The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases by John Marlowe

extraordinary that during this time Cream embarked on a similar campaign. Shortly after the murder of Nellie Donworth, he mailed two pseudonymous letters in which he accused Frederick Smith of W. H. Smith and Son of the murder. During his brief return to Canada he had printed a circular, warning patrons of London’s Metropole Hotel that the murderer was employed at the hotel. Four weeks after the deaths of Marsh and Shrivell, the Deputy Coroner George Percival received a letter from a ‘William H. Murray’ in which it was claimed that Dr Walter Harper of St Thomas’s Hospital was responsible for the murders. That same day, Walter Harper’s father, Dr Joseph Harper, received an extortion letter in which the same claim was repeated. Detectives at Scotland Yard were quick to recognize that the same hand was behind all these documents, but were unable to determine the writer’s identity. Their curiosity was raised further after two prominent Londoners received extortion letters in which one ‘M. Malone’ claimed to have evidence that each had carried out the murder of Matilda Clover – the victim whose death had been ruled accidental.
    The beginning of the end for Cream came in April 1892 when, quite by chance, he befriended an expatriate American named John Haynes. As a former New York City detective, Haynes had taken an interest in Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell, whose murders had occurred only a few nights earlier. As he discussed the case with Cream, Haynes was taken aback by the depth of information the doctor possessed. It seemed to the former detective that the doctor knew details that had not been reported. What was more, Cream linked the murders with those of two other women, Matilda Clover and Lou Harvey, whose names meant nothing to Haynes. After he had passed on this information to a friend at Scotland Yard, the body of Matilda Clover was exhumed. While they were still gathering evidence, on 3 June 1892, the London constabulary arrested Cream on suspicion of blackmail. Cream appeared at the inquest into Matilda Clover’s death, obliged to listen to the damning testimony. Among the witnesses was Lou Harvey, who, until the moment she entered the courtroom, Cream had thought he’d killed. The inquest concluded that Cream had intentionally administered a lethal dose of strychnine to Matilda Clover. The same witnesses were called by the prosecution during the subsequent criminal trial. No one spoke in Cream’s defence. It took the jury only ten minutes to deliver their verdict.
    But what of Cream’s final words: ‘I am Jack...’? It must first be said that there is some debate as to whether they were ever actually uttered, though his executioner, James Billington, swore it as fact. Assuming Cream did make the statement – and that what he had meant to say is ‘I am Jack the Ripper’ – is it at all possible that the Canadian doctor was the Ripper? At first glance, the answer must be negative. During the latter half of 1888, at which time Jack the Ripper committed his murders, Cream was serving the seventh year of his life sentence at Joliet State Penitentiary, across the Atlantic. Supporters of the theory that Cream was Jack the Ripper claim that corruption was such that the doctor left the institution years before receiving his official pardon. Another more complicated theory argues that Cream had a double who sat in the prison while Cream roamed the streets of London’s East End.
    Perhaps the best explanation for Cream’s words can be found in his considerable ego. Might it have been such that Cream desired to claim the most notorious crimes of the day as his own?
    JOSEPH VACHER
    Joseph Vacher murdered and mutilated a total of 11 people, more than twice the number butchered by Jack the Ripper. Yet Vacher appears condemned to spend eternity standing in the shadow of his English contemporary. Even his nickname, the French Ripper, owes its existence to the Whitechapel killer and in his native France, he