When Garmr, the hound of hell, breaks free and begins its awaful baying, Fenrir, the wolf child of the giantess Angrboda and the God Loki, will snap its fetters and devour the father of the gods, Odin, before Vioarr can protect him. All of these events signal the onset of Ragnarok (in old norse, "the final destiny of the gods"), the destruction of the old world and the old gods. Vioarr, the strongest of the gods after Thor, appears soon after Odin has been killed by Fenrir, and he avenges him by grasping the wolf's jaws in his hands and riping its mouth apart. Fenrir dies, and Vioarr joins the generation of gods who will live in the new world.
I some accounts of the myth of Ragnarok, Loki fatherd three children by his dalliance with the giantess Angrboda - Fenrir, the wolf child, the midgard serpent, and Hel. The gods decided to rear the wolf, but when Fenrir grew too strong for them to handle comfortably, they dicided to bind him. The werewolf easily broke his fetters until dwarfs at last managed to create a chain that he could notshatter until he regained his freedom at Ragnarok, the end of the old world.
In certain tellings of the onset of Ragnarok, Garmr and Fenrir become one wolf that rips free of its chains and kills Odin> In other accounts, Garmr is also a wolf, and when Fenrir is freed, one swallows the sun, the other, the moon. Still other versions allow Garmr and Fenrir to assume their traditional roles in the drama and assign the names Skoll and Hati th the two wolves who devour the sun and the moon.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Enkidu
Perhaps our earliest written record of a man-beast appears on a Babylonian fragment c. 2000 B.C. that tells the story of King Gilgamesh and his werewolf like friend, Enkidu. The Epic of Gilgamesh Remais to date the oldest known literary work in the world. Although it comprises 12 cantos of about 300 verses each, ancient records indicate that the original epic was at least twice as long as its present length.
Pieced together from 30,000 fragments discoverd in the library at Ninevah in 1853, the stoy tells of Gilgamesh, the legendary Sumerian King of Uruk, and his quest for immortality. At first preceing the physical aspect of his quest to lie in prepetuating his seed, Gilgamesh such a lustful monarch that no woman in his kingdom is safe from his advances. The godess, Aruru, assessing the situation, discides to take matters into her own hands, and she forms the man-beast, Enkidu from clay and her spittle in order to create an opponent powerful enough to challange Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh soon learns of this hairy wildman of the desert who protects the beasts from all those who hunt in his desolet domain, and the king begis to have uncomfortable dreams of wrestling with a strog opponent whom he could not defeat. Gilgamesh sends a woman into the wilderness to seduce the wild man-beast and to tame him. She accomplishes her mission, teaching such socail graces as wearing clothes and other amenities of civilization as they wind their way to Uruk. When Enkidu eventually arrives in the city, the two giants engage in fierce hand-to-hand combat. The king managas to throw the man-beast , but insted of killing him, the two become fast friends. Combining their strengths to battle formidable giants and even the gods themselves. It is the jealous goddess Ishtar who causes the fatal illness that leads to Enkidu's death.
Gilgamesh finaly abandons his search for immortality when the goddess Siduri Sabitu, dispenser of the wine of immortality to the gods, confides in him that his quest will forever be in vain - the cruel gods have decreed that all mortals shall die. Each day should be treasured, she advises, and one should enjoy the good things in life - a wife, family, friends, eating, and drinking.
Pieced together from 30,000 fragments discoverd in the library at Ninevah in 1853, the stoy tells of Gilgamesh, the legendary Sumerian King of Uruk, and his quest for immortality. At first preceing the physical aspect of his quest to lie in prepetuating his seed, Gilgamesh such a lustful monarch that no woman in his kingdom is safe from his advances. The godess, Aruru, assessing the situation, discides to take matters into her own hands, and she forms the man-beast, Enkidu from clay and her spittle in order to create an opponent powerful enough to challange Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh soon learns of this hairy wildman of the desert who protects the beasts from all those who hunt in his desolet domain, and the king begis to have uncomfortable dreams of wrestling with a strog opponent whom he could not defeat. Gilgamesh sends a woman into the wilderness to seduce the wild man-beast and to tame him. She accomplishes her mission, teaching such socail graces as wearing clothes and other amenities of civilization as they wind their way to Uruk. When Enkidu eventually arrives in the city, the two giants engage in fierce hand-to-hand combat. The king managas to throw the man-beast , but insted of killing him, the two become fast friends. Combining their strengths to battle formidable giants and even the gods themselves. It is the jealous goddess Ishtar who causes the fatal illness that leads to Enkidu's death.
