JACK THE RIPPER

Considered to be the first modern day serial killer. Jack murdered five women (all prostitutes) in the Whitechapel slum of London’s East End in 1888. He (or she) was one of the first killers to contact the press after his killings. And he was never caught.

August 31. The body of Mary Ann “Polly” Nicols, 42, was discovered on a street called Bucks Row. Throat slit and stomach cut open.

September 8. “Dark Annie” Chapman, 47, found in passageway behind residence on Hanbury Street. Head nearly severed from body and midsection opened wide. Intestines placed on shoulder. Part of vagina and bladder removed and taken.

September 28. Central News Agency receives a letter threatening more killings. It is signed “Jack the Ripper.”

September 30. The body of “Long Liz” Stride, age unknown, is found at 1AM on Berner Street. Blood is still pulsing from her slashed throat. It is believed Jack was disturbed during his attack.

Forty-five minutes later, a short walk from the Stride murder, the body of Catherine Eddows, 43, is discovered in an alley between Mitre Square and Duke Street. Throat slashed and midsection cut open. Intestines placed over right shoulder. Part of nose and right ear cut off. Uterus and left kidney were removed.

Central News Agency receives second letter. Jack apologizes for not sending the police the ears of his victim as he intended.

November 9. The first four victims were all murdered outdoors. The fifth and, many believe, final victim, Mary Jeanette Kelly, 25, is found inside her room at Millers Court. Her throat had been severed. Her body skinned and gutted. Her nose, breasts, and heart placed on a table. Her intestines draped over a picture.

There are 13 other murdered women who some historians believe were also victims of Jack the Ripper. Those killings were from 1887 to 1891.

It is generally believed however that the killings stopped after Kelly. But why? Was Kelly the person Jack was looking for? Was Jack arrested or committed for other acts? Did Jack die – by natural causes or suicide?

It is generally accepted that Jack was male but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes stories) suggested Jack was actually a Jill – a crazed midwife. Maybe, maybe not. We may never know.

MYSTERIES, UNSOLVED PART 2

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Dink (http://inkidink.blogspot.com/) supplied a list of other infamous mysteries. Thank you:

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1930 -- Judge Joseph Crater disappears in New York City. Never found.

1935 -- actress Thelma Todd is found dead in her garage. The question of suicide or murder is never answered.

1962 -- Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her Brentwood home. Official verdict is accidental suicide but the events before the authorities are called cloud the issue. Big time.

1966-74 -- the Zodiac Killer claims to have murdered 37 people in the San Francisco area. The murderer is never captured.

1975 -- labor organizer Jimmy Hoffa vanishes. Never found.

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and there are these mysteries:

1930s -- the Cleveland Torso Killer claims 16 victims. No arrests or convictions.

1937 -- pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanish on a flight across the Pacific. Bodies or wreckage never found.

1945 -- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is arrested by Soviet Red Army. He is taken to Moscow. Soviets refuse to release any information about what happened to him.

1965 -- the bodies of two elderly Houston residents are discovered dismembered in a refrigerator by police. "The Ice Box Murders" are never solved.

1978 -- actor Bob Crane murdered in Scottsdale Arizona. Suspect arrested but later found not guilty at trial.

1996 -- rapper Tupac Shakur shot to death in drive-by in Las Vegas. No one ever arrested or convicted of his murder.

MYSTERIES, UNSOLVED

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In books and movies, the mystery is solved at the conclusion. Those stories that don't offer a solution (or leave it to the audience's imagination) are usually failures and rightly so. Below are some true mysteries that are unsolved. Suspects may abound but no solid conclusions. So far.

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1888 -- Five prostitutes in London's East End are murdered. The killer, known as Jack the Ripper, is never caught. That we know of anyway.

1922 -- Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor is murdered.

1947 -- Elizabeth Short, a struggling actress nicknamed the Black Dahlia, is found nude and cut in half in a vacant Los Angeles lot.

1971 -- Over the Pacific Northwest, D.B. Cooper jumps from the plane he has hijacked with the ransom money. Never found.

1993 -- Three eight-year-old boys are tortured and murdered in West Memphis Arkansas. Teenagers Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley are convicted of the "satanic" murders. The evidence against them is highly suspect to say the least despite what the authorities in Arkansas claim.

1996 -- Child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is murdered in her home in Boulder Colorado.

2001 -- Chandra Levy, an intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, vanishes in Washington D.C. Her body is found several months later. Her murder is very similiar to the murder of Joyce Chiang, an attorney for Immigration and Naturalization, that occurred two years earlier.

AFI'S TOP VILLAINS

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A little while back, AFI listed their top villains in films. Here's their best (or is it worst?) ten:

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1) Dr. Hannibal Lector (in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS)
2) Norman Bates (in PSYCHO)
3)Darth Vader (in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)
4) The Wicked Witch of the West (in THE WIZARD OF OZ)
5) Nurse Ratched (in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST)
6) Mr. Potter (in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE)
7) Alex Forrest (in FATAL ATTRACTION)
8) Phyllis Dietrichson (in DOUBLE INDEMNITY)

9) Regan MacNeil (in THE EXORCIST)
10) The Queen (in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)

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Okay, Darth Vader and Nurse Ratched are solid choices. The others I would debate especially Regan MacNeil -- she's a victim not a villain. Then again, AFI didn't ask me for my opinion.

