Speaker 1: Come in welcome. I'm g Marshall.
Speaker 2: I forget too.
Speaker 3: But someone once said that fate is like a madman
with an axe waiting for us around the next corner,
which is to say, of course, that, however serene our lives,
we never know whether the madman is working around the
next corner, return ready to take a vicious wipe at
us with that axe. In point of which, consider the
case of Lucas Laudard Warden of a certain state prison
in a certain Western state. John, in Heaven's name, will
you try to understanding? In less than three hours, Guy
Richards will be executed, drop through that trap door to
his death, which will.
Speaker 4: Mean the end. I hope, Luke, of this whole insane
nightmare you've been going through, yes, and putting me through.
Speaker 1: I don't believe you still don't believe.
Speaker 5: I have to be mad to believe.
Speaker 4: Start raving mad.
Speaker 6: S.
Speaker 5: Guy Richards dies, Worse than madness may lie ahead for you, Joan.
Speaker 1: Much worse.
Speaker 3: Our mystery drama, The Strange Case of Lucas Lauder was
written especially for the mystery theater by George Lowther and
stars Robert Lansing. As we know, the death penalty is
outlawed in many states, but in some it is still
enforced in such special cases as the murder of a policeman,
death through kidnapping, and or particularly vicious crimes. Our story
begins in just such a state, in the condemned cell
of that state's prison.
Speaker 1: Send a message you wanted to see me, Richards.
Speaker 3: And thank you Warden. Thanks very much for answering it
this quickly. Won't you sit down?
Speaker 1: What is it? Richards?
Speaker 2: I want to discuss my case with you.
Speaker 5: There's nothing to discuss. You were legally tried, legally convicted.
If you think there's something I can do to say.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no no, there's nothing like that, Warden.
And I was guilty.
Speaker 3: I freely admitted murdering those women, all four of them,
and mutilating them with a butcher knife.
Speaker 2: No, no, no.
Speaker 3: The name of the newspapers gave me was well deserved,
Guy the Ripper.
Speaker 1: Then what is it you want to see me about?
Speaker 7: Warden?
Speaker 3: Hasn't it ever struck you as odd curious that someone
of my breeding and background could be guilty of four
such horrible murders, murders and mutilations identical with those done
by Jack the Ripper, nearly a century ago.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it has me and quite
a few others. He'd been judged insane.
Speaker 3: But I wasn't so judged, nor was I insane. No,
I am as sane as the next one, for whatever that's.
Speaker 1: Worth, which is a very busy man, and.
Speaker 3: Prefer to spend as little time as possible in the
company of anyone as vicious and paved as Guy Richards. Yes,
I know, but that's exactly why I asked you to
come and see me.
Speaker 2: Warden. Before very long, you're going to be spending all
your time in my company.
Speaker 1: Ha ha.
Speaker 2: I don't blame you for looking puzzled. Let me explain.
Speaker 1: Yes, I do explain.
Speaker 3: A little more than a year ago, Warden, I was
a professor of psychology at the university. I was happily married,
successful and deeply involved in my work. And then, suddenly, shockingly,
for no apparent reason, I became well, the embodiment you
might say of a man who has been dead for many,
many years, Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 2: It began, Warden.
Speaker 3: It all began one morning in my office at State University.
Speaker 1: Come in.
Speaker 3: Well, Eric, Eric Nordling, It's good to see you.
Speaker 8: Good to be back. Good to have you back.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how much I've missed you this
past month. It's like missing my right arm.
Speaker 8: No nonsense, I'll be frank with you.
Speaker 3: When you went into the hospital for those tests a
month ago, I didn't expect i'd missed you as much
at all.
Speaker 8: Why should you have just an assistant, professor?
Speaker 2: Ah, but what an assistant you?
Speaker 3: Remember when you left you in the class were analyzing
those strange, gruesome murders that had taken place the three women, Remember,
I remember well, I took over for you, and believe me,
the class soon let me know that I just wasn't
in it with you. They said, no one, not even me,
he could touch you when it came to explaining the
murderers drives and motivations. In fact, they said you understood
and explained them so well they wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2: If you were the murderer.
