By: Warren Gray
Copyright © 2021
“History is not history unless it is the truth.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 1856.
“I’ve given my word to keep my mouth permanently closed about it…(Jack the Ripper) wasn’t a butcher, Yid (Jew), or foreign skipper…You’d have to look for him not at the bottom of London society at the time, but a long way up.”
— Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline, who personally investigated the case.
This is a complicated story, in which the overwhelming mountain of evidence leads in a very uncomfortable direction, but we must follow that evidence diligently and dutifully, wherever it may lead, like a relentless, police investigation, to reach the inescapable conclusion. There have been hundreds of non-fiction books written on this grisly subject, mostly espousing random theories not supported by the actual evidence. The writers propose a solution first, and then work backward to prop up their awkward theories, and this is definitely not the way to conduct a proper, murder investigation.
Most of us have heard the term, “Jack the Ripper” before, in reference to the greatest series of horrific, unsolved murders in history. From August 31, 1888, until November 9, 1888, over the course of 71 grueling days and nights of unimaginable fear and horror, five women, all prostitutes, were brutally murdered at night in Whitechapel, in the East End of London, England. They were each silently strangled first, by someone standing directly in front of them, and then, after they were dead, their throats were viciously slit from left to right, indicating a left-handed assailant.
Although there was no indication of sexual contact in any of these cases, four of the five women were expertly disemboweled, with their reproductive organs removed, and in the fifth case, it’s believed that the killer was interrupted before he could finish his gruesome work. During the course of these 71 very tense nights in London, he actually taunted the police with a series of letters, giving himself the infamous nickname.
On September 27, 1888, the Central News Agency received this letter, in red ink, but not blood, after the first two murders: “I am down on whores, and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled…Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work straight away if I get a chance. Good luck! Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.” Interestingly enough, this same letter contained another very revealing message written on the side: “They say I’m a doctor now, ha, ha.” But, more about this cryptic and rather-telling note later.
The basic chronology of events unfolded like this: On Friday, August 31, 1888, at approximately 3:20 AM, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, age 43, a prostitute and heavy drinker, was killed in total silence in front of a stable door on Bucks Row (now Durward Street), strangled first, then her throat was slit twice, and her abdomen was mutilated after her death, but no internal organs were missing from the crime scene. Forensic evidence indicated a left-handed killer, using a very long, thin, single-edged, razor-sharp knife with an eight-inch blade or longer.
Next, on Saturday, September 8, 1888, at about 5:30 AM, Annie Chapman, another prostitute, age 47, was killed in the back yard behind a house at 29 Hanbury Street. She was nearly decapitated, cut from left to right, disemboweled, and her internal, reproductive organs were removed with a single slice of a very sharp, long-bladed (six to eight inches long) knife. Her uterus was missing from the crime scene. There was absolutely no evidence of a struggle, and police recorded that the body was “terribly mutilated…(and) there were indications of…considerable, anatomical skill and knowledge.” But no one nearby heard a sound.
Another incriminating letter arrived at Scotland Yard (the London Metropolitan Police Department) on September 29, 1888, stating, “Dear Boss – You have not caught me yet, with all your cunning, with all your ‘Lees’ (referring to noted psychic Robert James Lees, to be mentioned later in this article)…I was conversing with two or three of your men last night – their eyes of course were shut, and thus they did not see my bag…you may and may not catch – Jack the Ripper.”
Then, just three days after the letter in which the killer named himself “Jack the Ripper,” he struck again, in the ghastly “Double Event.” On Sunday, September 30, 1888, at 12:56 AM, the body of Elizabeth “Long Liz” Stride (also known as Annie Fitzgerald), a prostitute, age 45, was found by police constables on Berner Street, with grapes in her right hand, and grape stems amid the crime-scene debris. Grapes were a very expensive, luxury item at the time, and only the wealthy could afford them. Stride’s throat was slit from left to right, as usual, but there were no abdominal mutilations in her case, as the Ripper was apparently interrupted by police arriving on-scene unexpectedly.
Eyewitness Joseph Lawende saw Liz Stride only minutes before her death, walking with a man carrying “a Gladstone bag,” and a female witness saw a man with “a shiny, black, Gladstone bag” hurriedly leaving the area where Stride was killed. Gladstone bags were small, deep, portable bags, typically made of stiff leather, most commonly used as a doctor’s medical bag in an era when very few men carried any type of bag with them, but the Ripper actually admitted to carrying one.
