Blood, Smoke and Ashes by Bradley Convissar

His hunt will take him across the country, and even when he thinks he's finally discovered the truth, he quickly learns that not everything is as it seems. But when no more bodies with her distinctive markings show up over the next two years, Shaw allows himself to believe that maybe he has seen the end of the Jane the Ripper murders.Īs it turns out, what he thought was the end was only the beginning.

Shaw is not so sure, though, wondering if someone else will take up the mantle and kill seven more men to complete the cycle. Everyone believes that the horror has finally ended with her capture.

As if they are all the victims of the same murderer, not a copycat.īut that's impossible, of course, because Molly Blackburn is dead, her execution witnessed by a dozen people.įBI Agent Jack Shaw, the lead investigator in the Jane the Ripper cases since the seventies, finally catches a break in 2009 when the intended fifth victim manages to turn the tables on the newest copycat. The similarities between the bodies left behind each decade is uncanny. She kills eleven men then disappears, never to be found. Since that day, a copycat Jane the Ripper has appeared almost every decade in a different city, mimicking Molly's choice in victims as well as her methods of murder. The switch was flipped.Įverything after that went horribly wrong. Molly Blackburn, nicknamed Jane the Ripper by the Las Vegas press after killing eleven men while posing as a prostitute, was strapped to the chair without incident. In the Fall of 1955, the state of Nevada used the electric chair to execute a prisoner for the first time.

Blood, Smoke and Ashes by Bradley Convissar