What kind of serial killer of the Victorian era do you imagine? A misogynist. Obsessed with poisons. Collecting pornographic photographs. Not alien to perverse tastes and strange habits. Add a sideways glance and a theatrical smirk like a villain from a cheap melodrama—and you’ll get an image that’s easy to mistake for a “typical” maniac.
That was Dr. Thomas Neal Crim—a tall brunette with broad shoulders and a luxuriant moustache. In keeping with the fashions of the time, he wore a top hat and a cape-coat. What set him apart from everyone else, really, was only his squint, which he hid from other people’s eyes behind thick lenses of spectacles.
So how did it happen that a man with such a conspicuous appearance was for a long time not caught for the monstrous crimes that kept London, Chicago, and Canada in fear? Find the answer in the chilling book “Doctor Zed. About Who Quietly Killed Young Women While Everyone Feared Jack the Ripper.”
Victorian morals served Doctor Zed as a reliable shield. Unquestioning faith in doctors, police corruption, and the general panic caused by Jack the Ripper allowed him to slip away again and again, like a ghost. And again, to poison his victims coolly.
Author Din Jeobb leads listeners through heavy iron prison doors—into tight, coffin-like cells; into the detective offices of Scotland Yard; into dens and dimly lit taverns. Together they will leaf through dozens of volumes of police records, unearth forgotten court documents, yellowed newspaper clippings, and recollections of investigators. They will learn about the dubious and exhausting methods of forensic science of that era. And they will see how the police could make the same mistakes over and over: interrogate and arrest a serial killer—then release him back into the world, to new innocent victims.