TWO INVISIBLE WORLDS

There are two invisible worlds on this earth, one of the premises of the DESTINY’S DAMNED Thriller Trilogy.

There is the world of those already damned, for which there is no salvation either in this life or in the next. And, there is the world in which the rest of us live. A world on which the damned pray. This concept is based loosely on St. Augustine’s often misinterpreted and abused notion that there are two invisible societies intertwined on this earth. Those elected to go to heaven make up one invisible society and those destined to be damned make up another. Notice there is no gray area for those of us not ready or willing to be either.

Augustine based his idea on an argument made by St. Paul in Rom. 9-11. According to St. Augustine, “no event in time can alter settling of God’s will toward any human soul: his elect are chosen before the foundation of the world. God knows not before, but apart from, the time process - how each individual in the course of time will respond to the particular form in which grace is offered to him; and the elect alone receive the grace that will win their acceptance.”*

In the DESTINY'S DAMNED Trilogy, a savage serial killer already damned for murders committed in previous lives, as well as those he is committing in this one, reincarnates. The evil builds up inside him as he carries his sins with him through each life until he becomes evil itself. Becoming not only the slave of Satan but the embodiment of Satan, he joins the church where there resides others of his invisible world. His ultimate ambition is to lure every Christian on earth to damnation.

The serial killer in DESTINY’S DAMNED actually deserves to be damned. Once damned, there is no getting out. No going back. There is no forgiveness. There is only the compounding of the evils he’s committed through each of his reincarnations. Every life he lives is an existence in hell, and he will live in that kind of hell for eternity.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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*Encyclopedia Britannica.

Man Not Web of Life, but Merely a Strand

Quotation:

The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.

Chief Seattle

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS DEATH?

From a scientific point of view, there is no death. There is no time when life ceases. How would we even recognize the cessation of life? We don’t know what the source of life is. All we know is that a being as we knew it, no longer looks or functions the way we’re familiar with. Death is our “notion” of the end of life, not actually the end of life.

Our bodies are “matter,” which is anything that has weight and occupies space. “Matter is neither created nor destroyed, but it can change form through physical or chemical means.” BODY STRUCTURES & FUNCTIONS, pg. 13. When someone “dies,” what we see are dramatic changes in their form. Those changes in form are what we call death and decomposition.

Einstein determined that matter could be thought of as a form of energy. Mass and energy are equivalent to each other and are interchangeable. In other words, mass is a form of energy. RELATIVISTIC ENERGY AND MASS. Our bodies are made of cells which store energy. The source of that energy is in the atoms that make up our cells. BODY STRUCTURES & FUNCTIONS.

The authors of THE PARTICLE EXPLOSION, published by Oxford University Press, dramatically illustrate the longevity of those atoms:

“Take a deep breath! You have just inhaled oxygen atoms that
have already been breathed by every person who ever lived.
At some time or other your body has contained atoms that were
once part of Moses or Isaac Newton.
***
If atoms could speak, what a tale they would tell. Some of the
carbon atoms in the ink on this page may have once been part of
a dinosaur. Their atomic nuclei may have arrived in cosmic rays,
having been fused from hydrogen and helium in distant, extinct
stars. But whatever their various histories may be, one thing
is certain. Most of their basic constituents, the fundamental
particles-- the electrons and quarks--have existed since the
primordial Big Bang at the start of time. "

Quite a picture, isn’t it?

If the source of life is the energy within these atoms, then life is eternal. But then, that’s the mystery of life, isn’t it? That’s what draws many of us to believe life continues after the event we call death.

Joseph Campbell, renowned mythologist, observed:
"The source of life--what is it? No one knows. We don't even
know what an atom is, whether it is a wave or a particle --
it is both. We don't have any idea of what these things are.

That's the reason we speak of the divine. There's a transcendent
energy source. When the physicist observes subatomic particles,
he's seeing a trace on a screen. These traces come and go, come
and go, and we come and go, and all of life comes and goes. That
energy is the informing energy of all things. Mythic worship is
addressed to that." Joseph Campbell, THE POWER OF MYTH WITH BILL MOYERS, pg. 132

According to Joseph Campbell and others, the belief that life goes on after death originated as far back as 50,000 to 60,000 BC. Maybe that belief isn’t as far-fetched as some would think.

by Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT

Sources:

BODY STRUCTURES & FUNCTIONS by Ann Senisi Scott and Elizabeth Fong, Delmar Cengage Learning, 10 Edition (March 1, 2003)

Relativistic Energy and Mass
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/Eddie_Trochim/Energymass.htm

THE PARTICLE EXPLOSION by Frank Close, Michael Marten, Christine Sutton; Oxford University Press, USA (April 9, 1987)]

Joseph Campbell, THE POWER OF MYTH WITH BILL
MOYERS, Doubleday, 1988, P.132

Joseph Campbell, TRANSFORMATIONS OF MYTH THROUGH TIME., Mythology Limited, 1990, Reissued in HarperPerennail in 1999.

SECTION VIII
Chapter 5. Is Religion Intrinsic to Our Human Condition?
http://www.entheology.org/library/winters/PHILOSO3.TXT

“DEATH RITES” http://www.britannica.com/oscar/print?articleId=109494&fullArticle=true&tocId=66354

THREE CUPS OF TEA by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

THREE CUPS OF TEA is the perfect example of what can be accomplished when we don’t draw lines between each other. When religious and cultural differences are left out of the mix, and the only common goal is helping children. Devoted to educating the children, especially girls, in the area where the Taliban organized and Osama bin Laden hides, the wilderness between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Greg Mortenson built 55 schools over a decade. With the help of the people who reside there, who for generations have built their lives there, radical ideas were left at the doorsteps so those children could get a balanced education. Given the state of world affairs and the intolerance we normally show each other, it almost seems impossible, doesn’t it?

Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT

Our Lords, Tammuz & Christ

The similarities between the ancient god Tammuz and the Christian God are striking.

Tammuz was worshipped throughout Palestine and Mesopotamia, including Jerusalem, as early as 700 years before Christ was born. Tammuz worshippers called him “The Lord.”

The Church of the Nativity was built at the site Christian’s worship as the place Christ was born. It is located in Bethlehem. That same site was worshipped centuries before Christ was born as the place Tammuz was reborn.
In a letter from St. Jerome to Paulinis, St. Jerome writes, “This Bethlehem which is now ours, and is the most august spot on earth, was foreshadowed by a grave of Tammuz- that is to say, Adonis in the cave where the infant Christ once wailed....”

Tammuz was said to have been crucified. Tammuz symbol was the Tau, which was a pagan symbol for the cross.

Every year Tammuz’ was laid on a bed or bier and his death mourned by women. Afterwards, his resurrection was chanted and praised. Tammuz was said to have been a beautiful youth. The women who mourned him: the goddess Ishtar of Babylon and Assyria and the goddess Astarte of Phoenicia.

Many Christians, Muslims, and Jews reject any connection with gods like Tammuz that preceded their own. They call those gods “pagan.” For most of them that term is derogatory, particularly when the pagan gods are compared with their own. But why? Why are these “modern” religions so defensive? There is no reason to be ashamed. They may not be perfect, but Tammuz and the other pagan gods are the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim god’s ancestors.

Sources:
• “The Myth of the Resurrection” by Joseph McCabe (1925).(McCabe was once a Franciscan monk.) www.faithofyeshua.faithweb.com/crucified_sun_godno4htm
• “The Origins of Christianity & the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ,” www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm
• “Examining the Crucifixion of Jesus and Parallels to Crucified Sun-gods,”
www.faithofyeshua.faithweb.com/crucified_sun_godno4.htm.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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INTRODUCING SHARON MARSHALL - DESTINY'S DAMNED

Sharon Marshall is a high-powered trial attorney in San Francisco, a partner in the large, prestigious firm of Braddick & Beene. Alex Caldwell is an investigative reporter with the New York post.

Close friends, Sharon meets Alex outside the Medical Examiner’s office in San Francisco on the day after Alex’s brother, Eric, is sadistically and ritualistically murdered.