Speaker 1: But what is it, Eric, Eric, guy, I was? I
am the murderer. Ah?
Speaker 3: Well, I can see you're not joking directly, I'm not.
I also know that you haven't been well, in.
Speaker 1: Fact, very sick. Guy, I'm dying.
Speaker 8: But none of that changes the simple truth that I
murdered those women and mutilated them.
Speaker 1: Guy, I'm Jack the Ripper. No, I'm not crazy.
Speaker 8: As a professor of parapsychology, you do believe that people
can be possessed by the spirits of the dead.
Speaker 3: Ah, I keep an open mind, or try to.
Speaker 8: I can tell you that possession is a fact. For
some time now, I have been possessed by the spirit
of Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: Eric, if I didn't know you better, i'd say that
you're already possessed of a dose of LSD.
Speaker 2: But since I.
Speaker 1: Die, I believe me.
Speaker 8: What I'm telling you is the truth. Believe me, because
you're about to become Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 2: Eric, you're real. I can tell from looking at you.
Your serious.
Speaker 1: I am. I'm dying.
Speaker 8: I told you that they've given me less than two
months to live.
Speaker 2: Oh right, it's terminal.
Speaker 8: Less than two months, I'll be dead and the day
I die, the instant I die, the Ripper's spirit will
leave my body.
Speaker 1: And then to yours. Don't believe me, do you?
Speaker 2: Of course not?
Speaker 8: Then I'll have to prove it. You've taken your pen
knife out of your pocket and you're opening a blade.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, to clean out my pipe. What's so unusual
about that?
Speaker 8: Does your pipe need cleaning?
Speaker 1: Well? No, but you.
Speaker 8: Acted on impulse, sudden, inexplicable desire, desire to hold a
knife in your hand.
Speaker 2: Oh now, bawless, it isn't senseless.
Speaker 1: And if you think.
Speaker 8: So, try to put the knife back in your pocket.
Speaker 1: We'll go ahead, close the blade.
Speaker 8: Put the knife back in your pocket.
Speaker 3: Uh why I I haven't done what I intended to do?
Clean out my piper?
Speaker 8: Is that what you intended to do?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 8: In Heaven's name, guy, be honest with yourself.
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Mm? Now?
Speaker 8: What what do.
Speaker 1: You intend to do with that knife? But he wants
to do with it?
Speaker 2: I I want I want to kill with it, to
strike and sly, I.
Speaker 1: What is this?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 8: It's Jack the Ripper using your body. You need a
proof and he I just gave it to you. I
took possession of you for a few moments. But when
Eric Nordling dies, I'll become Guy Richards till he dies.
Speaker 2: And after that, one of it's madness.
Speaker 8: You and I you felt an overwhelming urge to strike
and slash.
Speaker 2: No, but there's got to be some explanation here is.
Speaker 8: You can pick up your knife and put it away.
We'll clean your pipe if you really want.
Speaker 2: To well warden.
Speaker 3: Those were Eric Nordling's words, almost his identical words, just
before he told me what I'm about to.
Speaker 2: Tell you.
Speaker 1: That I'm about to become Jack the.
Speaker 2: Ripper the day the instant I die.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's anything further you want?
Speaker 2: No, wait, wait, don't go now.
Speaker 5: Look, Richards, your time is short and yours is and
I want to do everything I can to make the.
Speaker 1: Next few days easy for you.
Speaker 5: When it comes to listening to the kind of the
kind of story you just told me, I haven't the time.
Speaker 3: You don't believe it either, even I didn't with all
my knowledge of the cult the psychic, I could bring
myself to believe in anything so impossible, seemingly impossible.
Speaker 1: And that is the word. Do you think I've got
a little uh what do they call it here? Stir crazy?
Speaker 5: I haven't been in long enough for that. I'm not
calling it anything. I'm not thinking anything. But if you
want to get something off your chest, to get it off,
I'll be gone.
Speaker 3: No, no, please, Richard's I don't listen for just one
minute more at six in the morning, two days so
now I'll be hanging for murders. Every bitter is revolting
as those of Jack the Ripper. Because I am Jack
the Ripper. This body you see is the body of
Guy Richards, once respected university professor. But I the spirit
that inhabits this body.