A mere four minutes later, Catherine “Kate” Eddowes, a drunken prostitute, age 46, was released from police custody, giving her name as “Mary Ann Kelly.” She was the common-law wife of John Kelly, and was alternately known as Mary Ann Kelly, Mary Kelly, Kate Kelly, or Jane Kelly. We shall soon see why these fairly common, Irish names were vitally important to the Ripper case. By 1:40 AM, Jack the Ripper had savagely murdered her in Mitre Square, with her throat cut, disemboweled, and her uterus and left kidney removed and missing.
Her face was mutilated, and carved with ritualistic, ancient glyphs. Police reported that “the perpetrator of the act must have had considerable knowledge of the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity, and the way of removing them.” Eddowes was last seen alive by witnesses at 1:35 AM, and her warm body was discovered at 1:44 AM, so the Ripper was able to act with extreme speed, stealth, and surprise. The old nursery rhyme, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” could certainly apply in this instance, although it was created in 1815, and is not a direct reference to Jack the Ripper.
The astounding, expert removal of her left kidney, from the front, with just one swipe of the blade, led London police surgeons Dr. Frederick G. Brown and Dr. George B. Phillips to conclude that Jack the Ripper was either “a hunter, a butcher, a student in surgery, or a properly-qualified surgeon.”
Immediately following the murder of Eddowes, graffiti was discovered on nearby Goulston Street at 2:55 AM, above a blood-soaked portion of her apron. It read: “The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.” Some used this to blame possible, Jewish suspects, as if the word “Juwes” was misspelled. However, when spelled properly, the Juwes (pronounced “Joo-eez”) were Jubelo, Jubela, and Jubelum, the assassins of Hiram Abiff, the chief architect of Solomon’s temple in Masonic legend, implying that the Ripper was possibly a Freemason.
But perhaps even more-interestingly, “Juwe” also means “two” in the ancient, Altaic language of Manchu, a language spoken by only two men in England at that time (and only 10 men now), Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Sir Charles Warren, a high-ranking Freemason, and Major (later Colonel) Claude Reignier Conder, a British explorer and intelligence agent, who was Warren’s best friend, and was also fluent in Arabic. Together, both men had previously excavated the ruins of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, and were well aware of the Masonic legends and rituals associated with it. Conder was also a recent, decorated, combat veteran of the Battles of Kassassin and Tel el-Kebir, Egypt, in 1882, in which he took part in a silent attack by starlight, killing at least one Egyptian-Arab sentry quickly and efficiently with a knife.
Adding another twist to this story is the fact that Conder’s younger brother, René François Reignier Conder, later lived next door to retired, Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline in the 1901 census, the same police officer who thoroughly investigated the entire, Jack-the-Ripper case in 1888. In other words, these very highly-placed individuals, with exceptional skills and qualifications, all knew each other! (See my Gunpowder Magazine article on “Guns of the JFK Assassination” from July 27, 2020, to discover that the CIA suspects and organized-crime suspects in that world-famous murder investigation also all knew each other. History certainly tends to repeat itself.)
In fact, Detective Inspector Abberline was handpicked to investigate the Ripper murders, and he would later investigate the infamous, Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889 to 1890, directly involving Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward (“Eddy”), the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the oldest son of Prince of Wales Edward VII, and grandson of Queen Victoria. Eddy was 24 years old in 1888, and second in line of succession to the throne. The humiliating scandal involved a male brothel, which Eddy was reliably rumored to have visited frequently between 1886 and 1889, and he was widely suspected to be either homosexual or bisexual.
Abberline quickly discovered in 1888, much to his eternal dismay, that Prince Eddy’s name seemed to come up quite often in the Ripper case, as either a suspect, accomplice, bystander, friend of the Ripper, or as a motive for the killings, particularly to avoid exposing Eddy’s rather blatant, sexual indiscretions.