Gilgamesh finaly abandons his search for immortality when the goddess Siduri Sabitu, dispenser of the wine of immortality to the gods, confides in him that his quest will forever be in vain - the cruel gods have decreed that all mortals shall die. Each day should be treasured, she advises, and one should enjoy the good things in life - a wife, family, friends, eating, and drinking.
Henri Boguet (1550 - 1619)
In 1584, a werewolf was seen attacking a small girl in a village locatedin the Jura Mountains of France. When the childs 16-year-old brother came to her rescue, the werewolf turned on the boy and killed him. Enraged villagers, hearing the cried and sounds of the struggle, cornered the werewolf and clubbed it to death. Amazed, they beheld the grotesque beast in its death throes turn into the nude body of a young woman they recognized as Perrenette Gandillon.
In his Discours des Sorciers (1610), Henri Boguet, eminent judge of Saint Claude in Jura Mountains, writes that an offical investigation of the matter led to the arrest of the entire Gandillon family, and he states that he personally examined observed then while they were in prison. According to his testimony, the Gandillons walked on all fours and howled like beasts. There eyes turned red and gleaming; their hair sprouted; there teeth became long and sharp; their fingernails turned horny and clawlike.
As a judge, Boguet was known for his cruelty, especially toward children. He had no doubt satan gifted witches wih the ability to change shape into a variety of animal forms, especially the wolf, so that they might devour humans, and the cat, so they might better prowl by night. In another case recounted in Discours des Sorciers, of 8-year-old Louise Maillat, who in the summer of 1598 was possessed by five demons; Wolf, Cat, Dog,jolly, and griffon. In addition the little girl was accused of shapeshifting into the form of a wolf.
In his Discours des Sorciers (1610), Henri Boguet, eminent judge of Saint Claude in Jura Mountains, writes that an offical investigation of the matter led to the arrest of the entire Gandillon family, and he states that he personally examined observed then while they were in prison. According to his testimony, the Gandillons walked on all fours and howled like beasts. There eyes turned red and gleaming; their hair sprouted; there teeth became long and sharp; their fingernails turned horny and clawlike.
As a judge, Boguet was known for his cruelty, especially toward children. He had no doubt satan gifted witches wih the ability to change shape into a variety of animal forms, especially the wolf, so that they might devour humans, and the cat, so they might better prowl by night. In another case recounted in Discours des Sorciers, of 8-year-old Louise Maillat, who in the summer of 1598 was possessed by five demons; Wolf, Cat, Dog,jolly, and griffon. In addition the little girl was accused of shapeshifting into the form of a wolf.
Elifasi Msomi ( ? - 1956 )
Beginning in August 1953 and continuing for nearly two years, Elifasi Msomi killed 15 men, women, and children under the alleged control of the Tokoloshe, the South African equivalent of the Bogeyman. A witch doctor in Richmond, Natal, Msomi turned lycanthrope when he deemed it a requierment of his magic to sacrifice the flesh and blood of humans. To prove the power of the Tokoloshe, Msomi summond his mistress, then raped and stabbed a young girl to death in her presence. Rather than being impresses by his by his spiritual guidance, the woman ran to the straght to the police, who immediately arrested Msomi. But the Tokoloshe had been impressed by Msomi's obedience to its demands, and the entity, in Msomi's veiw, enabled him to escape from police custody.
In April 1955, after the stabbing deaths of at least 5 children were attributed to his bloody handiwork, Msomi was once again arrested and placed in custody. But almost as soos as he was behind bars, he had made his escape due to the power of the Tokoloshe.
A month later,he was recaptured with some of his victims' property in his possession and the same bloody knife that had by now claimed the lives of 15 men, women, and children. Msomi did not hesitate to show the police where he had disposed of some bodies that had remained undiscoverd, for, after all, he was not to blame. The Tokoloshe did it.
The court, however, veiwed it diffrently and in september 1955 sentenced Elifasi Msomi to death for the murders. The local populace was so terrified that the Tokoloshe would one again free the witch doctor and allow him to go on killing that the prison authorities permitted a deputation of chiefs and elders to veiw Msomi's corpse after his appointment with the hangman at Pretria Central Prison on February 10, 1956.
In April 1955, after the stabbing deaths of at least 5 children were attributed to his bloody handiwork, Msomi was once again arrested and placed in custody. But almost as soos as he was behind bars, he had made his escape due to the power of the Tokoloshe.