Speaker 2: But I am. I assure you Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 3: And let me assure you, as Eric Nordling assured Guy Richards,
at the very instant the rope snaps my neck. On
that instant one, you will become Jack the Ripper. Further
I can be, and I'll prove it to you.
Speaker 2: As I made Nordling prove it to Richards.
Speaker 3: Now before you go to bed to nights, you will
feel that same strong, overpowering urge need to strike and
slash with a knife before you go to bed tonight.
Speaker 4: That's really one of the strangest stories you've ever brought
home with you.
Speaker 7: More potatoes.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 5: It's funny, though, what well, And don't ask me why
I did this. I certainly didn't believe a word of
Richard's story, not a word, but I guess curiosity got
the better of me. What I checked at the university,
Richards did have an assistant.
Speaker 1: Named Eric Nordley, and he did die when Richard City
did doesn't mean anything. Still, that part of Richard's story
was true, Johnny, What do you think?
Speaker 7: What do I think?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's kind of interested in that stuff, yoga
and astrology and the psychic and all.
Speaker 7: Oh not, you do have an interest, and not a
serious interest.
Speaker 1: Still, what do you think.
Speaker 4: I think I'd like another piece of roast beef? That's
what I think.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, I'll try not to be so heavy hand
at this time.
Speaker 4: Oh you weren't heavy handed. Just slice it a smidgeon thinner,
that's all just a smidgeon.
Speaker 1: Smidgeon it is, and easily done with a knife, is
raisor sharp as.
Speaker 4: This won't be done at all if you don't stop
staring at that knife and cut me a slice.
Speaker 1: Bop what It's nothing.
Speaker 5: I was just I'm just thinking thinking what we're Richard's
talked this afternoon. You thought I was gonna grab grab
it the first chance I got to carve up some
likely female you, for instance.
Speaker 4: Don't say things like that, Luke, not even jokingly.
Speaker 5: I'm not sorry, but can can you imagine anyone like me,
for instance, starting to cut a spice of roast beef
and then changing my mind and deciding to carve a
few slices out of you.
Speaker 4: No, I can't, And I'd just assume.
Speaker 5: Not the table like this, holding the carving knife in
my hand. It's a razor sharp carving knife.
Speaker 1: I'd come around the table toward you.
Speaker 7: Please.
Speaker 5: When I got to you, i'd stand over you. I'd
look look deep, look deep into your eyes, and then
and raise the knife high over my head and please you, h.
Speaker 4: Looke, let's come home for you. See if this is
a joke, it isn't your kind of joke. It was
a joke, wasn't wasn't it?
Speaker 1: Yes? Sure, sure it was a joke. What else? What else?
Speaker 2: Indeed, what else could it be?
Speaker 1: It could be?
Speaker 3: What Warden Lucas Lauder knows it was no joke at
all that for a few moments in.
Speaker 2: Time he was gripped by driven.
Speaker 3: By an all but overwhelming urge to strike with that knife,
slash with that knife, killed with that knife.
Speaker 1: I'll return in a moment for.
Speaker 2: That to.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, fate is sometimes likened to a
madman with an axe, and it would surely seem that
Lucas Lauder, Warden of State's Prison, has run head on
into him. When Guy Richards told Lucas that he was
really Jack the Ripper, that his body was possessed by
the spirit of the Ripper, Lucas laughed, but his laugh
turned to a worried frown when he came dangerously close
to stabbing the wife he loves. Now in Lucas office
at State's Prison the following afternoon, No, Jerry, no, look,
I don't mean to.
Speaker 5: Be harsh, but I think Maxwell's privileges should be taken
away for a while.
Speaker 1: Yes, a week at least? All right? Goodbye? Yes, miss comch.
Speaker 7: He brought diy Richard telgerboy, Uh, all.
Speaker 1: Right, tell them to bring him in.
Speaker 2: Yes, bringing.
Speaker 1: All right? Boys, you wait outside sun Richards.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Richard.
Speaker 5: I want to talk to you about, among other things,
I want to talk about your personal effects.
