That cold morning, an electrician went to the Marylebone bomb shelter to check the installation when he suddenly stumbled and lost his balance. Directing his gaze to the ground, he discovered a flashlight, a bag and, something else hidden, the inert and half-naked body of a woman. They had strangled her.
Evelyn’s murder was the beginning of a butchery of women in the middle of World War II and during the so-called London blackout. A time when a handsome British Air Force aviator, Gordon Cummins, became Jack the Ripper’s modern counterpart under the nickname The Blackout Ripper. No one could imagine that behind his seductive and educated appearance, a sexual sadist was hiding.
Gordon Frederick Cummins was born on February 9, 1914, in New Earswick, north of York (England), into a wealthy English family supposedly linked to the nobility. In fact, the young man always displayed exquisite education and manners, and whenever he could flaunt those aristocratic roots.
But beyond those good manners, Gordon also had an imposing physique – he was slim, handsome and athletic – and a seductive and conquering personality. The female gender used to be attracted to him, especially because of the refined way of talking about him. According to the writer Simon Read, the young man had an “intoxicating effect” on women, hence the ease with which he tricked his victims.
In 1936 Gordon married Marjorie, the secretary of a famous theater producer, with whom he moved to Barnes, Richmond. His marriage seemed idyllic on the outside, but the outbreak of World War II led the young man to distance himself from his wife. This was mainly influenced by his enrollment in the RAF (British Royal Air Force).
He had to continually change assignments to practice as an aviator, which meant that he lived away from home for many months of the year while Marjorie patiently awaited his return. As the war progressed, Gordon shortened the leaves to give free rein to a parallel life in the city.
This is how El Conde or El Duque, as his battalion mates nicknamed him to mock his supposed noble descent, began to run brothels in search of female company. First in Helensburgh (Scotland) and later in Colerne and Bath, both towns in the English southwest.
In January 1942, Gordon was transferred to the Air Crew Reception Center in Regent’s Park (London), a stage that he took advantage of to begin his bloody butchery during the famous blackouts that the city experienced as a precaution against bombing by the Luftwaffe (Force German air).
The streets and buildings of London were dark, the street lamps were off, and houses, shops, offices and factories closed and heavily curtained their windows and doors to prevent the Nazis from breaking them down. Citizens hid in basements, subways and bomb shelters to flee from the enemy, a circumstance Gordon used to cajole women in the dark.
In just six days, between February 9 and 13, the pilot killed four women and attacked two others as the city lay dark and bombed. His modus operandi earned him the nickname The Blackout Ripper, due to his criminal similarities to the notorious Jack the Ripper.
The massacre began on the night of Saturday, February 8, after visiting his wife. Back in London, Gordon assaulted 40-year-old pharmacist Evelyn Hamilton in the middle of the street: he dragged her into a bomb shelter near Marble Arch and strangled her. Before running away, she stole the money from her purse, about 80 pounds.
Upon arriving at the scene and given the crime scene, the authorities concluded that it was a robbery. In addition, the coroner ruled that the perpetrator of Evelyn’s murder was left-handed, a key detail that would help shortly after in the resolution of the case.
That same night, Gordon performed again, but this time after enlisting the services of a prostitute, Evelyn Oatley, 35, known in the business as Nita Ward. Her body was found naked, with her throat slit and her body sexually mutilated with a can opener.
This object, found a few meters from the victim, provided another crucial piece of evidence: the killer’s fingerprints. Furthermore, the coroner concluded in his report that the perpetrator was also left-handed. Second match in less than twenty-four hours.
Despite the clues found, the police were still unable to link the two crimes until the third murder occurred. On Tuesday, February 11, harlot Margaret Florence Lowe, 42, was mugged in her own home, strangled with a silk stocking and mutilated with a knife and razor blade. The killer was “a savage sex maniac,” the coroner determined after examining her body.
Now yes, the police were before the same responsible. “A new Jack the Ripper is on the loose,†published the News of the World after news leaked of a third woman murdered using the same procedure and with the same cruelty.
The next day, Gordon persuaded 32-year-old Doris Jouannet to rent him a room in the house she shared with her husband in Paddington. The woman, trusting and without any fear, let him pass and, then, the pilot strangled her with a handkerchief and proceeded to sexually mutilate her body, just as she had done previously.
So far, the murderer had been free, he felt unpunished. However, he would soon commit a slip that would lead to his immediate arrest.
On Friday, February 14, Gordon had a drink with Greta Hayward and, upon returning home, the young man wanted to have sex. She refused, her aviator got angry at her and when the woman tried to run away from her, he forcefully grabbed her by the neck and punched her unconscious.
Those noises in the dark caught the attention of a delivery man, who decided to find out what was happening, with such good luck that he interrupted the murderer when he was going to murder the victim. Gordon, feeling discovered, ran away in terror. But while fleeing from him, he dropped his gas mask with the serial number 525987, his name and his rank.
In addition, the witness described the attacker in detail: a male of one meter seventy, brown hair and with widely separated green eyes, and with a cap similar to that of a cadet officer. The police finally had a thread to pull from. But they wondered, was it possible that the murderer was one of his military?
While the investigation continued and the aviator’s identity was verified, Gordon had time to attack one last time: he tried to strangle the prostitute Catherine Mulcahy, but she managed to wriggle free with a kick to the shins. To prevent her from reporting him, he gave her an extra five pounds and left quickly.
Within hours, the police sought out the pilot to take a statement for finding his gas mask at the scene of a crime. Despite his seemingly perfect alibi, Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Edward Greeno decided to search Gordon’s belongings. He was convinced that he was hiding something. And, indeed, in his raincoat they found Margaret Lowe’s cigarette case and Doris Jouannet’s fountain pen, two of the victims.
On the other hand, after taking his fingerprints at the police station and comparing them with those found on the can opener used in the crime of Evelyn Oatley, the report determined that they were the prints of Gordon Cummins. There was no question. It was February 16, and the Blackout Ripper was finally behind bars.
The aviator pleaded not guilty to the four counts of murder and two of attempted murder against him, but Judge Asquith clung to the evidence and sentenced the defendant to death. The trial lasted one day, on April 27, and the Old Bailey court took just 35 minutes to try the ripper.
Two months later, the famous executioner Albert Pierrepoint, responsible for the execution of known Nazi genocides for war crimes, put the noose around Gordon Cummins’s neck and activated the suffocation mechanism just at the precise moment an air raid was taking place. in the sky of London. Seconds later, the serial killer breathed his last from him. He was 28 years old.
