Jack the Ripper Doesn't Exist

Scene 12

ABBERLINE: Tell me what happened with Elizabeth Stride. Why’d you stop?

 KELLY: I don’t know nothin’ bout Long Liz. I was busy thinkin’ about Kate.

ABBERLINE: Really got your money’s worth on that one, did you?

 KELLY: (smugly) Oh yeah. It was great.

 ABBERLINE: Got your hands good and dirty.

KELLY: That bitch... She wouldn’t shut her trap.

ABBERLINE: The others were nothing compared to Kate.

KELLY: I don’t even know how she found out about my wife, but she wouldn’t let it go. ‘I bet you’s Jack the Ripper! I bet you’s Jack the Ripper!’ Well, I showed her. I was Jack the Ripper.

ABBERLINE: Did you buy them? Was Katherine Eddowes a whore?

KELLY: (Screaming.) I didn’t kill the others! (Calms) Just Kate. She might’a liked her gin some, but she wasn’t no whore, or I’da known.

ABBERLINE: How did you get those girls?

KELLY: You was at my door the next day. You was askin’ me all those questions. Where was I? When did I last see her? I thought for sure you’d recognized me. Told you my name was John.

ABBERLINE: It was all the same. It got worse and worse. It was the same man.

KELLY: I was on a ship for America the next day. All that runnin’... I thought you was right behind me. I thought for sure you knew... I hadn’t even changed my name!

ABBERLINE: There was only one killer. There was one Jack the Ripper.

KELLY: I can save us both, Freddy.

ABBERLINE: My salvation is in the hands of a man tied to a chair.

 KELLY: What else do you got?

ABBERLINE: Nothing.

Continued Monday