Product Description
by Michael L. Hawley (Author)
Hidden from history for over a century, the name of Scotland Yard's key suspect in the mysterious Jack the Ripper murders was rediscovered in 1993. He was arrested, jumped bail, sneaked out of England--and then the murders stopped. Tracing his footsteps through Victorian London has revealed haunting finds. A macabre wax museum operated just yards away from the first vicious attack, in which the proprietor callously showcased explicit wax models of the fiend's victims, presented to the public just hours after each untimely death. A clandestine police investigation was being quietly pursued, based upon a Jekyll-Hyde theory that the killer was harvesting female organs in his quest to create an elixir of life. Surprisingly, actor-producer Richard Mansfield's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was showing at the famous Lyceum Theatre in London during the 1888 Autumn of terror; incredibly, the employees of the theater were members of an organization that was also in search of the precious elixir. Recent studies on the Jack the Ripper murders performed by experts in forensic science, sociology, and criminal profiling support the conclusion that the person linked to these graphic killings would be someone interested in the three types of anatomical organs taken from the victims; someone like this very suspect.
Author Biography
Michael Hawley holds a master's degree in invertebrate paleontology and secondary science education from the State University of New York, College of Buffalo, and a bachelor's degree in geology and geophysics from Michigan State University. He has published ten research articles in "Ripperologist," "Whitechapel Society Journal," and "Casebook Examiner." He is the author of "Curse of the Bayou Beast" (fiction, 2015), "Jack's Lantern" (fiction, 2014), "The Ripper's Hellbroth" (fiction, 2013), and "Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight" (nonfiction, 2010). He has been involved in genealogical research since 1992, which ultimately led to his interest in Ripperology research. He is a commander and naval aviator in the U.S. Navy (retired), and is currently enjoying a career as a secondary earth science and chemistry teacher at Tonawanda City High School. He resides with his wife and six children in Greater Buffalo, New York.