Speaker 3: Well, we've talked about that. I told you I don't
give it, damn what you do with it.
Speaker 2: Wharton. You didn't have me brought here to talk.
Speaker 3: About my property. You brought me here to talk about
what happened to you last night.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna start again on that nonsense about being
Jack the.
Speaker 3: Rippers nonsense, and you know it now, you also know
that when I go through the trap less than forty
eight hours from now, you will become Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 2: You know it because I put you through a sort
of trial run. You might say, last night, what did
happen last night?
Speaker 1: Wharton, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about what your wife Joan thought was a
sick joke, But it was no joke at all. I'm
talking about how you stood over her with a carving knife,
but n if he'd been using the roast beef.
Speaker 2: Right. Oh, look you I'm going to be sick, are you?
Speaker 1: How do you know that's what happened?
Speaker 2: I was there? How else you now?
Speaker 1: Now, that's impossible. What you're saying is impossible.
Speaker 3: Incredible, yes, but not impossible. I explained to you yesterday,
or tried to explain that I took this body when
Eric Nordling died just as I occupied his body. When, oh, well,
it doesn't matter who died before him or before him.
All that matters to you, or should matter to you,
is that you're next on that list to shall we say,
play host to Jack the Ripper?
Speaker 2: But why why?
Speaker 1: Yes, look, you must have died?
Speaker 3: What am I saying Jack, the Ripper must have died many,
many years ago, in nineteen o seven, of the exact
All right, then you've been dead, I mean, damn it,
the Ripper has been dead nearly seventy years. But his spirits,
my spirits, has lived on in others.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm getting out.
Speaker 3: Why because I cannot rest because of the awful crimes
you committed. No, not because of the crimes but the
reason behind them, the evil in me that drove me
to to what I did, the hates.
Speaker 1: No, I don't understand.
Speaker 2: There is nothing to understand. It's quite simple.
Speaker 3: A spirit, a soul, is given an earthly body and
forced to suffer through what you call life, forced to
go through this agony again and again and again until
it is cleansed completely.
Speaker 2: Of evil, of hate. Evil in me was so great
it will take.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Only the Lord knows how many lifetimes to wipe it away. Unless, unless,
unless it meets.
Speaker 3: A love as pure as the hate is evil, a
soul as tender as the hate is brutal, the spirit
as compassionate as the hate is ruthless, And that.
Speaker 2: That will never be.
Speaker 3: Never, No such love exists, no such soul, no such spirit,
not on miser.
Speaker 5: That's for sure. You really believe what you're saying, don't you.
You really believe that you are actually Jack the Ripper.
I'm going to give you another taste of what it's
going to be like.
Speaker 1: To be Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 3: If you think for one minute that I don't care
what you believe, just do me a paper and send
me back to myself.
Speaker 1: Yes, Riches, we'll go back to a cell now.
Speaker 7: Richard is going back.
Speaker 3: Now. Remember what I said, Warden, I'm going to give
you another taste.
Speaker 2: So all right, let's go.
Speaker 7: Warden.
Speaker 1: Yes, miss Comley, it's.
Speaker 7: Near time for me to go home, and the buses
get awful crowd in weather like this, so I was
wondering could I leave now?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 5: He is, of course, go ahead to wait a minute, Yes, sir,
I was about to leave myself.
Speaker 1: I'll drive you home.
Speaker 7: No, sir, I couldn't take you out of your way.
Speaker 1: It's not out of my way, but not much anyhow.
Speaker 7: If you're sure it's no trouble.
Speaker 1: It's no trouble at all. It'll be it'll be a pleasure.
Speaker 7: Thanks, Warden. Off a nice of you.
Speaker 1: I'll see to your door.
Speaker 5: Oh, no need for that, no, insists there's been a
lot of muggings in this neighbor to be sure that
you get to your apartment safe and sound.
Speaker 7: Well, thanks again, you're off the time.
Speaker 5: Miss coming. I wonder if I could. I wonder if
I might use your phone? Oh, sure, there's call of
home that my wife know. I'll be a little late
a second, though, there's no sense in calling. I won't
be that late.
Speaker 7: Oh, only five or ten minutes.