Excerpt from: DESTINY’S DAMNED:


A figure in shadow, sitting on a bench in an empty, colorless hall paved with marble was motionless, not even the clacking of an approaching woman’s three inch heels disturbing him. Behind him, was a double glass door, shades drawn, marked “Medical Examiner.”
“Alex,” she said, her voice soft and soothing, “are you all right?” Crowded by small, high cheek bones and brows that had no curve, her forehead pinched with worry, she stooped and put her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said, beneath his breath. His eyes were red and worn with distress as he rose and hugged her. “Thanks for coming.
Tailored in every respect, her not too short, dark brown hair was brushed back and over her ears in a style that perfectly matched her expensive, conservative business suit and figure. Wearing just a touch of makeup, allowing her natural color and the brilliance of her bright green eyes expression, she possessed a kind of genuine attractiveness Alex always found appealing. Comforted by her, he held her closer. His brown eyes tearing, he cried.
He was tall and slender, casual in appearance, his all night flight across the continent telling. His pre stressed jeans, over stretched, bagged at the knees. His black wool, sports coat was crumpled. He had been out in the rain and he was wet. Shocks of his curly, black hair clung to his forehead, and he shivered.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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A TROUBLED PRIEST - SATAN’S SCAT

Its air stagnant and old, its floors and ceiling, its tables and stools reeking of fifty years of stale body odor and smoke, the squalid, old bar in the heart of the Tenderloin District was home that night for Patrick. Sitting slumped at a booth in the farthest, darkest corner, a warm erotic body pressing him to the wall, he slugged down his sixth shot of mash and asked for more.

He was frightened and confused. Sybil had come for him but had not taken him. She had revealed her spirit to him but not her name. What does she want? he kept asking himself. Staring at hands that brought his drink, he took a ten from the bills he had put in front of him when he came in and surrendered it. Sober for months, he had a great thirst not only for drink but for something else.

Seductive fingers, crawling through tiny hairs at the back of his neck climbed toward his mutilated ear and played there. As her tongue took their place, her hand reached for his thigh.

Excerpt from SATAN’S SCAT

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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WHAT IF CHRIST LEFT HIS OWN TESTAMENT?

What if Christ left His own Testament? And what if that Testament survived and is hidden? Why would the Christian Church want to find and destroy it? And who would be protecting it?

The Christian Church is founded on the New Testament and its Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet none of these gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The Gospels were written by various people, many unknown, then added to, named, and materially revised during the hundreds of years following the apostles’ deaths.

During the 4th century AD, on the instructions of the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, Bishop Eusebius and others edited, rejected, or destroyed the stories of Christ then in existence. Writing new and revised stories that furthered Constantine’s ambitions, Eusebius and the others created a work that became known as the New Testament. As a result, through legend, folklore and revision, Christ’s original teachings might well have been lost.

But what if Christ’s original teachings survived in another form? In His own Testament? What if his teachings were recorded contemporaneously with his life and death and survive as originally written? Can you imagine what would happen then? What would the publication of Christ’s Testament do to the power and authority of a Church built on stories that have questionable origins? What would the Church do to protect itself?

from SATAN’S SCAT

Based partly on the work of Martin E. Marty in his A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, the World Publishing Company.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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WAS HEROD NOT A JEW? - SATAN'S SCAT

The infamous Herod may not have been a Jew. The man historically responsible for Christ’s death was probably not a Jew at all.
His grandfather was Antipater, an Idumaean. The Idumaean were conquered by John Hyrcanus at the end of the 2nd century BC. The Idumaean, together with Antipater and his family were obliged to live as Jews and were thereafter considered Jews. However, Antipater’s loyalty was to Rome.
Antipater won favor with the Romans by helping them in the Orient. That favor won Antipater’s son, Herod the Great, the office of governor of Galilee. The Roman Emperors Octavian and Antony later secured Herod the Great the crown of Judea. To help secure his position, he married into the Hasmonean family who were very popular with the Jews.
Herod the Great was known for building the temple of Jerusalem, but he also built temples to pagan gods. The most notable was a temple to Apollo in Rhodes.
Christ was probably born during Herod the Great’s lifetime.
After Herod the Great died, he was succeeded by his sons: first, by Archelaus; then by Antipas, the Herod accused of being responsible for Christ’s death. Both were educated in Rome.
Herod Archelaus publicly declared that his title and authority were dependent on the the good will of Caesar. But he lost that good will and was banished to Gaul ten years after his reign began.
His brother, Herod Antipas, succeeded him. It was Antipas who was allegedly responsible for Christ’s death.
Antipas, too, catered to Rome. The Roman Emperor Octavian confirmed him as tetrarch of Galilee. When Antipas built his capital city on the Western Shore of the Sea of Galilee, he named it after the Roman Emperor Tiberias. He tried to Romanize Galilee. He helped Rome extract as much wealth from the conquered land as possible.
He was devoted to the Romans. And like his family, Herod Antipas, appeared to be more interested in wooing the Jews than being one.

see: SATAN’S SCAT

Sources:
•Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, “Herod.”

•USU 1320:History and Civilization, “Section 13: Early Christianity and the Church,” http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/13XITY.htm

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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An UNUSUAL DETECTIVE - DESTINY’S DAMNED

An UNUSUAL DETECTIVE - DESTINY’S DAMNED

San Francisco. The sadistic, ritualistic murder of Eric Caldwell brought Sybil Meter, Lieutenant Detective of Homicide into the case. Outside the Medical Examiners office, where Eric was being autopsied, his brother Alex waited.

At precisely the appointed time, the double door that led to the Medical Examiner opened and a woman in an inexpensive, somewhat worn, brown, slack suit and black turtle neck, without adornment, stepped outside. She wore her thick, light brown hair like a hat, full on top and short on the sides. Elfish, triangular sideburns extended to the middle of her ears and framed big, round cheeks slung low over a subtly dimpled jowl. A small, but not delicate, mouth and strong, definite chin line accentuated her perfectly oval head. Under gently sloping eyebrows, trimmed evenly from one end to the other, her walnut brown eyes were dark and equivocal. She was not to be read easily.
“You Alex Caldwell?” she asked. She wore no make-up at all, but had a clean, fresh look, her skin reflecting the hall light. Suddenly sharing the light with her eyes, she drew them toward her, holding them captive. “Lieutenant Detective Sybil Meter,” she said, breaking the spell as she extended her hand.
Excerpt from: DESTINY’S DAMNED

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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SATAN’S SCAT: THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN MARY

Scholars believe The Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, died about fifteen years after His death. Although there is a “Mary’s Tomb” attributed to her in Jerusalem, many believe she left Palestine and actually died in Ephesus, Turkey. She was apparently 13-15 years old when Jesus was born in AD 1. It follows that she was 46-48 when He died and was 61-63 years old when she died.
Evidence The Blessed Virgin lived and died in Ephesus includes the following:
A. Ephesus, Turkey was a major Christian community.
B. The synodal letter of the Council of Ephesus infers that Virgin Mary and St. John lived and were buried there.
C. “Bar-Hebraeus or Abulpharagius, a Jacobite bishop of the thirteenth century, relates that St. John took the Blessed Virgin with him to Patmos, then founded the Church of Ephesus, and buried Mary no one knows where.
D. Pope Benedict XIV said Mary followed St. John to Ephesus and died there. Benedict was going to remove from the Breviary the lessons which mentioned Mary’s death in Jerusalem but died before he could do it.
E. Mary’s residence and death in Ephesus are upheld by such writers as Tillemont, Calment, etc.
F. The remains of a house, identified as the one in which Mary lived is on a hill about nine or ten miles from Ephesus.

This evidence raises certain questions. For example, why would Mary, at the end of her life, take such an arduous journey away from her lifelong home in Palestine?
What would make her leave? Was it fear of the people who killed Jesus? Scholars believe she did not depart Palestine until about 13 years after Jesus’ death.
Why did she leave St. Peter, Jesus’ successor?

Sources:
1. http://experts.about.com/q/turkey-207/virgin-mary-1.htm
2. Wikipedia, “Mary, mother of Jesus”
3. Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, “The Blessed Virgin Mary”
4. Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent. “St. John the Evangelist”
© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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THE REVEREND JOHN LESTER - DESTINY’S DAMNED

In a dramatic moment outside the apartment house where Eric Caldwell was murdered the reader meets the Reverend John Lester, minister of the Calvary Gospel Church, San Francisco.

