This is a walk made in the autumn of 2018, 32 years AFTER the murder of prime minister Olof Palme of Sweden. It follows his path that fatal evening. People in the streets have, of course, nothing to do with the case. The murder remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

On Friday, 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET (22:21 UTC), Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbet Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

 

Christer Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal he was acquitted. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in late September 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.

 

Police said that a taxi driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm, and two girls in a nearby car tried to assist. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 00:06 CET on 1 March 1986. The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Sequence of events

Cinema decision

Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.[1]

 

Grand Cinema

 

Grand cinema.

 

Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.

 

Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.[2]

 

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, then continued past the Dekorima shop which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan.

 

At 23:21, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. Palme at point-blank range and fired a second shot at Mrs. Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen

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IRELAND'S UNSOLVED MYSTERY ...

 

The Irish Crown Jewels were the heavily-jewelled star and badge regalia of the Sovereign and Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick. They were stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907 along with the collars of five knights of the Order. The theft was never solved and the jewels never recovered.

 

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PRUDENCE PEACH: "WE PROMISE ... we have NOTHING to do with the missing Irish Crown Jewels ... although my Mom could have done it ... she IS that old !!"

 

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Prudence is wearing her little green dress and crown set by kuloft ... we got it for Christmas ... but saved it for March 17th! :)

 

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Some of our BFA Models are rummaging around our wardrobes and closets today ... to see what FUN we can have ... by the WEARING OF THE GREEN ... and having some fun little photo shoots ... in "The Theme of Green" ...

 

:)

 

xo

 

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Wishing you ALL a Happy ST. PATRICK'S DAY !!

 

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Can you identify it now?

 

I like this one on black, too!

Artist | Emil Schwabe (1856-1924 in Germany)

Title |

Ungelöste Fragen

Unsolved Questions (1887)

 

oil on canvas

80 x 120.2 cm

 

Exhibitor | Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Exhibition | Alles Kunst?! Von Aldi Bis Rubens

 

sammlung.kunstpalast.de/en/objects/141754/ungeloste-fragen

 

Three different temperaments - but more importantly three different political attitudes - meet under the portrait of the then Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. At the time this painting was created, great social inequality was causing political unrest. The gentleman on the left can be interpreted as a conservative, the one in the middle as a reformer and the one on the right as a representative of Christian-based politics. After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Emil Schwabe continued to live in this city on the Rhine for almost 20 years before moving to Berlin in 1898.

  

MKD100

La llorona,, by Juana Alicia, 2004

see : www.juanaalicia.com/content/57/

"La Llorona (The Weeping Woman), Juana Alicia’s latest mural project, picks up where Las Lechugueras left off. This time Juana Alicia takes a look at environmental struggles involving women around the world. The new mural takes its title from the much-debated Mexican myth of the woman who allegedly drowned her children and is damned to weep for them. La Llorona weaves the stories of women in Bolivia, India, and at the U.S. Border together. It highlights Bolivians in Cochabamba who have fought to keep Bechtel Corporation from buying the water rights in their country; Indian farm workers in the Narmada Valley protesting in the flooded waters of their homes against their government’s irresponsible dam projects; and the women in black protesting the unsolved murders of women in Juarez, in the shadow of the Rio Bravo and the maquiladoras (sweatshops).

 

Juana Alicia believes that globalization is not inherently bad, but when it takes the form of corporate forces trying to sell people their own water, or when it begins to spread poverty through women, then she must raise her brush in protest."

This is a walk made in the autumn of 2018, 32 years AFTER the murder of prime minister Olof Palme of Sweden. It follows his path that fatal evening. People in the streets have, of course, nothing to do with the case. The murder remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

On Friday, 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET (22:21 UTC), Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbet Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

 

Christer Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal he was acquitted. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in late September 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.

 

Police said that a taxi driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm, and two girls in a nearby car tried to assist. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 00:06 CET on 1 March 1986. The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Sequence of events

Cinema decision

Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.[1]

 

Grand Cinema

 

Grand cinema.

 

Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.

 

Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.[2]

 

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, then continued past the Dekorima shop which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan.

 

At 23:21, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. Palme at point-blank range and fired a second shot at Mrs. Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen

Alexander, AR, looking northeast.

Be patient all that is unsolved in your heart.. love the questions..like locked rooms and books that now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers,which cannot given [to] you..because you would not be able to live them.. And the point is, to live everything. Live the question now.Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live.....into the answer. ( Rainer Maria Rike)

 

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Built in 1901, this Hawaiian Gothic-style hotel, mixing elements of the Queen Anne, Classical Revival, Beaux Arts, and Renaissance Revival styles, was designed by Oliver G. Traphagen and built by the Lucas Brothers for Walter Chamberlain Peacock as the first large hotel on Waikiki. Expanded in 1918 with the addition of two six-story concrete wings and a large rooftop addition on the original building, the hotel has changed scale and massing considerably from its original design, but maintains its original facade, roof, and decorative trim and ornament. The first hotel on Waikiki, the Moana featured 75 guest rooms with bathrooms and telephone service, a main parlor, salon, billiard room, and library, and a main reception area on the first floor, a grand staircase, ionic fluted columns inside the main lobby, an electric elevator, and an open two-story portion of the lobby ringed by balustrades on the second floor, with the hotel being considered very modern and luxurious for its time. In 1904, a banyan tree was planted in the courtyard on the ocean side of the hotel by Jared Smith, Director of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, which has since grown to be 75 feet tall and 150 feet wide. The hotel proved a bit too ambitious for the investment Peacock had put into it, and it was sold to Alexander Young in 1905 after encountering financial difficulties. Following Young’s death in 1910, the building became the property of the Territorial Hotel Company, founded by Young, which expanded the hotel with two wings in 1918, but went bankrupt during the Great Depression, with ownership then coming under the Matson Navigation Company. Various famous guests stayed at the hotel over the years, including the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VIII in 1920, author Agatha Christie and her husband in 1922, and Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, whom mysteriously died of strychnine poisoning in the hotel, though her murder remains unsolved. The original building features lots of classical Ionic columns, a hipped roof with broad overhanging eaves and brackets, clapboard siding, arched openings at the lanais with fleur-de-lis motif panels between them and supported by doric columns, decorative balustrades, one-over-one double-hung windows in singles and groups. In the center of the building is a tower with oxeye windows below the main roofline, doric pilasters on the corners, a lanai on the sixth floor with arched openings and a long row of french doors, and a tall porte cochere in the center of the first and second floors of the tower with fluted ionic columns, a roofline wrapped with a decorative balustrade, and an architrave featuring festoons, dentils, and brackets. The building also features lanais on the fifth floor below the roofline with decorative columns and sawn balustrades supported by brackets and featuring decorative trim, lanais with arched openings and sawn balustrades on the ends of the fifth floor of the original side wings, large arched openings at the base of the original side wings with large windows and juliet balconies, accented with circular panels featuring fleur-de-lis motifs, and crowned with another juliet balcony supported by columns, hipped dormers, and a multi-tier lanai on the rear of the building facing the ocean. The hotel was expanded with two Renaissance Revival-style six-story wings on either side in 1918, which featured concrete construction and stucco-clad exteriors with arched and rectangular double-hung one-over-one windows with decorative trim surrounds, open staircases on the front and rear facades with arched exterior openings, juliet balconies, small ionic columns, brackets, and corner pilasters, a hipped roof with broad overhanging bracketed eaves, small rooftop towers with hipped roofs, and arched vents, and pilasters at the corners of the wings themselves, dividing the side facades into three segments. After the construction of the wings in 1918, a large breezeway with double-hung windows making up most of the exterior was constructed across the ridge of the hipped roof of the original hotel building, running straight through the original building’s tower in the middle, which saw the addition of a similar rooftop tower with arched vents to the two 1918 wings. The hotel was renovated multiple times in the 20th Century, with the loss of the original porte cochere, reconfiguration of the interior, and the addition of bungalows across Kalakaua Avenue in 1925, which led to the hotel becoming known as the Moana-Seaside Hotel & Bungalows during the period between the 1920s and 1950s. A new hotel, known as the Surfrider, was built immediately Diamond Head of the Moana Hotel by the Matson Navigation Company in 1952, which stood 8 stories tall, towering over the older hotel next door. The hotel’s bungalows were demolished the following year and replaced by the Princess Kaiulani Hotel, with the Moana Hotel, Surfrider Hotel, and Princess Kaiulani Hotel being sold to Sheraton Hotels and Resorts in 1959. The Moana Hotel and Surfrider Hotel were sold to the Kyo-Ya Company, led by Japanese industrialist Kenji Osano, in 1963, but remained under the Sheraton banner. In 1969, a new and much taller Surfrider Hotel was built immediately Ewa of the Moana Hotel, with a new taller tower being added to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in 1970. After the completion of the new Surfrider Hotel, the old Surfrider, built in 1952, became the Moana Ocean Lanai, and later, the Diamond Head Tower of the Moana Hotel. The Moana Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1989, the Moana Hotel was restored under the direction of architect Virginia D. Murison to its 1920s exterior appearance, with the restoration of deteriorated exterior elements, interior common spaces, and reconstruction of the original porte cochere, as well as better integration of the historic hotel with the adjacent 1952 and 1969 buildings on either side. Now known as the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, the resort maintained the historic charm of the original Moana Hotel and conserved the hotel’s iconic banyan tree, while boasting 793 modern guest rooms, a new pool, with the project winning many preservation awards. The hotel has since been rebranded as the Westin Moana Surfrider Hotel.

Maker: Giraudon's Artist

Born: France

Active: France

Medium: albumen print

Size: 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.

Location: France

 

Object No. 2014.590

Shelf: B-16

 

Publication:

 

Other Collections:

 

Notes: The photographer called “Giraudon’s Artist” remains one of the unsolved mysteries of photography history. Adolphe Giraudon (1849–1929), born in the farming community of Charost, France, opened a photographic library in Paris in 1877 at 15 rue Bonaparte, specializing in topographic, architectural, genre, and nude studies for use by architects, artists and designers and taken by an international who’s who from the Italian Alinari Brothers to the Scottish Valentine & Sons. Available also was a group of photographs of pastoral activities, presumably commissioned by Giraudon, made by an unidentified photographer working near the Fontainbleau forest. They echoed the imagery and compositions of Millet and the other Barbizon painters. The series appears to have been short-lived as none were found in the Giraudon archives nor were they listed in his period catalogues of various works for sale. These photographs remained largely unknown until a few groups emerged about thirty years ago and in the absence of a name, were indentified as being by “Giraudon’s Artist”.

 

To view our archive organized by themes and subjects, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS

 

For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE PHOTO HISTORY TIMELINE COLLECTION

The film Stargate (1994, directed by Roland Emmerich) forms the basis of a successful science-fiction franchise spanning four television series with 380 episodes and two direct-to-DVD films. Its premise is an incredible archaeological discovery in Egypt: In 1928, a mysterious artifact is unearthed near the pyramids of Giza - a giant ring, fifteen feet in diameter, inscribed with strange characters, and made of a metal which does not occur naturally on Earth - the eponymous ‘Stargate,’ so-called by accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions. For more than sixty years, no one is able to decipher the unknown symbols that presumably hold the key to its function, until the arrival of wunderkind Egyptologist Dr. Daniel Jackson, recruited because the artifact’s apparent non- terrestrial origin and immense age lend credence to his unorthodox theories. When we first encounter him, Jackson is giving a passionate lecture arguing for a much greater antiquity of the pyramids and the Sphinx than conventional Egyptology will allow. Stubborn, elitist professors in the audience pillory him without mercy, asking whether he thought men from Atlantis built the pyramids - “or Martians perhaps!” Not Martians, but close. Jackson divines the purpose of the giant ring by recognizing the strange symbols as stylized star constellations: as the name implies, the Stargate is a threshold to the universe. If one enters the correct ‘address’ of seven of the thirty-nine symbols engraved on its surface, the gate opens a conduit between itself and an identical counterpart on another planet, much as one telephone dials another. Once Jackson and a team of soldiers step through this artificial ‘wormhole,’2 they are hurled across the universe within seconds and, emerging from the Stargate on the other side, find

1 I wish to thank Dylan M. Burns for helping this Egyptologist navigate the religionswissenschaftliche literature that has been essential for the story told on the following pages. I am furthermore very grateful to Ingbert Jüdt, Uwe Neuhold, and Jonas Richter for generously providing me with digital copies of some of their works cited here.

