The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

Further Reading

Barton Gellman, “Pop! Went the Tale of the Bubblegum Spiked with Sex Hormones”, Washington Post, 28 July 1997

JACK THE RIPPER

Between August and November 1888, the Whitechapel district in the East End of London was the scene of five—possibly six—slayings by a serial killer, dubbed by the press “Jack the Ripper”. The murdered were all female prostitutes, and all—except for Elizabeth Stride—were mutilated.

The first slaying, that of Polly Nicholls, took place on 31 August. Annie Chapman was murdered on 8 September. Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were both killed on 30 September and Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November. These are the “canonical five” Ripper victims, although some “Ripperologists” consider that Martha Tabram, fatally stabbed on 6 August 1888, should also be included on the butcher’s slate.

The identity of the perpetrator was, and is, a mystery. It is widely assumed that he (maybe she) had some medical training, based on the scalpel-like weapon used and the mutilations of the corpses, which showed a knowledge of anatomy. More than one hundred individuals have at some stage been proposed as the Ripper, but the most sensational suspect remains Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence—the son of the Prince of Wales, third in line to the throne. Dr Thomas Stowell nominated Eddy as the Ripper in an article in The Criminologist in 1970, suggesting that Eddy’s syphilis drove him insane, thus homicidal. Clearly a homicidal duke with a habit of mutilation was not good PR for the Royal Family, so they quickly bundled Eddy off to a private mental hospital, from which he briefly escaped to murder Mary Kelly, before being re-incarcerated. According to Stowell, Eddy died in the asylum of syphilitic “softening of the brain”, and not of flu as the Palace claimed. The Duke of Clarence supposedly learned disembowelling techniques on hunting expeditions. The Prince Eddy accusation was substantially repeated by Frank Spiering in Prince Jack. Like Stowell, Spiering claims to have found the necessary proofs in the private papers of Sir William Withey Gull, the royal physician. Ripperologists, however, point out that royal court records show that Eddy was not in London on the dates of the murders.

As cause, rather than perpetrator, Prince Eddy figures in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight, which posits a mass homicidal conspiracy instigated by the Royal Family to cover up Eddy’s secret marriage to a commoner named Alice Mary Crook. And not just any old commoner, but a Catholic one, thus violating the 1701 Act of Settlement. In brief, Knight has Prince Eddy slumming it down the East End accompanied by artist Walter Sickert, where he meets, beds and marries Alice Crook. When Grandmama—who happens to be Queen Victoria—hears about the marriage and its issue, a baby girl, she is not only scandalized but fearful that the news that a Catholic is in line to the throne will cause riots in the streets of Britain. To keep the kingdom safe, Victoria orders Lord Salisbury to deal with the matter; in turn he enlists help of Sir William Gull (yes, him again) and Salisbury/Gull have Eddy and Alice kidnapped from their love nest on Cleveland Street, with Eddy hospitalized under Gull’s care and Alice put in an asylum. Eddy dies from syphilis in 1892, and Alice dies insane in 1920. What about the Ripper murders? According to Knight, Eddy and Alice’s daughter was being nannied by one Mary Kelly when the love nest was raided. She then committed the child to the care of nuns, before returning to the East End and falling into drink and prostitution. At the behest of her friends, Mary Kelly began blackmailing the Royal Family—their royal money for her silence over the Eddy and Alice tryst. To make absolutely certain Mary and her chums—Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman and Liz Stride—kept their mouths shut, Gull and his coachman, John Netley, murdered them all, plus Catherine Eddowes, whom they mistook for Kelly.

As a physician, Gull certainly had the knowledge to perform the spectacular dissection of Mary Kelly, who was skinned, her abdomen emptied, her womb placed at her feet. One of her hands was placed in the evacuated abdominal cavity. Her intestines were placed over her left shoulder. Her heart was missing, as was the foetus she was known to be carrying.

Gull, who died fifteen months after Kelly, escaped detection, Knight believes, because the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Anderson, was a member of the conspiracy. What bound the principal conspirators, aside from their desire to carry out the royal will, was that they—Gull, Salisbury, Anderson —were all Freemasons. Knight discloses that the murders were actually re-enactments of the murder of Mason Hirem Abiff in Solomon’s Temple by Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum. The real evidence of the Masonic connection comes in the placing of the victims in specific locations, most dramatically that of Mitre Square, a “Mitre” and “Square” both being Masonic tools.

Does Knight’s book live up to its subtitle, The Final Solution? Alas not. Knight’s principal source of information was Joseph Sickert, the artist’s grandson. Joseph Sickert later recanted some of his most sensational claims. William Gull was also six foot tall, much taller than the eyewitness accounts of the Ripper. He was also seventy years old at the time of the murders.

Additionally, there is nothing to suggest that Gull (or Anderson) were Masons. It is also difficult to believe that the Crown would have resorted to serial killing to protect itself when invocation of the Royal Marriages Act would have set aside a marriage between Eddy and Annie because it was illegal, Eddy being underage and not having obtained the Queen’s consent. Lastly, almost all experts agree that the Ripper was insane. And Dr Gull does not fit the profile.

Further Reading

Stephen Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, 1976

Donald Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, 2004

www.casebook.org

MICHAEL JACKSON

Was Wacko Jacko whacked? The singer had not finished moon-walking off the mortal coil on 25 June 2009, before the w.w.w. went w-w-wild with rumours that he had been murdered. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took pole position in the suspect stakes, the reasoning being that the King of Pop’s demise handily diverted media attention from his crackdown in Tehran to Bel Air. Ahmadinejad’s rivals in responsibility for the deed were a criminal syndicate based in Russia, China, or was it Langley (HQ of the CIA), who controlled Jackson through his addiction to anaesthetics and raked in the moolah? Worried that Jackson was seeking to escape their nefarious clutches and go public, the gang/CIA had him bumped.

Theories that Jackson was murdered are rivalled only by the theories that Jackson is alive and well. Jacko is hanging out with Elvis south of the border, down Mexico way. The kings live! Why did Jackson fake his own death? Pressure of fame. Money. Or more precisely its lack. The hit-meister may have sold 61 million albums in the USA, but he was still in the red to the tune of $400 million. Aside from his habit of spending, spending, spending (the Neverland Ranch cost $14.6 million alone), his bank account had been sucked dry by lawsuits over his alleged child abuse. As conspiracists have it, by counterfeiting his death, Jacko could settle all his debts and still make money. Indeed, by demising, he would rekindle interest in his music, making it a very smart career move indeed. Death also had the advantage of being an inviolable excuse for cancelling his fifty-date comeback tour in the UK, which was shaping up to be Bad rather than a Thriller due his ill health. To take Jackson’s place on the mortuary slab, he and his accomplices (his family, chiefly) found a terminally ill double. To make sure nobody noticed the switch, the family therefore cancelled the announced lying in state at Neverland.

However, some think M. J. Jackson died of natural causes years before, and his body was rushed into a makeshift grave at Neverland. The police—who were afterwards paid handsomely to keep their lips sealed—had no difficulty in identifying the corpse because it was wearing a single glove. An impersonator then took over the singing duties. When he outlived his usefulness he was offed, and it is his body that was found on 25 June 2009.

Rewind to reality: Jackson died while in his bed at his rented mansion at 100 North Carolwood Drive in the