Saucy Jacky postcard


The "Saucy Jacky" postcard is the name given to a postcard received by the Central News Agency of London and postmarked 1 October 1888. The author of this postcard claims to have been the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. Because so many hoax letters were received by Scotland Yard, the press and others, it is not known definitively if this was an authentic letter written by the Whitechapel killer. It did contain information that was compelling enough to lead investigators to publish a facsimile of the communication in hopes that someone might recognise the handwriting.

Text

Postmarked and received on 1 October 1888, the postcard mentions that the two victims killed on 30 September were killed very close to one another, stating: "double event this time". Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were both killed in the early morning of 30 September, and part of Eddowes' ear was found detached at the crime scene as a result of facial mutilations that the killer performed. Some authors have argued that the letter was sent before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a hoaxer would have such knowledge of the crime, but the letter was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after many details were known by journalists and residents of the area.
The text of the postcard reads:
Police officials later claimed to have identified a specific journalist as the author of this message and the earlier "Dear Boss" letter. In 1931, journalist Fred Best of The Star claimed he and a colleague at the newspaper had written all the letters signed "Jack the Ripper" in order to "keep the business alive".
In the years after the Ripper murders, the Saucy Jacky postcard disappeared from the police files. Although the "Dear Boss" letter was recovered in 1987, the "Saucy Jacky" postcard is still missing.
In 2018, a forensic linguistic analysis found strong linguistic evidence suggesting that this postcard and the Dear Boss letter were written by the same person.

In popular culture

In the comedy film This is Spinal Tap, the band members discuss writing a musical based on the life of Jack the Ripper, titled Saucy Jack.
In the video game , the protagonist is occasionally referred to as "Jack the Ripper", which is a reference to Raiden's proper name and a traumatic incident in his past. One antagonist, however, briefly calls him "Saucy Jack".
In the Hellraiser comic Clive Barker's Hellraiser #7 - "Under the Knife" Jack the Ripper appears, turned into a Cenobite named Saucy Jack.