2 The popular term for a so-called ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridge,’ a sort of shortcut through space-time that has been hypothesized by astrophysicists. themselves on the desert planet Abydos, inside an Egyptian temple near a virtual duplicate of the Great Pyramid of Giza - total vindication of Jackson’s theories. The American explorers soon discover that the planet Abydos is inhabited by the descendants of Ancient Egyptians who were enslaved millennia ago by an alien tyrant who, having chanced upon Earth and primitive humans, created Egyptian civilization, assumed the persona of the sun god Ra, and took thousands of slaves through the Stargate to Abydos to work in the planet’s mines, harvesting the precious metal from which the Stargates are made and which serves as the foundation of Ra’s technological might. With impeccable timing, Ra himself soon appears in his ominous pyramid-shaped spaceship and lands on the pyramid near the gate. The Americans take up the fight against the god-king and his legions of warriors, who wield high-tech laser weapons and conceal their faces behind frightful helmets resembling the head of a falcon - the ‘Horus guards’ - while their captain Anubis wears the likeness of a jackal’s head. After the Americans are able to convince the Abydonians to rebel, Ra is eventually vanquished after a fierce battle at the pyramid, the symbol of his despotism. In the television series Stargate SG-1, the ‘Stargate Command’ battles many more (usually Egyptian or otherwise ‘Oriental’) false gods like Ra and liberates planet after planet from their despotic grasp.

From a critical standpoint, Stargate gives the initial impression of a very confused pop-cultural salad, randomly tossed together out of the vegetable bins of sci-fi, American military triumphalism, and a lot of Orientalizing Egyptomania. Yet the film was a lasting hit that developed into a franchise, complete with television spinoffs (four serials, from 1997 to 2011), merchandising, and even Stargate- inspired conspiracy-theories. Meanwhile, other films such as Mission to Mars (2000), Alien vs. Predator (2004), or Prometheus (2012) also proved commercially successful ventures in exploring the theme of extraterrestrial races interfering in Earth’s past, as have ‘non-fiction’ series such as Ancient Aliens (eleven seasons and counting). What is the cultural resonance of a story like that of Stargate, and where does such a story come from?

The present contribution seeks to address these questions by way of a multi- faceted analysis addressing questions of reception of antiquity and Egypt, as well as sociology of religion. Following general methodological remarks about reception-theory which are indebted primarily to the literary theory of reception aesthetics as well as a mnemohistorical approach in the vein of Jan Assmann, I proceed to identify the traditional images of Egypt that the film harnesses, and how they are embedded in the appropriation of contemporary discourses. One of these is the focus of my essay - the so-called Ancient Astronaut discourse (henceforth: AAD or just AA for other attributive instances of ‘Ancient Astronaut’), or Preastronautics, popularized above all by Erich von Däniken, who claimed that ancient mythologies commemorate extraterrestrial visits in Earth’s distant past. I proceed to examine the centrality of Ancient Egypt in the AAD, starting with narratives about ancient Oriental and Egyptian wisdom that have been contested since late antiquity until they were discredited around the eighteenth century and pushed to the cultural fringe, thus becoming open to appropriation by new religious currents. I illustrate how esoteric currents, particularly Theosophy, as well as popular culture and an increasing belief in extraterrestrials, all paved the way for the birth of today’s AAD.

I will then focus on the ‘Egyptian front’ of this discourse, showing that Stargate responds above all to the theories of Zecharia Sitchin and Robert Bauval. A close look at key works of the genre creates a strong impression that (the) Stargate was in a way ‘prepared’ by an increasingly technological language applied to the Great Pyramid as a literal ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Post-1994, the AAD exhibits a stunning development as the fictional origins of the Stargate device are silently dropped or explained away by conspiracy theories. I try to account for this phenomenon by adapting, in the vein of recent studies of fiction-based religions, Jean Braudillard’s theory of postmodernity. I argue that we are dealing with a ‘simulacrum,’ something that has become ‘hyper-real,’ supporting Carole Cusack’s assertion that “it is necessary to posit a definition of ‘religion’ that can harmonize with fiction and invention.”3 The AAD, we will observe, resembles in several facets a religious discourse to be located within the fringe realm of ‘occulture’ as defined by Christopher Partridge, particularly in its deep entanglement with popular culture. It serves as a neo-mythology able to re- enchant the world, to present an attractive anti-authoritarian option for identity formation and yet functionally equivalent to religion (according to traditional modern definitions) in its creationist tenets. In summary, the aims of this contribution are essentially twofold: One, to showcase the emergence of the AAD out of religious discourse as well as its continued religious functions despite all differences and pretensions to the contrary, and second, to sketch a concise literary history of this emergence itself, as well as the continuous mutual influence between the AAD and popular culture, exemplified via the rather spectacular case of Stargate. Throughout these observations, we will encounter an imaginary Egypt as providing both the primary building blocks and the general backdrop of ancient mystery from and upon which the AAD’s flying pyramids are built.

2. Reception Theory, Cultural Memory, and the Mnemohistorical Approach

In the late 1960s, German literary theorists, beginning with Hans-Robert Jauß, developed the reception theory of reader-response criticism, or Rezeptionsästhetik.4 Its defining characteristic is the focus on the reader not as a passive recipient of preexisting authorial meaning, but as the active producer of meaning that may or may not conform to the meaning originally intended by the author.5 When the Ancient Egyptians gave expression to their worldview through their art, literature, architecture, etc., they too were encoding ‘authorial meaning’ which Egyptologists attempt to recover through reconstruction of the original cultural context of Egyptian texts and artefacts. In Gunter Grimm’s terms, these are “interpretations [...] assessed in terms of their adequacy (Adäquanz) in reflecting authorial intentions”6 - something that only became possible in 1822 with the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script and the birth of Egyptology. Preceding this paradigm shift, and since then accompanying and fighting it, lies a long history of Ägyptenrezeption - a web of passionate constructions of Egypt whose primary threads go back to ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. These cultures incorporated ideas of Egypt into founding narratives that were of central importance for what I call, following Jan and Aleida Assmann, their respective ‘cultural memory’ - the memory (as opposed to Egyptology’s domain: factual knowledge) of Egypt in the West.7 The basic theory, laid out extensively by J. Assmann in 1992’s Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (published in English only in 2011), sets out to accomplish what Assmann’s most important predecessor, Maurice Halbwachs, had not considered: “expanding his theory of memory into the realm of a theory of culture.”8 His most brilliant case studies (most notably 1997’s Moses the Egyptian) emerged where Assmann qui Egyptologist applied to his main area of expertise (i.e., pharaonic Egypt) the notion that culture is, for all intents and purposes, the sum of its ‘memories’ (i.e., cultural constructions imagined as such, be they true or not) of founding myths that are shared by and thus consolidate a community of people. Important groundwork for this endeavor was laid in the concluding chapter of 1996’s Ägypten. Eine Sinngeschichte, where Assmann turns from the ancient Egyptians’ conceptions of self and world to the outside perspective - the history of the memory of Egypt that survives to this day, “enshrined in the cultural memory of western civilization.”9 Assmann emphasizes that identity-forming discourses of both Greco-Roman culture as well as Judeo-Christian religiosity - the two main ‘pillars’ on which Western cultural identity rests - look back to Ancient Egypt as their mythical place of origin. With respect to the overarching theme of this volume, these are the two most basic ‘master narratives’ of Western conceptions of Egypt: For the Greeks, it served as the glorified vault of mysteries and arcane wisdom from which civilization and knowledge of the gods itself reached Hellas; for Judaism (and then Christianity), it served as the abhorred prototype of false religion and the house of slavery - something to be resisted and overcome, instead of admired.10 As we will see, both images inform the representation of Egypt in Stargate. In adopting the premises of reception aesthetics and mnemohistory, I will consequently focus not on the veracity, but on the history and cultural relevance of the ideas that we will encounter.

3. Stargate as an Ancient Astronaut narrative

Stargate feels a bit like two movies shoehorned into one. The approximate first third covers the mythical story of Daniel Jackson’s vindication: An orphan, outcast, and misunderstood genius finds new meaning in life as he cracks an ancient mystery and is finally led to a portal to another world, where he finds himself before a giant pyramid and says blissfully, “I knew it.” At this point, his journey of (self-)discovery is essentially over, and Stargate switches gears as the American soldiers take it upon themselves to liberate the helpless and clueless ‘orientals’ from their evil God-king - a demonizing, biblical vision of Egypt as a ‘house of slavery’ that fuels a neocolonialist narrative negotiating legitimizing strategies about American military intervention in the Middle East shortly after the First Gulf War.11 Jackson’s solving of the Stargate mystery, however, is bound up with the so-called Ancient Astronaut theory (also called ‘Pre- astronautics,’ and, increasingly ‘Paleo-SETI’ [Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence]) which constitutes a popular discourse in Western industrialized societies and particularly the German-speaking countries.12 Its (in)famous founding father is, of course, Erich von Däniken, whose 1968 bestseller Chariots of the Gods? is the prototypical incarnation of the entire genre, as both his specific points and rhetorical tactics are retreaded to this day. As the ‘Bible’ of this discourse was written in German, its organized adherents are found predominantly in the germanophone sphere, and most in-depth scholarship on the subject is written in German as well (a significant exception being the work of Jason Colavito).13

In Chariots, von Däniken famously professed the idea that the gods of ancient mythology were really extraterrestrial visitors who were mistaken for deities by primitive humans, and that ancient writings and various (alleged) anomalies inthe archaeological record attest to the visits and the technology of these visitors. Von Däniken’s theory has been described by Andreas Grünschloß as a ‘ufological’ or ‘pre-astronautic Euhemerism,’ as it resembles a belief held by the philosopher Euhemerus (fl. 300 CE) that the gods were really great kings of yore who had over time been deified due to their remarkable innovations and achievements.14 As will be shown, the AAD was at the peak of its popularity in the mid-1990s when it was used as the premise for Stargate. Although it may seem that its popularity has diminished somewhat since then, the AAD is still very much alive and influential - in fact, I suspect that it is less conspicuous today because it has become normalized as an element of popular culture and lost some of its original shock value. The ‘gods’ are here to stay, and they continue to inspire ‘worship’.