A month later,he was recaptured with some of his victims' property in his possession and the same bloody knife that had by now claimed the lives of 15 men, women, and children. Msomi did not hesitate to show the police where he had disposed of some bodies that had remained undiscoverd, for, after all, he was not to blame. The Tokoloshe did it.
The court, however, veiwed it diffrently and in september 1955 sentenced Elifasi Msomi to death for the murders. The local populace was so terrified that the Tokoloshe would one again free the witch doctor and allow him to go on killing that the prison authorities permitted a deputation of chiefs and elders to veiw Msomi's corpse after his appointment with the hangman at Pretria Central Prison on February 10, 1956.
Micheal Lupo (1953 - )
Micheal Lupo took great delight in the fact that his last name in Italian meant "wolf," and he bosted that he truely was the "wolfman." Lupo also bragged that he had taken over 4,000 homosexual lovers and that he had murdered 4 of them.
In May 1986, the London police realized that a serial killer was stalking the momosexual communities. 24-year-old Tony Connolly' body had been found on April 6 by children playing near a Brixton railway embankment in South London. Connolly was determined to be HIV positive, and the police soon linked his death to that of another gay man who had been strangled in West London, as well as another attempted murder in the same area.
On May 18, police arrested Micheal Lupo, an Italian-born-ex-commando who now worked as a makeup artist and the manager of a fashion shop in Chelsea. The 33-year-old Lupo had not been all that discreet in bosting of the murders and his prowess of the wolfman and he had been heard to state that he would continue killing until the police were able to catch him. Lupo was charged with the murder of Tony Connolly, as well as that of railway guard James Burns. Police also accused him of the attempted murder of a man in South London.
Three days after his arrest, the police were able to add the death of Damien McClusky, a 22-year-old hospital worker, to the wolfman's list of murders. Before Lupo was brought to central criminal court, a new murder charge, that of an unidentified man in his sixties, strangled near Hungerford Bridge, brought the tally to four murders and two attempted murders.
On July 10, 1987, Lupo pleaded guilty to all charges, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on each of the murder charges, and to consecutive terms of seven years on each of the counts of attempted murder.
In May 1986, the London police realized that a serial killer was stalking the momosexual communities. 24-year-old Tony Connolly' body had been found on April 6 by children playing near a Brixton railway embankment in South London. Connolly was determined to be HIV positive, and the police soon linked his death to that of another gay man who had been strangled in West London, as well as another attempted murder in the same area.
On May 18, police arrested Micheal Lupo, an Italian-born-ex-commando who now worked as a makeup artist and the manager of a fashion shop in Chelsea. The 33-year-old Lupo had not been all that discreet in bosting of the murders and his prowess of the wolfman and he had been heard to state that he would continue killing until the police were able to catch him. Lupo was charged with the murder of Tony Connolly, as well as that of railway guard James Burns. Police also accused him of the attempted murder of a man in South London.
Three days after his arrest, the police were able to add the death of Damien McClusky, a 22-year-old hospital worker, to the wolfman's list of murders. Before Lupo was brought to central criminal court, a new murder charge, that of an unidentified man in his sixties, strangled near Hungerford Bridge, brought the tally to four murders and two attempted murders.
On July 10, 1987, Lupo pleaded guilty to all charges, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on each of the murder charges, and to consecutive terms of seven years on each of the counts of attempted murder.
Jean Grenier (c. 1589 -1610)
In 1610, Pierre de Lancre, a noted judge of Bordeaux, France, visited the Monastery of the Cordeliers personally to investigate a werewolf that had been confined to a cloister cell for seven years. The werewolf, Jean Grenier, had viciously atacked several victims, and eyewitnesses to the assault sworn that Grenier had been in the form of a wolf when he made the atacks.
In his L'inconstance (1612), Lancre writes of Grenier that he possessed glittering, deep-set eyes, long, black fingernails and sharpe, protruding teeth. According to the jurist's account, Grenier freely confessed to having been a werewolf, and it was apparent that he walked on all fours with much greater ease than he could walk erect. The judge writes that he was horrified when Grenier told him that he still craved human flesh, especially that of little girls, and he hoped that he might once again savor such fine meat.
The nights and days as a werewolf began for Jean Grenier in the spring of 1603 in the Gasconey region of France when small children began to disappear. Then, during a full moon, witnesses watched in horror as a 13-year-old girl named Marguerite Poirer was attacked by a monstrous creature resembling a wolf.