Speaker 5: Why at the rain and wind against the window shows
me to the bone just looking at it.
Speaker 7: I couldn't give you a drink, could I?
Speaker 1: Sir? Miss commonly? I wasn't hinting you know.
Speaker 7: Oh I didn't think you would. But well, if you would,
I could drink.
Speaker 1: Why not? I love one.
Speaker 7: I keep the liquor in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: It's scott isn't it just a short one.
Speaker 7: I won't be a minute.
Speaker 1: I'll come with you if you don't mind.
Speaker 7: Oh, of course not.
Speaker 1: Never been in the apartment before. I'd like to see
how my secretary lives.
Speaker 7: I'm not very fancy.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid it looks nice. It's comfortable. Do you live alone?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 7: I tried living with someone else, but it oh, it
just didn't work out here? You are, no thanks, that's
good Scotch, glad you like it.
Speaker 1: Where'd you get those knives?
Speaker 7: Knives?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 1: Have you got a knife set on the wall?
Speaker 7: Oh? Oh there was a I don't know. I've had
him so long?
Speaker 1: Why I like knives? Good ones as that is? Those
look good? You mind if I don't be my guest?
Speaker 2: It's beautiful?
Speaker 8: Do you feel that edge?
Speaker 1: They don't often see knives kept in this good conditions.
It's sure.
Speaker 7: It's no thanks to me. I just use him.
Speaker 5: Never sharpen 'em, shure fit in my hand perfectly. Its
en most beautiful knives I've seen and over s in
the years.
Speaker 2: Jane, get out of my cell, Warden. I don't have
to put.
Speaker 1: Up when you're doing to me. You Anthony Richards, What
are you doing?
Speaker 3: I've told you told me a lot of nonsense about
you being Jack the Ripper and taking possession of me
my body when you die.
Speaker 2: I don't buy that.
Speaker 1: But you're up to something.
Speaker 5: You've done something to me, and I'm not leaving this
cell till you tell me what it is.
Speaker 3: You're scared, Warden, what you came dangerously close to doing?
Your secretary yesterday and will do not long after you
hang me. Ha ha, the urge, the nearly overpowering urge.
I stayed your head, not you, to plunge the knife
into a to slash shop.
Speaker 1: And see stop it now you listen to me. I'm
no fool.
Speaker 5: Yesterday I nearly murdered that girl somehow you know all
about it. But I stayed my hand, not you, because
I'm not a killer.
Speaker 2: Then how do I know what went on in that kitchen?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: You've devoted your life to parapsychology, and you know all
there is to know about things like esp thought transference, hypnotism, hypnotism,
that's it, hypnotism like nothing.
Speaker 5: You're a You're a hypnotist.
Speaker 3: Somehow or other. I don't know how you managed to
hypnotize me while I was.
Speaker 1: Talking to you.
Speaker 3: A good ideas in my head posts post hypnotic suggestion thing.
Speaker 2: It's called.
Speaker 3: You cannot give a post hypnotic command that's contrary to
the subject's normal fiber.
Speaker 1: Ha oh.
Speaker 2: And it would be impossible for me or anyone to
command you to kill. It is men you to kill.
Speaker 3: But that will all change when I am in you
and approximately a second or two after six o'clock tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2: Oh, which reminds me. I have a gift for you.
Here a knife, a knife?
Speaker 1: Where did you get this?
Speaker 3: It was made for me in the prison machine shop,
from a soup ladle, a soup ladle, carefully aid, ground
down at the edges, skillfully shaped into a knife, expertly sharpened.
Speaker 1: How did you manage to have this maid? How did
you manage to have this maid?
Speaker 3: Tom Warden, you know your prison as well as I,
or you should obviously dog Anything can be done in
a prison if you know the ropes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the knife, take.
Speaker 1: It, ed ed.
Speaker 3: He take that knife from Richards and get rid of it.
See me in my office later, and you explain how
he got it. And I wait, wait a minute, he
g give it to me. U.
Speaker 1: I'll get rid of.
Speaker 3: It not til you've used it, not till I the
ripper have used it again again. And I don't see
this man again until his execution tomorrow morning at six.