According to Joseph Sickert, a painter who lived on Cleveland Street, and was a close associate of Eddy’s, Eddy met a Catholic shop girl named Annie Elizabeth Crook in 1884, got her pregnant, had an illegitimate daughter in 1885, Alice Margaret Crook, and secretly and illegally married Annie in 1888. Annie’s good friend, Mary Jane Kelly, an Irish, Catholic servant girl, was an eyewitness to the ceremony.
These have all been authenticated as real people, lending credence to the Sickert Theory. In fact, Annie was later institutionalized in Guy’s Hospital, run by Sir William Gull, the Royal Physician, to silence her, and Eddy’s (and Gull’s) personal coachman, John Charles Netley, age 28 in 1888, intentionally ran down seven-year-old Alice Margaret in 1892 with his coach, clearly attempting to kill her, and simultaneously applying even further credence to this disturbing theory. Fortunately, she survived.
Then, there is the Alternate Royal Family Theory, a simpler and more-likely version, which suggests that Eddy was seen with Mary Jane Kelly, also a Catholic commoner and part-time prostitute, quite a bit, and got her pregnant. Eddy could never become king if this were known, so Mary Kelly and the fetus both had to be “removed.” The assigned killer, or killers, however, didn’t know her full name, age, or what she looked like, so they had to carefully track her down without alerting her to their presence.
It rapidly became apparent to Abberline that the Ripper murders were certainly not the random work of a madman, but were instead cold, calculated, and methodical, hunting for just one vitally important victim, within a very specific, one-square-mile area. The first four women all used the names or nicknames of Ann, Annie, or Mary Ann, were all similar in age, all frequented the Britannia pub at the corner of Commercial Street and Dorset Street, they had all lived with 100 yards of Flower and Dean Street in 1887, and two of them either lived or had a boyfriend at 35 Dorset Street. Catherine Eddowes was also known as Mary Ann Kelly or Jane Kelly.
In addition, they were all killed at night, under cover of darkness, in total silence, on or near a weekend (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday only), indicating a very skilled and elusive killer who clearly did not want to be seen or heard, and probably had a full-time job elsewhere on most weekdays, so he likely was not an ordinary, unskilled, local man from the East End.
On October 16, 1888, another Ripper letter was received by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, authenticated as genuine because of the accompanying half of a human, left kidney. It read, in part, “From hell…I send you half the kidney I took from one woman…Catch me when you can.” The handwriting was completely different from the original, “Jack the Ripper” letter, however, with one written neatly by a right-handed individual, and the other scrawled somewhat sloppily by a left-handed man. Did this mean that the Ripper was actually two men, and not just one, as the word “Juwe” in the Manchu language would seem to corroborate?
Strangely, Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren abruptly resigned from his office on Thursday, November 8, 1888, just one day before the Ripper would strike with savage ferocity for the very last time. Did he know, or at least suspect, that it was coming, and did he know who was involved? It certainly seems possible. His timing was absolutely impeccable.
Jack the Ripper’s fifth and final victim was, probably not surprisingly, Mary Jane Kelly, age 25, and reasonably attractive, the samegirl involved in both Royal Family theories, and she was the most horribly-mutilated of all the victims, killed inside her own, tiny home at 13 Miller’s Court, just off of Dorset Street, and only a short walk from the Britannia pub, at about 2:00 AM on Friday, November 9, 1888. Her throat was slit all the way to the spine, the abdomen was completely emptied, her heart was missing, her breasts removed, and her face was hacked beyond recognition.
The knife used to ravage her body was at least six inches long, and only about one inch wide. She was the youngest victim by far, the only one killed indoors, and was allegedly about three months pregnant at the time. The vicious mutilations to Kelly’s body were so incredibly detailed, methodical, and ritualistic that police estimated that the Ripper required at least two hours to perform all of the incisions, tiny nicks, and intricate carvings found on her bloody corpse later that same morning.
The last person to see Mary Jane Kelly alive was George Hutchinson, who observed her escorting a man into her room shortly before two AM. The stranger was about five feet, six inches tall, 34 to 35 years old, with a moustache and clean-shaven chin. This description almost perfectly matches that of Major Claude Conder, who was actually five feet, five inches tall, 39 years of age, and had a thick, drooping moustache.
