It is strange what one comes across when one has considerable time for it. I was under the impression that the author of what were known as the Jack the Ripper crimes, the murder of women of ill fame in the East End of London, was an unsolved mystery. These crimes at the time created quite a sensation, with the author of them not being caught. William Le Quex (sic), the well known writer of criminal stories, in his book "Things I Know", vouches that he has found to his amazement the actual truth concerning the Jack the Ripper crimes from an unfinished manuscript left by that infamous monk, Rasputin. He says he was not able to publish it until recently as he was unable to verify the facts. This he has since done.
According to Le Quex, Rasputin intended to publish the manuscript in a book entitled "Great Russian criminals." The manuscript was handed to Le Quex by the Kerensky government in Petrograd, established for a short time after the Russian Revolution, along with others, after the murder of Rasputin, found in a safe in the cellar of his house.
To put it briefly, here is what Le Quex found in the manuscript, which he copied before he returned it to the Kerensky government.
The manuscript, which was in French and typed, was evidently dictated by Rasputin. In it he said that the true author of the atrocities was disclosed by a Russian, well known in London, named Niderost, a spy of the Russian Secret Police, who was a member of the Jubilee Street Club, the Anarchist centre in the East End of London. One night in the club the identity of Jack the Ripper was revealed to him by an old Russian anarchist, Nicholas Zverieff. The mysterious assassin was Doctor Alexander Pedachenko, who had been on the staff of the Maternity Hospital at Tver in Russia, but had gone to London to live with his sister in Westmoreland Street, Walworth. From there he sallied forth at night, took an omnibus across London bridge and walked to Whitechapel where he committed his secret crimes.
Dr. Alexander Pedachenko, according to Zverieff - whose record appears in the records of the Russian Secret Police - was aided by a friend of his named Levitski, and a young tailoress, called Winberg. The latter would approach the victim and hold her in conversation and Levitski kept watch for the police patrols, while the crimes and mutilations took place. Levistski wrote the warning post cards to the Police and Press. It was through Levitski that Zverieff knew the truth.
It is stated in the manuscript that, as a matter of fact, the Russian Secret Police knew the whole details at the time and had themselves actively aided and encouraged the crimes, in order to exhibit to the world certain defects of the British police system, there having been some misunderstanding between the Russian and British police. It was for that reason that Pedachenko, the greatest and boldest of all Russian criminal lunatics, was encouraged to go to London and commit the series of atrocious crimes. Eventually, at the orders of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, the Secret Police smuggled the assassin out of London and, as Count Luiskovo, he landed at Ostend and was conducted by secret service to Moscow. While there a few months later, caught red handed attempting to murder and mutilate a woman named Vogak, and was eventually sent to an asylum where he died in 1908.
After the return to Russia of Levitski and the woman Winberg, says the manuscript, the Secret Police deemed it wise to suppress them, and they were exiled to Yakutsk. "Such," says the manuscript, "are the actual facts of the Jack the Ripper mystery which still puzzles the whole world."
Le Quex says that he ventures to make public the unfinished manuscript of Rasputin because he had only recently discovered that a doctor named Pedachenko did actually live in Tver, and his homicidal tendencies were well known. He has further found out that a man named Niderost was a member of the Jubilee Street Club. Hence, without agreeing that the British police system is defective, he printed these disclosures among "Things I Know." Sounds like an Edgar Wallace story, but appears to have the hallmark of truth.