FAVORITE VILLAINS

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In April 2005, my article "Villains" was published by SFREADER. I contacted several authors who graciously answered my question about who was their favorite bad person in films and novels. Anyway, I concluded the article with my favorite ten. Here they are, in no particular order:

Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (above)

Calvera in The Magnificent Seven

Milady deWinter in The Three Musketeers

Hans Gruber in Die Hard

and

Norman Bates in Psycho
Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Archibald Cunningham in Rob Roy
Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs
Christian Szell in Marathon Man
Annie Wilkes in Misery

MOVIES BETTER THAN THE BOOK

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Usually the book is better than the movie. But occasionally the film adapted from a novel clicks on a level far above its source material. I like a couple of the novels listed below (and a couple are major stinkers) but the movies are solid. A couple are even classics.

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Die Hard

The Dirty Dozen

Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger (if it hadn't been for these three no one would remember James Bond)

Forrest Gump

The Godfather

Jaws

The Last of the Mohicans (the Daniel Day-Lewis one)

Planet of the Apes (the Chuck Heston version)

Pyscho (Hitchcock's version)

The Shawshank Redemption

BEST-SELLING NOVELS OF ALL TIME

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According to Amazon, these are the biggest selling novels ever.

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1) Valley of the Dolls

2) Jonathan Livingston Seagull

3) The Exorcist

4) Jaws

5) God's Little Acre

6) Catch 22

7) To Kill a Mockingbird

8) The Thorn Birds

9) Peyton Place

10) Gone with the Wind

11) 1984

12) Animal Farm

13) The Godfather

14) The Carpetbaggers

15) The Catcher in the Rye

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No Harry Potter, no Da Vinci code? I think this list may be a tad outdated, Mr. Amazon. Oh, yeah, I've only read half of them.

QUICK SIDE BAR

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Over on the Murderati website (http://www.murderati.typepad.com/) Pari Noskin Taichert has written an interesting article on being tagged as a "regional" author. In her case, a Southwestern author or more specfically a New Mexico writer. Check it out.

THE BEST-SELLING CHILDREN'S BOOKS

OF ALL TIME

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1.
Charlotte's Web, E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams (1974)
2.
The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton (1968)
3.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Judy Blume (1976)
4.
Love You Forever, Robert Munsch, illustrated by Sheila McGraw (1986)
5.
Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls (1973)
6.
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell (1971)
7.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling (1999)
8.
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume (1972)
9.
Shane, Jack Schaeffer
10.
The Indian in the Cupboard, Lynne Reid Banks (1982)

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I think these numbers may be a little old. Harry's series has probably knocked most of them out of the Top Ten. Seriously doubt that the western, Shane from the 1950s, is still in there.

BURNED A BOOK LATELY?

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According to the American Library Association, these authors were the most challenged and banned from 1990 to 2004:

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1. Alvin Schwartz
2. Judy Blume
3. Robert Cormier
4. J.K. Rowling
5. Michael Willhoite
6. Katherine Paterson
7. Stephen King
8. Maya Angelou
9. R.L. Stine
10. John Steinbeck

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Some day I want to be on this list.

FICTIONAL DINNER PARTY

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I decided to host a fictional dinner party. All invitees had to be from novels or stories. All would be adults. Sorry, Huck Finn and Harry Potter. I invited an equal number of ladies and gentlemen. I believe that is proper etiquette. My fictional female companion for the evening would be McKenna Alexander from my own novel, Rebel Nation. My guests would be:

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LADIES

Irene Adler

Elizabeth Bennett

Mina Murray

Jane Parker

Clarice Starling

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GENTLEMEN

James Bond

Atticus Finch

Jay Gatsby

Sherlock Holmes

Captain Nemo

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I believe this would be a quite enjoyable evening.

Tappava kuu

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My horror story, "The Killing Moon," has been translated into Finnish and is appearing in the latest issue of Spin. I should receive my copies of the magazine in the mail shortly. Above is the title in Finnish. This is cool.

ARRESTED ... OH, YEAH

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NEW CASTLE COUNTY, DELAWARE. A 17-year-old male went to police headquarters to report that his apartment had been burglarized. He was promptly arrested. The police had been investigating a shooting in his area, when they spotted marijuana, cocaine, and $1700 in cash through an open apartment window. They got a search warrant and confiscated the cash and illegal drugs. But they were unable to locate the resident. Unable that is until he walked into the station to report the burglary.

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HAMBURG, GERMANY. Three 17-year-old males were arrested for attempted robbery and assault. They attempted by force to steal the cell phone of 17-year-old Pauli Borchardt as he walked home from a friend’s house one night. Unknown to the three would-be robbers however, Borchardt was an amateur kick-boxing and karate champ. The trio will be taken to jail to await trial as soon as they are released from the hospital.