As if thunder suddenly struck from a dry, clear sky, a scream rolled across the lawn and hit them. Sybil turned.
Her eyes on fire, her voice shrill as a whistle, the woman on the porch next door was shrieking in long desperate cries, setting them all on edge. Darting from side to side, her gaze a flurry of fear, she was frozen, unable to stop what was happening.
Outside an open gate and in the middle of the street, a curly haired toddler without a coat, in blue and pink overalls and shirt, was squatting, trying to pick up a penny, oblivious to the dinosaur about to consume him. Less than twenty feet from him, a 60’s vintage Lincoln with gray fender and dented passenger door, was about to run over him.
A middle-aged man with close cropped hair and thin, taut lips was driving, not paying attention to the road. His mouth agape, he was staring at them instead, ignoring the mother’s frantic screams.
With no time to move or otherwise react, Sybil picked up a stone and threw it as hard as she could at the passenger window. Sailing in the direction of the driver’s eyes, he started, clasped the wheel, and as the stone chipped the window, screeched to a stop. Exploding with rage, he opened the door on the driver’s side and got out, rounding the front fender to come after her. Grabbing the hood ornament to pick up speed, he cursed, “You bitch, I’ll get you for this!” He was pushing off the ornament when he heard the mother’s cries.
She was just feet in front of the car. Her arms around the toddler, weeping.
“Jesus,” he whispered, realizing what almost happened.
His anger turned to fear. Taking one last hateful look at Sybil, he retreated, jumping back into his brute of a car. Racing the engine and shoving it into reverse, his tires squealed as he careened backwards down the street. Wheels smoking, he backed around the corner, gunned the engine, and roared away.

Excerpt from DESTINY'S DAMNED


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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SATAN’S SCAT-MARY MAGDELENE SET ADRIFT

The French claim Mary Magdelene came to France and died there. But did she really?

The Catholic version of Mary Magdelene’s journey to France begins with Mary and others being set adrift by the Jews. As the story goes: Fourteen years after Our Lord’s death, St. Mary was put in a boat by the Jews without sails or oars - along with Sts. Lazarus and Martha, St. Maximin (who baptized her), St. Sidonius (“the man born blind”), her maid Sera, and the body of St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin. They were sent drifting out to sea and landed on the shores of Southern France, where St. Mary spent the rest of her life as a contemplative in a cave known as Sainte-Baume. She was given the Holy Eucharist daily by angels as her only food, and died when she was 72. St. Mary was transported miraculously, just before she died, to the chapel of St. Maximin, where she received the last sacraments.
Source: Catholic Online, St. Mary Magdelene “The Penitent,” www.catholic.org.

Even on its face, there seems to be problems with that story. First, if Mary and the others were set drifting in the Mediterranean, why did they go all the way to France? How did they get around all the land masses between Palestine and France? Where would the currents have taken them? Why didn’t they land sooner?
What destination would have made more sense in light of biblical and historical fact? Turkey maybe?

From: SATAN’S SCAT


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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SATANS SCAT: THE COMULSION TO KILL-THE AFTERLIFE

If you were a compulsive killer in one life, would that compulsion follow you into the next? And would it be even stronger?
What would you be?
What would you look like?
What would you feel like to your victim?

Excerpt from SATAN’S SCAT:

Curling beneath her robes and coiling up her legs, the swirling, black smoke took form, and something oily and bristly crawled upon the nun’s breasts and bit her. “Ooohhh,” she shuddered, frantically hitting and swatting at what she though was a rat.
Its jaw clenched, its teeth dug deep into her flesh, she screamed, but there was no sound. Flailing at him, hysterically clawing at the robes that confined her, her fingers tore at her chest. Ripping the robe to her breasts, she flung it open and grabbed.
An empty victory. The rat was gone, and so was her nipple.
A hesitant witness to what was happening to her behind the abbey, the sun was but a glint on the horizon waiting until it was over to rise. Crowded into a corner of the enclosure, the chickens were but stunned and silent observers.
Sobbing, she knelt, unaware that the form that bit her was still there. Stealthily moving just over the dust in circles around her, it was stalking her. Long and sinewy, its fingers reached up and hovered over the inside of her thigh. Titillatingly skimming over the soft hair of her skin it moved over her groin and upward.
....


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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A POPE MADE MARY MAGDELENE A WHORE

Mary Magdelene was apparently not a whore until Pope Gregory the Great made her one in 591 A.D. He was at the Basilica San Clemente in Rome when he announced it.
He based his conclusion on an event briefly described in the New Testament, Chapter Seven of Luke. Though the woman was not named, Luke mentions that a “sinful woman” anointed Jesus’ feet.” From that description, he assumed the woman was Mary Magdelene and that she was a whore. He made her a whore so Jesus could reform her.
After Pope Gregory made Mary a reformed whore, her reputation spread through Europe, and she became somewhat of a heroine. The French, as you might suspect, made her their heroine, which is why the stories were told she ended up there. In the 13th Century a Dominican Monk claimed, in writing, she came to southern Gaul after Jesus died.

SOURCE: May 29, 2006 issue of Newsweek, “An Inconvenient Woman,” by Jonathan Darman with Anne Underwood.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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MURDER FOR SALVATION

In the DESTINY’S DAMNED Trilogy, a man who has been a vicious killer through all his many lives, carries such evil within him that he becomes evil himself. He is haunted by it. He lives in a hell because of it.

He comes to believe his only hope is the Christian promise of salvation, but there is historical evidence there is no salvation. How desperate would he be? What would he do? He turns to the God that promised him salvation, joins hands with Him, and kills again.

Swearing to God his allegiance he did what he always did to satiate himself. He hurt someone. He murdered. He hurt even himself:
“Like stings from wasps, bits of razor woven in knots of sisal rope cut him in nine different places, their sharp points slicing into then ripping his bare back. The cat-o-nine he was using on himself was devised from pictures he saw of relics. Knees pressed hard against the concrete, shoulders rounded to stretch and make the cuts bleed, he bowed in prayer. Amid the musty darkness of the unfinished basement, the only light that single, 25-watt, purple bulb, he was in spiritual reverie, his mind unshakably linked with God’s.
Resting the tendrils of the whip on the floor, raising his eyes to heaven, he prayed, ‘Forgive me, Dear God, all my trespasses, and lead me not again into temptation.’ Lowering his head and, once more, rounding his shoulders, he flicked his wrist, raising the tendrils like willows in a wind over his shoulder. Striking himself even harder than before he repeated, ‘Forgive me, Dear God, for all my trespasses and lead me not again into temptation.’”

From DESTINY’S DAMNED.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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IS CHRISTIAN SALVATION IMMORAL?

When we think about the possibilities of reincarnation or any other afterlife, we want to believe that when we leave this life and go into the next, we go with a clean slate. Even if we reincarnate into a dung beetle because of our wrongs or if we go to purgatory, we want to believe that despite our demotion or punishment we have a chance to redeem ourselves. If we’re a good dung beetle, we’ll come back on a higher order the next time and ultimately become human again. If we pay our debt in purgatory, we’ll get to go to heaven. Better yet, if we’re forgiven by the church here on earth, there is no debt and we’re free to continue our evil ways at will, unscathed.
It’s seems important to humans that we be forgiven for our evils. We want to be able to start over again with an unmarked soul even if we’ve done something awful. Christian churches have made a lucrative business out of forgiving us. They’ll forgive us even for cardinal sins as long as we worship the way they want us to worship and we give them tithing.
But what if those churches have no power to forgive? What if the men and women behind the pulpit aren’t really the agents of God? What if there is no redemption? The evils we commit in one life go with us into the next. Isn’t that the way it should be?
Is it right to be able to leave this life and go into the next with a clean slate? Should reincarnation or any other afterlife free us from the evils we commit? Isn’t it only fair that each of us carry forever the burden of our evil?
Doesn’t the promise of salvation by merely accepting a faith actually encourage evil? Doesn’t that alone, make it immoral?
© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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DESTINY'S DAMNED: A KILLER'S SACRIFICE TO GOD

Careful not to remove the veil, Judy reveled in the feel of the towel across her body. Like a hot, cleansing bath of the kind she had not had in weeks, she did not mind when he took the towel to reach around her and tenderly clean her back and buttocks. Better than a meal, life almost again worth living, she sighed. Patiently waiting while he returned the towel to the bathroom, she clasped her hands, looked to the ceiling, and prepared to pray.
From his pants pocket, he took a tobacco tin and, holding his hand over the tin, dipped his fore and middle fingers inside. “Repeat after me. Our father,” he began, as she followed, “who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven....” Stepping toward her, he put his ash soiled fingers on her forehead and made the sign of the cross. “In this time of sacrifice, we must forego our sins and be penitent,” he continued alone. “Judy Bowers, You and I are adulterers. We are sinners before God. If we are to find salvation we must sacrifice. We must free ourselves from sin.”
Instinct telling her this was the moment of her release, hope erupted inside her. Looking up at him expectantly,she smiled as his blade found her throat and cut.

