Sudoku

Sudoku By Andrew Salem

How to Solve: Fill in the blanks so that each row, each column, and each of the nine 3x3 grids contain one instance of each of the numbers 1 through 9.

By Charlotte Volk

Almost everyone has heard the name ‘Jack the Ripper’, mainly because prolific media and fiction coverage of his crimes has created an urban legend around him. Jack the Ripper was a serial killer who preyed on vulnerable women, all the while sending taunting letters to the authorities desperately trying to capture him. To this day, his actual identity remains unknown and is the object of much speculation. However, some researchers believe that a McGill alum and Jack the Ripper were one and the same.

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream enrolled at McGill University in the Faculty of Medicine in 1872 and received his Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery in 1876. In a sinister beginning to his career, he wrote his doctoral thesis on chloroform, a substance he would later use in his early murders. Later, he switched to strychnine, which causes convulsions and is evidence of Dr. Cream’s sadistic tendencies.

Cream's first victim was his wife, Flora Brooks, who he married in 1876 after almost killing her during a botched abortion procedure. Brooks’ death a year later was originally attributed to consumption but is now believed to be chloroform poisoning. Cream's attempts to frame a local businessman for another of his murders were unsuccessful, and he fled to Chicago, where he established a medical practice near the red-light district offering illegal abortions to prostitutes. A string of chloroform and strychnine poisonings in Chicago followed this move. Cream was eventually arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment after he attempted to blackmail and frame a pharmacist for one of his murders. After Cream’s brother allegedly bribed the authorities for leniency, Cream was released from prison and sailed to England, where he continued to murder, and continued to attempt to blackmail and frame others. In fact, it was this insistence on accusing others that was his ultimate downfall, as the police found it suspicious for one person to have such intimate knowledge of the various murders.

Cream was convicted and hanged in 1892. Cream’s executioner claimed that Cream’s final words were “I am Jack…”, a claim which has been seized upon by “Rip-

Source: Alchetron.com

perologists” to connect Cream to the Jack the Ripper murders. One such researcher, Donald Bell, draws parallels between the crimes: both killers targeted prostitutes, both wrote taunting letters to the authorities, and their murders all showed signs of sadistic tendencies on the killers’ part. Another link between the two serial killers is that Jack the Ripper showed signs of detailed anatomical knowledge, and it is postulated that he was medically trained. However, evidence suggests that Cream was in prison in Illinois at the time, making the connection tenuous at best. Did Cream bribe the officials to be released early, as Bell postulates? Did he have a doppelganger that served time in his place? Or were Dr. Cream and Jack the Ripper friends who used each other’s prison sentences as alibis? We will likely never know the truth... ♦