When the fear of a stalking werewolf was reaching fever pitch in the villages of Gascony, a teenage boy whome everyone had believed to be mentally dificient began to boast of having the ability to transform himself into a wolf, As if that announcement was not disturbing enough to his neighbors, 13-year-old Jean Grenier also confessed to having eaten the missing children and having attacked Marguerite.
When he was questioned by the authorities, Grenier told of having been given the magical wolf's belt that could transform him into a wolf. The awasome gift had been presented to him by the Master of the Forest, who revealed himself as a large man dressed in entirely in black. Although Grenier was content merely to accompish such a powerful transformation, the very act of doing so caused him to crave the tender, rawflesh of plump children. He tried to stifle the perverse hunger by killing dogs and drinking their warm blood, but such measures were only temporary. He was driven to steel children and eat there flesh.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the case of Jean Grenier is that the court elected not to have him burned at the stake for being a werewolf, but, insted, assessed his claim as the result of him being mentally defective. They dicided that his supposed powers of transformation were the lycanthropic dilusions, and because the young man was therefor insane, could not be held accountable for his terrible crimes. Rather than enduring tortures of the Inquisition and the usual transformation into ashes at the stake, Grenier was given a life sentence to a cell in a monastery in Bordeaux.
In his L'inconstance (1612), Lancre writes of Grenier that he possessed glittering, deep-set eyes, long, black fingernails and sharpe, protruding teeth. According to the jurist's account, Grenier freely confessed to having been a werewolf, and it was apparent that he walked on all fours with much greater ease than he could walk erect. The judge writes that he was horrified when Grenier told him that he still craved human flesh, especially that of little girls, and he hoped that he might once again savor such fine meat.
The nights and days as a werewolf began for Jean Grenier in the spring of 1603 in the Gasconey region of France when small children began to disappear. Then, during a full moon, witnesses watched in horror as a 13-year-old girl named Marguerite Poirer was attacked by a monstrous creature resembling a wolf.
When the fear of a stalking werewolf was reaching fever pitch in the villages of Gascony, a teenage boy whome everyone had believed to be mentally dificient began to boast of having the ability to transform himself into a wolf, As if that announcement was not disturbing enough to his neighbors, 13-year-old Jean Grenier also confessed to having eaten the missing children and having attacked Marguerite.
When he was questioned by the authorities, Grenier told of having been given the magical wolf's belt that could transform him into a wolf. The awasome gift had been presented to him by the Master of the Forest, who revealed himself as a large man dressed in entirely in black. Although Grenier was content merely to accompish such a powerful transformation, the very act of doing so caused him to crave the tender, rawflesh of plump children. He tried to stifle the perverse hunger by killing dogs and drinking their warm blood, but such measures were only temporary. He was driven to steel children and eat there flesh.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the case of Jean Grenier is that the court elected not to have him burned at the stake for being a werewolf, but, insted, assessed his claim as the result of him being mentally defective. They dicided that his supposed powers of transformation were the lycanthropic dilusions, and because the young man was therefor insane, could not be held accountable for his terrible crimes. Rather than enduring tortures of the Inquisition and the usual transformation into ashes at the stake, Grenier was given a life sentence to a cell in a monastery in Bordeaux.
Jack The Ripper
The true identity of one of the most famous of the werewolf-type rippers of the past century and a quarter remains unknown. No one knows for certain whether Jack the Ripper was a man or a woman - a Jane the Ripper. There is even disagreement over how many victims were riped and slashed by the monster;s maniacal blade. What is generally agreed upon in that in 1888, during the black hours before dawn, the Ripper butchered at least five woman in London's East End.
The newspaper gave him his notorious nickname, and it cought on quickly among the Londoners who shudderd behind locked doors on those foggy autumn nights. But there were always those woman who went out at night in spit of the malignant presence of lurking death. The victims were all streetwalkers, but that fact didn't make the jod of catching the Ripper any easier for the london police. Although some historians of crime place the number of deaths attributed to the Ripper as high as 15, there is a consensus that the series of slayings began with the murder of Mary Ann Nichols on the night of August 13, 1888, and ended nine weeks later with the gruesome slaughter of Mary Jeanette Kelly.