FROM DESTINY'S DAMNED


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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JACK THE RIPPER-HIS HOPE FOR SALVATION

Murder for salvation. Even the most evil of men hope to be forgiven. Hope to be granted the salvation offered by the crucifixion.

Jack the Ripper, whose actual identity has not been established, murdered, cut open and removed organs from five women in London in 1888. According to Richard Patterson, Jack the Ripper may have been Francis Thompson, a renowned poet. He was also a cricket fan who impressed and made friends with other poets. His most famous poem was “The Hound of Heaven” in which he talks about God’s pursuit of a human soul.

All of Jack the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes, all murdered near Christ Church of Whitechapel. Richard Patterson, in his casebook FRANCIS THOMPSON, believed The Ripper’s motive might have been that he was chosen by God and that he was the voice of God. Killing these women would have wounded society. Patterson argued that The Ripper may have perceived himself to be a “messiah.”

Patterson connected the murders to the feast days of martyred saints, all eastern crusaders and saints of Innocence, Butchers, Soldiers, Doctors and Scholars. Contending The Ripper was attempting to project the five wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion on society by murdering five sinners near a church, Patterson believed The Ripper was trying to be a key player in the apocalypse so he could be forgiven his sins.
Source: From an article entitled: “Francis Thompson” by Richard Patterson at http://www.casebook.org/suspects/ft.html

In DESTINY’S DAMNED, the serial killer is also obsessed with the hope that by murdering he will be granted salvation by virtue of the promise of the Crucifixion. How can we help but wonder why these murderers conclude the Christian promise of salvation was meant for them? Meant they would be forgiven if only they killed for God. Is it something the Church said?

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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SATAN'S SCAT: SYBIL AND THE ASYLUM

Furrowing her brows, she stared at him, slowly and steadily guiding her eyes along straight planes as she carefully examined his face, hesitating but once as she paused at the ear she bit off.
“Remember?” he asked, restraining his impatience.
Her eyes met his, and as she gazed at him, he felt her soul move inside him. It startled him. His saliva turned to salt. When he gulped, his throat burned. His legs unwilling to wait, his body forcing him to get up, he stood. “That’s all right, you don’t have to remember. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He found himself running down the hallway, down the stairs, and onto the street, his heart skipping beats every time it tried to repel her. “Sybil!” he screamed, as he kept running.

Excerpt from SATAN’S SCAT.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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CLOISTER

Forbidden to touch anyone or anything but the cold, stone floor on which they prayed and prostrated themselves, sleeping without cover on thin beds of straw, they lived isolated and alone. In a dark, dank, six-hundred-square-foot room with a fourteen-foot high ceiling, in a structure made entirely of stone, with only two, scant candles on the granite altar providing light, the brilliant orange dawn was lost somewhere outside.
In control of her shaking, the cold forgotten, she allowed her senses to wake and heard from a distance, a thick, bronze bell, the sound muffled by pungent smoke which draped the air and hindered her breathing. Her awareness aroused, the rich, lingering sound of the bell came closer and, with it, a voice, a grim, deliberate voice in methodical rhythm.

Excerpt from SATAN’S SCAT.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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JESUS NOT ONLY GOD WHO ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN

Jesus was not the only god believed to have been resurrected and thereafter ascended into Heaven. One of those gods was Hercules.

Like Jesus, Hercules was the son of the god that ruled Heaven. Like Jesus, Hercules descended into Hades where he wounded Hades, the god of the underworld, whom we know as Satan.

After being cursed by an enemy, Hercules suffered from an inner fire. Thus tortured, he built his own funeral pyre and set himself on fire.

When the flames reached Hercules a cloud descended from Heaven and amidst thunder and lightning, the beautiful, young god disappeared to live with his Father in Heaven forever.


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT EBOOKS

DESTINY'S DAMNED and SATAN'S SCAT are now available as Ebooks.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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IN A CAGE-THE CREATION OF A SERIAL KILLER?

Alternately whimpering and begging, the tears in my voice garbling my words, I was terrified. Like a wild animal, I began to circle, looking for a way out, repeatedly scraping my knees and hands on the hundreds of edges of iron.
“Please, Daddy, I won’t do it again,” I kept crying, as I circled.
But he and Grandpa were busy working around that piece of plywood, attaching the steel bars together, making some kind of an arch with the wheel in the middle. “What’s that, Daddy?” I called, when they were finished and I gave up circling to watch.
Peering into the cage, getting his face as close as he could to mine, he answered. “The wings that will take you to hell.” His eyes were like stone, his face like blank paper, and I knew there was no hope for me.

Excerpt from DESTINY’S DAMNED.


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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HEAVEN'S TEMPERATURE

If hot air rises, why isn't Heaven as hot as Hell?

Half-jokingly a friend of mine asked me that question, today.


© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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What If the Christian Church Is Not Legitimate?

What if the Christian Church as we know it doesn’t have any authority to speak for God? Doesn’t have any authority at all from God? What if the Church is not legitimate? What kind of evil would that spawn? How would the Church protect itself? What would become of its trusting members?

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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DESTINY'S DAMNED: A PRELUDE TO MURDER

The stray cat on the bedroom floor, sleeping over the crack, was
purring, the steady, familiar rattle soothing, as Judy Bowers lay stiff
in her sub-floor coffin., grateful for the company. Sneaking in the
house through some opening, probably in the basement, the cat was a
loyal companion, coming back immediately after each of her visits,
comforting her as she calmed, her wounds unattended. “You my kitty?”
she whispered. A triangular-shaped head, half distinctly black, the
other half fire and stone, the mottled colors of the earth, peered
through the crack as the tortoise shell female purred perceptively
louder. “Got somebody to feed you?”
He was there just that morning,
impatient with Judy because he forgot her food, in a hurry because he
had some kind of meeting with a friend, rushing, not getting a rise
from himself and, in anger, sodomizing her with a broom, hurting her
like he had never hurt her before.
Though he had not brought her
food for more than three days, and though she bled from her rectum for
what seemed hours after he left, she was peaceful, knowing he would not
hurt her again, at least until tomorrow.
Bound at the wrists and
ankles, while staring blankly at the tortoise shell’s fir, wishing she
could make some physical contact with something alive other than him,
she became aware that something cold was crawling up her arm.
Occasionally hesitating as if there to inspect her skin for edibility,
it then continued. Near hysterical, she shuddered. Rolling her
shoulder, bumping her body as best she could against the underside of
the floor, she tried to shake or knock the thing off. Strength a luxury
she did not have, her effort was useless. The tiny feet crawled onto
her neck. Bound tightly, the only defense left to her the movement of
her head, she twisted quickly, and the muscles of her spine unraveled.
“Oh..h..h,” she groaned, unable to fight further. Straining her eyes to
see the creature that now crawled across her cheek, she was horrified.
Through the blur, was a long, shiny creature with pincers.
Fear
turned to lust, and as the creature ventured further, she opened her
mouth and turned in its direction. Catching the scent of her breath,
lured to the fleshy cavern, the creature changed course and crawled
inside, to be instantly trapped and eaten.

Much later, possibly
an hour or three hours later, the instance with the insect lost in a
fog of other memories, she slept. Not realizing the cat and her purrs
were gone, she took a peaceful breath which while descending down her
throat stopped and went no further. The front door was closing. Heart
pounding, breath trapped inside her throat, she listened as the feared
and familiar footsteps came toward her.
“Hey, bitch,” he called, words slurring, anger seething. “Where’s my dinner?”
Confused,
her world more nightmare than reality, she accused herself, reviewing
in her half crazed mind a conversation that never took place. Dinner.
My God, whydidn ’t I fix him dinner. He told me he’d be back. He told
me he wanted roast beef, rare,.and scalloped potatoes. But, where’s the
refrigerator?”