4. The Road to von Däniken: Ancient Wisdom through the Ages

We have seen above that the mystification of Egypt originates with the ancient Greeks. One may specifically point to the transformation of Middle- and Neoplatonic philosophical speculation into religious narratives (such as the various incarnations of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.) in late antiquity, sharing as a common legitimizing strategy the reference to a primordial wisdom possessed by the ‘barbarians’ of the Orient, including the Jews, Brahmans, Magi, and, of course, the Egyptians, usually represented by the god of wisdom Thoth, known to the Hellenistic world as Hermes Trismegistus. It was debated whether Platonic wisdom was really wisdom derived from the ancient Orient, hence the moniker ‘Platonic Orientalism.’15 In these narratives, Egypt was one of the key players: “(N)ot only was Greek philosophy seen as derived from oriental sources, but the Egyptians in particular could even claim to be the true founders of philosophy as such.”16 This controversy of how Greeks (and later, Christians) should evaluate the ‘wisdom of the pagans’ was picked up again when the sources became known in Europe during the Renaissance. While the verdict of the church fathers was overwhelmingly negative,17 the Renaissance witnessed a new apologism for ‘Oriental pagan wisdom,’ whose Egyptian chapter was largely defined by a platonizing misunderstanding of the hieroglyphic script that long obstructed its actual decipherment and that remains influential to this day.18 A crucial early figure in this resurgence of Platonic Orientalism is Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), who “stands at the origin of a non-institutional current of religious speculation, the development of which can be traced in European culture through the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, and where ‘Plato’ stands as a generic label for a much wider complex of practices and speculations largely inherited, as we know today, from the Hellenistic culture of late antiquity.”19 This label went on to assimilate over time all those “traditional bodies of spiritual, theurgical, magical, arithmological, astrological, and alchemical lore” attributed to ancient sages such as Hermes Trismegistus, thus accumulating the collective ‘referential corpus’ sometimes referred to today as ‘Western esotericism,’ which in this essay is to be understood as a typological umbrella term for such currents.20 This spectrum was eventually exiled into the ‘occultural’ fringe where we find it today, in large part due to new methods of philological criticism that began to view the narrative of ancient wisdom “as an inherently a-historical approach to historical questions.”21 The emerging historiographical disciplines - such as Egyptology - distanced themselves sharply from what was perceived as embarrassing and unscientific fantasy. This ‘other’ history was appropriated by new religious movements like Theosophy, founded by Helena Blavatsky (1831– 1891). She and other influential esotericists “absorbed diverse culturally available elements, interpreted this material through a hermeneutic framework of their own and presented the result as a coherent doctrine.”22 For our purposes, this means that conceptions of Egypt were embedded in a larger narrative that strings together various ‘wisdom-bearing’ cultures.23

Another important feature of many esoteric traditions that survives into the AAD is the minor significance or absence of a supreme deity.24 Instead, the focus is on contact with intermediary beings such as angels that populate the heavens, sometimes understood to be extraterrestrials.25 Blavatsky focuses on intermediary figures in a particular, salvific-historical framework crucial to the development of AAD.26 According to Blavatsky, human development had arrived at a crucial turning point: she and other theosophical leaders were in spiritual contact (via ‘channeling’) with benevolent ascended masters, “living persons who had fully evolved through many reincarnations, had acquired and become the custodians of ‘ancient wisdom,’ and now sought to impart that wisdom to humanity in order to lead it into a new age of peace, spirituality, and global community.”27

While Blavatsky’s first major work Isis Unveiled (1877) - with its “plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom- Religion”28 - carried strong Egyptian connotations, her Theosophical Society soon shifted its focus permanently towards India, where Blavatsky claimed to have been initiated.29 Among the second generation of Theosophists, Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) can be said in many ways to bridge the gap between the tradition of Theosophy and the beginning of the New Age movement of the 60s and 70s;30 furthermore, the messages he claimed to receive have had a lasting impact on ‘alternative Egypts.’31 Cayce believed, as did many Theosophists, that ancient Egypt had preserved the primordial wisdom of the lost civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis. He claimed to have experienced past lives in Ancient Egypt, around 10,500 BCE - long before Egyptian civilization even existed, according to orthodox Egyptology - and he prophesized that, beneath the Sphinx, the fabled ‘Hall of Thoth’ would be discovered. We will reencounter this dating and this prophecy as cornerstones of ‘alternative Egyptology’ and the AAD.32 While Cayce (who identified firmly as Christian) was very influential in the United States, Alice Bailey (1880–1949), who channeled messages from extraterrestrials, was the more prominent figurehead of second generation Theosophy and the ‘New Age’ in the United Kingdom and Europe.33

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the father of Anthroposophy, also integrated Egypt into a diffusionist sequence of civilizations, beginning with Atlantis. Steiner approached the ancient texts with a strong literalist tendency, interpreting, e.g., the god Osiris as an extraterrestrial visitor, and his headdress as a spiritual sense organ.34 This way of reading the ancient sources as literally true and declaring the gods extraterrestrials marks an important step towards AA rhetoric. Literalist readings became more widespread in the New Age movement,35 and messages received through channeling increasingly stem from extraterrestrials. Already in Neo-Theosophy, represented among others by Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934), extraterrestrial explanations had begun to displace spiritual ones - Sanskrit, for Blavatsky the language of the gods, was declared by Leadbeater to be an extraterrestrial language, and Nirvana a sort of space station.36 While Blavatsky and other early Theosophists still considered the intermediaries angelic beings who lived on an ‘etheric plane,’ later authors like A. E. Powell already show them steering physical spaceships toward Earth.37

The ‘60s and ‘70s saw a veritable explosion of counter-culture,38 leading to the pop-cultural entanglement of the AAD, analogous to the interdependency that informs the development of UFO religions.39 Since 1947, when an alien spacecraft is alleged to have crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico, UFOs have remained something of a national obsession in the United States. This phenomenon lent further immediacy to the increased Theosophical emphasis on extraterrestrials outlined above, rooted it deeply in popular culture, and it did much to further what Christopher Partridge has called “the sacralization of the extraterrestrial.”40 Following in the tradition of the Theosophists’ ‘channeling’ of messages from ascended masters, the teachers were now extraterrestrial beings - Theosophical mythology thus began to merge with the UFO phenomenon, a synthesis that Mikael Rothstein dubs “a case of mythological modernization or updating, and...an example of Theosophical adaptability.”41 Already in 1934, Guy Ballard, who founded the I AM Activity, had claimed to be in contact with Venusian masters.42 Like in the New Age movement, UFO religions feature prominently a millennialist expectation that a new age and a transformation of humanity are upon us.43 The extraterrestrials wish to help us through this crisis, often specifically connected to the threat posed by the atomic bomb.44 Indeed, UFO religions and the AAD alike share a desire to establish a unified worldview where science and religion are no longer separate - a ‘re-enchanted’ world.45 Important early UFO contactees such as George Adamski (1891–1965) described the Venusian masters of Blavatskian myth as extraterrestrial visitors who brought civilization to earth and were remembered as gods - preparing the central belief of the later AAD.46 Recalling the extreme literalism brought to Ancient Egyptian texts by Rudolf Steiner, we encounter across the spectrum of UFO religions “the physical interpretation of scriptures and ancient mythologies” that is the basis of AA theorists’ interpretations. Those, notes Partridge, are in turn “sacralised and replicated” in religious movements: “this physicalism is explicit in the writings of all the principle [sic] individuals and groups, from Adamski to von Däniken and from the Raëlian Church to Heaven’s Gate.”47 The AAD therefore serves as an integral origin myth in various religious movements.

A crucial transformation was achieved by the veritable ‘godfather’ of AA theories, Charles Fort (1874–1932), who, with a righteous gesture of unveiling uncomfortable secrets that had been guarded jealously by conspirational orthodox historians, offered as the answer to all kinds of perceived ancient anomalies the intervention of extraterrestrial visitors in Earth’s distant past.48 Instead of spiritual enlightenment, Fort’s project was that of an alternative historiography, an agenda that was popularized in France by Louis Pauwles and Jaques Bergier, whose major work, Le matin des magiciens (1960), “is little remembered now, but it has the distinction of launching a revival of interest in the occult in the 1960s and 1970s that would culminate in the ancient-astronaut craze of the 1970s.”49 Pauwles and Bergier were both influenced by H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937),50 whose most famous cosmic horror stories comprising the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ are based around monstrous extraterrestrial beings that were worshiped by primitive humans. While Colavito’s The Cult of Alien Gods certainly overstates Lovecraft’s influence on the AAD as a whole, it is nevertheless significant to note that these stories impacted the authors of Le matin des magiciens. Much of its content, as well as the works of another representative of this largely forgotten French chapter of the history of Preastronautics, Robert Charroux, were later borrowed - mostly without credit51 - by Erich von Däniken when he wrote the ‘Bible’ of the AAD, Chariots of the Gods?

5. The Egyptian Front: From Chariots to Stargates

While sidelined in the Theosophical ancient wisdom narrative, Egypt rules supreme in the AAD. Chapter seven of Chariots deals with the pyramids of Giza as “Space Travel Centers,” and several of von Däniken’s claims here would become ever-repeated tropes: First, he asserts that “ancient Egypt appears suddenly and without transition with a fantastic ready-made civilization. Great cities and enormous temples, colossal statues...splendid streets...perfect drainage systems, luxurious tombs...pyramids of overwhelming size - these and many other wonderful things shot out of the ground, so to speak. Genuine miracles in a country that is suddenly capable of such achievements without recognizable prehistory!”52 As the prehistorian Herbert Kühn noted, “nothing is more false than this. The prehistory of Egypt is known particularly well, and a great number of books documents it. Däniken knows nothing of them.”53 The notion that Egyptian civilization simply “shot out of the ground” as von Däniken puts it, or rather, “fell from the sky,” is repeated to this day, and it is representative of the anti-evolutionist overtones of AA narratives. Further important claims are the implication that the barque of the sun god Ra is actually a spaceship,54 as well as the notion that the extraterrestrials had some part in the building of the pyramids55 - both points are of course present in Stargate.

Two further aspects are particularly significant for the AAD’s quasi-religious properties. First, von Däniken suggests that it may be humanity’s destiny to follow in the footsteps of the ‘gods,’ and that we too may one day be greeted as gods by the primitive inhabitants of other worlds (which happens repeatedly in Stargate and the television series Stargate SG-1).56 Second, von Däniken assures the reader that “(d)rawings and sagas actually indicated that the ‘gods’ promised to return from the stars.”57 This vague reference to “certain legends” that allegedly tell of the gods coming from the stars to earth and leaving again with a promise to return, is one of the most typical clichés of AA narratives. Which specific legend that is, and on which temple wall or papyrus one may read it, is never stated - which in the case of Egypt may be explained by the fact that no such myth exists.

Von Däniken’s influence hit America in the early 1970s, mainly to the credit of Rod Serling and Alan Landsburg, respectively the host and producer of the popular science-fiction series The Twilight Zone (who, like von Däniken’s forgotten French precursors, were also fans of H. P. Lovecraft whose stories influenced several episodes of their show). Inspired by Chariots, they cooperated on a television documentary titled In Search of Ancient Astronauts that aired on NBC in 1973, presenting von Däniken’s main claims with impressive images. The program was a huge hit, and in its wake, Chariots became a massive success in the US as well, spawning many sequels, imitators, and further television events.58

The second most influential figure in the AAD after von Däniken is Zecharia Sitchin (1920–2010). Between 1976 and 2007, Sitchin published the seven books comprising The Earth Chronicles, beginning with The Twelfth Planet (1976), where he explains that Sumerian culture, like von Däniken’s Egypt, mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. “A mysterious hand once more picked Man out of his decline and raised him to an even higher level of culture, knowledge, and civilization.”59 We learn that Sumerian civilization and the human race itself were created by extraterrestrials from Nibiru, another planet in our solar system. Those aliens, the Annunaki, were considered gods by the Sumerians, and Sitchin insists that the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia (of which all others are deemed derivative) preserves actual historical records of their activities. Sitchin’s most significant contribution to the Egyptian ‘front’ of the AAD is the second volume, The Stairway to Heaven (1980). Here we are told that, according to the usual unspecified “Egyptian traditions,” “in times immemorial ‘Gods of Heaven’ came to Earth from the Celestial Disk”60 - the latter is illustrated by the symbol of the winged sun disk (which is actually a form of the god Horus, not a dwelling- place for the gods). This misinterpretation of the ‘winged disk’ as either the planet or the spaceship of the aliens is repeated in Preastronautic literature to this day.61

Furthermore, Stitchin’s entire book is framed by a narrative concerning humanity’s eternal quest for immortality, a prevalent theme in Stargate as well: Ra takes a human body as a host “to cheat death,” and he possesses a machine in the shape of a sarcophagus in which he perpetually recharges his life forces and is potentially immortal - reminiscent of Sitchin’s assertion that “Ra...managed to live forever because he kept rejuvenating himself.”62 While Stargate’s Ra found and enslaved humanity and Sitchin’s aliens genetically engineered humans, both do so for the specific purpose of mining a precious metal: The Annunaki made Homo Sapiens as a slave race that could mine the Earth’s gold resources.63 In Stargate, Ra takes thousands of slaves through the Stargate to Abydos in order to mine the alien metal that is the basis of his technology. The entire part, the aliens as oppressors who enslave humans and abuse their status as ‘gods’ for evil, is rather atypical of the AAD, making it all the more likely that Emmerich was inspired by Sitchin.