Conder was later mentioned as a possible suspect in Tom Slemen’s 2010 book, Jack the Ripper: British Intelligence Agent, which gave rise to the “Assassin Theory.” Claude Conder was not only a British spy, noted explorer, archeologist, author, painter, combat veteran, martial-arts expert, fluent Manchu and Arabic-speaker, who was the best friend of the London police commissioner, but he also personally knew Prince Eddy quite well, and had escorted him as a guide on his recent tour of the Middle East. Conder, however, was not a surgeon, with the precise, anatomical knowledge required for this series of brutal murders, but he certainly had the extensive, intelligence expertise to track the
victims down one at a time, and the considerable, physical strength to easily strangle them in silence.
Slemen writes that, “Conder was an able fighter, despite his small-but-stout frame…who excelled at hand-to-hand combat…with split-second timing…Jack the Ripper operated in darkness…an expert in stealth…in his trademark style of almost supernatural silence…a phenomenally-fast operator…carrying out the blackest of black operations: the brutal and terrifying murder and mutilation(s.)” Doctor Thomas Bond added in his 1888 book, Profile of Jack the Ripper, that, “The murderer must have been a man of great physical strength, and of great coolness and daring…quite likely a quiet, inoffensive-looking man…living among respectable persons.” These descriptions almost perfectly match the appearance and unique attributes of Major Claude Conder.
The murder weapon, according to Doctor Thomas Bond in 1888, was, “No doubt a straight knife…strong, very sharp point at the top, one inch in width, at least six inches long.” Doctor George B. Phillips added that it was a “very sharp, thin, narrow blade at least six-eight inches long…a small, amputating knife six-eight inches long.” In the 1880s, these types of thin, surgical knives, with razor-sharp blades six to eight inches long were known as “Liston knives,” after Doctor Robert Liston (1794 to 1847), a Scottish surgeon revered as “the fastest knife in the West End,” who could amputate an entire limb in just 28 seconds. Most were handcrafted by expert knife smiths in Germany or France. On October 1, 1888, the morning immediately following the Stride and Eddowes murders, a bloody, nine-inch, Liston-type knife was found on Whitechapel Road by Thomas Coram, but no one knows what became of it!
Most of the books and articles concerning the Sickert Theory or the Alternate Royal Family Theory involve Sir William Gull, the Royal Physician, chosen because he was the best and most-skillful surgeon in England. While he was never a suspect at the time, as more and more evidence gradually came to light over the following years, it became readily apparent that he not only habitually carried a black, leather, Gladstone bag, but was left-handed (according to the London Metropolitan Police, but he carefully concealed this fact), had a fondness for imported, American grapes, and knew the Royal Family, their numerous problems, and their darkest secrets quite intimately.
Gull was not a Freemason, however. He died in 1890, and was first implicated in the Ripper murders in 1895. Engraved upon his headstone is his favorite, Bible quote, from Micah 6:8, “What doth the Lord require of thee?” Was this an admission that he had been required to do something quite noteworthy, distasteful, and even horrible in order to preserve and protect the monarchy?
Gull had suffered from a massive stroke in 1887, and retired from practicing medicine, lacking perhaps in strength and stamina, but was still a consummate professional with a surgical blade, and was fiercely and intensely loyal to the Royal Family. Robert James Lees, a journalist, distinguished spiritualist, and official psychic to the Royal Family, led police in October 1888 to what he fervently believed to be the killer’s home, at 74 Brook Street, Mayfair, a four-story (plus a livable attic), white townhouse in the affluent, West End of London, just a stone’s throw from the upscale, Grosvenor Square community park, and only three-quarters of a mile north of Buckingham Palace, the Queen’s stately and magnificent residence in the heart of the city.
Even today, police agencies worldwide still routinely use psychics to help solve crimes, and their accuracy is often astonishing. Lees was, of course, the very best physic in all of England at the time, and shockingly, this particular address was the home of Sir William Gull! Lees later verbally identified Gull as the Ripper, but he was quietly sworn to secrecy, and received a life pension (a bribe?) from the government for his exemplary work on the case. Gull was never arrested, or even questioned.
