After Pastor Jack takes over the church, two beautiful choir girls are found dead in its creaking bell tower: Minnie Williams, stabbed and crucified, and Blanche Lamont, horribly strangled, her nude body arranged as though in prayer. The immediate suspect is not the pastor, but a young medical student with keys to the bell tower. And Pastor Jack is only too ready to testify against his own parishioner. True crime investigator Robert Graysmith pierces the mystery of the bell tower and unravels this first "trial of the century," which catapulted newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to fame. It is a trail that ultimately leads Graysmith to the true identity of Jack the Ripper.