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Discover the haunting untold true story of the woman whose crimes inspired speculation that Jack the Ripper was a woman.
On October 24, 1890, the body of a woman was discovered on a pile of rubbish in Hampstead, North London. Her arms were lacerated and her face bloodied; her head was severed from her body except for a few sinews. Later that day, a blood-soaked stroller was found leaning against a residential gate, and the following morning the dead body of a baby was found hidden underneath a nettle bush. So began the chilling story of the Hampstead Tragedy.
Eventually, Scotland Yard knocked on the door of No. 2 Priory Street, home to Mary Eleanor Pearcey, the pretty twenty-four-year-old mistress whose dying request was as bizarre and mysterious as her life.
Woman at the Devil's Door is a thrilling look at this notorious murderer and the webs she wove.
About the author
Sarah Beth Hopton came by her love of crime writing honestly: her father was a detective for the sheriff's office and a graduate of Quantico's FBI Academy who shared with her his admiration of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes at an early age. She grew up visiting her father after school at the county jail and passed the time between homework and dinner pouring over his old, unsolved case files or eating a candy bar with Old Smokey, the beloved district attorney who liked to tell tall tales about the rural county's many criminal shenanigans. Hopton holds degrees in journalism, creative writing, and rhetoric and is an assistant professor at Appalachian State University. When she's not in the archives skulking after the next case, she's working her 3.5-acre organic homestead with her partner, their two dogs, pigs, chickens, rabbits, too many ducks, and a rascally fainting goat named after her dad, Bob.
