Alayna Urquhart

That's weird.

That's why it takes on a little bit of, you're like, that's not the same person.

Is that?

Like what?

And also as time passed, other bodies were discovered outside of Atlanta that bore the hallmarks of the Ripper and many that didn't.

Okay.

Like after a bit of time, the press began ascribing the Ripper moniker to unsolved murders of young black women outside of Atlanta, regardless of whether there was any evidence or any kind of like similarities to the early Ripper ones.

Like it just kind of all got thrown into one pot.

Yeah.

You know, just liberally ascribing blame to an increasingly mythical and kind of legendary killer at this point became a problem for investigators when they did make an arrest in one of the cases in the summer of 1912.

In August, police arrested Lawton Brown for the murder of Eva Florence, one of the victims that was assigned to the Ripper in late 1911.

The arrest was based largely on his having known the victim and his wife's statement that he'd been out on the night of the murder.

Okay.

And she discovered him burning some of his clothes the next morning.

That's suspicious.

Pretty suspicious.

After a lengthy interrogation, Brown confessed to the murder of Florence.

According to Brown, he, quote, Okay.

While it's entirely plausible that Brown did kill Florence for the money that he believed she possessed, the more he spoke to investigators, the more questionable his confession probably should have become.

In addition to confessing to Florence's murder, he claimed to have witnessed the murders of several other Ripper victims, not as the killer or a participant, but as a spectator who was, quote, merely passing by and chanced to see the crimes.