Mary Ann Nichols was found laying across a gutter. She had been repeatedly slashed by someone with a long-longhandled knife and a general knowladge of anatomy. A week later, Annie Chapman was found in a backyard, her head nearly severed from her neck. Certain other "horrible mutilations" were hinted at in the papers. The Ripper had taken two brass rings from her pockets and carefully arranged them at her feet.
A few nights later the Ripper was interrupted in his attacked on a local celebrity known as Long Liz by a man who drove a pony cart into the yard. The pony shied at the fleeting figure of Jack, and the driver jumped down from his seat to lift the woman's head. The blood poured from the open wound in her throat, and it was evident that she was not going to survive.
Apparently the intrusion so annoyed the Ripper that within an hour he had lured Catherine Eddows into a lonly ally were he could indulge his perverse and deadly passion at his leisure. After the preliinary slashing of the throat, Jack extracted the left kidney, certain other organs, and wiped his hands and knife clean on her apron.
The London newspaper ran countless stories speculating about the Rippers true identity. Perhaps he was a demonic butcher, a Polish Jew, an American sailor, a Russian doctor, and a host of other suspects - anyone, it seemed, so long as he was not English. Jack, who was obviously following his press quite carefully and enjoying every inch of ink in the papers, counterd with this famous qoatrain which he sent to the Times:
I'm not a butcher; I'm not a yid,
Nor yet a foreign skipper;
But I am your own true loving friend,
Yours truely - Jack The Ripper.
The Ripper corresponded with Scotland Yard as well as the London newspapers in a monstrous yet grimly humorous manner. He once wrote: "Next time i shall clip the lady's ears off and send them to the police, just for jolly." Toa ppersistent police officer, whome investigation was evidently well known to the Ripper, he sent part of a kidney. "Ihave fried and eaten the other part," he stated in an accompanying note.
Jeanette Kelly was the only victim killed indoors, and she was the only lady of the streets who might have been considered quite atractive. She had been seen by someone singing "Sweet Violet" during the evening and she had seemed to be in high spirits. Her horridly mutilated corpse was discoverd the next morrning by a passerby who could look directly into her ground level apartment.
Sir Melville Macnaghten, a Scotland Yard official, Reported that the Ripper must have spent at least two hours over his hellish work: : "A fire was burning low in the room, but nether stove nor gas was there . The madman made a bonfire of some old newspaper and of his victim's clothes, and by this dim irreligious light, a scene was enacted whitch nothing witnessed by Dante, in his visit to the infernal regions, could have surpassed."
Although most of Kelly's internal organs had been scattered about the room, the Ripper had carried away no part of the body. This break in his modus operandi seems to puncture the theory that the murders were committed for the purpose of gathering anatomical specimens.
The only possidle description that we have of Jake the Ripper came from someone who saw Jeanette Kelly in the company of a man who may well have been the monster himself: A man about 35 years old, five feet six inches tall, of a dark complexion, with a dark mustache turned up at the ends."
Abruptly the murders ceased, but theories about the now romanticized Ripper continued to afford morbid pleasures for amateur detectives at the local pubs and painstaking police work for tough-minded Scotland Yard inspectors. Someone with a knolage of surgery always ranked first in the theoretical ;ist of suspects. The second favorite was a midwife who had both familiarity with her victims and a knolage of elementary surgery. A journalist reported the death of a diabolical doctor in Buenos Aires who allegedly made a deathbed confession that he was Jack the Ripper, but his claim was impossible to document.
The notorious Dr. Neill Cream, convicted for poisoning four women shouted, "I am Jack the..." just as the exicutioner pulled the lever on the hangman's platform and droped the doctor to the end of his rope. Eager devotees of the Dr. Cream/Jack solution to the Ripper legend were disappointed when their investigation yielded the results that Cream had been in Joliet Prison in Illinois throughout the period of the East End murders.
More recent theories to Jake's identity have even included HRH, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, the grandson of Queen Vicrotia. And then there are those who say that Jack the Ripper is still among us - traveling first in one country to rip and to slash, then moving to another. These individuals see him as an evil, restless spirit, condemned to go on killing forever, like a flying Dutchman of Death, a monster that seeks the life blood of woman to rekindle his strength to whield a deadly butcher's blade.
The newspaper gave him his notorious nickname, and it cought on quickly among the Londoners who shudderd behind locked doors on those foggy autumn nights. But there were always those woman who went out at night in spit of the malignant presence of lurking death. The victims were all streetwalkers, but that fact didn't make the jod of catching the Ripper any easier for the london police. Although some historians of crime place the number of deaths attributed to the Ripper as high as 15, there is a consensus that the series of slayings began with the murder of Mary Ann Nichols on the night of August 13, 1888, and ended nine weeks later with the gruesome slaughter of Mary Jeanette Kelly.
