The GoJ, The End

I finished reading this book. Excellent with the exception of the Afterword which left me totally mystified. A few more quotes then I need to read more about The Mad Butcher.

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Panzram is another prime example of multi-motivational, multi-attributable reprisal. When dealing with authorities of any description, individually petty-minded tyrants, you must never wait for anyone to accept responsibility, for it is against their cowardly nature to do so. You must, without hesitation or pointless consultation, confer responsibility on the obvious culprits and decide the price you will make them pay, one way or another.

In short, you must act as tyrannically as they do, but solely on your own authority. Panzram did not need to be taught this principle, of course, as you shall see. (235)

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Kindness can be an extremely vicious weapon, when someone has deliberately programmed himself to deal with anything but. It sneaks through the defences like a knife between the ribs.

Quite frankly, I'd rather do without such gestures of generosity in prison, as it isn't worth the candle, and you have the trauma of having to get back into a normal character for the next run-of-the-mill, illiterate, looking-for-trouble guard or prisoner who comes along. Kindness has no place within a penal institution. It is also a sensible practice not to read any books which might induce human or altruistic sentiment. (243)

'Wake up, kid. The real truth of the matter is that I haven't the least desire to reform. It took me thirty six years to be like I am now; then how do you figure that I could, if I wanted to, change from black to white in the twinkling of an eye?' (Panzram, 250)

-----

'Get those Bible-backed cocksuckers out of here! Now let's get going. What are we hanging around for?!'

'Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you're fooling around!'

I laugh with delight even now at Panzram's magnificent final performance on earth, full of such tremendous insolence and spirit. Those were Panzram's final words, his contemptuous goodbye to a world he loathed having to breathe in. The lever was pulled, the trapdoor opened. With that fall the world became a duller place. A great spirit had flown. A star had been extinguished. The air seemed subdued.

The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has lived little. Whether you have lived enough depends not on the number of your years but on your will. ~ Montaigne

(252)

Simon Says

Blenda, the Bad(ass) Witch

Via Badass of the Week:

So as I previously mentioned, Viking women were pretty damned hardcore, but Blenda and her buddies honestly weren't going to stand much of a chance in a straight-up deathmatch against a rampaging horde of badass, neck-punching Danish berserkers who spent their entire lives cracking people in the faces with axes and stuffing them into garbage bags. Still, that didn't exactly mean these chicks were going to sit around and let themselves be plundered and carried off like a bunch of Medieval twenty-inch rims left unattended overnight in downtown Brooklyn. They were from Smaland, which (as far as I can tell at least) is basically a suburb of Geatland – the home of hardcore, monster-arm-snatching, mother-stabbing ass-wreckers like Beowulf - and these tough broads weren't going to just kick back and chill while the Danes plundered all their hard-earned crap, killed their children, and dragged them off to wherever the hell it is that Danish people come from. No, these determined women had a plan, and it was a twisted, devious scheme so beautiful in its simplicity and its deviousness that the Danish invaders could never have seen it coming.

Read the entire entry HERE. Hail the power of boobs and booze!

More GoJ - Notes and Quotes

Part two is dedicated to the analysis of several notorious serial killers. Gacy, Sutcliffe, Corll, "The Mad Butcher", etc. The evaluations (for lack of a better word) are all interesting, all insightful. But then it dawns on me like a bucket of ice water has just been dumped on my head that the man writing these things is also a killer. Which makes some of the things he says particularly harrowing.

-----

Bear in mind that the more you tell someone, the more dangerous they become to you and, therefore, the far more dangerous you become to them. (105)

Some individuals erroneously believe that if they master logic they will master life.

Logic is merely a tool. The science of argument. In that context it can be used to deduce what argument the serial killer is trying to put across by his actions, what he is trying to prove or disprove. (110)

More often than not it is foolish to try to kid a kidder. There are no saints in this world, only liars, lunatics and journalists. (151)

Religion is the deus ex machina of the misfortunate and oppressed. (159)

Normal life becomes insipid by comparison, once the adrenaline-charged high has been experienced, driving them insatiably, in a futile effort to capture and refrain the god-like charge of omnipotence, the ambience of divinity, the lofty gestalt of Olympus -- but some forget to take their oxygen masks before attempting such heights. (161)

Naught's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without
content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction
dwell in doubtful joy. ~ Macbeth, Shakespeare

He would teach them the meaning of misery, of existential accounting. The enemy identified, the attack began, and the result is criminal history. So, when Ramirez sneered, 'I am beyond your experience,' he was to some extent perfectly right. We are all beyond one another's experience. But not so far beyond as the law-abiding would piously prefer to pretend. One fine day the dispossessed become the possessed. Beware the wrath of the disillusioned idealist; it knows no bounds. To seriously paraphrase Groucho Marx, such people end up declaiming they would never join any club that would accept them as a member.