If he has any last minute requests, you handle them.
If he has any questions, you answered them. He wants
to see me for any reasons, No, tomorrow morning, Richards,
I'll see you then, and not until then, six o'clock
on the scaffold, Richards on the scaffold, when the noose
will be tightened round the neck of Guy Richards, the
trap will be sprung and he'll plummet to death.
Speaker 2: Or will it be life? Another life to.
Speaker 1: Be lived out in the body of.
Speaker 3: Warden Lucas later, I'll return shortly or Act three. There's
much talk these days about possession, the control of a
human being by an evil spirit.
Speaker 1: Probably such talk has.
Speaker 3: Gone on since man can remember, intense discussion, even violent debate,
as to whether possession is a form of schizophrenia or
a malignant spirit which has invaded an earthly body. For
Lucas Lauder, warden of State's prison, it isn't a subject
for idle debate, but a frightening reality. In the bedroom
of his home for a short distance from the prison itself.
Speaker 1: Luke go to slip charm.
Speaker 4: I know it's impossible for you to sleep the night
before an execution, but this time there's something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, John, I'm scared.
Speaker 5: What, dear, I haven't just been sitting here in this
chair watching you while you slept it. Yes, I've been
fighting a urge, powerful urge to kill you, kill me.
Speaker 1: You know all this?
Speaker 7: Where did you get that?
Speaker 1: Archers gave it to me? Are we looking? Knife? Isn't it?
Speaker 5: Somebody managed to get it made in the machine shop
and have it smuggled to him. He he gave it
to me as a present, A strange kind of present.
It's not a present to me, Jones to himself.
Speaker 4: T Oh, oh, of that nonsense, nonsense. How about him
being the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper?
Speaker 1: Oh he is, he is? I I laughed too at first.
Speaker 5: But he is the Ripper in possession of Guy Richard's body,
and at six this morning, less than three hours from now,
he'll be in possession of mine.
Speaker 4: Luke, Luke, Darling, you you can't be serious.
Speaker 7: You don't really believe.
Speaker 1: That after what's happened. I'd be a fool if I didn't.
Speaker 7: What has happened?
Speaker 5: He I, I have to bring myself to talk about it. He he,
he told me he was going to take possession of
me temporarily for a short time, to prepare me for
what's he could come after.
Speaker 1: He hangs.
Speaker 4: But you didn't take that seriously?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, not then.
Speaker 5: But within an hour I'd I nearly stabbed, and this
called me to death, your secretary, you are home in
that storm day before yesterday, I invited myself in, pretended
I wanted to use the phone to call you, but
I had no intention of using that phone.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get into her apartment.
Speaker 4: To to kill her.
Speaker 5: I I didn't know it then. I I didn't know
why I tricked my way in, But well then I
I sort of led her into offering me a drink,
and I went with her into the kitchen where she
keeps the liquor. While she was making the drink, I've
noticed a set of knives, kitchen knives, you know, on
the wall.
Speaker 3: I pretended to admire them mine. I took one to
examine it.
Speaker 5: Only I only I wasn't examining it.
Speaker 1: I was thinking.
Speaker 5: I was thinking, look, my god, don't touch me, don't
don't touch me, don't even come near me.
Speaker 1: It's it's dangerous, it's dangerous.
Speaker 4: Luke, what are you saying, can do to.
Speaker 1: You right now?
Speaker 5: Right now? Well, I came close to doing to her.
The rige was powerful then, but it's even more powerful now.
It's almost as if, is it. The closer I get
to Richard's hanging, the more the urge crows inside me. Look,
I don't have any control, John, no control anymore.
Speaker 3: It's knife I gave. I gave it to the guard
to get rid of No no, no I. I started
to give it to him, and then I changed my mind.
I mean I was forced to change it by a
power stronger than me, and so I kept it and.
Speaker 1: Brought it home.
Speaker 5: I've been sitting here for hours, holding in my hand,
fighting off a terrible obsession to kill.
Speaker 1: You with him.
Speaker 4: Oh, my, poor darling, to think what you've been going through,
and I never knew.
Speaker 1: How can you think of me when you're the one
who's in danger?