Abberline himself was also sworn to secrecy, but he later told crime writer Nigel Moreland that in hunting for the Ripper, “I’ve given my word to keep my mouth permanently closed about it…(Jack the Ripper) wasn’t a butcher, Yid (Jew), or foreign skipper…You’d have to look for him not at the bottom of London society at the time, but a long way up.” Abberline later became quite disenchanted with police work after the Ripper case and the subsequent, Cleveland Street Scandal, his last, major case, convinced that there had been high-level cover-ups by his superiors, and he retired from the police on February 8, 1892, after having received 84 commendations and awards.
Realizing that a maniacal killer was on the loose, the London police took care to arm themselves appropriately for the task at hand. The favored, police handguns for plainclothes detectives at the time included the Webley Bulldog revolver in .442 Webley, the Webley Mk. I in .455 Webley, and the Webley R.I.C. in .442-caliber, as was owned by both George and Tom Custer here in the U.S., until 1876. (See my Gunpowder Magazine article, “Guns and Bravery at the Little Bighorn,” from December 29, 2019.) Inspector Abberline personally carried a blued, Webley WG (“Webley Government”) Army Model in .455-caliber, with a six-inch barrel. In true, “Dirty-Harry” style, this was the most-powerful handgun produced in England at the time.
Abberline’s boss, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who led all Ripper investigations, interviewed all suspects and witnesses, and organized all evidence, definitely owned an 1880, brass-framed, seven-shot, Tranter revolver in .22 Short, inscribed on a silver plate on the back of the grip with, “To Donald Swanson, 1882, Per Deum Et Rege (‘For God and King.’)” This was probably his “salon gun” or “parlor gun,” for gentlemanly, marksmanship contests in the basements of friends and neighbors, and certainly not his primary, duty weapon.
Well-to-do, civilian gentlemen often armed themselves during this period while walking the mean streets of London, since most police officers, especially uniformed constables on patrol, were unarmed at the time, and were therefore unable to help potential crime victims. Walking sticks or canes were very common items carried by most men of that era, so there was a proliferation of weaponry hidden inside hollowed canes, including sword canes, .410 shotgun barrels inside various canes, or the French Dumonthier 1885 single-shot, cane gun in .44-caliber, black-powder chambering. Even the lower-class “ladies of the evening”, and there were an estimated 5,000 of them in Whitechapel alone, had begun arming themselves with knives, short daggers, derringers, and small revolvers during his critical period.
More than 2,000 people were interviewed, over 300 suspects were investigated, and 80 were temporarily detained at the Commercial Street Police Station in Whitechapel, but in 1888, without modern, forensic techniques, obtaining conclusive evidence was all but impossible. So, no actual arrests were made, and Jack the Ripper was never caught.
Sir Robert Anderson, the Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, was also a lawyer, intelligence officer, theologian, and writer, who was recalled from vacation in France due to bad publicity for the London police during the Ripper investigation. He astutely overserved that, “For one murder to occur where the killer leaves no clues behind is unusual, but for a series of crimes to occur where the killer leaves no clues behind is unheard of.” He was hinting at the thoroughly-professional manner of the killings, clearly indicating that Jack the Ripper was no ordinary criminal.
The term “Juwes” was much like today’s fabled, conservative, “Let’s Go, Brandon” movement, with hidden meanings that only Sir Charles Warren would instantly understand, se
cretly referring to a Masonic ritual connection, or informing him in the Manchu language that there are “two” of us committing these crimes. The single, Manchu word itself would also instantly identify Claude Conder to his best friend, a truly shocking discovery. In fact, when Warren finally viewed the graffiti in person at 5:15 AM, he ordered that it be removed immediately, ostensibly to avoid a possible, Jewish riot, except that he likely knew far better than that.
The scientific principle known as Occam’s Razor, or the Principle of Simplicity, states that, given a number of competing hypotheses, the simplest one that accounts for all of the known facts is most-likely to be correct. Applying that principle to the Ripper case, let’s examine the known, incriminating facts, subtle clues, and confirmed evidence:
Jack the Ripper was probably left-handed, with “considerable, anatomical skill and knowledge,” an expert with a long, thin, Liston-type, surgical knife, carried a black, Gladstone bag (seen twice), admitted that “they did not see my bag,” was probably a “properly-qualified surgeon,” or even the “Royal Physician,” was definitely wealthy (due to the imported grapes), was mentioned in any of six different theories regarding Prince Eddy, was likely to be at least two (“Juwe”) men, he/they killed in a definite pattern, and stopped completely after killing Mary Jane Kelly, the intended victim all along, expertly left no tracks or clues…“unheard of,” may have had a thick moustache, knowledge of the Manchu language, and was “a long way up” in London society.