In the modern inferno of crumbling inner cities, such militant outsiders now grow in number by the hour. With a little help and instruction from their friends.

Be in not the least doubt that they are coming to confront some of you. Read tomorrow's newspapers -- if mercy or accident has left you alive after encountering one of this number -- for you may be featured in them. Ponder, like Scrooge, that it is never to late to change direction. Or buy a gun. For all the prisons in the world shall not increase your vain hopes of safety one jot, only lessen them.

"In our course through life we shall meet the people who are
coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many
strange roads, and what it is set to us to do to them, and what
it is set to them to do to us, will all be done."

~ Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens (176)

Choose Your Own Apocalypse

This is interesting! The folks over at Slate have an interactive game/tool/thingamajig where you can pick various ways that America will die. The list alone is pretty wild, 144 different possible scenarios including Obesity, Christianity and the independence of Vermont.

Click HERE for the article.

Click HERE to play God.

GoJ: Notes and Quotes

More from The Gates of Janus.

Colin Wilson wrote the (rather lengthy) introduction and in it makes frequent reference to his long-time correspondence with Brady. I'd assumed that meant they were friends or something. Heh. Brady isn't all that impressed with Wilson (or crime-writers/journalists of any kind) and gives some scathing criticism of Wilson's interpretation of some things.

Another note -- Brady addresses the reader directly quite a lot. Not exactly novel but in this case is oddly invasive. It feels like he's reaching through the page, grabbing my collar and yanking my face in close. It's not allowing me to distance very well and I keep sinking into deep introspection, mulling over the questions. It's a bruisy, slightly uncomfortable feeling that follows me long after I've shut the book.

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More or less, all but the constitutionally inadequate possess the wish for power, but many lack the will. The desire to be insubordinate and autonomous, reach mercurial heights, psychically transfuse the blood of gods into the veins, is more common than the ability to do so. Conscience confounds the majority. The remainder, in my opinion, are as culpable as the criminal. In brief, sanctioned by law or no, elitism is the soul of criminality. (64)

Studying humanity with the objective detachment of a spectre -- my active, free participation in the human comedy now being constrained by manganese-steel bars and electronic eyes -- I have observed nothing in the social evolution of mankind to shake my lack of faith in human nature in general. (65)

Audience reaction, rather than the discriminating wisdom and inherent superiority of individual judgment, is the critical factor in defining a 'criminal', an 'outsider', someone not running with the herd or going with the prevailing popular flow.

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it
prosper, none dare call it treason." ~ Sir John Harrington (1561-1612)
(77)

It is rather significant to note that those members of the lower classes who assiduously adhere to law and prevailing morality usually display a smug self-righteousness, which appears to be based on the patent delusion that their virtuous qualities are inborn, rather than evidence of a servile constitution predisposed to the influence of social engineering. (77)

Morality does not enter into the equation except in the shoddy guise of derisively pious editorials, reminiscent, in shallow sympathy and ersatz horror, of the lucrative ramblings of the late Edgar Lustgarten. This self-styled media 'criminologist,' a jaundice-jowled, lugubrious little specimen with the eyes of a carp, the ethics of a minnow and the ambience of a ripe red herring, physically personified what every media sensationalist should be obliged to look like as a warning to others.

The sensationalists shrewdly appreciate that when it comes to serial killers or killings, the general public has the infinite attention span of lower primates assiduously searching for fleas.

The illusion of having a 'good reputation' to maintain can be a most corrupting preoccupation, whereas confessing to a bad reputation is often highly virtuous.

You should never doubt your own experience in favor of other people's opinions, no matter how loftily they berate you with them. Hypocrisy adores exalted heights to condescend from. (79)

Steal an apple, you are a thief; steal a country, you are a statesman. (82)

Society, if you believe such a thing exists, trains and constrains the individual to counterfeit surface respect for powerful personages and outmoded conventions which, in truth, the large majority abhor and despise.

