A Libri GmbH A Good Night for Murder

A GOOD NIGHT FOR MURDER
The Unsolved Christmas Eve Killing of Harriet Buswell and the Case Sixteen Years Before Jack the Ripper
Christmas Eve, 1872. A woman walks home with a stranger. By morning, she is dead.
The man she brought home was seen by witnesses. Police followed the trail. A German ship's chaplain, Dr. Gottfried Hessel, was arrested and identified by several witnesses.
Then everything began to unravel.
Why did the evidence collapse? And how did a murder witnessed by so many people remain unsolved?- A forgotten Victorian murder that preceded Jack the Ripper by sixteen years- Conflicting eyewitness testimony that placed an innocent man-or possibly the right man-at the centre of the investigation- A controversial suspect and a disputed alibi that pushed the case toward an unexpected release- Class, prostitution, and Victorian prejudice that shaped how Harriet's death was investigated and remembered- The chilling physical evidence left behind, including the infamous bitten apple preserved by Scotland YardBuilt from contemporary reporting, court accounts, archival material, and historical research, A Good Night for Murder revisits a case that has almost vanished from public memory.
Before Jack the Ripper became London's most famous unsolved killer, Harriet Buswell was already dead-and her killer was already walking free.
If you are fascinated by unsolved murders, Victorian true crime, historical mysteries, Jack the Ripper, disputed eyewitness evidence, and cold cases, this forgotten case deserves your attention.
Read the case. Examine the evidence. Decide for yourself what happened that Christmas night.