Pushkin

Suzanne Blaymeier's left school with good grades in psychology, sociology and English literature.

Her mother took great pride in how bright and articulate she was.

When she wasn't studying or horseback riding, Suzanne worked in a care home.

Her duties there and the people she helped inspired her to train as a nurse and she enrolled in college.

But a drug habit and the constant need for money to feed it pushed Suzanne in a different direction

and to adopt an alter ego that she hid from her family.

She became Amber, a sex worker.

I hated her being a prostitute, said her boyfriend.

But I turned a blind eye because we needed the cash.

In 2010, age 36 and years on from her own college studies, Suzanne was approached by a graduate student.

He was pursuing a doctorate in criminology at the nearby university,

but he seemed to have a special interest in the women who worked in the red light area near his home.

He'd photographed them for an exhibition he'd explained.

Suzanne accompanied him back to his apartment, as they approached his door they chatted amicably.

Perhaps he was telling her about his studies, his PhD thesis and his focus on homicide in the Victorian era.

As Suzanne entered the flat, she would have seen a large bookcase,

shelf after shelf of true crime, and book after book about a man her host seemed to genuinely admire,

Jack the Ripper.

And then, behind Suzanne, the apartment door shut.

I'm Halle Ribbonhold.

You're listening to Bad Women, the Ripper Retold.

...