Excerpt from DESTINY'S DAMNED.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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PAGAN CROSS IS RICH IN SYMBOLISM

The symbolism of the cross goes much deeper than what the Christians assign to it. The Christian symbol of the cross incorporates only part of its ancient pagan meanings. Pagans attached a much greater significance to it.
The cross symbol originally represented fire and looked like a swastika. As the sign of life, the cross was always associated with fire and the sun. The cross was also the symbol for several pagan gods. The vertical arm of the cross symbolized the masculine forces of the sky, the horizontal arm the feminine forces of darkness. When used to symbolize a god being crucified it might have, above the god’s head, an upside down crescent moon symbolizing death and resurrection. The crucifixion of a god represented the sun’s passing through the equinoxes. In the spring, the sun reaches the vernal equinox and is resurrected. In the winter, it descends in the sky until the solstice when it stops or dies for three days, then on December 25th, moves north and is reborn.
The cross symbolizes the threshold between time and eternity. Death and resurrection. The cross is the threshold over which a soul leaves this earth and enters eternity. It is also the threshold at which the soul comes back from eternity and is reborn. It is a gateway between life and the afterlife. A god on the cross signifies his control of that gate, symbolism less obviously adopted by the Christians.
In the celebration of Easter, an outgrowth of ancient pagan festivals, we should remember the cross’s much greater heritage and symbolism.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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SERIAL KILLER: DAHMER-MOTIVE OR EXCUSE

JEFFREY DAHMER murdered then sexually molested, mutilated and/or cannibalized 17 young men and boys. WHY?
Look at what he did.
He murdered his first victim right after he graduated from high school in 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker, took him to his parent’s house, drank beer with him and had sex with him. When the hitchhiker tried to leave, he killed him, bludgeoning him to death with a barbell. To hide the crime, he dismembered the body, dumped the pieces in plastic bags, and buried them in a wooded area behind his parent’s house. About three years later, right after he was unceremoniously discharged from the army for drunkenness, he went back to his parents and dug up the decomposing body parts. Not finished with the mutilation, he beat the body into tiny pieces with a hammer and scattered them through the wooded area in which they had been buried. Apparently, he had not yet turned into a necrophile or cannibal.
He began killing again about 1987. At first he had sex with his victims before he murdered them. Later, he waited until they were dead.
He lured these 16 young men and boys to his apartment, promising them alcohol or sex, offering them money to appear in nude photographs or just plain companionship. Promising anything that would get them there. Once a victim was in his apartment, he slipped sleeping pills into the beer he served them, and when they fell asleep, he strangled them. He had sex with their corpses.
He dismembered his first four victims and disposed of them in the garbage. He took pictures of the rest of his victims both before he killed them and after. He kept their skulls for souvenirs or trophies. He told police he kept the skeleton of his eighth victim and ate some of him. He dissolved the bodies of his other victims in a huge barrel filled with acid.
He was a monster.
An excuse might have been his severe alcoholism. But, what sense does that make? How many thousands of alcoholics never kill anybody?
The first symptom of Dahmer’s compulsion for murder revealed itself when he was a child. He started killing his pets and other small animals. See my articles “Growing a Serial Killer” and “Marine Killing Puppy Reveals Something More Deadly.”
The motive most often suggested as to why Dahmer so brutally murdered and destroyed his victims is lust. Sexual gratification. He was a dangerous sexual predator. But, was that his motive?
His childhood murders of small animals might well have begun before he was sexually active, their murder more a natural act for him, than a sexual lust. There is also no evidence or suggestion that when he served in the army for two years he committed any murders. In the army, in a barracks at least part of the time, he would have been in close contact with hundreds of tantalizing young men. If he was compelled to murder for sexual gratification, why not then?
In my thriller DESTINY’S DAMNED, the serial killer is a compulsive murderer. He’s been killing for many lifetimes and is damned. As he begins each life there is no forgiveness, no starting over. He carries his evil acts with him into each reincarnation. As the numbers mount, his evil compounds. He lives in a hell already, and he cannot turn back. He is compelled to murder from the day he is born.
Dahmer was a compulsive killer who must have lived in his own hell. If he got sexual pleasure out of murder, why not stop at that? He had to shame his victims by having sex with their corpses and eating them. He then had to destroy them, to pound them into little pieces and scatter them, to cut them up and throw them in the garbage, to eat part of them, or to annihilate them with acid.
What if he didn’t get any sexual gratification at all? What if that’s why he went so far, because he was incapable of getting gratification from anything? What if he put his victims through hell because he wanted them to share his hell? Maybe he wanted to be better than them by winning, by exercising the power of life and death over them, to punish them for not giving him the pleasure he so desperately needed. Maybe he, too, was pure evil, destined to kill from the moment he was born.

For background on Dahmer see:
• www.murdersdatabase.co.uk; “Jeffrey Dahmer.”
•The Biography Channel; “Heidnik And Dahmer: Great Crimes And Trials;” http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/489:346/1/Jeffrey_Dahmer.htm.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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amazon.com
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DESTINY'S DAMNED: A Serial Killer's Nightmare

A serial killer obsessed with the Crucifixion and the salvation it
offers murders to please God. Already damned, terrified the Crucifixion will disappear, he has a nightmare.

3:00 a.m. Sunday
12th day of Lent

Sleep a dark cave in which demons dwell, ans he was always afraid to close
his eyes. But, chest battered, face sore, thigh simmering with
infection, in desperate need of rest, he ignored his fears, and allowed
himself to fall into the hole that took him there, reluctantly
embracing the darkness. Tumbling into the depths of the earth, mind
whirling, his limbs growing limp, his heart slowing, he lost all
consciousness as he reached the cave’s entrance, coming to rest in a
cold, musty hollow. Head back, arms to the side, body exposed, he felt
the wind on which the demons rode and waited. Fists clenched, tears
flowing, he prepared himself.
Dirt an abrasive which was washing his bare skin clean, the wind its master, he choked, unable to breath as it whirled around him. Blind to all that did not deal with him, he sank inside himself and, in the hollow of his soul, began to drown in sin.
Screams not his own, but from those he murdered, rose in his gut and tore
through him. The figure of the demon that drew near was lost in a dark
brown robe that flowed over its head. Sleeves growing out of its
shoulders billowed down its arms and toward the ground, forming a train
that extended three to four feet out to its sides and back, moving with
the wind but never touching the earth. Draped around the demon’s neck
and over its forearms was a white, silk shroud with the image of a
young man. Limp and lifeless, his earth colored skin was a pale,
flaccid replica of what he had been in life.
The demon pulled its hood back. In its face was a myriad of creatures, circling, swirling,always changing, the demon never revealing its own face to him. Yet, he
knew this demon, for throughout his existence, she was the greatest and
worst of all his demons.
“Come with me,” she bade him.
Trembling,unwillingly but impulsively rising to her call, he followed her as he
always did further into the recesses of the cave, as she eased him ever
closer to his destruction. Yet, he did not go rapidly. Like a jumper,
reluctantly but compulsively, seeking the edge of a cliff, knowing what
would happen the instant he stepped off, he moved only inches at a
time. Tentative, fearful, each step closer to the plunge, he cringed.
His arms wrapped around him, his hands clutching at his breast to hold
his heart still, he was suddenly sucked into a vacuum. Rolling and
twisting, turning and whirling, caught in a wind so strong if let go
would tear him apart, his eyes could not see, his mind could not think,
and his feet never touched the ground.
Time did not exist. Space was but a memory.
Then,suddenly the wind was gone. He was falling, and as he hit ground, found
himself in the midst of a thunder storm. Daylight obscured by dark,
billowy clouds with flat, black bottoms, he was atop a hill leaning
against a large, upright stake, two women at his side, wrapped in robes
of coarse wool. Heads down, cheeks tucked against their breasts, they
were crying.
Grateful to be still, to be, for a moment, free from her, he waited for the demon to reveal herself, but she did not come.
Back pressed hard against the stake, his awareness returning, he raised
his eyes to figures standing several feet away. Legs bared, calves and
feet wrapped in leather straps, their leather skirts bearing armor,
they were Roman Centurions.
Suddenly realizing his shoulders were damp, his head and body stained with blood, he looked up, into the
tormented face of a man being crucified.
Startled, powerful forces
of fear and adoration violently colliding inside him, he panicked and
scurried away. Hiding behind the very men who were crucifying his Lord,
he cowered in torment. Crumbling to the ground like rubble, he wept.
Coward
and fool, so close to Christ he could touch Him, he crawled in agony
between the legs of His persecutors and hid from Him. Afraid to look,
yet compelled to do so, he peered into the eyes of the man he
worshipped, and found within them strength enough to come forward.
Adoration the force that lifted him to his knees, he to left the
protection of evil and ventured to move toward God’s light.
Eyes
fixed on His, the light of eternity within them, he wrapped his arms
around the crucifix and held on, absorbing, for his very salvation, all
the hope and forgiveness inside. Mesmerized by his faith, imagining
forces never known to him before surging through his soul, he did not
see the two women beside him fade away or the ground beneath him move.
He did not sense the earth begin to liquefy as the viscosity of the
soil changed, turning fluid. He was not aware of any of this until the
crucifix moved.
Shaken into the reality of his nightmare, he was
suddenly in a tug-a-war with the earth as it began to swallow the
crucifix. His arms wrapped so tightly about the rough, chiseled stake
beneath Christ’s feet, they bled as slivers as big as nails drove into
his flesh. Struggling against the downward pull, he was fighting not
only for Christ but for His promise.
Getting to his feet, bearing
his entire weight against the forces absorbing Christ and His crucifix,
he was, at once, pulled, too. Quickly buried up to his waist, the body
of Christ in passage before him, he begged his Lord in heaven, “Help
us!”
While on the hill overlooking them, was the demon, quietly
watching and remembering, her senses gorged with the fresh scent and
taste of blood.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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Satan's Scat: The Asylum