Unfortunately, virtually none of the published books or articles on this subject contain theories that are 100-percent accurate, or supported by the vast preponderance of the evidence. In addition, in 1888, there was nofingerprinting done, no blood typing or blood analysis, no DNA evidence possible, conflicting, eyewitness testimony, an overcrowded crime zone with too many possible suspects, and the killer had to either confess, or be caught in the act, but neither of those eventualities ever occurred.
The Sickert Theory, the Alternate Royal Family Theory, and the Assassin Theory, however, all contain certain elements that do match the existing facts and evidence, so some type of Royal Family connection seems highly probable. And, most-stunningly, between 1988, the 100th anniversary of the dreadful murders, and 1990, only two years later, at least half of the official, police records from the Ripper case (two full boxes of the original four) virtually disappeared from Scotland Yard’s files. Ask yourself, who had the power, the authority, and the influence to remove official, world-famous, top-priority, police documentation from under lock and key at Scotland Yard, and why would they do that? What were they covering up?
Please also note that Prince Albert Victor “Eddy” was obviously such a huge embarrassment to the Royal Family that since his untimely death from influenza on January 14, 1892, at age 28, the esteemed, princely title of Duke of Clarence has never been bestowed upon anyone else in the family. Today, the Queen’s two grandsons are Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. Ironically, the once-substantive name, Duke of Clarence, in use from 1362 to 1892, is now an extinct title in the British peerage, all because of Eddy’s notable scandals. For a Royal Family so intensely steeped in tradition, this is a major and very-telling change.
If we follow the actual evidence forward to its inevitable conclusions, it becomes readily apparent that Jack the Ripper, taken collectively, was, in fact, most likely three men, not just one. The actual killers required stealthy transportation from London’s fashionable West End to the seedy slums of the East End, and coachman John Netley, the personal driver for both Prince Eddy and Sir William Gull, likely drove his black, lacquered coach (the “getaway car,” in modern terminology), with the royal coat of arms of the lion and unicorn professionally hand-painted on both sides. No one, and certainly no British policeman, would ever dare to stop or question such a distinctive vehicle, even at night, and in the “wrong part of town.”
According to at least one account, probably at least partly fictionalized, but maybe not, Queen Victoria herself summoned Gull to head off this potential scandal involving Eddy’s sexual escapades, instructing him that, “We leave the means to you, Sir William. We would simply it were done, and done well.” Thus, he was apparently given carte blanche to solve the sordid, Mary Jane Kelly problem. He was still a virtual prodigy with a surgical knife, but was weakened by his recent stroke, and had no idea how to track down this particular woman. He needed a tough, veteran, intelligence operative.
This is where Claude Conder enters the picture, using his tradecraft skills, physical strength, and hand-to-hand combat expertise to pursue all possible clues in attempting to locate Kelly. There was “collateral damage,” as the first four victims turned out not to be Mary Kelly, after all, and they had to be silenced to prevent alerting her that she was being hunted down, since these women all knew each other, and all frequented the same, nearby pubs. Conder’s job was apparently to question potential witnesses who might lead to Kelly, quietly strangle them, and then Sir William would step forward and disembowel the bodies, to remove any possible fetus from Kelly’s body. The goal was to strike abject fear and terror into anyone who threatened the British crown through potential blackmail or scandal, and it worked exceedingly well.
There is, of course, no absolute, ironclad proof that it happened this way, but it really is the simplest-possible explanation that accounts for all of the known facts and evidence in the Jack-the-Ripper case, and therefore the most-likely to be true. And that’s as close to reality as we’re ever going to get with these historic and horrific murders.
Warren Gray is a retired, U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with experience in joint special operations and counterterrorism. He served in Europe (traveled twice to England) and the Middle East, earned Air Force and Navy parachutist wings, eight more military qualification badges, and four college degrees, including a Master of Aeronautical Science degree. He is currently a published author and historian. You may visit his web site at: warrengray54.vistaprintdigital.com.