JACK THE RIPPER & D. B. COOPER
No, this isn't a sensationalist weekly scum rag super market tabloid
(my favorite educational material). I don't do that...usually.
I frequently watch the "Discovery Channel" and others that claim to be
a bit truthful in their reporting. Doing so I
stumbled across a report on an
airline hijacker named RICHARD McCOY.
Four months after D. B. Cooper hijacked a
N. W. Airlines Boeing 727,
Richard McCoy did the same thing. His method of operation was identical to that
of Cooper...including bailing out of the tail ramp
of the plane. A 727. Even
his disguise was the same and artists' drawing of
the suspects was almost identical.
McCoy was successful in the hijacking and got
away with $500,000. This time
there would be a different ending.
A phoned in tip led the FBI to McCoy. His home was searched and the
FBI found $499.000 of the hijack money...all in
marked bills. With other
overwhelming evidence McCoy was convicted and sent to prison for 45 years.
While McCoy was in prison the FBI kept investigating him as a major
suspect in the Cooper hijacking. As was suspected of Cooper, McCoy
was an ex paratrooper who knew how to fold his own
parachute and was experienced
in night jumping.
McCoy, an experienced small engine pilot,
volunteered to help in the
search for Cooper when authorities
were searching the wooded area Cooper bailed out in. He also volunteered to
pilot a search plane in the later search for the
second hijacker before he was
identified.
In later tests the hijacking note Cooper gave the stewardess was written
in the same hand as the one McCoy gave the stewardess in the second hijacking.
And...a magazine that Cooper had left in his seat
had McCoys fingerprints on it.
Before charges could be filed against McCoy for the Cooper hijacking
he escaped from prison and went on a robbery & killing spree. The FBI found
his hideout apt., staked it out...and when McCoy
came home one day he was shot
to death in a gun battle.
Without charges ever being filed against McCoy there has never been
a closure to this case.
A NOTE OF IRONY...years later a little boy found a bundle of $5,000 from
the Cooper ransom money...the money was buried
along the banks of the Columbia
River where it had apparantly washed down stream.
The finding made national
headlines...along with pictures of the boy and his
father who gladly posed.
An alert FBI agent saw the picture of the father and recognized his as an escapee
from prison some years back. He finished out his
term along with an extra five
years for escape. The guy had to be a moron.
JACK THE RIPPER
More than one hundred years have passed since
this monster terrorized Londons
Whitechapel area by murdering and butchering five
prostitutes. Still, the
mystery and curiosity remain. Who was Jack The
Ripper...why did he commit the
attrocities?
An American mystery writer, Patricia Cornwell,
thinks she has the answer...
so do I.
The case was never solved, although dozens of
Victorians have been mentioned
as possible suspects. Now Patricia Cornwell is
certain she has found the
right culprit. WALTER RICHARD SICKERT, an
impressionist painter of that
period, who walked the same East London streets
as Jack The Ripper and,
twenty years later, produced a gruesome series
of paintings of murdered
prostitutes is her candidate.
The idea that Sickert might be Jack The Ripper
has been around since the
1960's, and most "experts" believe it is a myth
stemming from his sick paintings.
But Cornwell's research has convinced her and
many others that she has the
right man.
Sickert is best known for his paintings of London theater scenes.
But in 1908-9 he painted a dark series showing
a naked prostitute-sometimes
alive, sometimes murdered-in a room with a clothed man. The series is
known as the "Camden Town Murders", after a 1907
killing is Sickert's London
neighborhood. But Cornwell believes the artist'
s tortured depictions of the
dead prostitutes were inspired by murders from
two decades earlier.
She says one of the paintings closely resembles
the room where Mary Kelly,
the Rippers last known victim, was killed in 1888. Cornwell noted that
the painting features a wooden bedstead, just as in the Kelly murder. Sickert
painted iron bedsteads in his other paintings.
She believes Sickert waited
twenty years before painting the series because
he knew the works would have
attracted attention if he painted them sooner.
Cornwell also read extensively about Sickert's
life and works. In a
memoir written by one of his fans, she read that
he kept a red handkerchief
in his studio while he was painting the Camden
series, using it for inspiration.
