The Bell Tower: Jack the Ripper in San Francisco [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Robert Graysmith (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Veteran true-crime author Graysmith (Zodiac, Unabomber, etc.,) weighs in with an ambitious theory linking the Ripper killings with two murders committed in San Francisco in the spring of 1895. Graysmith's Ripper is John George Gibson, a Canadian-born Baptist preacher who resigned his parish in Scotland in 1887 and whose whereabouts are unknown until his arrival in the U.S. in December 1888, a month after the last Ripper murder. Although a medical student was convicted and hanged for the San Francisco murders, Graysmith makes a persuasive argument that only Gibson had the time and access to kill the two women, whose bodies were found in his new parish, the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco's Mission District. His own detailed drawings and diagrams of the labyrinthine church further his case. However, Whitechapel enthusiasts will find much to refute Graysmith's contention that Gibson was the Ripper. The San Francisco victims were not prostitutes; there was none of the careful mutilation that marked the Ripper as a man with some medical training; and the killer didn't boast to the authorities of his crimes. The book itself is gratuitously detailed, padded with too many diversions about the battle between newspaper tycoons Mike de Young and William Randolph Hearst, as well as with long biographies of the writers and artists who covered the slayings. As it stands, only devoted followers of the Ripper murders will remained interested to the end. (Aug.) FYI: Touchstone Pictures is making a film of Zodiac.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Two murders and an ensuing scandal that the on-the-make Will Hearst's San Francisco Examiner headlined ``THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY'' are linked, seemingly inevitably, to ``Saucy Jack.'' At the 1895 murder trial, the prosecutor claimed that medical student and Sunday-school teacher Theo Durrant was a psychopath with the same motive that prompted and made into a monster Jack the Ripper.'' Durant allegedly killed Blanche Lamont, mutilating her body and hiding it in the bell tower of the scandal-plagued Emmanuel Baptist Church. The rhetorical connection to this killing and that of another young woman at the church is only slightly less than the evidence veteran true-crime writer Graysmith (Zodiac, not reviewed, etc.) has to connect it with the 1888 Whitechapel murders. While Durrant still professed his innocence on the scaffold, Emmanuel Baptist's pastor, John ``Jack'' Gibson, was never investigated as a suspect, even though the scandal couldnt be dislodged from his reputation. Pastor Jack was also in England during the Ripper slayings, left just after the last ``canonical'' killing, and bore a strong resemblance to one of the police sketches of the serial killerall of which Graysmith juxtaposes as he slowly narrates the Bell Tower Murders. Using the official police record and the considerable press coverage, Graysmith (a longtime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and the man who identified the Zodiac killer) has thoroughly researched his work. His novelistic approach, with an amalgamated journalist character, re-created dialogue and thoughts, and plenty of old-time Frisco atmosphere, reads like an aspiring Caleb Carr's draft. Graysmith painstakingly reconstructs the murders to prove Durrant had no opportunity to commit them in the labyrinthian church, with enough locked doors to confound Agatha Christie, and to show that Pastor Jack, with the help of a parishioner, did. Yet the highly selective evidence doesnt provide even circumstantial proof. True crime narrated like fiction but slowed by digressions and a hobbyhorse theory. (b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (June 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895263246
• ISBN-13: 978-0895263247
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,305,814 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Bell Tower: The Case of Jack the Ripper Finally Solved, July 28, 2000

By	Evan A. Baker "Malcontent for hire" (Irvine, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is without a doubt the most poorly written and researched book on Jack the Ripper that I have ever read, and I have over sixty volumes on the subject in my personal library. Hard facts are ignored in order to bolster the author's preconceived theory.A series of "Ripper" letters long considered fakes are presented as factual and loose ends are tied to other loose ends, in a willy-nilly fashion, whether they belong together or not. Perhaps the most tawdry scholarship (in a book filled with tawdry scholarship) is the series of totally false "deathbed confessions" which the author would foist upon his readers. This book adds absolutely nothing of value and little of truth to the on-going "Ripper" scholarship. I'm glad I bought it used! It's certainly not worth the full price. All of this is too bad; I did so want it to be a useful addition to my library

Darrell Baker Irvine, California

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars All Style and No Substance, November 17, 1999

By A Customer

I've read short accounts of the Emmanuel Baptist Church murders over the years, so I was pleased to see that someone had finally done a full-length book on the crimes. Unfortunately, Robert Graysmith has turned out a sloppy, badly-researched book with a completely unconvincing theory. He piles on lots of atmospheric descriptions of old San Francisco to hide the fact that he has nothing to back up his claim that Theo Durrant was innocent of the murders of Blanche Lamont and Minnie Williams. There isn't a shred of evidence to connect anyone other than Durrant with the crimes. His claim that the church's pastor was the real killer doesn't hold water and the idea that the pastor was really Jack the Ripper is nothing short of ludicrous. Making wild claims is nothing new for Graysmith; the book jacket calls him "the investigator who identified the Zodiac killer". In fact, the Zodiac has never been caught or identified. Graysmith just targeted one suspect, with no more proof than he offers here. A great book could be written about Theo Durrant, unfortunately, this wasn't it. For a much better (if shorter) account of Durrant and his victims, see Dorothy Dunbar's 1964 book, "Blood In The Parlor".

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Totally Confusing, November 25, 1999

By A Customer

By the time I finished this book I couldn't figure out whether Graysmith believed Reverend Gibson or William Randolf Hearst was Jack the Ripper. He simultaneously showed the newspaper accounts of the day to be, at best, heavily predjudiced accounts of the crimes, and then depended on them for his research. His reconstructed diary of Theo Durrant was the last straw--it was written by a character he had invented! I'm going to avoid Graysmith from now on.