Mysterious Murders in London Credited to a Strange, Half Crazy Character
London, Sept. 5.
Police investigation of the White Chapel women murders has resulted in the discovery that the man guilty of all three crimes
is called "Leather Apron" and nobody knows him by any other name. He is a character half way between Dickens' Quilp and Poe's
baboon. He is short, stunted and thick set. He has small, wicked black eyes and is half crazy. He was always hanging about
the deep shadows that filled the network of the courts, passages and alley ways in White Chapel. He did not walk, but always
moved on a sharp or queer run and never made any noise with his feet. In addition to the three women he murdered he scared a
hundred more of them nearly to death, and every street walker in White Chapel has her own story to tell of him. He lived by
robbing them late at night and kicked, cuffed or knocked down two score of them in the last two years. His usual lodging
place wa a four-penny house in a poverty stricken thieves' alley off Brick Lane. He has left there, now, however, and nobody
knows where he is. He is suspected of having done the three murders from the fact that he has frequently drawn a knife on
women, accompanied by the same threats which have been carried out on the dead women. The story of Mrs. Colwall, who heard
the screams of the woman as she was being murdered, is that she was clearly running away from somebody who was murdering her,
and yet she could hear no other footsteps. The blood stains on the sidewalk indicated the same thing - that the murderer, who
ever he was, was noiseless in his pursuit, and this quality points direct to Leather Apron. He is a slipper maker by trade and
gets his nickname from the fact he always wears a leather apron, and is never seen without it. One peculiar feature of the
case is that none of the police or detectives appear to know him, he having always kept out of their sight, and they are now
gleaning information concerning him from women he has assailed.