Speaker 7: Why?
Speaker 4: Because I don't believe I am in danger, not from you.
Speaker 1: I just told you.
Speaker 4: I don't care what you told me. I care about
what I know, and I know you.
Speaker 1: Love me, Yes, I love you.
Speaker 4: But she'll be dead in a few hours, dead, and
all this business about his spirit possessing you. I don't
believe that.
Speaker 1: I came close that close to killing miss Coomba.
Speaker 7: And killing me, you say, but you didn't.
Speaker 1: But next time there won't.
Speaker 4: Be a next time, because once Richard dies, his power
over you will be ended. Oh, luke, luke, don't you
see what's happened to you?
Speaker 1: Yes, I see he's possessed me.
Speaker 4: Nonsense I can give you. I don't know how many
reasons why it is just play.
Speaker 2: Nonsense, all right, can then just one?
Speaker 4: But I've read a lot about Richard's in the papers,
and you've told me a lot about him. He's a
skilled hypnotist. I don't know much, if anything, about hypnotism,
but it seems to me that he could have brought
you under some kind of hypnotic influence.
Speaker 1: No, no, I can't believe.
Speaker 4: I another thing I know about him. His personality is strong, overpowering,
viciously overpowering. Just talking to someone like that, being near
him could do strange things to a person.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I don't care how many reasons you
can dress up.
Speaker 1: I know what I know. I know what I've got
to do.
Speaker 5: What I've got to stop the execution, Luke, you can't
do that.
Speaker 1: I can try.
Speaker 5: It's my only hope I've got. I've got to stop
that execution. I got to save him, to save myself.
Speaker 3: I know it's only four in the morning, but this
is a matter of life or death. You get the
district attorney out of bed.
Speaker 4: I'll wait Luke, try to pull yourself together telephoning the
district attorney at this hour? What are you going to say?
Speaker 1: Tell?
Speaker 3: Uh mister mcowan, I'm sorry to wake you at this hour, Sir,
I thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes it is I. It is urgent.
Speaker 5: I wanna stop the execution of Guy Richards at six
this morning. On what grounds? I have reason to think
he's innocent. Uh no, sir, there's no proof.
Speaker 1: I know, no real proof.
Speaker 3: But look McGowan, I want you to call the governor
if necessary.
Speaker 1: McCowan, I beg you right, Yes, I see, I see
that case. I'll phone the governor myself.
Speaker 4: Luke Darling, you can't phone the governor.
Speaker 1: Operator. This is Wharton Lucas, Lauder of State's Prison.
Speaker 3: I want to put through a call, an urgent call
to Governor Morris at the state Capitol and hurry, please hurry.
Speaker 1: Well he refuse.
Speaker 4: Well, you couldn't expect.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 5: I hoped against hope.
Speaker 1: I had better. Get ready, Richard says, less than an
hour ago, and so have I.
Speaker 5: It's time Riches God telling me if you're ready?
Speaker 1: Question is are you come on? Let's go?
Speaker 3: You're a tired one. No sleeping, don't worry about it.
You'll sleep just fine tonight. The Ripper always sleeps well
afterward after what having killed. Well, I didn't know there'd
be an audience to see the end of Guy Richards.
The prayers straight out of the scaffold Richards, miss wedding, Warden,
calm down, make you feel any better? There's no pain
to this over in an instant.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: I've been through it once before, the man whose body
I took before, Eric Nortings.
Speaker 2: Well, here we are a moment in destiny for us both.
All right, I did oh do we really need the hood? Well, yes,
I guess we do. Spare the feelings of our audience.
Go ahead, just uh one thing to say, Warden before
you pull the trap.
Speaker 1: Yes, this isn't goodbye.
Speaker 9: I'll be with you again soon China.
Speaker 1: That's the latest news from the nation's capital. Guy Richards,
the notorious Guy in the Ripper, was executed this morning
at State Sprint.
Speaker 4: That's enough news for one day. I'm for bed you, Luke, Luke,
it's after eleven. Time for bed.
Speaker 1: Oh, John, Yes, dear, where'd you put it? Put? Why
the knife?