Therefore, there exists in every free-thinking person a tenacious tension between that which they know to be their genuine beliefs and desires, and the grotesque proprieties and social protocols they reluctantly pay homage to under duress. The resulting psychic conflict creates a neurotic self-contempt, a mordant doubt that they possess the will or spiritual strength needed to throw off such tight bridles and assert unconditional individuality, even at the risk of their disconsolate lives. (82)

Contrary to Ian Fleming, you only live once. Therefore, a person should consciously choose whether to exist as a grey daub on a grey canvas, or as an existential riot of every color in the spectrum. You know which of these alternatives the serial killer selects, action-painting with his knife on a human canvas, each slash-splash creating a unique masterpiece. Not for sale but nevertheless widely viewed with fascination by most.

By all means punish or execute the transgressors, but do not bore them to death with concepts based entirely on social engineering flatteringly disguised as divine wisdom. (83)

The Gates of Janus

Currently reading -- The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and Its Analysis, By the 'Moors Murderer' Ian Brady



Part one is dedicated to explaining his worldview. Similar to Kaczynski, this guy is a literal genius and constantly references Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, De Sade, etc. Some of it's a bit over my head. I'm going to record quotes here I'd normally just underline if this weren't a hardback. Starting out of order because the following seems relevant to a discussion going on elsewhere:

Who can deny having experienced moments when, had you owned the power, you would have gladly destroyed the world and every living creature on it in your anger and despondency, like a thwarted, disgruntled child?

In retrospect, when the blood has cooled or circumstances brightened, you may self-flatteringly asseverate, 'Oh, but I didn't really mean it.' Nonsense! Had the world-exstinguishing button been under your thumb at that particular moment of inspired rage or evil brilliance, you would have pushed it with grateful exhilaration, even joy. The Gotterdammerung syndrome.

I offer this to illustrate further that there is no great gap between the law-abiding and the criminal. It is man's expedient or delusional nature to parade lack of omnipotent power as innate virtue, well knowing the latter formed no motivational part of his thoughts or emotions at the moment of resentful revenge. (60)



Remorse for my part in this and other matters is axiomatic, painfully deep. (18)

Religion taken neat can be toxic. People drink a lot on Sunday evenings to get rid of the hangover left by attending church. (37)

It is not uncommon for perpetrators to overestimate their own callousness. (39)

As indicated, the whole of society, backed by the power of the mass media, is geared to concentrate public attention and hostility upon the captured, relatively small-time psychopaths, and particularly serial killers, using them as popular entertainments to distract public scrutiny from the infinitely more dangerous, socially-acceptable psychopaths who hold high office throughout society. (58)

Study your leaders more, your prisoners less. Be more concerned about the beliefs of the Inquisitor rather than the heretic. The barbarity and power of the state thrives upon lack of public understanding and organized repudiation. (59)

One should try to be honest with oneself almost as a daily devotion. (60)



If history teaches anything, it is: In every war or ideological conflict both sides genuinely believe themselves to be right. They deny purely selfish stimulus, paying lip-service to lofty moral concepts, but unwittingly reveal, by their actions, the true and universally empirical belief that the end does justify the means, that might is right, that the victor does dictate morality and legality; that often two wrongs do make a right and two rights a wrong. And, of course, that the spoils always go to the victor. Equivocations to the contrary are patently cosmetic and falsely egalitarian. (61)



Can there by any objective doubt, in those of you wisely conversant with the wiles and ways of human nature and man's infinite capacity to rationalize every atrocity there is, that the main psychological reason why most people do not pray to the Prince of Darkness, had they robust spirit to do so, is that it would be tantamount to worshipping themselves, thus confirming a nature they would piously deny?

Is not evil man's true element of delight, the dominating psyche he naturally luxuriates in and is drawn inexorably to embrace? A source of spontaneous vitality and verve, evil banishes the mundane barriers of 'normal' existence, galvanizing the senses and lending a fresh vibrancy to the world. It is a facet of character man thoroughly enjoys in the darkness of mind and bed most of his life. Intoxication without artificial stimulation. (61)

Joshua Hoffine

Visit his page HERE.

From the About Burble:

I stage my photo shoots like small movies, with sets, costumes, elaborate props, fog machines, and special effects make-up. I use hotlights rather than strobes because they give me better fog effects as well as a warming color shift. My images are not photoshop collages. I use photoshop to finesse details and to adjust color and contrast for printing. I use friends and family members as actors and crew. Everyone works for free. We do it for fun.

I love old Disney cartoons. I like the hyper-realism of animation, and the overblown production values of big Hollywood movies. I want my images to be pretty so that you'll look at them longer. I am interested in the science of fairy tales. I want to reinvent archetypes. I embrace the Jungian power of a cliche. I think of my photographs as pieces of candy.