Squatting on the floor in a far corner of her dimmed, ten-by-ten foot room, her thin legs pedestals on which she balanced, Jane Doe Number Eight moved not a hair as Patrick and Jeff opened the heavy, steel door and came inside. There was a wild, sickly look about her. The bones of her jaw from ears to chin were so distinct beneath her skin they were skeletal. Her bright red hair was short and barbed-like. Her eyes, yellowed by jaundice, glared at them over unnaturally bulbous, red cheeks.
“What’s wrong with her?” Patrick asked, quite startled. The powerful, beautiful mother of all gods would never look like this. Or would she?
“Chronic hemolytic anemia caused by an inherent abnormality of her red blood cells and/or her environment,” Jeff told him. “She’s expressing severe anemia and jaundice because it’s in an acute stage. They discovered she had it when they found blood in her urine at the hospital.”
Trying to see what or whom was inside her, Patrick studied her. She seemed frightened and very alone in this place. Her cot was without sheets. The only half normal thing around her was a single unit, stainless steel toilet and sink against the back wall.
“Let me talk to her alone,” he asked Jeff. She seemed, after all, not so much different than he was when he was committed to an asylum. “Maybe I can calm her down.”
“Sure. Just let me know when your finished.”
As Jeff went into the hall and Patrick closed the steel door behind him, Patrick did not see or hear the stealth behind him, the animal-like quickness with which she sprung from the corner. Leaping through the air, she drove his head into the door.
He was dazed, trapped between floor and door so Jeff could not open it. Straddling his shoulders, her fists flailed against his temple, while in growling low pitch, she screamed obscenities.
Grabbing his hair, she smashed his face again and again into the floor then suddenly pulled his head back. Attaching her teeth to his ear, she ripped.

Excerpt from Satan's Scat, The Destiny's Damned Trilogy - Book 2

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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Serial Killers: Who Are They?

Serial killers often seem to be perfectly normal individuals. A truck painter. Law Student. Political insider. A renowned Poet. Shoe salesman. Husband. Father. A University drop out. Soldier. Alcoholic. Medical doctor. A photo technician. Someone physically challenged. A mild mannered, quiet, obedient employee. Migrant worker. Teacher. An ordinary, solitary and non-threatening individual. A street kid. Rape victim. A forestry student. Or, even the neighborhood’s favorite clown.

Collectively, these seemingly normal types, 14 men in all, murdered as many as 911 men, women and children. But, who are they?

The trunk painter was Gary Ridgway, aka the Green River Killer who strangled 48 women and/or dismembered and molested their bodies. He was called the Green River Killer because he dumped their remains near the Green River in northwestern Washington.

The infamous Ted Bundy was a law student and political insider, absolutely charming to those who knew him socially and politically. He had a degree in psychology and, while he worked for the Republican Party in the State of Washington developed a close relationship with governor Dan Evans. Yet, with all his connections and advantages, he turned violent. Over about four years, he raped 30 women, murdered them by bludgeoning them to death or strangling them, and then molested their bodies.

Jack the Ripper, whose actual identity has not been established, murdered, cut open and removed organs from five women in London in 1888. According to Richard Patterson, Jack the Ripper may have been Francis Thompson, a renowned poet. He was also a cricket fan who impressed and made friends with other poets. His most famous poem was “The Hound of Heaven” in which he talks about God’s pursuit of a human soul. (See: “Francis Thompson” by Richard Patterson at http://www.casebook.org/suspects/ft.html)

John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered 33 boys and young men, most of whom he buried in the crawl space under his house. He was a husband and a father. He was a shoe salesman and later managed a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. He bought a house in Cook County, Illinois and became active in the local Democratic Party. Becoming a precinct captain, he was photographed with Rosalynn Carter, wife of the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. Most benignly of all, he frequently entertained the neighborhood children in costume as Pogo the Clown.

Yoo Young-Chul of South Korea was also a husband, but a troubled one, with a history of mental problems and rape. His wife divorced him in 2002, and from September 2003 to 2004, Yoo killed, horrifically dismembered, and cannibalized 21 men and women.

Jeffrey Dahmer was also a well-know cannibal. He might have appeared normal, but he wasn’t. He killed his first victim in his parent’s house after he graduated from high school. After that he drank to excess and dropped out of Ohio State University after just one term because his drinking was uncontrolled. He joined the army and two years later he was discharged for alcoholism. In all, he killed 17 boys and young men, most in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, often having sex with their bodies, dismembering them, and eating part of them.

William MacDonald murdered 4 derelicts in Sydney, Australia, stabbing each victim dozens of times then cutting off their genitals. He was a soldier, too, a member of the Lancashire Fusiliers. He was raped by one of his corporals.

One of the worst serial killers of all time was raped, too. Pedro Alonso López, known as the Monster of the Andes, was born in 1948 in Santa Isabel, Colombia. Abused and repeatedly raped as a youngster, he lived on the streets and became a rapist, then murderer. By 1978, by his own accounts, he had murdered 300.

Among those often above suspicion are medical doctors, yet they are in a position to murder scores of people if they so desire. Fred Shipman, for example, a general practitioner in England murdered as many as 250 women and men. He graduated from Leeds Medical School, married and had four children. Many of his victims were murdered by a lethal injection of heroin. Doctor Marcel Andre Henri Felix was less ambitious and murdered only 60, hiding the remains of 26 of them in his house in Paris. As a youngster he was often accused of delinquency and criminal activities and often expelled from school, yet he completed medical school in only eight months. He too, was in politics, becoming mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He was a husband and a father. He was also a thief.

Mild-mannered, ordinary, obedient men with quiet and solitary lives have also been serial killers. In Japan, Tsutomu Miyazaki was so described. He had a physical deformity and was often shunned when he was growing up, yet he attended Junior college and become a photo technician. In the late 1980’s, he murdered 4 girls, had sex with their corpses, gruesomely handled their remains, tormented their families, and ate portions of two of them.

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, an ordinary, non-threatening, teacher in Russia murdered, tortured and mutilated as many as 70 boys and girls. He was also a husband.

Huang Yong of China was a migrant worker. He tied his victims to a noodle-processing contraption and suffocated them. He murdered 17 teenage boys and kept their belts as souvenirs.

In the late 1990’s a forestry student, Anatoly Onoprienko, murdered approximately 52, men, women and children. Selecting an isolated house, he would enter and shoot all of its occupants and anyone else who might have witnessed the crime. He then burned the house.

These serial killers have little in common with regard to their outward personas, except that, before they were caught, most of them appeared to be normal.

