] Once again, Atlanta was back to square 1.
[9:18] By 1913, the panic had begun to subside a little, perhaps out of
[9:23] fatigue and the lower frequency of new attacks.
[9:27] But the mystery was far from solved.
[9:30] In March 1913, the slaying of yet another young black woman,
[9:35] Laura Smith, made the papers, and she was noted as possibly
[9:39] the third victim of the Ripper that year.
[9:42] In early 1914, a chilling development revived all the old
[9:47] fears. Handwritten notes were found
[9:50] pinned to emergency call boxes around the city, warning that
[9:54] the Ripper would start attacking younger black women caught out
[9:57] at night. Soon after, several more women
[10:02] were attacked and slain in familiar fashion, bringing the
[10:06] total toll attributed to the Atlanta Ripper to somewhere
[10:09] around 20 victims in all. And then, as mysteriously as it
[10:14] all began, the attack stopped and never resumed.
[10:19] After 1914, no more slayings were linked to the Ripper's
[10:23] spree. The nightmare that had
[10:25] terrorized Atlanta for three or four years simply evaporated
[10:30] without any satisfactory conclusion.
[10:35] Over a century has passed, and the Atlanta Ripper case remains
[10:38] unsolved. No single suspect was ever
[10:41] definitively identified as the perpetrator, and no one was
[10:45] convicted for the majority of the attacks.
[10:48] After the attack stopped, the authorities rapidly lost
[10:52] interest in wrapping up the investigation and the case went
[10:55] cold. Contemporary analysis has
[10:59] strongly considered that the Atlanta Ripper might not have
[11:02] been a lone wolf at all. It's possible that multiple
[11:06] perpetrators use the Rippers brutal methods as a cover for
[11:09] their crimes. Some have suggested it could
[11:12] have been a group that actually communicated and conspired with
[11:15] one another. Others have suggested that as
[11:18] the hysteria built, copycats could simply employ the widely
[11:23] known methods of the Ripper to provide cover for their crimes.
[11:28] Under this theory, these individuals may have simply used
[11:31] it as a cover to attack those close to them without the usual
[11:35] scrutiny that would bring. Others maintain it truly was one
[11:41] man who vanished from Atlanta by 1915, explaining why the attacks
[11:46] ceased so suddenly. Ultimately, the truth of this
[11:50] case is unlikely to ever be known.
[11:56] In the pre dawn darkness of August 9th, 1975, a quiet
[12:01] Sudbury, Canada neighborhood hid a chilling secret.
[12:04] A young woman vanished without a trace from her own home.
[12:08] The next morning, 20 year old Jane Smith's bed was empty and
[12:12] her belongings untouched. This baffling disappearance
[12:16] would leave her family and community haunted for the next
[12:19] 50 years, desperate for answers to what really happened in those
[12:23] fateful hours. Born in 1955, Jane grew up in
[12:30] Newmarket, ON and attended school in the town where she was
[12:34] born. In 1973, she enrolled at
[12:38] Laurentian University in Sudbury to study social work, reflecting
[12:42] her passion for helping others. By 1975, at age 20, she was an
[12:48] aspiring social worker and active student leader, even
[12:52] serving on the student council during her first year at
[12:55] Laurentian. Friends and family recall Jane
[12:58] as energetic and compassionate, someone who wanted to make a
[13:02] difference in the world. The summer of 1975, instead of
[13:07] returning home, Jane chose to stay in Sudbury.
[13:11] She had a job at a local Canadian Tire store, which is a
[13:15] national chain that's essentially a Walmart, minus the
[13:18] food, with a service center attached.
[13:23] By all accounts, she was happy living in Sudbury, excited about
[13:27] her future and closely connected to her family back home.
[13:32] There were no signs of trouble in Jane's life as she headed
[13:35] into that August, which makes her sudden disappearance all the
[13:38] more mystifying. On Friday, August 8th, 1975,
[13:45] Jane is thought to have gone about her usual routine.