I believe that the horror story is ultimately concerned with the imminence and randomness of death, and the implication that there is no certainty to existence. The experience of horror resides in this confrontation with uncertainty. Horror tells us that our belief in security is delusional, and that the monsters are all around us.

I Hate The Sun

Yeh, I know it's good for the planet, and me, and keeps everything from dying and all that but gee whiz I sure do hate it. In my perfect world I'd be able to sit on my front stoop sipping coffee and watching traffic without getting my corneas burned out. I need one of those black censorship bars.

"How many times have I longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or use that star to burn the world. Oh, that would be a crime!" ~ Marquis de Sade

It fits.

Ron Pippin

Assemblage artist whose obsessive attention to detail is astonishing and reminded me of another favorite, Alex CF. Manuscripts, boxes, creatures, lots of razzle dazzle.

Visit his page HERE to look at all of his amazing work!

The following is his "Solar Deer":

Paper Model Purgatory

A 3-D Tribute to Disney's Haunted Mansions! Courtesy Ray Keim.

"I created these models for my own enjoyment and to share with other fans of the haunted mansions.
Please enjoy these FREE models! Pass them around, and above all.
KEEP THEM FREE!
~ Ray ~"

TONS of fun stuff here! Including templates and detailed instructions for gingerbread and sugar cookie houses! I HAVE to try these!

The Cameraman's Revenge

Ladislas Starevich (1882-1965) was a Russian stop-motion animator best known for his use of dead animals/insects as puppets. "Mest' kinematograficheskogo operatora" (The Cameraman's Revenge) was made in 1912. Wildly whimsical and darkly funny.

Erick Swenson

Visit THIS PAGE for more photos and their accompanying burbles.

Ash Sivils

6 a.m. Chasing crunched altoids with my scalding hot cinnamon vanilla candy coffee, watching Peter Cushing movies out of one eyeball, enjoying the Colorado cold and quiet of a non-working day courtesy my perpetual insomnia. Thanks Brain, didn't want to sleep anyway.

Gobs to post, bunch of stuff I've made odd barely decipherable notes on and better immortalize before the language is dead. Assuming I don't get distracted by something shiny. Let's begin, shall we?

Ash Sivils is a self-proclaimed "dark artist", whatever that means. Her Deviant Art page is HERE.

Fetus in Fetu

From wiki:

... is a developmental abnormality: a mass of tissue inside the body that more or less resembles a fetus. There are two theories of origin concerning fetus in fetu. One theory is that the mass begins as a normal fetus but becomes enveloped inside its twin.[1] The other theory is that the mass is a highly developed teratoma. Fetus in fetu is estimated to occur in 1 in 500,000 live births.[2]

Maybe splitting hairs (or something) but not quite the same thing as parasitic. Get your freaks straight. And, see? I'm not being entirely inaccurate when I call your unborn a tumor.

Parasitic Twins

From wiki:

... is the result of the processes that produce vanishing twins and conjoined twins, and may represent a continuum between the two. Parasitic twins occur when a twin embryo begins developing in utero, but the pair does not fully separate, and one embryo maintains dominant development at the expense of the other. Unlike conjoined twins, one ceases development during gestation and is vestigial to a mostly fully-formed, otherwise healthy individual twin. The undeveloped twin is defined as parasitic, rather than conjoined, because it is incompletely formed or wholly dependent on the body functions of the complete fetus.

Dermatobia Hominis

What a name. Apocalypse Chic posted an impressive photo of a human botfly recently (below). Here is an excerpt from Parasite Rex on the botfly which paints a vivid picture of what these critters do:

As horses walk through fields, adult botflies lay eggs on their hair, and when the horses lick themselves clean, they swallow the eggs. The eggs take the warmth of their mouths as a cue to hatch, and they chew their way into the horse's tongue. From there they drill down into the horse's stomach, where they anchor themselves and drink its blood. Once they mature they let go their grip and are carried out the horse's digestive tract. They hit the ground and are transformed into adult flies.

In the jar before us, a swatch of horse stomach lay at the bottom, studded with botfly larvae, a cluster of stony little hives. I was fascinated but Hoberg flinched. "That's one thing I can do without." I was glad to see that even a parasitologist had their limits." (139)

So, wanna see it in action? I thought so.



And holy parasite, there is a blog about everything these days, even these little aliens. Go to HUMAN BOT FLY to read and watch more than you could ever hope for. Actually there aren't that many entries but it does include an article on extraction from the tip of the penis so earns a spot here for sheer ew factor.

You're welcome.