Meanwhile, Stargate’s Daniel Jackson argues in his lecture at the beginning of the film that the only inscription inside the pyramid that gives the name of king Khufu - the main basis for Egyptologists’ ascribing the pyramid to this Pharaoh - is a forgery, at which point the room begins to empty, accompanied by laughter and jokes about Martians and Atlantis. Jackson’s argument here is that the discovery of the hieroglyphs made by Col. Richard Vyse, “was a fraud.” Sitchin was the first to make this accusation,64 and argued that, as Jackson concludes, “the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty did not build the great pyramids.” For Sitchin, the pyramids of Giza were built by the Annunaki as guiding beacons for their starships during landing on Earth, and all other Egyptian pyramids are just inferior imitations.65 In Stargate, Ra’s starship is seen landing on top of a pyramid as a kind of alien airport (cf. Sitchin: “the Celestial Boat of Ra was depicted as sitting atop a mountain”),66 and even the fact that Ra’s ship is itself pyramid- shaped seems lifted from Stairway, for Sitchin explains that an Egyptian funerary pyramidion, showing the deceased in adoration of the sun god (this is literally what the accompanying hieroglyphs say), actually represents the sun god who “landed on Earth” in his “Celestial Chamber.”67 According to Sitchin, just as the Pharaohs could only build inferior imitations of the great “mountains” built by the “gods,” so the journey of the deceased described in Egyptian funerary literature constitutes an emulation of actual journeys to the stars actually undertaken by the “gods” long ago. This section of his book is dominated by imagery of “doors,” “portals,” and “gates” - due to the fact that, for instance, the Book of the Dead is full of portals that the deceased needs to pass through.68 The Egyptian gods “open for the king a path and a gateway,”69 and Sitchin states that “the gods assume more technical aspects.”70 In light of all the other close correspondences, it seems very likely that this technologized ‘gate’-language inspired Emmerich to give a concrete form to one such “gate of the star gods.” Another of Emmerich’s inspirations may have been the work of Peter Krassa and Reinhard Habeck who popularized certain depictions in the temple of Dendera which supposedly (not really)71 show lightbulbs. After earlier treatments, it was in their Das Licht der Pharaonen (1992) where the “Dendera lightbulbs” are embedded in a larger Preastronautic narrative. Krassa and Habeck were in turn von Däniken’s source when he presented the same case.72 Since then, the Dendera lightbulbs have become recurring stars.73 Much emphasis is furthermore put in Das Licht der Pharaonen on the wars, weaponry, and starships used by the Egyptian “gods” - obviously inspired by Sitchin’s Mesopotamian scenarios - Krassa and Habeck even reprint (their fig. 17), and they are not the last to do so,74 Sitchin’s absurd illustration implying that Egyptian funerary pyramidia represent starships. So here we have pyramid- shaped starships, Egyptian gods as aliens with horrifying weapons, and as the formidable pilot of the “winged sun-disk” spaceship we meet the falcon-headed god Horus.75 And just two years later, Ra’s soldiers in Stargate wear falcon helmets and fly fighter jets with stylized wings. The name of Emmerich’s Egyptian planet, Abydos, may be derived from early 90s AA literature as well. In 1990, a group from the AA Society took pictures of some hieroglyphs in the funerary temple of Seti I. in Abydos that appear to depict technological contraptions, including what looks deceptively like a helicopter. First published in 1991, the (long debunked) Abydos “technoglyphs” have joined the ranks of Aegyptiaca technologica in the ever-repeated canon of Preastronautic literature.76 In 1976, the same year that saw Sitchin’s Twelfth Planet, Robert Temple claimed in The Sirius Mystery that the tribe of the Dogon in Mali possessed astronomical knowledge that they could only have inherited from the ancient Egyptians, who had it from extraterrestrials.77 This book in turn inspired Robert Bauval to construct a complex archaeoastronomical theory, published first in two articles in Discussions in Egyptology in 1989 and 1990, and most famously and comprehensively together with Adrian Gilbert in The Orion Mystery (1994), holding that the three great pyramids of Giza were all planned in advance and aligned with the three stars of the ‘belt’ of Orion, representing the god of the dead Osiris. While this alone was not outside the realm of what most Egyptologists would consider possible, the notion that the foundations for this entire monumental landscape were laid around 10,500 BCE certainly was (Cayce’s year again). The so-called ‘Orion Correlation Theory’ was popular in the 1990s, coinciding with exciting new explorations of the great pyramid of Khufu in 1993, as the UPUAUT 2 robot crawled along narrow shafts and ran into a sealed door, quickly prompting wild speculations and conspiracy theories about hidden chambers. It is this media hype around the pyramids of Giza - supposedly linked to the stars and thousands of years older than orthodox Egyptology would allow - which clearly forms the most immediate ‘occultural’ context for Stargate, released in the same year as Bauval’s and Gilbert’s Orion Mystery,78 although the simultaneous release means that Stargate could hardly have been inspired by the book, but rather by the previous popularization of its main theory. At any rate, it is surely no coincidence that it is specifically the constellation of Orion that leads Daniel Jackson to realize what the Stargate really is. Remembering Sitchin’s very technical ‘gate’ terminology that seems to have inspired (the) Stargate, it is noteworthy how Bauval and Gilbert opine with a similar tone “that the Grand Gallery looks like part of a machine, whose function is beyond us.”79 They refer to shafts in the King’s Chamber as “channels to the stars”80 and to the whole Giza complex as “the great star-clock of the epochs.”81 In 1995, one year after Stargate and The Orion Mystery, Graham Hancock made the case for a forgotten civilization that was the real originator of the pyramids and the Sphinx (Fingerprints of the Gods).82 Then, with Robert Bauval, he fused this lost civilization theory with the ‘Orion Correlation Theory’ in 1996’s Keeper of Genesis (in the US: Message of the Sphinx). Together, they aimed “to align the pyramids with Orion circa 10,500 BCE, which they claim was the date of the lost civilization’s entry into Egypt,” during the astrological Age of Leo, represented by the Sphinx. Their calculations were also meant to demonstrate the existence of a secret chamber beneath the Sphinx - thus proving Cayce’s prophecy.83 Bauval and Hancock adopt Sitchin’s conspiracy theory discrediting the inscriptions with Khufu’s name,84 and their terminology is once more striking: The shaft containing the newly discovered door is literally called a “Stargate,”85 and the pyramid is interpreted as a kind of salvific machine to which New Age millenarian hopes are attached “that the sages of Heliopolis, working at the dawn of history, could somehow have created an archetypal ‘device’, a device designed to trigger off messianic events across the ‘Ages’ – the Pyramid Age...and perhaps even a ‘New Age’ in Aquarius?”86 While these theories did not involve extraterrestrials explicitly, their 1996 articles in the London Daily Mail postulated that the ancient cultures of Earth were actually influenced by an advanced civilization from Mars, due to a renewed interest in NASA images of the red planet, where believers wanted to see the infamous ‘Mars face’ as well as various pyramids. Bauval and Hancock teamed up again, assisted by John Grigsby, to write The Mars Mystery in 1998, where they announced more carefully that aliens may or may not be the originators of the “Martian monuments.”87

A particularly interesting entry is Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince’s The Stargate Conspiracy (1999), because it is unusually critical and self-aware. The authors take several ‘celebrities,’ such as Temple, Bauval, and Hancock to court, expose flaws in their theories and conclude that there is an agenda to construct a new alternative orthodoxy about the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Mars face, and to arrive at all costs at the year 10,500 BCE, prophesized by Cayce. As far as this goes, most orthodox historians and Egyptologists would probably applaud the authors for having seen the light. However, this project of debunking is only the beginning. Picknett and Prince identify as the source of this artificial mythology a shadowy group preparing for a sinister new world order ushered in by the return of the Egyptian gods (or possibly, in the vein of Stargate, evil imposters). These gods are specifically “the Nine,” i.e., the Great Ennead of Heliopolis, the most significant genealogy in the Egyptian pantheon who have been the alleged source of messages received through ‘channeling’ since 1952.88 Picknett and Prince chronicle the activities of various organizations at Giza and relate rumors “that the US government is searching for a physical artefact or ancient device, perhaps even of extraterrestrial origin,” prompting the authors to speculate that “(i)f the Americans are involved with ancient stargate technology, then it would be the most top secret project in history, and the number of people ‘needing to know’ about it would be minimal.”89

  

The Stargate Simulacrum: Ancient Egypt, ...

 

Heidelberger OJS-Journals

journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.

  

Tyler Richards (1986-2016) memorial mural. "Live out your dreams".

From The Coast: Before the murder and after, the life of Tyler Richards

 

Mulgrave Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

June 7, 2018.

Mural by Joey Cook, Mike Burt, Dan Burt and Justin Fraser from Blackbook Collective.

-NO EDITS-

Lyrics from Unsolved Mystery by Animal Collective

Looks like one of lame empty tumblr posts now. I wanted it to look cooler than this. Sorry, Animal Collective. Song's a genius.

This is a walk made in the autumn of 2018, 32 years AFTER the murder of prime minister Olof Palme of Sweden. It follows his path that fatal evening. People in the streets have, of course, nothing to do with the case. The murder remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

On Friday, 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET (22:21 UTC), Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbet Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

 

Christer Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal he was acquitted. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in late September 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.

 

Police said that a taxi driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm, and two girls in a nearby car tried to assist. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 00:06 CET on 1 March 1986. The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Sequence of events

Cinema decision

Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.[1]

 

Grand Cinema

 

Grand cinema.

 

Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.

 

Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.[2]

 

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, then continued past the Dekorima shop which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan.

 

At 23:21, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. Palme at point-blank range and fired a second shot at Mrs. Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen

The Death of a Young Girl In 1992

 

By Bill Strain

 

Eglena was probably a ninth grader or perhaps she was a tenth grader and her boyfriend was a ninth grader. School had only been in session for about a month in 1992 when Eglena was taken to the "Fiesta Patras", held annually on the square in Seguin, a small town east of San Antonio, Texas. She spent most of the evening with her boyfriend but he left around 11 pm with his family; maybe he had to work the next day. When they parted Eglena was supposed to rejoin her family, but something went wrong.

~

That night the family began to look for Eglena shortly after 11 pm and could not find her. They contacted her boyfriend's family. They searched the town square through the still very active crowd. They sought the help of the Police Department and by midnight there were a large number of people diligently looking for Eglena. After midnight the evening shift police officers stayed on to continue the search. Eglena was perhaps sixteen years old; running away was not in her lifestyle, nor was coming home late.

~

In the early morning hours of the next day a police officer and a reserve officer made a very grizzly discovery in a narrow space between two buildings on the grounds of the Catholic Church and School only a block from the Town Square.

~

Eglena was found, nude, face down, arms and legs spread as wide as possible for that space; rigor mortis had set in so completely that after photographing and recording, the body was propped up like a pretzel against the side of one wall so the ground under could be searched for clues. It is my belief that an excellent job was done in securing and preserving evidence. This community has the highest percentage of FBI trained officers of any community for miles around.

~

Some of this information may be inaccurate. I was working for Southwest Texas State University Police Department at that time as a Criminal Investigator and was frequently farmed out by my department to other departments to do composite drawings and most of the information I received on the case came from conversations with the patrol officers who found the body.

~

Several days after the murder I was contacted by the Assistant Chief of Police of that community who told me he had two witnesses of a person seen coming from between the buildings where the body was found after 11 pm on the night of the murder. I agreed to meet with the witnesses the next day and do two composite drawings to see if the witnesses saw the same person and what that person looked like to the best of their memory. Since I had a full schedule of my own, I arranged to meet with his witnesses after 5 pm.

~

When I arrived at their Police Department, practically the entire force was present; a Texas Ranger had been called in and was taking statements and reviewing the evidence collected by the investigators. I went in, met the Ranger, gave him my background and described what I intended to do and how I intended to schedule the work between the two witnesses. He agreed and I never spoke with him again.

~

The process of doing a composite drawing usually runs something like this. First the witness tells you everything they can remember about what they saw, then you take out a 'Composite Record Form' and begin to ask specific questions; much of this is repetitive but tends to get the person to “remembering“.

~

Then they are asked to choose the best likenesses of specific features from the FBI Catalog of Facial Features. They are asked to make choices of: Head Shape, Eyes, Nose, Lips, Chin, Cheeks, Forehead and Hair. I usually add the neck also. Some composite artists don't.

~

Then the witness takes a break while I do a line drawing. When the line drawing is finished the witness comes back in and makes any corrections needed to make the drawing look more like the person they saw. Then they take another break and I draw in the tone and shadows.