Mary Ann Nichols was found laying across a gutter. She had been repeatedly slashed by someone with a long-longhandled knife and a general knowladge of anatomy. A week later, Annie Chapman was found in a backyard, her head nearly severed from her neck. Certain other "horrible mutilations" were hinted at in the papers. The Ripper had taken two brass rings from her pockets and carefully arranged them at her feet.
A few nights later the Ripper was interrupted in his attacked on a local celebrity known as Long Liz by a man who drove a pony cart into the yard. The pony shied at the fleeting figure of Jack, and the driver jumped down from his seat to lift the woman's head. The blood poured from the open wound in her throat, and it was evident that she was not going to survive.
Apparently the intrusion so annoyed the Ripper that within an hour he had lured Catherine Eddows into a lonly ally were he could indulge his perverse and deadly passion at his leisure. After the preliinary slashing of the throat, Jack extracted the left kidney, certain other organs, and wiped his hands and knife clean on her apron.
The London newspaper ran countless stories speculating about the Rippers true identity. Perhaps he was a demonic butcher, a Polish Jew, an American sailor, a Russian doctor, and a host of other suspects - anyone, it seemed, so long as he was not English. Jack, who was obviously following his press quite carefully and enjoying every inch of ink in the papers, counterd with this famous qoatrain which he sent to the Times:
I'm not a butcher; I'm not a yid,
Nor yet a foreign skipper;
But I am your own true loving friend,
Yours truely - Jack The Ripper.
The Ripper corresponded with Scotland Yard as well as the London newspapers in a monstrous yet grimly humorous manner. He once wrote: "Next time i shall clip the lady's ears off and send them to the police, just for jolly." Toa ppersistent police officer, whome investigation was evidently well known to the Ripper, he sent part of a kidney. "Ihave fried and eaten the other part," he stated in an accompanying note.
Jeanette Kelly was the only victim killed indoors, and she was the only lady of the streets who might have been considered quite atractive. She had been seen by someone singing "Sweet Violet" during the evening and she had seemed to be in high spirits. Her horridly mutilated corpse was discoverd the next morrning by a passerby who could look directly into her ground level apartment.
Sir Melville Macnaghten, a Scotland Yard official, Reported that the Ripper must have spent at least two hours over his hellish work: : "A fire was burning low in the room, but nether stove nor gas was there . The madman made a bonfire of some old newspaper and of his victim's clothes, and by this dim irreligious light, a scene was enacted whitch nothing witnessed by Dante, in his visit to the infernal regions, could have surpassed."
Although most of Kelly's internal organs had been scattered about the room, the Ripper had carried away no part of the body. This break in his modus operandi seems to puncture the theory that the murders were committed for the purpose of gathering anatomical specimens.
The only possidle description that we have of Jake the Ripper came from someone who saw Jeanette Kelly in the company of a man who may well have been the monster himself: A man about 35 years old, five feet six inches tall, of a dark complexion, with a dark mustache turned up at the ends."
Abruptly the murders ceased, but theories about the now romanticized Ripper continued to afford morbid pleasures for amateur detectives at the local pubs and painstaking police work for tough-minded Scotland Yard inspectors. Someone with a knolage of surgery always ranked first in the theoretical ;ist of suspects. The second favorite was a midwife who had both familiarity with her victims and a knolage of elementary surgery. A journalist reported the death of a diabolical doctor in Buenos Aires who allegedly made a deathbed confession that he was Jack the Ripper, but his claim was impossible to document.
The notorious Dr. Neill Cream, convicted for poisoning four women shouted, "I am Jack the..." just as the exicutioner pulled the lever on the hangman's platform and droped the doctor to the end of his rope. Eager devotees of the Dr. Cream/Jack solution to the Ripper legend were disappointed when their investigation yielded the results that Cream had been in Joliet Prison in Illinois throughout the period of the East End murders.
More recent theories to Jake's identity have even included HRH, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, the grandson of Queen Vicrotia. And then there are those who say that Jack the Ripper is still among us - traveling first in one country to rip and to slash, then moving to another. These individuals see him as an evil, restless spirit, condemned to go on killing forever, like a flying Dutchman of Death, a monster that seeks the life blood of woman to rekindle his strength to whield a deadly butcher's blade.
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