Millenium Quote

Millenium is one of my favorite shows. Especially the first couple of seasons. I am a huge undying, arduent fan of Lance Henriksen. Interesting factoid about him, he did not learn to read until age 30 when he taught himself by studying film scripts. Anyway, utterly quotable show.

From episode 19:19 --

PRINE: World War III has already started. People always think that wars happen in the future but they really happen in the past. The fighting is just the inevitable result of events that have already occurred.

Vibrio Cholerae

Still listening to The Ghost Map, although sporadically since I actually have to focus. Can't listen to it while driving for instance.

There is an exceptional description of cholera featured that I'm not going to take the time to transcribe but one of the most disturbing and characteristic symptoms of this disease is "rice water" stools. The appearance comes from flakes of intestine being shed in Niagara Falls amounts of watery diarrhea.

From the wiki article: Vibrio cholerae is a Gram-negative bacterium that produces cholera toxin, an enterotoxin, whose action on the mucosal epithelium lining of the small intestine is responsible for the disease's most salient characteristic, exhaustive diarrhea.[1] In its most severe forms, cholera is one of the most rapidly fatal illnesses known. A healthy person's blood pressure may drop to hypotensive levels within an hour of the onset of symptoms; infected patients may die within three hours if medical treatment is not provided.[1] In a common scenario, the disease progresses from the first liquid stool to shock in 4 to 12 hours, with death following in 18 hours to several days, unless oral (or, in more serious cases, intravenous) rehydration therapy is provided.[3][4]

Steven Johnson (author of GM) discusses the book, including cholera symptoms:

Harvey Carignan

The so-called "Want Ad Killer"

Some interesting Q&A from Serial Killer Central:

What is your most treasured honor? To be loved by a good woman.

Describe the perfect woman. That is a matter of individual taste and what I think is perfect couldn't possibly be of any interest to you.

Nobody knows you're.... And they never will!

What is your biggest regret? That I did not learn the meaning of regret earlier in my life.

What is your advice to kids? Do not have parents.

If you were an animal, what would you be? A human being.

From Mystery Crime Scene, what I assume is an excerpt from Ann Rule's book:

He described himself as: "An instrument of God, one who was acting under His personal instructions. Murder, rape and mutilation are all part of a Grand Plan. God is a figure with a large hood and you can't see his face." Under so-called orders from God, he killed at least 5 and maybe as many as 18 women.

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“I’m not dangerous now... but I won’t say that I wouldn’t be tomorrow.”

Basal Writhing

I've been wanting to read Richard Preston's Cobra Event for some time. Sneaking suspicion that, because it's a novel, he can nix some of the cloak n' dagger he's (understandably) had to use in his non-fiction. Meaning, there may be lots of truth amongst the make-believe. Maybe.

The book opens with a young girl dying from what is presumably some kind of bioweapon-esque disease. Her crash is described in vivid living color but one phrase in particular caught me eye: basal writhing. Apparently a very real phenomenon.

From the book, including the fantastically gross part that precedes it:

Then her teeth sank into her lower lip, cutting through the lip, and a run of blood went down her chin and neck. She bit her lip again, hard, with ferocity, and she made a groaning animal sound. This time, the lip detached and hung down. She pulled her lip in, sucked it into her mouth, and swallowed. Now she was chewing again. Eating the inside of her mouth, chewing her lips, the insides of her cheeks. The movement of her teeth was insectile, like the feeding movementsof an insect larva chewing on its food: intense, greedy, automatic -- a kind of repetitive yanking at the tissues of her mouth. Her tongue suddenly protruded. It was coated with blood and bits of bloody skin. She was eating her mouth from the inside.

"She's biting herself!" he yelled. "Help!"

He got his hands around her head and tried to hold her chin steady, but he couldn't stop her teeth from gnawing. He could see her tongue curling and moving behind her teeth. He was begging for help at the top of his lungs. Jennifer was next to him, weeping, crying for help, too. The bathroom door was open, and students were standing in the hallway, looking in, stunned with fright. Most were crying. Several of them had run to call 911.

The girl's body went into a back-and-forth thrashing movement. Then she began to writhe. It was a type of writhing associated with damage to the base of the brain, the midbrain, a knot of structures at the top of the spinal cord. The movements were what is known as basal writhing.

From Merck: Chorea, Athetosis and Hemiballismus

"Chorea is repetitive, brief, jerky, rapid involuntary movements that start in one part of the body and move abruptly, unpredictably, and often continuously to another part. Athetosis is a continuous stream of slow, flowing, writhing involuntary movements. Hemiballismus is a type of chorea, usually involving violent, flinging involuntary movements of one arm."