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JIM THORPE, PENNSYLVANIA. A 25-year-old male has been sentenced to one-to-six months in jail when he showed up drunk for his DUI trial.

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There is also a suspect-at-large in Palm Springs, California, who robbed a bank but didn't put the loot in a bag. On a street near the bank, the cash was found scattered across the neighborhood lawns and sidewalks. Just blowing in the wind.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE A WRITER?
A QUIZ

1) Do you read a lot?
2) Do you own more than one dictionary?
3) More than one thesaurus?
4) Do you have a baby name book even though you are not about to have a child?
5) Are there books in every room of your home?
6) Is there a pile of magazines in your bathroom?
7) Within sight of your home desk or writing space are there copies of your favorite books?
8) Has it been a long, long time since you actually read any of those books?
9) Do you have files with scraps of paper, notes, and articles that you’re saving for a future project?
10) Is the file actually a Black Hole? Things go in but never come back out?
11) When you break a grammar rule, do you know you’ve broken the rule?
12) When reading a story or book, whether good or bad, do you find yourself stepping back and looking at how the writer put their words and sentences together?
13) Have you taken at least one creative writing class?
14) Are you able to accept criticism of your work without taking it personally?
15) If the criticism is valid, can you accept and use the suggestions even if an idiot has given them to you?
16) Do you know other writers?
17) Do you know at least one writer, usually a very very talented one, who has never completed one single project?
18) Do you have more than one rejection for the same story or book?
19) Do you have a drawer or box or trunk with stuff you’ve written that no one will ever see?

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20) Last question. Supercedes all others. Do you write?

eBOOKS

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Both my novels, Rebel Nation and The Inheritance are now available in electronic format at FICTIONWISE (http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/ChristopherStireseBooks.htm) Rebel Nation has three terrific reviews on the Amazon site that you can read and The Inheritance won the 2003 Dream Realm Award for Horror. Go. Now. No waiting. You'll be happy you did. And so will I.

THANK GOODNESS THAT'S OVER

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Tom Cruise apologized to Brooke Shields for his rant about her taking anti-depressants after child birth. (http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004741117) I'm glad that's resolved. I will sleep easier tonight. Yep. One down, 2496157883 world problems to go.

NEW HIGHWAY SIGNS

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The Washington Post held a contest for new highway sign suggestions. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800635.html) Here are some of the winners:

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REPORT

PHONE-USING DRIVERS

CALL 202-555-3147

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REST STOP CLOSED

CROSS LEGS

NEXT 23 MILES

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WHATEVER YOU DO

DO NOT LOOK IN
YOUR REARVIEW MIRROR

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SHOW US

YOUR HEADLIGHTS

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TUNE RADIO TO AM

FOR POOR

SOUND QUALITY

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KEEP KICKING YOUR

BROTHER -- DAD CAN'T

TURN CAR AROUND

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And my two favorites:

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END ROAD WORK

I MEAN IT.

END IT NOW!

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3 CAR CRASH AHEAD

1 IS FLIPPED

BEST VIEW LEFT LANE

SPOOKY TRIVIA

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I writing my next movie review column for Dred. One of the films I'm reviewing is Silent Hill. I always conclude my reviews with a bit of trivia about the movie. I'm checking different things out about Silent Hill and I discover the setting was inspired by a true story. Normally I shrug this info off because it's usually garbage but this was a little different to say the least.

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In 1961, a fire started in one of the mine shafts that crisscross under the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. The fire couldn't to put out and continue to grow. It burned throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Congress allocated $40 million to extinguish the fires in 1984. Those attempts failed. Finally, in 1984, the State of Pennsylvania claimed "eminent domain" and relocated the few families still remaining in the town. Yep, despite smoke coming up out of the ground and sinkholes, hundreds of feet deep, suddenly opening up in the ground a few morons refused to leave. The fires under Centralia still burn today. It is estimated that because of the coal deposits the fires will burn for the next 250 years!

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Spooky.

SPICY THEN NICOTINE-FREE

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I think I'm trying to kill myself off. I love spicy chicken wings -- both boned and boneless. The other day I had several. They were delicious. But. The big but. Woke up the next morning with nuclear heartburn. I swallowed several Rolaids and drank a half-gallon of milk. Not good. Is this one of the signs of getting older?

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Then. I want to quit smoking. Been failing miserably. I bought a pack of herbal, nicotine-free cigarettes. Cost twice as much as regular buds. They are made with leaf of lotus, corn silk, and licorice root. I figured if I could wean myself off the nicotine, I could soon break the habit altogether. Smoking is the second stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. Anyway, I lit one of those herbal sticks up and inhaled. Thought I was gonna die right there, right then. Sucking on a car tailpipe would've been a smarter thing to do.

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Okay. I'm done grousing. For the moment. Hey, if I smoke a spicy wing I'll ... never mind. Another lame idea in a long line of lame ideas.