Was Aleister Crowley a Serial Killer?

The man they want to keep hanging.

Ah, it seems not a month goes by without poor old Uncle Al getting a  lambasting in the press. Most recently, he was name-checked when a bunch of deranged occult-pedos were caught mis-interpreting his ‘Book of the Law’ (read all about it!). 

The Daily Mail claims, after speaking to author Mark Beynon, that Crowley is to be implicated as a serial killer:

Mark Beynon has drawn on previously unpublished evidence to conclude the occultist – dubbed the wickedest man in the world –  masterminded a series of ritualistic killings in ‘revenge’ for the British archaeologist Howard Carter’s opening of the boy-king’s tomb.

After analysis of inquest reports, Crowley’s diaries, essays and books, he also argues Crowley was a Jack the Ripper-obsessed copycat murderer.

His ‘victims’ included Carter’s personal secretary Captain Richard Bethell, who was found smothered to death at an exclusive Mayfair club, and Bethell’s father Lord Westbury, who plunged seven floors to his death from a St James’s apartment where he reportedly kept tomb artefacts.

The article goes to to claim that Crowley is very loosely connected to some of the victims, and is a Jack the Ripper copycat.

NOW, I haven’t read ‘London’s Curse: Murder, Black Magic and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End‘ yet – it’s on its way from Amazon now – so I will report back shortly; but it seems very odd to me that only now has an author and ‘historian’ (I can’t find any academic credentials for Mr Beyon) linked this together.

Could it be that Crowley’s name is once again being used to sell books? We’ll have to see.

Ken Eakins

(source: The Daily Mail)