Austin Statesman (Texas, USA)
Tuesday, 10 October 1888
A thousand dollars reward was yesterday offered for the Whitechapel murder
in London. The fiend has added two more women to his victims, nor left a
trace as to his identity. The peculiar mutilation of the bodies, the
silence in which they are slain—no out-cry—the impenetrable mystery that
envelopes the assassin—all tend to make a case almost entirely similar to
the series of Austin woman murders three years ago, and which, like the
Whitechapel butcheries, have never yet been explained.
The Fort Worth Gazette says: “When the mysterious murders occurred in
Austin a few years ago people were greatly shocked, but it was ‘Texas, you
know,’ and anything might be expected in that horribly wild place. Now they
are duplicated in the most populous city in the world.” Not only that, but
the murders in London are committed before midnight and on a much traveled
thoroughfare, while in Austin they were perpetrated at a late hour and in
sequestered corners. Mystery is a capricious mistress.