Speaker 5: Don't look at me as though you didn't know what
I was talking about the knife Richards gave me.
Speaker 4: I know what knife you're talking about, but I don't
know why you're asking me where I put it.
Speaker 5: You didn't take it. I put it in the top
drawer of this table. You saw me put it there.
I put it there so you could get rid of it.
Speaker 2: You didn't.
Speaker 1: No, I can't believe you'd take the chance. It didn't.
Speaker 5: The knife is here, yes it is. I gave you
a chance to get rid of it. Why didn't you?
Speaker 4: Why didn't you if you wanted to be rid of it,
why didn't you simply throw it away?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think I do.
Speaker 4: You were testing me, testing.
Speaker 1: My love for you, testing your love.
Speaker 4: If I had done what you thought i'd do, it
would have shown that my love for you isn't as
strong as I said it was. And it's quite possible
you really might have tried to kill me. You could
always get another knife, have.
Speaker 1: But thanks to you, I have this one.
Speaker 4: Then use it if you can. What, Luke, We're going
to come to this sooner or later. I don't know
how Guy Richards persuaded you he was Jack the Ripper
and that he would possess you once he died. But
he did. You said last night that the urge to
kill was growing stronger in you, and you were convinced
once Richard was hanged, it would become so strong you'd
never be able to control.
Speaker 1: It's all day.
Speaker 5: Growing in me, filling me with a need of lust
to take this this knife.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: And unless this obsession of yours is smashed now, right now,
you'll kill.
Speaker 7: Sooner or later, you will kill. Well.
Speaker 4: If you're going to do it, do it, do it
and get it over with.
Speaker 3: You're taunting me, you're taughting me because like all women,
you have contempt.
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 5: You're lying, you don't love.
Speaker 3: You don't know the meaning of love.
Speaker 7: Eight.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's something else again, that's something you know all about.
Speaker 1: You think I'm not on to you, all of you.
Let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: I've spent months, years watching you and the likes of
you and your.
Speaker 10: Little tricks lawn then and oh, don't think I didn't
see you today this very day left the square fraunting
your charm square Piccadilly Fleet's feet.
Speaker 7: You can tell yourself, Luke, and.
Speaker 4: A snap out of it, pull yourself together and.
Speaker 1: Talk about you.
Speaker 10: Take your last long look before you die, you see
that gaslight at the end of the alley, Well.
Speaker 7: You see it for the last time.
Speaker 10: Last, you hear the carriages of the coaches, the horses
for the last time. And then you feel the point
of this knife against truss rout, feel the cool steel
against your skin before the Ripper plunges it deep into
your deady little neck, plunges it.
Speaker 7: No, I can't, I want to.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 6: Why why care the because you are not Jack the Ripper,
your Lucas load her, my husband, the Ripper hated you
love you love me every bit as much as I
love you.
Speaker 1: What I do I do? Why do I do?
Speaker 8: I hear?
Speaker 1: He said? Richards said.
Speaker 5: The spirit of the Ripper would never be free, never
find rest until it met a love as strong as
his hate. Heaven knows Jone, there can't be there, never
has been a love as strong as yours.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's crazy, but I feel.
Speaker 5: I Feelia has found that rest at last, thanks to you.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're puzzled by this strange happening to Lucas lawdie,
you've got nothing on me. Did Guy Richards in some
way place Warden Lawder under an hypnotic influence did Richards
believe he was truly Jack the Ripper?
Speaker 1: Was he? What do you think? I'll be back shortly.
Speaker 3: When I told this story to a friend of mine
who is a psychic a sensitive she said that, of
course Guy Richards was the reincarnate Jack the Ripper. Another friend,
a psychiatrist, said, nonsense, A clear case of a split personality.
Speaker 2: Which is right?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. Wherever it lies,
it makes a good story. I hope you enjoyed it.
Our cast included Robert Lansing, Linka Peterson, Ralph Bell, Ira Lewis,
and Patricia Pierton. The entire production was under the direction
of Hymon Brown.
Speaker 1: This is E. G.
Speaker 3: Marshall inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for
another adventure in the macabre.
Speaker 5: Until next time, pleasant dreams, FI