~

Again, they come in and make any corrections needed and when they finally say, “That looks just like him” or “That's as close as I can get to the suspect“, the composite is finished. Copies are made and given to the lead investigator on the case and I've always retained my originals so I can KNOW they will be found and available for court if I'm subpoenaed to testify as to the methods used in creating the composite. The average length of time is six hours to do a composite.

~

The first witness was a classmate of Eglena, who was in the process of telling me about attending the fiesta and shortly after 11 pm seeing a young Hispanic male who looked to be about 9th grade or high school age coming from between the two buildings. She had never seen him before. He had very distinctive features. There would be no mixing him up with someone else because he had a unique “gang” haircut which involved shaved sides of the head and a pony-tail in back. We were in an interview room with the door open and while we were getting ready to look at the FBI catalog, the second witness came in. He was a young man of High School age also.

~

When my female witness saw him walk past the door, she became very agitated and nervously whispered to me, “That's him! That's him! That's the young man I saw coming from between the buildings.” I quietly went to the Lead Investigator and told him what had happened. I could not believe his response. He walked into the interview room and scolded the young girl for “starting rumors” and said there were far too many “rumors” floating around this case already and for her to stick to the business at hand.

~

I couldn't believe my ears, but neither could I interfere because I was there only to do the composites and I had to remember that the lead investigator had access to all information while I had access to only the rudimentary case facts, so we proceeded to do a composite which, of course, came up looking very much like the young man who was my next witness and of course the young girl never mentioned the second witness again.

~

And of course the case is unsolved to this day.

~

When I started the interview with the second witness, the young man began to describe another young man, dressed all in black, as he himself was and with exactly the same type “gang” haircut that he had. Except he pointed out that the young man he saw had a more recent haircut than his own.

~

When he began to describe the pony-tail, I even measured his to get an idea of the similarity and had him turn his head sideways so I could do a detail of the pony-tail on the composite page. I asked him several times if he knew this young man. How could the two of them dress so much alike and look so much alike and not know each other? He only suggested maybe the other young man came from out of town. I could have just gone to the car, gotten a camera and taken his picture and told him, "I'll use this to finish the composite at home".

~

He never became excited. He was always sparse of words and never responded to my repeated questions about he and the suspect being members of the same 'Club'. He just very calmly went about the business of telling his short story and making the selections from the FBI catalog.

~

The composite posted is the one I did with this witness, because I think the surrounding facts make it the more interesting of the two and of course they both look very much alike. This one is special because I think it is the killer giving me an accurate description of himself, knowing that his honesty will confuse the investigation, and that's exactly what happened.

~

Several weeks later I was entering the Police Department in that town and the young man who presented himself as a “witness” was there on a bicycle with two friends also on bicycles. As I walked by him, I said "hello" and then very quietly said "you got away with it, didn't you?" He didn't answer. He didn't frown. He didn't smile. He did absolutely nothing and that was the last contact I had with that case.

~

I expected at least the typical response of, “Got away with what?”

~

Investigating crime has taught me that often when the criminal is a part of the community, group or school in which the crime is perpetrated, they will present themselves as “victims” also and often list stolen items incompatible with the rest of the case and again like our young man they often present themselves as witnesses to “help solve the case” and present testimony that is incompatible with the testimony of the other witnesses.

~

Perhaps one reason Eglena went with him between the buildings is he is a handsome young man. Perhaps one reason my female witness noticed him and remembered him is that he is a handsome young man.

~

If he had been more experienced I think he would have given us a similar but different person coming from between the buildings. That would have separated the suspect from himself and also would have cast some doubt on the female witness's testimony, but he had no way of knowing the diversity of witness testimony surrounding the multiple witnessing of a single suspect, so he gave me exactly what he knew the female witness would give me....himself.

~

Capital Murder has no statute of limitations. If I had been lead investigator I would have told both witnesses that it is customary for all witnesses in a Capital Murder case to take a polygraph test and I would have had a Polygraph Operator on hand that very instant. It would have been interesting to see if the young man could have passed a polygraph test and since all witnesses were seemingly taking the test it would have been inappropriate for him to refuse.

~

To this day I regret not having walked into the office where the Texas Ranger was working and telling him of the identification of the killer made by my first witness. That would have ended my relationship with that police department and with the lead investigator on that case. I suppose you can call that bowing to peer pressure or possibly just falling in line and doing what you've been taught to do. The military and law enforcement agencies are inclined to create bowers to peer pressure. As I look back on the incident it come to mind I had every right to stop the composite, tell the lead detective that since he had just impeached his witness by accusing her of telling lies and spreading rumors, there was no point in taking further testimony from her.

~

Go look at the composite sketch. That's a very accurate drawing of my second witness to the murder of Eglena. God rest her soul.

 

The conclusion to this case came about suddenly last night when I saw Jimmy Limmer on TXCN involved with the rescue of people from rising water in Comal County. When my information on Eglena's murder ended, Jimmy had been lead detective on the case. At the time I was doing the composite drawings. In fact someone told me Jimmy had resigned because the killer was a local boy related to someone who worked at Seguin P.D. and there was too much interference in his investigation. Someone said there were refusals of funds to pay for adequate DNA testing.

 

I found Comal County's website on the internet and left an Email for Jimmy to Email me at his convenience. I had no idea Jimmy would even want to discuss the case since murder has no statute of limitation. When I heard from Jimmy, I got the surprise of my life.

 

The case had not only gone to trial, but there was a conviction based on DNA evidence and the killer is still serving time. Here are the two communications I received from Jimmy Limmer indicating there was even a Cold Case Files TV segment called "Justice for Eglena."

 

Jimmy said: "Bill, After the case was tried I shredded my "unauthorized copy" of the case file, so I'll try to do this from memory. There was a young guy I remember as "Johnny" who wore his hair in the Steven Segall style like the actual killer wore his. In fact one of the witnesses to the killer walking away from the crime scene saw "Johnny" at the P.D. and almost crapped on herself. However the killer was the same guy that Richard Bennie and I worked up back in 1992. It was interesting in that at the time of his trial he had gone from a "buff" martial arts expert I remembered him as in the original investigation to a withered up, pale, little old guy. Guilt will eat you up if you have any humanity in you at all." J.L.

 

Later I received another Email from Jimmy: "Bill, Since I sent the original e-mail to you I read your other message. The case has been tried and Guadalupe Chino "Pio" Sandoval is now eating TDC chow. He'll be out on parole if he lives long enough. Ranger Tony Leal opened a cold case file on this and due to improvements in DNA testing was able to get with the DPS Lab and test a couple of swatches of a bandana that turned out to have both the victim and the suspects DNA on it. This was all Bud Kirkendal was waiting for, that affirmative physical link. He got Pio indicted. The trial lasted less than a week and the jury took less than 3 hours to find him guilty. A&E did an episode of "Cold Case" files on the case and it is titled "Justice for Eglina". I helped with it and the main problem I have with it is that they never even mentioned Ranger Richard Bennie. He was instrumental in the case as you know from the original investigation. Richard became our Chief Deputy after he retired from the Rangers. He passed away with terminal cancer about a year and a half ago. Tony Leal has since been promoted to Ranger Captain. Let me know if you have any questions or I can be of any help to you." J.L.

 

After I read Jimmy's two Emails, a thousand questions started popping up in my mind, but before bother Jimmy further, I searched the internet and found that "Justice for Eglena" was listed on "TheCold Cases" season four number eighty-five, a link that was disfunctional for some reason. I posted an additional Email to Jimmy asking if the Chino was about the same age as the victim, if he was a local Seguin boy or from out of town, did he get a life sentence, what was the date of the trial and I was also interested in the reason for the rumors I had heard about departmental interference in his original investigation.

 

I haven't heard from Jimmy on those questions and am unable to get the "Justice for Eglena" link to work. If Jimmy gets time, I'm sure I'll get an Email from him, or he may choose to not discuss the case further; that's certaiinly within his rights.

 

The fact is I slept like a baby last night. With this new information, so much got resolved in my mind. My first reaction to the new information is, "Sometimes it's GREAT to be wrong." I'm glad "Johnny" was simply a witness telling me about someone who had his same hairstyle and looked a lot like he did. I'm glad Jimmy finally got closure on the biggest case that will probably ever crop up during his law enforcement career.

 

I almost added "...and I'm glad Eglena finally got the justice she deserves." On second thought, it's madness to say justice has been served when a young girl is dead forever and a killer sits in a prison watching TV, working out with expensive equipment, and using the prison library in an attempt to free himself from that so-called justice. The fact is justice for a senseless homicide is an impossible concept. The only thing we do is take a dangerous a threat to life and lock it away with other dangerous threats to life for the protection of those of us who are less dangerous. You'll find differing opinions.

 

This story also tells me something about myself that I already knew. I am prone to "wild flights of fantasy" in whatever discipline I pursue. That was probably my biggest flaw as an investigator. With my own cases I was able to pursue the fantasy until it either proved itself or had to be discarded. When I've been doing a small task on someone else's case, I didn't have that opportunity, as in this case, but when all's said and one, I'd rather have too much fantasy than not enough.

 

This is "The End" unless I can get Season 4 Episode 85 to work, in which case I'll be back for a short postscript.

 

I just got this Email from Jimmy Limmer, the original detective on this case who did the ground work to convict "Pio" for the murder. Here's what Jimmy has to say and this will end my story.

 

Re: Guadalupe Chino "Pio" Sandoval

To: "bill strain"

 

"Bill, I'll take you through the basics of what took place when. The name "Pio" came up from E.G.'s friends. Seems he came onto her at the festival and she more or less played it cool with him. How we finally got him I.D.ed was through the televised media. On the Friday following the murder we had come up dry on a good solid suspect. There were lots of accusations thrown around among the local punks and wanna be gangsters. But when the composites were shown on T.V. the phones started ringing. All of the tips pointed to our guy. All of the C.I.D. section mobilized and we had a long chat with Pio (about 8 hrs) While he was with us a search warrant was ran on his car and home. Little evidence was collected that would help provide a solid connection with the crime. He had cleaned up everything he could think of as well as disposing of the murder weapon, a knife, but he still had it's leather case. When the victim was found she was totally nude except for a string "friendship' bracelet that the kids at that time exchanged. He even took the time to rub out his footprints in the dirt of the flower bed where the victim's body lay and took time to wipe up most of the blood spots. He was cleaning up the crime scene when spotted by the second group of folks that helped with the second composite. I had made the statement at the time of our initial investigation that whomever committed the murder had some kind of formal fighting training, possibly military. Turns out that Pio held a black belt in one of the disciplines of Karate. He also was a collector of edged weapons and I believe he had some training in thier use although I never confirmed anything formally. The hypothosis had come from the fact that aside from some defensive wounds on the victim's hands and lower arms, none of the damage done to her was sloppy or exessive as is normally the case. Every blow to her face was to effect, the strangle marks on her throat were exactly placed and the "ceux de gras" with the lock blade knife was a straight in and out out thrust that severed her left jugular vein. Our boy was also an assistant instructor at a karate school in Seguin called Strom's Academy. He was also known at the time for having an explosive temper. Some of the tips that Friday came from guys he worked with whom he bragged to that if a woman would not cooperate with him sexually he would choke her down until she did. His temper would have come into play when the victim scratched his face. E.G.'s family had said that she would fight if someone tried to rape her and she apparently did exactly that. She got in some good scratches on the side of his face that were still visible several days later when we talked to him. Another interesting point is that our boy had a nasty fight with his live in girlfriend the same day as the murder. She had gone home to her mom's house where he picked her up later that night after the killing. His girlfriend was almost a dead ringer for the victim. hmmmm The girlfriend gave us a written statement that contradicted his statement. She also said that when she didn't want to have sex with him he would choke her down. Real nice fella. She also said that he had her cut his cute little "Steven Segall " pony tail off when he saw his composites on T.V. and told her to tell the cops she cut his hair 2 weeks before. The girlfirend was damn scared of Pio. She wrote in her statement that she thought he had done the murder. When Bud (the D.A.) ordered us to cut his a#$ loose the night of the original investigation I about blew a gasket. We had run the whole thing past Tom Ryan, the municipal court judge who was also a licensed practicing attorney, Tommy put a 1 million dollar bond on Pio. He was just as flabbergasted as I was when the D.A. had him come back and dummy up another magistrates warning for Pio that showed no bond such as you would do to someone who was a "person of interest" and not a full fledged suspected offender. Don't know how legal that was but that's briefly how things initially went down.

