Mary Jane was the only victim
to be murdered indoors.
In her room in Miller's Court, the
Ripper had the time and space
to realise his very
darkest fantasies.
When detectives discovered the body,
they sent round a photographer.
We get the first, and only,
photographs of a Ripper crime scene.
They're truly chilling.
But they're also a powerful
investigatory tool
that we can deploy today.
By using the scene-of-crime
photographs
and the really detailed notes taken
by detectives who were there,
we can recreate the murder scene,
in detail, for the first time
in over 130 years.
We've built a full-scale replica
of Mary Jane's bedroom to help
understand the Ripper's psychology.
Peter is once again helping us
investigate the murder scene.
So, tell me, what was Miller's
Court, a flat or a house?
No, it was a ground-floor room
in a block of over a dozen flats.
We have a photograph of the outside
of the building here,
taken on the day that
Mary Jane Kelly was murdered.
OK. Mary Jane Kelly,
what do we know about her?
Well, she was about 25 years old.
And so she's the youngest
of the Ripper victims.
What were her movements
on the day of her murder?
Well, we know that about 2am
she goes out and she's seen
with a man, and that's the last
sighting we have
of Mary Jane Kelly alive.
And remember, this is the height
of the Jack the Ripper murders.
There's a heightened
police presence.
The newspapers are going crazy about
covering the Jack the Ripper case,
and there are wanted posters
all round Whitechapel
saying, "Beware Jack the Ripper,"
and he's still prepared to kill.
This is an exact reproduction
of Mary Jane Kelly's room,
built to scale, and the furniture
is placed exactly as it was found
by the police when they came
through the door
after Mary Jane Kelly's death.
So, what is it exactly that you
would look for when you first come
into a crime scene?
In a modern-day investigation,
detectives would be looking
for traces of DNA, fingerprints,
shoe marks or even tiny microscopic
fibres that could have been
transferred from the clothing
of the victim to the killer,
or vice versa. But, of course,
in 1888, none of this exists. No.
So they would have been completely
reliant upon the visual signs -
what was the crime scene
telling them?
Was there any sign of forced entry?
No sign of forced entry.
And, in fact, the police had to
bring an axe to break down the door.
So presumably the Ripper
was invited in.
And there was absolutely no sense
of this, at first glance,
being a murder scene, is there?
No, and that's strange.
I mean, I'd sort of expect
that there would be clothes strewn
across the floor, and the furniture
would be upturned,
but, in fact, the clothes
were found perfectly folded,
and Mary Jane Kelly's boots
by the fireplace.
She was clearly comfortable
in the company of this man.
So, what does that say
about the Ripper himself?
Well, it tells us that Jack
the Ripper, at least initially,
was a very plausible punter.
He could put the women at ease
but then, of course,
in relation to Mary Jane Kelly, this
is the first crime he's committed
inside a woman's room, and, frankly,
he's in no hurry to leave.
Dr Thomas Bond attended the murder
scene and made detailed notes,
which we are using in our
reconstruction.
But if we follow his report and say
that the heavy blood staining
was there, and, of course,
the pool of blood was found
underneath, it indicates that her
body's been moved somewhat
from the point at where I would
contend she was murdered
to this side of the mattress.
And why would that be? Pulling
the victim away avoids him being
covered in blood, and allows him
to pose Mary Jane Kelly.
He then begins to dismember
the corpse, and place organs
around the room.
The question for me is,
why does he dismember the body?
It's messy, bloody
and time consuming.
And we know, therefore,
it's incredibly unusual,
whether we're talking about murder
in 1888 or whether we're talking
about murder today. I mean, there
are something, on average,
like 550 murders each year
in the United Kingdom,
and only a handful of those murders
would have any form of dismemberment
at all. And the dismemberment cases
that I've come across, invariably,
that has been done in order
to transport
or otherwise dispose of the body.
But that's not
what we're seeing here.
And I think what we're seeing
in this murder is just simply
he's got time to be with a dead
victim, and he's exploring.
He's allowing his fantasies
to be fully flowered.
For me, the other significant
and striking feature of the murder
of Mary Jane is just the ferocity
that the killer has focused
on her face. She was described
as a pretty woman, wasn't she?
But then when the police surgeon
describes finding her here, he said
that her face was gashed
in all directions
and that her nose and cheeks
and eyebrows and ears
had been partly removed.
All of this is shocking, but it is a
massive disfigurement, isn't it?
Yes, and, of course, to attack
the face is to attack
the very being of the victim.
So, what can we determine about his
psychology from this room?
Oh, we see the absolute limits
of his misogyny.
When he's got time to be alone with
a dead woman,
he disfigures, he dehumanises.
Mm-hm.
He obliterates.
