From Hell letter
[2] The murders committed by Jack the Ripper have attracted much attention in popular culture for decades, with several factual and fictional works directly making reference to the "From Hell" letter.
The identification of the killer as Jack the Ripper occurred after 27 September, when the offices of Central News Ltd received the "Dear Boss" letter.
The Central News people received a second communication known as the "Saucy Jacky" postcard on 1 October 1888, the day after the double murder, and the message was duly passed over to the authorities.
While the police felt determined to discover the author of both messages, they found themselves overwhelmed by the media circus around the Ripper killings and soon received a large amount of material, most of it useless.
[10] The letter reads:[11] From hell Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise.
[10] The author did not sign this correspondence with the "Jack the Ripper" pseudonym, distinguishing it from the earlier "Dear Boss" letter and "Saucy Jacky" postcard, as well as their many imitators.
[8][12] The primary reason this letter stands out more than any other is that it was delivered with a small box containing half of what doctors later determined was a human kidney which had been preserved in spirits.
[13] Arguments in favour of the letter's genuineness sometimes state that contemporary analysis of the kidney by Dr Thomas Openshaw of the London Hospital found that it came from a sickly alcoholic woman who had died within the past three weeks, which would be consistent with Eddowes.
[2][10] A contemporary police lead found that shopkeeper Emily Marsh had encountered a visitor at her shop, located in Mile End Road, with an odd, unsettling manner in both his appearance and speech.
He was described as a slim man wearing a long black overcoat at about six feet in height who spoke with a distinct Irish accent, his face featuring a dark beard and moustache.
[8][12][14] Forensic handwriting expert Michelle Dresbold, working for the History Channel documentary series MysteryQuest, has argued that the letter is genuine, based on the peculiar characteristics of the handwriting, particularly the "invasive loop" letter "y"s. The criminal profiling experts in the programme also created a profile of the killer, stating that he possessed a deranged animosity towards women and skills in using a knife.
[10] The purported diary of James Maybrick, another man who has been proposed as a Ripper suspect, contains references to the "From Hell" letter, particularly the alleged cannibalism.
The work was originally published in serial form from 1989 to 1996, first collected as a single piece in 1999, and adapted into a 2001 feature film starring Johnny Depp, Ian Holm and Heather Graham.