[13:49] There's little record of what she did that evening, but
[13:52] nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
[13:54] Based on what's been reported, she lived in a small basement
[13:58] apartment on Charlotte St. in Sudbury, which she shared with a
[14:01] roommate. That night, the two young women
[14:04] stayed up late. Around 2:00 in the morning on
[14:07] August 9th, Jane's roommate saw her in their apartment as Jane
[14:11] was preparing to head to bed. It was the last confirmed
[14:14] sighting of Jane Smith. Sometime in the early morning
[14:18] hours, something went terribly wrong.
[14:23] By 7:30 that Saturday morning, Jane's roommate realized Jane
[14:27] was nowhere to be found in the apartment.
[14:30] Jane's bed was empty, and she was gone without making a sound
[14:33] in the night. Panicked, the roommate searched
[14:37] and then contacted others. Before long, police were
[14:41] notified that Jane was missing. What they found, or rather did
[14:46] not find, was deeply unsettling. Apart from the clothes Jane had
[14:52] been wearing when she was last seen, all of her personal
[14:55] belongings were left behind in her room.
[14:58] Her purse, identification, and even everyday items a young
[15:02] woman would normally take were untouched.
[15:05] It looked as if Jane had intended to be back soon or had
[15:09] no chance to gather anything at all.
[15:13] Crucially, Jane's bank accounts were never accessed again after
[15:16] that day. This meant that none of her
[15:19] money was withdrawn or spent, and she didn't contact any
[15:22] friends or family. For investigators, this was a
[15:26] red flag. It strongly suggested that Jane
[15:29] did not plan to leave for long, since she took no money or
[15:33] belongings and she hadn't simply started a new life elsewhere.
[15:38] It appeared that someone had removed Jane from her home or
[15:41] the surrounding area against her will.
[15:46] In the immediate aftermath of Jane's disappearance, an
[15:49] intensive investigation unfolded.
[15:52] Friends, family, and volunteers scoured the area for any clue.
[15:57] Sudbury Police treated the case with urgency.
[16:00] A young woman disappearing from her own home was not something
[16:03] they took lightly. Early on, Jane's family and the
[16:07] local community offered a reward for information.
[16:11] Her distraught parents, along with family friends, put up
[16:14] reward money in hopes of enticing anyone with knowledge
[16:18] to speak up. Jane's fellow students at
[16:21] Laurentian University even organized fundraisers to add to
[16:25] the reward fund. Posters of Jane's smiling face
[16:28] were distributed and local media covered the story.
[16:33] Despite these efforts, no solid leads emerged and it was as if
[16:38] whatever happened to Jane had left no witnesses or evidence
[16:42] willing to surface. Initially, 2 main theories took
[16:47] shape that Jane was the victim of foul play or that she left of
[16:52] her own accord. As the weeks and months passed
[16:56] with no sign of Jane, the runaway theory rapidly lost
[17:00] credibility. Tragically, the foul play theory
[17:04] is now widely accepted as the likely explanation.
[17:08] The Greater Sudbury Police have never closed the case, and
[17:11] Jane's case is officially classified as a suspected
[17:14] slaying, albeit without a body to prove it.
[17:21] Without concrete evidence, speculation has run rampant. 1
[17:25] possibility is that Jane knew her abductor.
[17:28] Perhaps she stepped outside to meet someone she trusted in
[17:31] those early morning hours and met with harm.
[17:35] It's been theorized that perhaps she had recently started dating
[17:38] a man and hadn't yet told anyone else about him.
[17:42] Under this theory, she may have headed out in the early morning
[17:45] hours to meet up with him, and the encounter turned deadly.
[17:51] Another speculative theory is that she perhaps stepped out in
[17:55] the middle of the night for some fresh air.
[17:57] This would explain why the only thing that was missing was her
[18:00] clothing While out. Under this theory, she was
[18:04] abducted by an assailant who may have been stalking her, waiting
[18:08] for her to emerge from her home. Again, this is speculative, but
[18:13] given how completely she vanished, it's potentially
[18:16] accurate. In the end, the story of Jane
[18:21] Smith is a heartbreaking tale of a young woman who should have
[18:25] had a long, fulfilling life. Her family hasn't given up the
[18:29] search for her and has been able to use the 50th anniversary of
[18:33] her disappearance to bring additional attention to her
[18:36] case. It's likely someone out there
[18:39] somewhere knows exactly what happened to Jane on that Sudbury
[18:42] Saturday morning.

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