She believes the red handkerchief is the same one
a witness saw a man hand Kelly
shortly before she was murdered.
She also found that Sickert had the same psychological profile of
many serial killers. He grew up with an abusive
father and was a fearful
and compulsive child who washed his hands constantly.
Forensic profilers have found that serial killers often have a growing
rage stemming from a painful event in early childhood. Cornwell knew that
Sickert had undergone painful
surgery several times as a small child for a
fistula, or abnormal canal, somewhere on his body. She later learned fron
Sickert's grand nephew that the fistula was on his penis, meaning that the
operation may have left him sterile.
Sickert married three times but never had any children, and Cornwell thinks
he might have had a sexual disability that set
off a murderous rage iin 1888,
when he was 28. From another source I have read
that the third "operation" was,
actually, amputation. It was performed without anesthetic while he was being
held down.
With powerful circumstantial evidence linking
Sickert to the Ripper crimes,
Cornwell was sure that he was the culprit. After
ten years of investigation
and spending more than four million dollars of her own money, Cornwell seemed
to have gone as far as she could. In the lat1990's, however, DNA
evidence system was developed.
She decided that if she could obtain DNA evidence from letters believed
to be from the Ripper, she could compare it to
DNA from letters known to
have been written by Sickert. During 1888 murders
the police had received hundreds
of letters claiming to be from the murderer, most
being hoaxes. There are a
few Ripper letters, however, that are believed to
be real.
At her own expense Cornwell flew a whole team to London...a handwriting
expert, a forensic photographer and a DNA analyst. They discovered that
the letters had been heat-sealed under plastic
to preserve them, a process
that degrades DNA. None of the letters had any trace left.
Then a Scotland Yard curator discovered a Ripper letter that had never
been turned over to the archives and had not been heat-sealed. An initial
test found no DNA, but the letter did have a
watermark from Perry & Sons...
an exclusive stationer of the day. In the archives Cornwell found that
Sickert had used the same stationery at the time of the murders.
After the first DNA test failed she commissioned more expensive
and time consuming "mitochondrial" DNA tests.
In results that just came
back in Dec., 2002, it was found that there was a
blend of DNA on the Sickert
letters and a clear DNA sample on the Ripper letter. The Ripper letter
DNA MATCHED the blend on the Sickert letter.
Thus showing, in fact, that
Jack The Ripper handled the Sickert letter.
Recalling visiting the untended graves of the five young prostitutes, Cornwell
said: "They have a right to have justice after
113 years. They have a right
to have someone care about them for once and not to care about hin...He doesn't
deserve to be mythologized and turned into some
hero played by movie stars.
And he doesn't deserve to have his art celebrated".
CONRAD DIPPLE..early 1800's in England, bought human bodies from local mortuaries.
Cut them up, sewed various parts together in an
attempt to make the perfect human.
He then gave them a jolt of electricity to try
to instill life. It didn't
work but he inspired MARY SHELLEY...you know
what she wrote at the age of 18.
He was known by other names...aliases. No one
ever knew why, but, he never
publicly admitted his true name was HENRY McCARTY. I don't suppose
you ever heard of Henry...he died before your time. July 14, 1881.
Some folk knew him as Kid Antrim. A lot of folk,
perhaps you, think his real name
was William Bonney. Not so...BILLY THE KID was
really Henry McCarty.
ZODIAC...
Remember this freak? In the late 1960's he
terrorized San Francisco by
randomly murdering seven people...then he sent
coded messages to the police.
The coded messages were finally decoded and found
to be of a military code. Basically
he bragged about how he enjoyed
killing people and that one day he would destroy
a busload of school children.
The killings stopped in 1968 then there was one
more in 1972. After that no more.
He was never caught but over 2000 people were
investigated. Investigators
came up with the profile that he wore size 101/2
wing tip boots...was or had
been connected to the military...was a child
molester...and had spent
some time in prison.
ARTHUR LEE ALLEN, who died in prison in 1992,
was considered by most
investigators to be Zodiac. He was a pudgy,
balding nondescript man whose
description fitted that of the profilers. Allen
wore 10 1/2 wing tip boots...
his father, an ex-military man, taught him the
codes...and he served four
years in prison, 1968-1972, for child molesting.
