It would be more than four years before anyone had cause to mention her name again.Ĭlaiming as many as eight victims, Jack the Stripper, like BTK, after almost half a century may still be out there. As the case slowly went cold, Elizabeth Figg and the strange case of the semi-naked corpse were forgotten. Yet despite house-to-house enquiries, interviews with prostitutes, pimps, taxi drivers, and night shift workers, no strong clues were found as to the killer's identity. To find a dead body abandoned nearly naked in a public place was shocking even for experienced detectives, suggesting this was different to the crimes of passion, violence or avarice that police were used to. They stumbled across the body of a woman, sat up against a small willow tree, her blue and white striped dress torn open to reveal her breasts and some scratches on her throat. However, something considerably more sinister than the usual discarded prophylactics greeted police as they patrolled the towpath early on the morning of June 17, 1959. Duke's Meadows, on the banks of the river Thames in Chiswick, West London, was one such spot, crudely nicknamed "Gobblers" Gulch' by locals in reference to the sexual practices said to be popular there. Likewise, in the dimly lit back streets of England's capital city, married men were prepared to pay for the kind of services which "nice girls" such as their wives would not provide. Yet society's suppression of it meant that exponents of the world's oldest profession were rarely short of customers. In post-war Britain, it certainly seemed for many that sex was something that was rarely seen and barely ever heard.
But the quality of the evidence used to convict Christopher is controversial, especially since another likely killing in the series occurred while he was in jail. Leonard Christopher, a quiet black man who worked in the area, was arrested and convicted for the murder of one victim in the series. She had also been stabbed in the right arm, and one vicious and deep slash across her abdomen had exposed the internal organs.īetween seven and eight women from 28-68 became the victims of this violent rapist and serial killer in an old section of Philadelphia. She had been sexually assaulted and had died from 47 stab wounds to her head and chest.
She was 52 when she died, and while it was clear to the police that she had been stabbed many times, it took an autopsy to determine the official cause and manner of death. Helen Patent was nude from the waist down and she had been posed in a sexually provocative position, with her legs open and her blouse pulled up to expose her breasts. It was here in 1985 where the first victim was found in a railroad yard. This was the area that Sylvester Stallone selected as the setting for his film Rocky. At one time, it was a prosperous area, but by 1980 it had become a crime-ridden slum populated by prostitutes, junkies, and small businesses struggling to survive.
The Frankford area of Philadelphia was once a town older than the City of Brotherly Love itself.