On the Trail of Jack the Ripper - The Cryptic Files Podcast Edition

October 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The first major incident had nothing to do with Jack the Ripper at all. Emma Elizabeth Smith, a 45-year-old prostitute, was gang-raped and murdered by four youths on Easter Monday 1888. The newspapers would later link her death to the Ripper, but the police knew better. Five days earlier, however, a young woman named Ada Wilson had been attacked in her room by a man who cut her throat but failed to kill her. The description she gave—a man of about thirty, with a sunburnt face and small light moustache, about five foot six—matched a witness description later given of the Ripper himself. "The inexpert attack five months before the Ripper somehow discovered his own very effective form of sudden slaughter suggested that this could have been him in his unskilled days," the author notes. "But of course this is speculation based on coincidence and not proof."

The murders that defined a legend

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What you'll learn

1 (00:51) **The First "Ripper" Victims: Emma Smith and Ada Wilson** - The host establishes the pre-Ripper context, describing two violent attacks on women in Whitechapel before the canonical murders began.
2 (04:43) **Martha Tabram: The First Grey-Area Victim** - The host details the murder of Martha Tabram on August 6th, 1888, a killing that remains disputed as either a Ripper murder or a separate crime.
3 (11:54) **The Canonical Murders Begin: Polly Nichols** - The host describes the first of the five "canonical" victims, Polly Nichols, whose murder in Buck's Row on August 31st introduced the signature throat-cutting and abdominal mutilation.
4 (17:59) **The Birth of a Media Sensation** - The host explains how the radical press, particularly *The Star*, transformed a "commonplace murder" into a national sensation to advance political agendas.
5 (21:49) **The Hunt for "Leather Apron"** - The host describes the police and press hunt for a local Jewish immigrant nicknamed "Leather Apron," who had been threatening prostitutes.
6 (28:48) **Annie Chapman: The "Expert" Surgeon Theory** - The host details the murder of Annie Chapman on September 8th, 1888, a crime that introduced the theory that the Ripper possessed medical skill.
7 (40:10) **Arrests and the Clearing of John Pizer** - The host describes the chaotic police response, including the arrest of several madmen, and the public clearing of the prime suspect, John Pizer.

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Show Notes

Originally released in the early 90s, Dr Martin Fido’s ‘On The Trail of Jack the Ripper’ was a cassette-only audio documentary that described and discussed the eponymous serial killer. It is a four-part narrative that explains the case in detail and examines the major suspects, including his own highly plausible lead suspect. However, the original recording suffered from some audio glitches, including a very high-pitched whine throughout parts three and four. It also included some rather irritating classical music as the intro and outro to each episode, which also plays over some of Fido’s words.
This new version has removed the high-pitched whine and ‘connected’ the four parts into one continuous play (just over 3 hours). I have also removed the classical music and added a suitably atmospheric Underscore.
Warning – Some of the descriptions of the injuries to the victims are quite graphic.

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