We later took Pio to DPS in Austin for a polygraph. We told him what time he'd be picked up and he stalled and shucked and jived until he finally showed up at the P.D. something like 35 minutes before his appointment time. Got him to the far side of Austin with almost 5 minutes to spare. (showed him what I hold one of my "black belts" in, pursuit style driving). That boy had white knuckles all the way there. (think I heard him whimper a couple of times too). Anyway he dogged the polygraph exam. After the initial preparetory questions, he'd sniff everytime he was asked a question. Screwed up the results pretty well. The examiner afterward told us that he felt we had the right guy and to stay after him. Pio had said that it was too cold in the exam room and his nose started to run. He rode home in the front seat like he came up. But on the way home I turned the a/c as cold as it would go. He never snifed once, heck I was COLD. Not enough for the D.A. to go with tt so things kind of wound down as time passed. I mcontinued to bitch and it got back to the D.A. He sent back the a threat through Mike Rosas that if I didn't stop talking publicly about the case he would haul me in front of a grand jury. I told Mike that if that happened at least the case would be heard by a grand jury and that might not be so bad. He didn't see the funnies in that at all.

As you know I left the P.D. in Dec. 1992 and came over to where I am now. They got some "interesting" prosecutors here too, but I have no end of admiration and loyalty to my sheriff. He's one of those kind of men you'd go through the gates of hell for if he asked you to. Another aside that you might not know. E.G. was the neice of a good friend of mine, Juvenile P.O. Veronica Carrillo. I knew E.G. personally. When nothing came out of the case my wife Lynn made me promise before God that I would not take matters into my own hands and that I would trust God to see that justice was done in the end. She, being married to me is aware of the level of training and capabilities that I had (and still do). I was trained as a SWAT sniper and the mechanics of taking care of the problem would not have been hard. (FBI training is very good. My personal record at taking a wild turkey with my personal .308 sniper rifle is in excess of 550 yards.)

I hope that fills in some of the gaps for you, keep in touch. My (2) typing fingers are getting tired. Take care." Jimmy

The charm of unsolved places

The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie in Scotland

 

The Loch Ness Monster is a creature that lives in Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Popular interest and belief in the animal was brought to the world's attention in 1933. The most common speculation among believers is that the creature represents a line of long-surviving 'lizard' plesiosaurs.The scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster as a modern-day myth, and explains sightings as a mix of hoaxes and wishful thinking.Despite this, it remains one of the most famous examples of cryptozoology. The legendary monster has been affectionately referred to by the nickname Nessie since the 1950s.

 

On October 22nd 2012 Theresa Irene Wolowski, and Ryan Janek Wolowski, took a boat ride through Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands looking for Nessie, who's presence was felt.

 

Fore more on The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie visit

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/legend-loch-ness.html

 

Photo

Scotland, Scottish Highlands, UK United Kingdom, Europe

10-22-2012

The truth was that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of unsolved cases in the D.P.D. archives. “Hell,” Joe thought, ”most of the people who were alive in Detroit when I joined the force, were dead by now anyway.” So why was he bringing this old paperwork home? He knew the answer, but was afraid to acknowledge it. In his first major case as a young detective he failed miserably. Maybe he should not have been assigned the case…maybe he was too new in the job….maybe a more experienced cop would have cracked the case….These dreadful doubts had come back time and again throughout his police career. That’s why he took home little more of value than an old worn, faded, out-of-focus photograph , which had been shown to hundreds of people, but yielded no workable leads.

Long before the vampires of the Twilight trilogy captured the suspense seeking minds of audiences across America, MGM was thrilling the public with bloodsucking baddies, such as Carroll Borland in Mark of the Vampire. Complete with spidery eyelash and a vampy pout, the actress is perfectly captured by famed photographer Clarence S. Bull.

 

Starring Bela Lugosi, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, Jean Hersholt, and Michael Visaroff. Directed by Tod Browning.

youtu.be/irNxN9PmE58 Trailer

synopsis

Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) and occult expert Prof. Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) investigate, with the full cooperation of leading citizen Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt). For awhile, it looks as though the vampires -- Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and his chalky-faced daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) -- will continue to hold the community in thrall, but the truth behind their mysterious activities is revealed midway through the film, whereupon the story concentrates on identifying the well-concealed murderer. In the original London After Midnight, Lon Chaney played both Count Mora and Prof. Zelen, which should provide a clue as to the film's incredible outcome.

review

 

Director Tod Browning's 1935 murder mystery Mark of the Vampire is essentially a lesser remake of two of his earlier films: 1927's Lon Chaney silent London After Midnight and 1931's Dracula with Bela Lugosi. Originally titled The Vampires of Prague, the film is most notable for its stunning conclusion, which reveals that the various murders being blamed on the supernatural have been committed by a more natural source. The bloodsucker father and daughter, played by Lugosi and Carol Borland, are given minimal screen time, but provide the film's best chills and appear to be the inspiration for Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. This picture originally insinuated that Lugosi's vampire had an incestuous affair with Borland that resulted in a murder-suicide, leaving them both undead. This explains the mysterious bullet wound on the side of Lugosi's head throughout the film. However, MGM was wary after Browning's Freaks spawned great controversy, so cuts were made to ensure that Mark of the Vampire was safe for public consumption. The barely feature-length production looks rather stagey and the special effects are typical of the time (bats on strings, fake rats, etc.), but Browning's atmospheric style and the great cast, including Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, and Lionel Atwill, makes this good entertainment. Cinematographer James Wong Howe shot test footage of Rita Hayworth for Borland's part.

 

Sharon Tiffin/News staff

!702 DeSousa Place in Gordon Head where body of 24 year old real estate agent, 24 year old Lindsay Buziak was believed to be showing a home Saturday.

Es una tecnica sencilla y divertida. Está perfectamente descrita (en ingles, pero se entiende bien) en el siguiente tutorial:

brilliantdays.com/archives/2005/10/how_to_create_a.php

Los resultados son siempre sorprendentes

This is a page from the URW++ FontCollection from 1996. This scheme shows how the typeface classification links classes of type to atmosphere values. Nowadays, tagging provides a solution for linking details and atmosphere values more accurately.

 

The question that remains unsolved is how to design a visual interface which both links values to classes and also shows how smaller visual details and single adjectives relate.

 

Anmutungsqualitäten von Schriftklassen

 

Copyright 1996, Albert-Jan Pool

An infamous house located on the shore of Loch Ness, once owned by a notorious occultist dubbed "the wickedest man in the world" Aleister Crowley. Originally the site of a chapel which was involved in a despicable mass murder. Burned to the ground whilst congregation was still inside. In recent times it was owned by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page who said of it; "Strange things have happened in that house which have nothing to do with Crowley. The bad vibes were already there." The house now a shell after a unsolved mysterious fire.

Thirty years of police work was enough. Thirty years of gang violence, drug epidemics, fraud, under-staffing, declining respect, public indifference and political wrangling. There was really no point in taking unsolved case files with him, because if he had any chance of solving them, it would have been done during his tenure as Chief of Special Investigations, when he stopped being a cop and became just another bureaucrat, at least in his mind. But Joe hated to leave anything unfinished. He would stay in a theater to the bitter end of the worst movie, just to see who made it. So the files remained in their labelled boxes, in the unlikely event that some shred of new evidence were to surface.

Set: Unsolved cases + Shoes (Helsinki, Finland)

"Palekaiko" --PalekaikoÓ Ð While Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) and Five-0 investigate the murder of a man on his honeymoon and his wifeÕs abduction,, Medical Examiner Dr. Max Bergman recognizes uncanny similarities to a series of unsolved homicides from a year ago, on HAWAII FIVE-0 on HAWAII FIVE-0 Monday, Dec. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.Photo: Neil Jacobs/CBS.

©2010 CBS BROADCASTING INC. All Rights Reserved.

This is a walk made in the autumn of 2018, 32 years AFTER the murder of prime minister Olof Palme of Sweden. It follows his path that fatal evening. People in the streets have, of course, nothing to do with the case. The murder remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

On Friday, 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET (22:21 UTC), Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbet Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

 

Christer Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal he was acquitted. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in late September 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.

 

Police said that a taxi driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm, and two girls in a nearby car tried to assist. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 00:06 CET on 1 March 1986. The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Sequence of events

Cinema decision

Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.[1]

 

Grand Cinema

 

Grand cinema.

 

Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.

 

Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.[2]

 

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, then continued past the Dekorima shop which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan.

 

At 23:21, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. Palme at point-blank range and fired a second shot at Mrs. Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen

In this edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Paul Avery sounded off on the Zodiac Killer and surrounding investigation.

 

Scan courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

[Transcribed by me. Please note any errors you find in the comments.]

 

"Gilbert and Sullivan Clue to Zodiac"

 

By Paul Avery

 

One year and one day ago, the killer who calls himself Zodiac put a 9-mm. bullet through the brain of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine and then posted a letter to The Chronicle boasting of the slaying.

 

Stine, he wrote, was victim number five. He bragged he would continue his killing spree - choosing victims at random - and that he wouldn't get caught.

 

Zodiac is still at large today.

 

And he is now claiming he has murdered 13 persons.

 

Homicide detectives who've been hunting Zodiac for nearly two years frankly admit he is as much an enigma now as he was on Dec. 20, 1968, when he chalked up his first two victims.

 

ARIA

In fact, just about the only thing they feel they know for certain is that Zodiac is a Gilbert and Sullivan buff.

 

That bizarre conclusion came as a result of two letters Zodiac sent to The Chronicle last July 27. At the request of investigators, the contents have been kept a secret until now.

 

In the longer of the two letters, Zodiac penned in poetic style a list of types of people he would like to put "underground."

 

It was immediately apparent that Zodiac had plagiarized several stanzas from an aria in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "The Mikado."

 

It is the entrance aria of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner.

 

MEMORY

Because of numerous misspellings and occasional variations from the original lyrics of W. S. Gilbert, police are positive Zodiac put the words on paper from memory rather than copying them from the libretto.

 

This has prompted serious speculation that Zodiac - perhaps in the days when he was a student - once performed the role of Ko-Ko.

 

Here is part of the executioner's aria as remembered with errors, by Zodiac.

 

"I've got a little list. I've got a little list.

 

"Of society offenders who might well be underground.

 

"Who would never be missed, who would never be missed.

 

"There is the pestulentual nucences who whrite for autographs.

 

"All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs...

 

"There's the banjo seranader and the others of his race.

 

"All people who eat pepermint and phomphit (blow it) in your face.

 

"And the Idiout who praises with inthusastic tone.

 

"Of centuries but this and every country but his own."

 

SEARCH

A quiet search for onetime Ko-Kos has turned up none that could be Zodiac. Obvious differences in physical description and handwriting comparisons have cleared all Ko-Kos tracked down since the arrival of the July 27 letters.

 

There has never been any shortage of Zodiac suspects.

 

San Francisco homicide inspectors William Armstrong and David Toschi have, they say, checked out, and cleared, "literally thousands of suspected Zodiacs" named by "wives, mothers, acquaintances, friends, fellow workers, delivery men ... not to mention police agencies throughout the world."

 

Sheriff's detective sergeant Kenneth Narlow of Napa county has fruitlessly followed up another 900 tips as to Zodiac's identity since the Sept. 27, 1969, knife slaying of coed Cecilia Ann Shepard at Lake Berryessa.

 

Hundreds of other leads have been checked out by Solano county authorities because of the murders Zodiac committed near Vallejo. On Dec. 20, 1968, he gunned down teen-agers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen and on July 5, 1969, he fatally shot waitress Darleen Ferrin, in each instance at local lovers' lanes.

 

With Stine, these are the five known victims of Zodiac.

 

Detectives doubt Zodiac's claim he has murdered eight other persons, mostly because he has never identified any victims but the first five.

 

WARY

They believe he came so close to getting caught while carrying out the slaying of Stine that he is wary of actually killing again and is content to deluge The Chronicle with correspondence in which he keeps upping his score - on paper only.

