POLICE PUZZLED AND POWERLESS
Jack the Ripper's Strange Immunity from Detection
London July 19.
Who will stop Jack the Ripper?
At present it looks as if Jack himself were the only man who can accomplish that end.
Constables come and constables go in the Whitechapel district, and there is little interval between; but into that interval Jack manages to slip, and when the constable comes back from the end of his beat there is the bloody reminder of the murderer's visit lying, still warm, on a spot which the officer's feet had pressed ten minutes before.
This is the case in regard to the murder of Tuesday night.
The officer almost stumbled over the evidence of fresh crime, but the criminal had made his escape so sure that here, as before, when Jack has been at work, the police have to acknowledge that they are absolutely without clews.
"It would seem as if that would wake them up," say people after the discovery of each fresh horror, and it would seem so, indeed; but there is only a little sluggish stir, expressing more of annoyance that they should be put to such trouble than of determination that they will find the criminal, and then everything lapses and the Ripper can begin again when he is ready.
Alice Mackenzie, alias Kelly, the choring (sic) woman, who is the latest victim of the fiend at large, was not one of the worst of the Whitechapel women, though she possessed some of the tendencies of that class.
She drank some, but is said not to have been drunk when last seen before her death. She made advances to strangers, and in this way undoubtedly found the man who eventually became her murderer.
While her body was mutilated after the same general fashion as those of the previous victims it was evident that the murderer had been hindered or interrupted so that he was not able to fully complete his work. Some of the wounds were so slight as to suggest that the knife had slipped in a hurried motion, or that the instrument was too dull for the purpose of the assassin.
Castle Alley, where the body was found, is one of the myriad little byways which are scattered through Whitechapel. It is shunned by most people at night, being narrow, dark and choked with trucks and carts left there at the close of the day's business.
It affords ample concealment for any evildoer. It is within a stone's throw of points which have been stained by the blood of other victims in the horrible series of Whitechapel crimes.
