That's the world of crime...

I love scary stories, always have. The fact of the matter was, my mother sensed my intelligence and risked it once by buying me my first Stephen King novel when I was in the sixth grade. She sensed my reading prowness, coupled it with juvenile purient interests and then bought the book at a garage sale.

I was hooked into the grotesque.

Kinda explains my first marriage, come to think of it.

Time passes and my tastes mature. I move up to Clive Barker and Robert McGammon. Then I see the movie "Silence of the Lambs" and have to review it for a newspaper I was working for. To make the story fuller, I went ahead and found Thomas Harris' text and expanded on the topic.

And I discovered that sometimes truth is, by far, scarier than fiction.

Also, scare-ily like my first marriage.

Today's writing topic is what famous unsolved crime would I like to know the answer of. Well, the fact is, like Sherlock Holmes, I've read as many books as I can about good old Jack the Ripper. So much so, I have even developed theories as to he might be, but have never realy followed up in the reality department.

But, just like every other serial killer prior to him, I wanted to know the ins and outs. I could never hurt a fly, yet, here was someone who could drap intestines around someone's neck. That was where the fera came from and my interests--what could make the average person follow through on such a thing and yet walk amoungst us afterwards?

I would love to know who Jack really, really is. But here's the trick, frankly. I wouldn't tell a soul. The murders are passed now, everyone would question the answer as it was anyways. But I would love to find the solution and then apply it to the facts. The why. The where. The reality.

But the mystery is part of Mr. Ripper's mystique and I can never destroy that. Sure, it might give decesdents of his history some closure.

*) As I elaborate, I would also do the same for Zodiac. His trail was so twisted, I just want to see the answer just for the closure. But would say little--but his issue was that, in my research, he is either deceased or was captured, since we've heard so little of him since the seventies.

That's my story.