 

The Zodiac investigators concede, however, that there are far more than eight unsolved murders in Northern California and that some of these might indeed be the work of the boastful killer.

 

They also recall that last November Zodiac said he was going to "change the way" of committing murders he'd followed until then.

 

"I shall no longer announce to any when I commit my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, & a few fake accidents, etc." Zodiac dime-store stationary.

 

TORTURE

In his letters of last July, Zodiac warned that future victims will be tortured before being killed.

 

Some victims, he said, will be tied over anthills so he can "watch them scream and twitch and squirm."

 

"Others," he continued, "shall have pine splinters driven under their nails and then burned. Others shall be placed in caves and fed salt beef until they are gorged.

 

"Then I shall listen to their please for water and I shall laugh at them."

 

There is no doubt the July Zodiac letters are authentic. Crime Lab handwriting experts have made comparisons with other known messages from the killer and say the hurried printing and crossed-circle signature are identical.

 

CARD

For this reason inspectors Armstrong and Toschi are puzzled by what they believe to be still another piece of correspondence from Zodiac.

 

Last Wednesday, The Chronicle received a postcard-like note signed "Zodiac." It actually was a plain white, 3-inch by 5-inch file card onto which the author has pasted words cut from an edition of The Chronicle itself. Dated "Mon., Oct. 5, 1970," it read:

 

"Dear Editor:

 

"You'll hate me, but I've got to tell you.

 

"The pace isn't any slower! In fact it's just one big thirteenth.

 

"Some of Them Fought It Was Horrible."

 

It ended with a P.S., pasted onto the card upside down.

 

"P.S. There are reports city police pig cops are closeing in on me. Fk. I'm crackproof. What is the price tag now."

 

Thirteen holes were punched in the card and a small cross, in which blood was used as ink, was pasted on next to the signature.

 

The detectives studied the card for two days and for reasons they decline to make public say they feel it "highly probable" it came from Zodiac.

 

The post card is now locked in a fireproof steel filing cabinet, four-drawers high, which is jammed full of reports, suspect investigations, and evidence relating to the Zodiac case, unsolved after almost two years.

 

Note: This article refers to Darlene Ferrin as "Darleen Ferrin," and refers to Cecelia Shepard as "Cecilia Shepard." The article also says Darlene died on July 5, 1969, when in fact she died July 4.

On August 23, 1987, two Saline County, Arkansas boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives, were murdered, then laid upon the tracks near the Shobe Road Crossing where it was hoped the damage done to their bodies by a passing train would erase all evidence of the crime. The book, "The Boys On The Tracks", by investigative reporter, Mara Leveritt, and the film "Obstruction Of Justice", produced by Jean Duffey, and Linda Ives (Kevin's determined and tenacious mother), provide an in-depth look at an American tragedy and it's cover-up. Both are available for purchase online.

 

Part of the background for this book reveals Jean Townsend's links to the circle that later featured in the Profumo Affair. The journalist and royal biographer Gwenn Robyns was an especially helpful source. Over a delicious vegetarian mean she served me at her Oxfordshire home, she was royally indiscreet, especially about Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, last Viceroy of India, First Sea Lord, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS. Mountbatten, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, had been the uncle both of Prince Philip and his aristocratic partner in erotic adventures, Milford Haven.

 

In 1975, a Daily Mirror exposé accused Mountbatten of involvement with a gay circle of Royal Life Guards. The resulting army investigation saw five Life Guards officers and thirty-six guardsmen dismissed from the regiment for "homosexual activities." Needless to say, the Earl was unscathed by the allegations, which he denied. (The allegations no doubt excited the Guards' obsessed Michael Whittaker).

 

Gwen Robyns was a close friend of Lady Pamela Carmen Louise Hicks Pamela Hicks. At one point Gwen began a biography of Lady Pamela's husband, the interior designer David Hicks, and interviewed many of his friends. She was shocked at how "after knocking back a few drinks" they detailed Hick's lurid and debauched adventures - which extended into Buckingham Palace:

He was really into mucky stuff!

 

Then Earl Mountbatten got wind of her research.

 

Gwen Robyns:

 

"Mountbatten took me to lunch at the Yacht Club. So I went, and then Mountbatten said, 'Now, you've got all these interesting tapes. I've got a chauffeur and he could take you home to get the tapes and then would you give them to me?' And I said, "No!' And he said, 'Why not?' And he said, 'Now don't be such a silly girl.' And I said, 'I'm not a silly girl.'

Gwen told him the confessions had been made in confidence. Mountbatten insisted. Gwen compromised.

I said, 'What I will do is I'll have the tapes burnt - in front of my lawyer and in front of your lawyer'. So we solemnly made a date and we went to some little office somewhere and there was a little grate, and all these tapes were burnt there and then."

 

Gwen also told me about the Hicks' marriage:

 

"And I said to Pammy once, ‘He's got a boy staying with you’ - he was eighteen and from South Africa. I said, ‘Do you know - people are talking about David being in the nightclubs with this boy at night?’ And she said: 'It doesn't interfere with me... I just go to bed and have my chocolates and things.’ And I said, 'But you must feel - there's something so degrading about the whole thing!' And she said, ‘I don't think there's anything much wrong in that.’ She said, 'My parents were far worse of course.' She said, 'Far worse! They were miles worse. We don't do anything compared to what they did!'"

 

A rare and previously unpublished photo of the still unsolved Woody/Mr.Bill double homicide of 2001.(Courtesy of The National Enquirer.)

lily in a garden in cabbagetown. in keeping with the tradition of naming flowers based on their appearance, i call this one scene of the hammer attack.

This is a walk made in the autumn of 2018, 32 years AFTER the murder of prime minister Olof Palme of Sweden. It follows his path that fatal evening. People in the streets have, of course, nothing to do with the case. The murder remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

On Friday, 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET (22:21 UTC), Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbet Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

 

Christer Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal he was acquitted. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in late September 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to conspiracy theories.

 

Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.

 

Police said that a taxi driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm, and two girls in a nearby car tried to assist. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 00:06 CET on 1 March 1986. The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Sequence of events

Cinema decision

Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.[1]

 

Grand Cinema

 

Grand cinema.

 

Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.

 

Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.[2]

 

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, then continued past the Dekorima shop which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan.

 

At 23:21, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. Palme at point-blank range and fired a second shot at Mrs. Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen

The explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800 in the sea near Long Island was overshadowed 5 years later by 9/11, but remained a tragic and unsolved mystery. That day, I went with a colleague from the hospital to the Ramada Inn in Long Island to provide PTSD therapy to families and co-workers of the victims. We each received this Commemorative Medal from Mayor Giuliani for our participation.

Joe Mahr of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Thomas Peele of Bay Area News and A.C. Thompson of ProPublica, left to right, discuss covering cops and courts at the Investigative Reporters and Editors 2009 conference in Baltimore.

 

Peele and Thompson explained how they have pieced together detailed stories on unsolved crimes, including their award-winning investigation into the death of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey.

 

Mahr explained how his team was able to use electronic records requests to document fraud and abuse in the local police department's towing operation.

The second in a set of murders, The first was her first husband in San Diego three years before, The second was herself. The connection? Leon Gase her second estranged husband, who was last to see her before her murder.

  

Olive Laura Hill was from Arkansas originally, but had been recently from Erick, Beckham County Oklahoma. She was the sister of Tisan Redus Hill. Tisan known as "Dink" was captured in Sicily in 1943, and held for the duration of the war in Stalag IIIB, and Stalag IIB, by the Germans. In May of 1944 he escaped and was picked up by the Russians. They pointed him to the west and he made it back to US lines, where he was sent home in May 1944, and after a month of recovery discharged to return home June 29, 1944. While he was gone, a string of deaths occurred in his family. His brother-in-law "Bud" Miller was murdered in San Diego County. His father, who came to California to assist the widow, Olive, died in a 'suspicious' auto accident after Olive told him her new husband Leo Gase, had shoved her down a flight of stairs, when she accused him of involvement in the murder of Bud Miller. Olive, Tison Redus Hill's sister, was murdered in Los Angeles, while he was on the way home. The car she is sitting on in the photo above was to be his. The whereabouts of the car after the murder is unknown.

 

Olive Hill married a man named Omer Leon "Bud" Miller in 1941, He had a criminal history as a gambler out of Illinois and Texas, and had spent time in a Texas prison. Olive herself had an arrest record for Prostitution in Los Angeles, described by the Police records as "Morals" violations.

 

Her first husband, Omer, was killed by "suspicious accident" in San Diego in 1942 when he mysteriously flew out a second floor window at an illegal gambling room. Leo J. Gase was present. Olive stated to her family that she was convinced that Leo murdered Omer, and that she would prove it, if it was the last thing she would do. Leo "consoled" the widow after the loss, and Olive, foolishly, married Leo. Leo was working as a bartender in Los Angeles, and she took a job as a waitress, and subsequently was arrested at least twice by the vice squad, for 'consorting' after work with 'men'.

 

In March 1944, she and Leo had an argument, and she stated that he shoved her down a flight of stairs injuring her significantly, after she accused him of being the cause of death of Omer. She was hospitalized and when released she fled Leo, back to Beckham County Oklahoma. Two months later she told her family she was driving back to LA to file for divorce, and to get her things back. She meanwhile took a job, at the Turf Cafe as a waitress, at the corner of Pico and Figueroa, and on June 28, 1944 Leo found her. Leo who lived about a mile and a half from her place of employment had come into the bar where she worked about 10 PM on June 28, 1944. She had apparently served divorce papers on him. He and she talked at her place of employment, until her boss ordered him to leave, because he was stopping her from doing her job. It was Olive and Leo's first wedding anniversary. Other employees reported to police that Leo and Olive were going to get back together (Very unlikely). Olive who got off work at midnight was seen entering her car, and that was the last she was seen alive. The police indicate that someone was hiding in her car.

 

The following morning at 6:30 AM a garage worker reporting for work found her car and her body on the street, about four blocks south of her place of employment, parked on 17th street, she was on the passenger side of the car, shot 5 times (17 wounds). A sixth bullet was in the car door.

 

The initial suspect was Leo J. Gase. He was pulled in for questioning. Leo claims he left at 10:00 PM. His story was that he returned home and started a poker match with his buddies. His friends collaborated that he was there at 11:30 PM, and again there at 2:30 AM the following morning. They do not say he was there continuously, but was there at those two times. Police indicated that his alibi "may" be valid, but arrested him on suspicion of murder. Hours later, based on the statements of his poker buddies, and the coworkers of the bar, he was released. He had indicated a group of persons who he claimed were the cause of his separation three months previously, but those person's alibis checked out. The focus shifted to "A red-haired man" described by employees, later identified as "Mr. Hibbs", who had moved to Long Beach the day before to take a ship building job, and had later moved to NY, before the Police tracked him down. He was a red-haired man, and had been trying to get involved with Olive a week before. He had previously been acquitted of a NY murder. He had also plead guilty to Vehicular Manslaughter in California in 1928, and had served his prison sentence.

 

Mr. Hibbs was arrested in NY, and extradited to California, and indicted for the murder. He was held without bail. However several months later, when he was tried, he was acquitted because he could prove he wasn't anywhere near the location the night of the murder, he was in Long Beach. Also all of the witnesses could not be found on the day of the trial. He did testify that Olive had several people who wanted her attention romantically. His previous acquittal was "an indication" that he was a valid suspect in Olive's murder. The warrant was issued because of this and that he had red hair, plus he was 'involved' with Olive personally. His inopportune time in leaving the area made him a fall guy.

 

The Police closed the case when they made the arrest. However with the acquittal the case is still unsolved. All of the witnesses 'disappeared' before the trial, and were not found.

 

The viciousness of the crime indicates it was a crime of great emotional involvement. Leo Gase, despite the statements of his friends and the workers at the Bar, who likely were afraid of him, was the ONLY person who had motive and opportunity, and the means to access her for the crime.

 

1. He lived nearby, and was unaccounted for at the time of the murder.

2. The murder happened away from her apartment from work and toward his house, she lived NORTH of the place she worked. The site of the body was in the direction of his home from her work, south.

3. She had already been assaulted by him, and swore to her family he had murdered her previous husband. Gase's statement that they were getting back together is ludicrous, she FEARED him enough to run back to Oklahoma to escape him.