From Neuroscience Notes: Basal Ganglia, Dr. Stephen Gislason

"There abundant examples of movement disorders that emerge when components of the basal ganglia are damaged. Involuntary movements include tremors (rhythmic, oscillatory movements), athetosis (slow, writhing movements), chorea (abrupt movements of the limbs and facial muscles), ballism (violent movements), and dystonia (persistent postures, grotesque movements and postures)."

Thunderstruck

Thunderstruck by Eric Larson



"He was shorter than I expected." ~ the author upon meeting Dr. Crippen at Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors (pictured above)

Thunderstruck is about one of Britain's most notorious killers, Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen. Larson is also responsible for the incredible, award-winning account of another Dr. H.H. (Holmes), The Devil in the White City. This one is written with the same formula, ping-ponging between the story of Dr. Crippen and Guglielmo Marconi, the man most famous for developing wireless communication. Two entirely separate sagas that start out seeming so unrelated, slowly come together until they are seamlessly intertwined.


(Crippen)

With Larson's signature ease and thrilling pace, we see how the wireless telegram (the Marconigram) became a crucial element and key character in the story. Employing this narrative style fleshes out the story so beautifully. It reminds me somewhat of City Confidental. We do not just get a history of the criminal in question but all of the details of the late Victorian/Edwardian age which were as much a part of Crippen's character as how he walked and talked.


(Marconi)

There are a few reasons this case is so infamous. The man, the murder (or, more accurately, the disposal) and the continuing mystery.

Crippen was an enigma. Short, scrawny, meek, always described as "kind-hearted" and, by all appearances, utterly submissive to his wife Cora but the acts he was accused of are Hyde-ishly horrible, truly grotesque. Maybe opposites do attract because this couple was like night and day. His wife is generally described as a brash, wannabe opera singer; loud, flirtatious, big and boisterous, constantly critical of and abusive towards her husband. By contrast, Crippen was quiet, awkward, mild-mannered.

Killing a spouse isn't that novel. But dissecting, disemboweling, decapitating, eviscerating, de-boning; that's another thing entirely. The detailed description the reader gets here surpasses anything I've ever encountered regarding this case. One of those buggy-eyed wow moments. The murderer literally filleted his victim. What was discovered buried in Crippen's cellar was just a "deflated balloon" of skin and a pile of organs (although nothing to indicate the body's sex). There were no bones, not even the tiniest of the feet or hands, nor were any ever recovered. The amount of pure sweaty work this would require is just astonishing and doesn't seem to fit Crippen's physicality (or lack thereof). Not only that, but after all of this allegedly took place Crippen was still his same old self, seemingly unphased by any of it. "Could Crippen have done all of this and, further, could he have done it without help? If so, how had he steeled himself and how had he then managed to erase the knowledge of the act from his eyes and visage?" (320)

The book is plumped out with a brilliant cast of characters, many of which will be familiar -- namely Dr. Bernard Spilsbury, the father of forensic science, and Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard, investigator on the Jack the Ripper case. There are also several tantalizing nuggets of doubt regarding Crippen's guilt. Not the focus of the book by any means but not artistic license either -- the question of whether Crippen was wrongly accused and executed came up as recently as 2007 when forensic experts, using DNA testing, declared that the body identified as Cora's was not hers. Interesting by highly controversial/contested findings.

Larson has a genuine talent for breaking up scientific technical stuff into easily digestable chunks. Nothing about the Marconi portion is difficult to understand. Also, his investigative skills and the breadth of his research are beyond reproach. Do not miss the "Notes" section where a ton of fascinating bits edited out of the main treatment are collected.


(Crippen and Le Neve)

There is a single half page story tucked into the arrest timeline that struck me. Kind of an aside, it doesn't have anything directly to do with the crime. During the pursuit there were a lot of mistaken identifications made. Upon discovering her corpse, one lady was thought to have been Crippen's mistress, Ethel Le Neve. In the midst of devouring this book with lightning speed I was stopped to a standstill by the suicide note. "Life to me, alas! appeared unsmiling." I will never forget those words.

Finally, the way this book ends blew me away. I went through so many emotions in about 0.3 seconds, so powerfully moved, that two thousand years from now forensic anthropologists will likely find evidence of that final sentence on my bones. Brilliance. Pure, utter, sparkling electric brilliance. I loved it.



All this to say, very good book. Highly recommended.

Dot dot dot dash dot dash.