Any thoughts?

by Shawna Ryan

Resources:
http://www.answers.com/topic/gary-ridgway;
Excerpt from truTV CRIME LIBRARY; “Green River Killer: River of Death -- At Wits End” http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/greenriver/links_5.html;
CourtTVnews, Wednesday Feg. 27, 2008,The Green River Killer,
Gerald Boyle, Jeffrey Dahmer's lawyer, comments on the sentencing of Gary Ridgway, Dec. 18, 2003;
www.murdersdatabase.co.uk;
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ruth.buddell/bundy.htm;
http://www.answers.com/topic/ted-bundy;
“Investingating Jack the Ripper” at http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/09/15.html based on the investigations of retired British Police Detective Trevor Marriot;
“Francis Thompson” by Richard Patterson at http://www.casebook.org/suspects/ft.html;
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-wayne-gacy?cat=entertainment;
The Biography Channel; “Heidnik And Dahmer: Great Crimes And Trials;” http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/489:346/1/Jeffrey_Dahmer.htm;
http://www.answers.com/topic/harold-shipman;
http://www.answers.com/topic/harold-shipman;
truTV Crime Library: “WILLIAM "THE MUTILATOR" MACDONALD,” by Paul B. Kidd; Australia's Most Feared Serial Killer; http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/macdonald/index_1.html;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Miyazaki;
CNN Internationl.com at http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/12/09/china.killer.reut/;
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/chikatilo;
http://www.answers.com/topic/pedro-l-pez-serial-killer?cat=entertainment;
http://www.answers.com/topic/marcel-petiot;
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/youngchul.htm.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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Satan's Scat: In Satan's Belly-Captured

Blinding fog, through which only God could see, consumed the street and all the objects around her as she stumbled to the right and into an alley. Half naked, her tight, old fashioned, ice-blue kirtle torn nearly off at the bust and sleeves, its hem damp and shredding as she stepped on it, she staggered face first into a dumpster and fell. Face swollen, her bright crimson cheek torn, she crawled to her feet and wept.
They were somewhere behind her, but where? Terror a spark that shocked her to her feet, she pushed away from the dumpster and ran on. Her feet vehicles with no driver, they flailed against the pavement as she careened her way along, crying, crashing into walls and trash cans, fire escapes and stairs. Bruised and bloodied, she felt nothing but fear.
Echoing her footsteps, magnifying her sobs, the fog was a radar for her enemies. She knew they were coming by their own footsteps. Coming quickly. Steadily. Gaining on her by inches, and then by feet.
Hysterical, she ran faster, overwhelming the sound of their footsteps with her screams. Light. Where’s the light, she worried, as she searched for the other end of the alley. If I can just get out of here.
Through the haze, in the brume, a nebulous, borderless glow appeared, and she ran for it. Oblivious of all that was to the right and left of her and that which was about her, barely missing the curb at her feet, she ran half blind toward the light. Comforted by its presence, only vaguely aware that the footsteps behind her approached, she felt nothing as tons of steel, led by a bumper, hit her, sending her sailing.
Excerpt from SATAN’S SCAT

© Shawna Ryan
Author: thrillers DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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DESTINY'S DAMNED: SERIAL KILLER - CAGED

Excerpt from DESTINY'S DAMNED:

Hands and feet bound with locked,
plastic, zip strips, her mouth covered with duct tape, she was helpless
as she stared at a four-inch-wide-metal disk, encasing something . Her
days and nights were measured only by light coming from a small crack
between the floor boards. With nothing to eat or drink except that
which he sometimes gave her while he was there, she lost count of the days after six weeks.
Her
mind dulled, sleep her only pastime, the memory of her family was
fading as she allowed her mind to slip away, slowly falling into
stupor. Her only respite, if you could call them that, were his visits.
Listening for him was her occupation. Hoping, yet dreading, he would
come for her when he came into the house, the horror he brought her
was, at least, living.
Forsaken and alone, the spiders in the corner
of her prison that built webs in her hair and a cat that sometimes
slept over the crack in the floor were her only other company.
Starving, seeming not to have eaten for an eternity, she listened,macabrely grateful when she heard a voice taunting her. “Honey, I’m home.”

© Shawna Ryan
Author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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Technorati Profile

SATAN'S SCAT: Serial Killer: In the Body of Hell

Crouched beneath the edge, the pit his hiding place, a thin, nearly fleshless being peered over the rim and studied her. He had yearned, practically begged for death, for freedom from the bodies he inhabited, yet death brought him nothing, and he was cold. Hoping that in this state he could move unobstructed, explore without tether, he forgot what it was like in hell.
The Abbess looked comfortable, old and wrinkly like a well-used bed, and she was perspiring with heat, wonderful, consoling heat. The wounds from the torture he endured by Angelina still raw, vulnerable to the cold and agonizing, he longed for someone like her, a warm, uninjured sanctuary where for a time he could rest from his hell.
He had murdered the real Sisters Mary Benedict and Benedict Augusta and Michael; devoured their hands, faces and feet, the body parts that gave them their identity; and become them. Hoping through them he could find what his master had sent him for, he used them for access, worming his way into positions of trust.
They had been useless to him. Remembering their betrayal, the center of his yellow eyes turned red, and he glared at her. Would this old woman do the same?
He moved just enough to shift his feet beneath him. His body tensed, his long bony fingers gripped the edge of the pit, and he sprung.
Flames on the walls froze in place and all others died. Instantly, the room turned frigid.
Her breath sucked out of her, the Abbess froze, too, as she awaited his attack in terror.
“Damn!” he said, as he touched her, the warmth he sought gone.
Looking for fire, anything that still burned, to warm her, he became aware of something going on outside the room. A vault was opening. That which he was looking for was exposed.
His master was inside him warming and inciting him. The cold melted away, and while his master lured him with promise, he listened. For an instant, he was free from pain.
Evil flourished in a body already ripe with it, and he smiled as he moved away from the Abbess. Ignited by the power the evil brought him, inspired by Satan’s promise of their own version of heaven, the acids within him churned. Friction intensified, and by the powers that controlled him, he exploded in a ball of fire.

excerpt from SATAN'S SCAT, THE DESTINY'S DAMNED TRILOGY - BOOK 2

© Shawna Ryan
Author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
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DESTINY'S DAMNED: Serial Killer: Murder #1

From the third story of a house less then a hundred feet up the hill and to the right, a hazy, fog blurring light coming from a single group of windows was indistinguishable from the light of so many other houses nearby. Deep in concentration, his shades drawn, Eric Caldwell did not hear the cable car’s bell, nor did he know it had rained that day or there was fog outside. He worked at a modern, metal-framed, wood-top desk, finishing his latest article. A dedicated, investigative reporter with the mental discipline to close out almost everything, he heard nothing. Not even the footsteps on the stairway up to his room.
As he looked through small, light gray, titanium glasses studying the screen of the laptop, he had taken to every corner of the world with him, he absentmindedly swept back his long, dark-brown bangs. Small lesions on his face, from years of overexposure to the sun, were meaningless. The dysentery that followed him, everywhere, mere nuisance compared to a story.
To his right, always visible from the corner of his eye, always with him, no matter where he went, was a picture of a little girl and her mother, smiling and beautiful, taken eight years ago. He had wanted to be a good husband and father, to be the man his wife and daughter forever looked to for love and protection, but as Rebecca got older and his need to expose the wrongs of the world came to obsess and absorb him, he somehow lost them.
Taking a sip of coffee, long gone cold, he began to reread the article he wrote that day, making editorial changes along the way, he did not hear the lock being picked nor the door opening behind him. Seemingly mesmerized by a certain phrase, he put down the coffee, propped his square chin on his left palm, and mentally picked the phrase apart.
Stunned, as if shot by a rock with a sling shot, he gasped. Abruptly straightening, his body rigid, time stood still, as an object, hard and deadly, breached his flesh and bore into his heart.
Instantly limp, unable to stop, he collapsed and fell forward, his face smashing into the laptop. God! he thought, his arms slumping to his sides. I’m having a heart attack. His cell phone only inches away, he panicked as he tried to lift a hand and reach it.
Pain, like that of slowly cracking bones was emanating from his heart, filling his chest, and radiating down his left arm. He trembled. Desperate for help, yet not able to call, he heard the familiar squeak of his apartment’s softwood floor.
Help me. He opened his mouth but found no breath to say the words.
Within a couple of fleeting seconds, he was aware that someone was leaning over him. A deep, heavy breathing drowned out the sound of his own feeble breath. Eric tried again to speak but heard only a groan rattling inside him. Able to roll his head by letting its own weight topple it, he felt the right side of his face clear the key board and mouthed, “Help.” Glasses askew, trapped beneath his left cheek, with blurred vision he searched the room.
Only inches away, he saw a hand gloved in purple nitrile laying a .22 caliber revolver with silencer on the desk top in front of him, he suddenly realized the hot, sweaty body above him was, most probably, his murderer.
Why? Who are you? he asked in terror, without being heard.
Frantically struggling, yet unable to force himself to move, Eric felt the steel like, purple hand slide down his flaccid, dangling arm and grab his right wrist, pulling, then extending the arm across the desk, pinning his hand, palm down, fingers outstretched, to the top.
His strength and interest in what was happening about him waning, he was little aware that something rubbery and vice-like was holding in place his right index finger. Sensations numbing, the pain of the bullet wound mercifully lessening, he felt only a sting, heard but a thud, as a six-inch knife severed his finger tip. His heart struggling to beat, his mind and sight blurring, strangling from lack of oxygen, an irresistible, overwhelming horror overtook him, and he closed his eyes.
His life’s liquid pooling on the high gloss, oak tabletop, he fought to open his eyes in response to the angry voice, muffled and unclear, reverberating in rhythm to the pounding of his head. “Her...sc...ant...sions...and...votion...more!” A piece of paper with printed words was set before him, a corner coming to rest in the leaching pool of red liquid.
“Sign!” the voice ordered. Roughly lifting what was left of Eric’s finger, pinching as it wrote, his hand scrawled with blood oozing from the stump something unintelligible at the bottom of the page.
Like a sheet in the wind, the bloodstained paper flew by him, and the voice shouted,“Her...!”
He heard a shuffling, a zipper being opened and closed, something metal being placed on the floor and something very heavy beside it. And then, his attacker came back.
Digging crooked, clawed fingers into Eric’s shoulders, his attacker threw him against the back of his chair then casually propped him there, positioning his drooping head to the left. Eric saw, but could do nothing, as the purple hand retracted, lingered in the air an instant, and struck, fist doubled, into Eric’s face, knocking him to the side.
As his chair moved, as his attacker then flung him to the floor, there was a rolling motion, a tumbling. Unforgiving wood from the floor rose up against him, and he screamed. Fighting with the last moments of his life to understand what was happening to him, half hallucinating as he was sprawled on the floor, he caught a glimpse of a headless man dressed in black, his hands waving something in front of Eric’s eyes. A bumpy plate of some kind was placed against the center of his forehead, and as he watched, numb from his ordeal, a blurry, round stone dropped.
Prickles of pain were suddenly radiating across his head. Streams of blood were flowed into his eyes, blinding him. His skull was cracking under the pressure of the plate being hammered into his forehead, the agony that followed but a brief discomfort as Eric quickly expired.