4. He stated he was getting back together with Olive after 3 months of separation, and claimed she was going to meet "a red-haired man" that night to break off with him, BUT Mr. Hibbs had already left the locality.

5. No other suspects were uncovered by the investigation.

6.The police were not thorough in their investigation and once they suspected Mr. Hibbs, obtained a warrant, and arrested him, considered the case closed.

7. The newspapers report that his location at the time of the crime was NOT at the poker game, he had left and then returned about 2:30 AM.

  

Leo J Gase was the first suspect, but he successfully redirected the police to other persons, and eventually to "red-headed" Ronald Hibbs who had left Los Angeles the day before the murder. Hibbs left, looking for employment, so the Police had a warrant issued for him. Leo Gase remains as the best suspect with motive, means and opportunity.

 

Leo died in 1961.

  

News reports:

 

The San Jose Evening News, June 28, 1944

 

PRETTY WAITRESS IS FOUND SHOT TO DEATH

 

Los Angeles, June 28 (UP). The body of pretty Olive Miller Gase, 31 year old brunette waitress was found slumped in an automobile abandoned along a residential street today.

 

She had been shot three times, apparently by a gun fired from within the car, a club coupe.

 

Her husband, Leo Gase, 45, bartender, told police he had been separated from his wife for the past three months, but that a reconciliation had been effected. Police hunted a recent companion of Mrs. Miller's (sic-Gase)

 

The San Jose Evening News, June 29, 1944

 

HUSBAND IS HELD AS WIFE MURDER SUSPECT

 

Los Angeles, June 29 (INS)

 

Leo Gase, estranged husband of Olive Miller Gase, 31-year-old waitress who was found mysteriously shot to death yesterday in the front seat of her automobile, was booked on suspicion of murder today by police.

 

Gase, questioned by police for nearly 12 hours after his wife's bullet-ridden body was found, protested that the slayer must have been a rejected suitor, and that he and his wife had planned a reconcilliation.

  

San Bernardino Sun, June 29,1944

 

Husband Booked as Suspect in Slaying

 

Los Angeles, June 29 (UP) Leo Gase, estranged husband of Olive Miller Gase, 31 year-old waitress found dead in an automobile has been booked on suspicion of murder.

 

Detective Lts. Lloyd Hunt & R. L. Lohrman said Gase. denying the crime, suggested the slayer was a rejected suitor.

 

Mrs. Gase's body a red ribbon in her hand, was found yesterday. She had been shot six times.

  

June 29, 1944, Los Angeles Times, Pg 14

 

Woman's Bullet ridden body found in her auto.

 

Punctured by 10 bullet wounds, the body of Olive Miller Gase, 31-year-old waitress, yesterday was found sprawled grotesquely on the front seat floor of her car in the 600 block on W. 17th Street.

 

Several hours later the woman's estranged husband, Leo Gase, bartender of 301 S. Hartford Ave, was booked at University Police Station on suspicion of murder after being questioned by investigators.

 

Gase, who identified his wife's body at the County morgue denied complicity in the slaying and told officers he suspected an acquaintance of Mrs. Gase who he said, caused them to separate three months ago.

 

The husband said he had attempted a reconciliation Tuesday evening and last saw his wife at the cafe where she works as a waitress at 10 pm Tuesday. Police questioned a suspect named by Gase, but his alibi checked flawlessly.

 

Homicide Officers launched search for a man believed to have secreted himself in the rear of the automobile before she entered the car at midnight after leaving her place of employment at Pico and Figueroa streets.

 

STRUGGLE INDICATED

 

Reconstructing the slaying. Det. Lts. Lloyd Hurst and R. A. Lohrman conjectured that the murderer forced her to stop the car and that she then struggled to wrest the gun from him.

 

Investigation showed that the waitress was formerly married to Omar Miller, who died mysteriously in San Diego two years ago.

 

Police records show that Mrs. Gase had a record of arrests on morals charges.

 

Autopsy surgeons at the County Morgue said that Mrs. Gase may have been shot only five times, the bullets passing entirely through the body and causing ten puncture wounds.

 

The body was discovered shortly after 7 AM by Charles Persons, mechanic, as he was reporting for duty at a garage near where the car was parked.

  

Los Angeles Examiner, June 29, 1944

 

Man Held In Wife Slaying

 

Bullet torn body found in car. Acquaintances cleared.

 

Leo Gase, 44, estranged husband of Olive Miller Gase, 31, whose bullet-torn body was slumped beneath the steering wheel of her club coupe early yesterday, was booked on suspicion of murder last night after he had sought vainly, police said, to suggest the slayer was a rejected suitor.

 

Detective Lieutenants Lloyd Hunt and R. L. Lohrman, who questioned Gase for nearly 12 hours after his wife's crumpled body was discovered by a passing mechanic, said they had investigated several "acquaintances" whom he had accused of having caused the estrangement between himself and his slain wife.

 

ALIBIS TOLD

 

Each of these acquaintances the detectives declared, had satisfactorily accounted for his activities at the time when someone, sitting in the seat of the Coupe parked in front of 622 west 17th Street, pumped six bullets into Mrs. Gase's body.

 

Mrs Gase, who lived at a hotel at 428 West Second Street, and her husband had been separated several months, Gase told the Police. He then described efforts he had made toward a reconciliation. The last of these occurred in the Turf cafe, Pico and Figueroa streets, where his wife was employed. When he saw her there about four hours before the slaying, Gase is quoted as telling the police, she seemed nervous and whispered: "Please don't stick around, I am afraid there is going to be trouble."

  

Los Angeles Herald Express, Vol. LXXIV, Section B, 29 June, 1944

 

Check "Red Ribbon" Girl's Loves Police hunt clues in murder of bar waitress.

 

In the "Love Life" of Olive Miller Gase, 31-year-old bar girl who was found clutching a red ribbon after her life had ebbed through multiple bullet wounds, Los Angeles homicide detectives today turned for a clue to her murderer. Still held in University station on suspicion of murder was her estranged husband, Leo Gase, 45 year old bar tender.

 

Mate's story holding.

 

Investigators began an intensive questioning and alibi checking on Gase this morning, but indicated that his story of the pre-murder hours may be holding up.

 

It was learned that Gase's story of being in his home at 501 South Hartford Avenue when the Midnight murder occurred was being substantiated. He was 'placed' there at 11:30 PM Tuesday and at 2:30 the next morning, detectives said.

 

Mrs. Gase was found crumpled in her car in the 600 block of west 17th Street at 7 am yesterday.

 

Homicide detectives theorized that her slayer secreted himself in the rear seat of her car. Other employees of the Turf Club at Pico and Figueroa informed them she left there at 11:58 PM. Tuesday.

 

Gase maintained that he last saw his estranged wife at 10 PM. the night of her murder, when he visited her in the cafe. Several "acquaintances" named by Gase as having caused the separation between he and his wife were questioned by detectives, but cleared of implication in the crime.

 

Shot 5 Times.

 

Autopsy surgeons reported she had apparently been shot five times. There were ten gunshot wounds, but the bullets may have passed entirely through her body, a preliminary examination indicated.

 

Police records showed that Mrs. Gase had been arrested on morals charges, and that she was formerly married to Mr. Omar Miller of San Diego, who plunged to death from a hotel two years ago.

 

Gase told police investigators that he went to her place of employment to attempt a reconciliation -- after three months of separation -- and she told him "not to stick around because there might be trouble".

 

Los Angeles Times August 2, 1944

 

Warrant Out For Murder

 

A murder warrant for Ronald Hibbs, 30, yesterday was in the hands of Lts. P. K. Parry and H. A Skaggs of the University Division. Hibbs is wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of Mrs. Olive Gase, waitress who was shot to death in her parked car at 17th nd Figueroa sts., June 28. Investigation has narrowed to the search for a red-haired suspect, reported to have been Mrs. Gase's lover. A red-haired man was reported to have had a rendezvous with the woman on the night of the murder. Hibbs a shipyard worker who disappeared the day after the shooting is red-haired and freckled, detectives said.

  

Los Angeles Times (April 24, 1945)

 

Detectives seek bar Tender's return

 

Two Los Angeles detectives were en route yesterday to New York to bring back Ronald Hibbs, 38, bartender and former shipyard worker, who is wanted here for questioning about the murder last June of Mrs. Olive Miller Gase, waitress. Hibbs according to capt. Thad Brown of the Homicide detail has refused to waive extradition.

 

Hibbs has been sought on a warrant issued last August 1, following his disappearance subsequent to the discovery of Mrs. Gases' body, slumped in the seat of her automobile parked in front of 622 W. 17th St. The woman had been shot five times.

  

Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1945

 

Man Held in Killing

 

Ronald Hibbs, 39, was ordered held for Superior Court trial on murder charges following preliminary hearing into the fatal shooting last June 28 of his admitted girl friend, Mrs. Olive Miller Gase, 30-year-old beer-parlor waitress. Principal witness against Hibbs was Det. Sgt. T. K. Parry, told of finding the woman's body in an automobile in the 600 block of W. 17th St.

[Note: Court records indicate that all of the witnesses disappeared and could not be found for the trial.]

 

Los Angeles Times (Sep 25, 1945)

 

Man Acquitted of Murder

 

Ronald Hibbs, 40, yesterday walked from the courtroom of Walter S. Gates, acquitted of charges that he murdered his sweetheart, Olive Miller Gase, 31-year-old waitress, whose bullet riddled body was found in her car in the 600 block of W. 17th St., June 28, 1944. Hibbs was brought here from New York's Bowery last April to face trial. Co-workers of the dead woman said that she was last seen as she left to meet Hibbs, to tell him she would not see him again as she loved her husband, Leo Gase, bartender. The accused man's attorney, S. S. Hahn, contended that Hibbs was not near Mrs. Gase the night she died of 16 wounds made with five gunshots. He maintained that three men were in love with the waitress and that any one of them might have committed the crime.

This label is an interesting read:

 

- The first ingredient is something called "SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE", whose first ingredient is "SUGAR"

 

- The second ingredient is, um, "SUGAR"

 

- Reading on we find that the product "CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: ... CHOCOLATE ..."

 

- Elsewhere we see that of the 42 grams per serving, 22 grams are, yes, SUGAR

 

So that clears up why the product isn't called CHOCOLATES.

 

Still unsolved: Why is it called "CHAMPAGNE"?

trovare un punto fisso e seguirlo, qualunque esso sia.

è la vecchia regola.

provare a farla ritornare nuova, è il mio scopo odierno.

Day 185

On August 23, 1987, two Saline County, Arkansas boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives, were murdered, then laid upon the tracks near the Shobe Road Crossing where it was hoped the damage done to their bodies by a passing train would erase all evidence of the crime. The book, "The Boys On The Tracks", by investigative reporter, Mara Leveritt, and the film "Obstruction Of Justice", produced by Jean Duffey, and Linda Ives (Kevin's determined and tenacious mother), provide an in-depth look at an American tragedy and it's cover-up. Both are available for purchase online.

 

The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie in Scotland

 

The Loch Ness Monster is a creature that lives in Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Popular interest and belief in the animal was brought to the world's attention in 1933. The most common speculation among believers is that the creature represents a line of long-surviving 'lizard' plesiosaurs.The scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster as a modern-day myth, and explains sightings as a mix of hoaxes and wishful thinking.Despite this, it remains one of the most famous examples of cryptozoology. The legendary monster has been affectionately referred to by the nickname Nessie since the 1950s.

 

On October 22nd 2012 Theresa Irene Wolowski, and Ryan Janek Wolowski, took a boat ride through Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands looking for Nessie, who's presence was felt.

 

Fore more on The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie visit

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/legend-loch-ness.html

 

Photo

Scotland, Scottish Highlands, UK United Kingdom, Europe

10-22-2012

Julian Symons - Sweet Adelaide

Penguin Books 5792, 1981

Cover design by Neil Stuart

Cover photo by Walter Wick

 

"Basing his story on a notorious unsolved nineteenth-century murder, Julian Symons weaves a tale filled with psychological suspense, rich in Victorian atmosphere, and capped by a brilliantly imagined solution."