Why Toss the Apron Piece

[diana]

This may be a bit obvious but since there has been much discussion of Jack writing the GSG and then depositing the apron piece to authenticate it, it seems like a good idea to explore other reasons he might have had for getting rid of it.

The apron piece would be enough to hang Jack if he had been caught with it.

In fact the delay (until 2:20) of finding it may be explained one of two ways.

First we can infer from a completely unrelated issue (that Kosminski ate bread from the gutters) that the streets were not especially pristine. In other words they probably were full of flotsam. To not notice one dirty rag in the midst of a lot of other junk I think could be forgiven. So it is possible that the apron piece was present on previous pass throughs.

The other possibility is that Jack knew that he could not be found with that rag and so he hid until he had an opportunity to ditch it.

[mariag]

Let's remember that this wasn't just a dirty rag.

This was a sizeable piece of material. Look at pictures of those aprons that go more than halfway around the body and from waist to shoe. The torn part was about half of that.

You absolutely right that he couldn't afford to be caught with it. It's one of the few things that everyone agrees on ( please god I hope so) that this piece found near the GSG was indeed the other half of Kate's apron.

[bluecedar]

I don't think he did get rid of it, in the manner you're suggesting. He removed this part of the apron from the victim, planted it by the wall and then wrote the message so the police would connect the two and likewise connect him to the message. Just like the Zodiac removed pieces of the murdered cab driver's shirt and then sent them to the San Francisco Chronicle so they would know his letter claiming credit was authentic.