Excerpt from DESTINY'S DAMNED - BOOK 1 OF THE DESTINYS'S DAMNED TRILOGY
© Shawna Ryan
author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT

available:
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Growing a Serial Killer

Serial killers are often friends, neighbors, spouses or sweethearts of people who buy into the killer’s persona of normality. Some never even suspect the truth until the killer is caught or confesses.
But, how did it happen? How did this seemingly normal person become a monster, a sadistic, ruthless murderer? How could he kill once and relish the experience so much that he kills over and over again? How did it begin?
My father, an infantryman on the front lines in World War II, told me when I was a girl that there was nothing more exhilarating than killing another human being. I didn’t know quite how to take that back then, but I do now. He was teaching me that it is in our nature to kill.
Killing is easier for some than for others, and so addictive to a few they cannot stop. Those few most likely experienced the thrill of killing in their childhood. Their victims are small, helpless animals whom they torture and murder. Each kill feeds their need to kill, but only briefly.
When the kills get common place and boring, the murderer child moves on to larger animals, always with his eyes on the weak or injured. As he gets older and moves to humans, he usually experiments at first, torturing or molesting in some way, but not yet killing.
Each time he gets away with an attack, he becomes more confident, convinced he will get away with it again. He comes to believe he is too clever to get caught.
Each time, he tortures or molests the thrill is dulled by its repetition. He needs more.
He is self-absorbed, the satisfaction of his own needs paramount to everything else. By successfully fooling those close to him, he empowers himself and gains more confidence. He convinces himself his victims deserve to die for whatever reason he concocts. He feels their pain, but only because it elicits joy within him. The rush inside him is so addictive he cannot turn back, nor does he want to turn back.
When he begins to kill his human victims, his exhilaration is uncontrollable. It lingers, but when the exhilaration fades, he must kill again. Kill until he is stopped.
Think about it. Is there anyone close to you who's a killer?

by Shawna Ryan
author: DESTINY’S DAMNED & SATAN’S SCAT (Thrillers)

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SATAN'S SCAT - Book 2

SATAN’S SCAT is book 2 of the DESTINY’S DAMNED Trilogy.

What if Christ left His own Testament? And what if that Testament survived and is hidden? Why would the Christian Church want to find and destroy it? And who would be protecting it?

Already Damned for murders in past lives, the vicious killer morphs into evil itself and joins forces with the Church. Despite powerful threats by the Church against them, Patrick and Alicia tenaciously search for The Issue, the only proof that the Church was contrived by a pagan to enslave the world. A wild woman in an asylum bites off Patrick’s ear. Confused and naive, he causes her suicide. Suspecting The Issue is at an abbey in the Burren, Patrick and Alicia go to Ireland, where Alicia becomes a postulate. Patrick becomes a handyman at the monastery up the road. An unwary nun is sadistically murdered. Searching for historical documents that will help heal the wounds when the conspiracy to resurrect the empire is revealed and the Church collapses, Alex and Kevin go to the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin. Hunted, his life in danger, Kevin is tormented by fear as those around him are murdered. Women who are protecting a world shattering secret are imprisoned beneath the ground in a devil’s cauldron.

ISBN: 0-9785216-1-7
© Shawna Ryan
Author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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DESTINY'S DAMNED-BOOK 1

In DESTINY'S DAMNED, book 1 of the Trilogy, a sadistic, serial killer commits bizarre, ritualistic murders in the heart of San Francisco. Eric Caldwell’s finger is cut off at the first joint. His skull is crushed by a sledgehammer, and a mysterious symbol is stamped between his eyes. Stan Bartlett, a young, middle school teacher, is sadistically murdered after being mentioned in a Sunday school class. Professor Jeffrey Warren, Stanford University, is shot in the head after writing a paper comparing the holy week of the mythical god, Attis, to the Christians’ Easter holy week. Judy Bowers is caught up in the horror, and is one of a long list of women imprisoned in a box, deep within a crawl space, and then murdered. Near death, Retha Washington struggles to survive in the crawl space. Alex Caldwell, Eric’s brother, is an investigative reporter for the New York Post. When Eric is murdered, Alex comes to San Francisco and enlists Sharon Marshall, a successful trial attorney in San Francisco, to search for Eric’s murderer. Kevin James is a professor of mythology at the University of California at Berkeley. In helping with the investigation, he becomes a target himself. John Lester, the minister of The Calvary Gospel Church, is a Neo-Nazi under suspicion of diverting funds from the church to his Aryan Brotherhood and for hate crimes. Howard Blake, Lester’s henchman, is somehow involved not only in the disappearance of Lester’s wife, but in his own wife’s disappearance. The mysterious Lieutenant Sybil Meter’s investigative and arrest techniques are highly unusual. Monsignor Patrick Bodowski steals The Issue, the only surviving proof that a Roman emperor created, manipulated and promoted modern Christianity to save and unite the Roman Empire. The Issue is also the only proof that his legions survive within the Church today, ready to resurrect that empire. Troubled and alone, dangerous to himself and possibly others, Patrick is hunted by those modern legions. Peter Cook, minister of the Cross of our Savior Baptist Church, and his wife, Alicia, give Patrick refuge, but Peter is suspicious of him.
ISBN: 0-9785216-0-9

© Shawna Ryan
Author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
available:
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DESTINY'S DAMNED THRILLER TRILOGY

Summary

Attorney author Shawna Ryan's DESTINY'S DAMNED Trilogy is a thriller mystery of the bizarre, spiritual and supernatural. Delving into the heart, mind, and soul of a serial killer so evil he morphs into evil itself, the trilogy also dares question the legitimacy of the church that protects him.
Using her vivid imagination and analytical skills in scrutinizing the mind and compulsions of the vicious killer, the history of Christianity and the New Testament, and the threatening ramifications today of a religion created to rule the world, the attorney author, SHAWNA RYAN, creates a breathtaking, terrifying story.
Readers who enjoy exciting books that educate, as well as, thrill will love the DESTINY'S DAMNED Trilogy. Fans of Douglas Preston’s and Lincoln Child’s RELIC and their other thrillers; of Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE; and of Stephen King's horror stories will be mesmerized by the DESTINY'S DAMNED Trilogy.

© Shawna Ryan
Author: DESTINY'S DAMNED & SATAN'S SCAT
Available:
www.pilchuckpublishing.com
Amazon.com
book stores and libraries