At approximately 3:40 a.m. on August 31, 1888, Charles Allen Lechmere turned down a deserted street in East London, just as he'd done many times before.

 At approximately 3:40 a.m. on August 31, 1888, Charles Allen Lechmere turned down a deserted street in East London, just as he'd done many times before. 

He always took Buck's Row on his way to work as a driver for a London trucking company. But this morning, the street wasn't quite as empty as it seemed at first. Halfway down the block, next to a gated stable entrance, lay what looked like an out-of-place tarp. But when he went to investigate, he saw that it was instead a woman lying in the street. 

There were no immediate signs of bleeding, and when he reached down to touch her face, it was warm. But when he grabbed her hand and tried to rouse her, he found it cold. Then, he noticed the two cuts across her throat. By the time police were summoned, a pool of blood had spilled out around the body. Investigators estimated that she had been killed only minutes before Lechmere found her, just long enough for the killer to have rounded the corner before Lechmere turned down the street. 

A week later, another dead woman would be found in the same neighborhood and with similarly gruesome knife wounds. And three weeks after that, two more were found. By that time, the killer had a name: Jack the Ripper. 

Go inside the story of Mary Ann Nichols, Jack the Ripper's very first victim: https://bit.ly/2Y91cJ9