During this time there were
no murders or taunting letters. However, two
days after his 1972 release from
prison the police received another letter and
there was another murder.
Shortly after that he was sent to prison again,
for child molesting, and died there.
The file on this case has never been closed...
but most of the Zodiac
investigators believe Arthur Lee Allen was,
indeed, Zodiac.
The "CATNIP BURGLAR" who, actually is not a
burglar, has been terrorizing
this neighborhood for three years. Somehow,
this fiend slips undetected
into the yards of neighbors and plants catnip.
An excellent way to keep cats out of your yard...if that's what you
like...is to sneak over late at night and plant
catnip in your neighbors flowers.
We have detected an odor of catnip on the paws of a well known neighborhood
hole digger and gardener. Bubba Jones has been put on probation for the summer.
10/27/03
I'll end this page with a short writing in keeping with the date...
Scary costumes, weird decorations and eerie noises are fun parts of
Halloween, but in the begining they were serious ways to keep evil spirits
away. The ancient Druids of the British Isles believed that at harvest time,
the dead spirits were walking around looking for bodies to take over. So people tried
to make themselves and their homes as wretched
and ugly as possible, so the
spirits would leave them alone.
Speaking of wretched and ugly...oh...never mind.
WHO KILLED THE BLACK DAHLIA?
Her name was Elizabeth Short. She was a beautiful black haired young
lady who was murdered in Los Angeles in 1947. She had been raped, decapitated,
all the blood had been drained from her body and her body was sugically cut
in half...her remains were then dumped in an open field. This murder was never
solved and remains a mystery to this day...or is it?
Steve Hodell of L. A. thinks he knows who the
murderer was. His father,
Dr. George Hodell.
Dr. Hodell died a few years ago and his son, Steve, was going through some
of his papers. He came upon an old photo album
and found a picture of Elizabeth
Short in it. He became curious and explored his
fathers past further.
Steve found out that his father had an affair with Elizabeth but she dumped
him. He also found out that there had been many
similiar murders and mutilations
in the area and same year.
After more than a year of intense investigation
Steve has come up with many
other facts relating his father to the murder
and portraying him as a serial killer.
Dr. Hodell once actually confessed to the police but later recanted
his confession. It is claimed that there was wide spread corruption in
the L. A. police dept. at that time and Dr. Hodell had been known to make
regular payoffs. After the confession Dr. Hodell
bribed a top police official
to cover up the confession and investigation. It
was feared that if the investigation
of Dr. Hodell continued the extreme corruption
would be revealed.
In 1948 Dr. Hodell was arrested for raping his
sixteen year old stepdaughter
but wasn't brought to trial until 1949.
On Feb. 18, 1950, Dr. Hodells secretary was raped, murdered and mutilated
the same way Elizabeth Short was.
The Marquis De Sadde was Dr. Hodells hero and
he idolized a sicko painter
named Manrae who enjoyed painting pictures of
The Minotaur...a mythical
monster that ate people.
steve Hodell presented this and more evidence
to the L. A. prosecuting
attorney's office and was told by a deputy prossecutor that he would file
charges if Dr. Hodell were still alive.
This page has become long enough. I will end it here and begin a new page
"Concerning mysteries and such..." as the information becomes available.
I will leave you with this... Did you hear about the big shooting at
the Burien Safeway recently? A man shot up all of the boxes of Wheaties. Turned
out he was a cereal killer.
Goodnight, Bubba.
SEEN ON "COPS" recently. Police officer with
his trained dog...German
Sheppard...cruising along and gets a call to
a residential burglary
in progress. Zooms to the address in time to
see the thief run out of
the house and into the bushes across the street.
Cop turns the hungry dog loose and doggie rushes
over, leaps into the bushes
and starts tearing at the jerks leg. Pulling
here and there, tearing pants,
blood flying...thief screaming in pain and
yelling for help. Cop
rushes up and in his most indignant and mean
voice bellows "LEAVE THE
DOG ALONE!"
|
