True Detectives Needed: New Hook Death?

You are seeing some of the revelation of the method, the heightened awareness brought to us in the brilliant and successful HBO series True Detective, which mixes the discovery of a ritualistic killer or group of killers and the abuse and murders of young people. (But this posting is not about the show and contains no spoilers.)

As I first reported here in 2010, in The Peter Pan/Hook Deaths, there seems to be taking place several underground child homicides, labeled as suicides and suicide attempts.

"I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive." ~ Charles Fort

While I fully understand and am skeptical of all of this myself, as it all is beyond belief, I must point out a few things. I extensively studied and worked in the field of suicide for over 30 years, writing the first book to actually look at modern suicide clusters. Next, child suicides do exist, unfortunately, and kids under ten do take their own lives, usually by hanging. But also, we must be aware that there are some rather creepy pedophiles out there, who work in groups, and get jobs in schools, for example, that are filled with emotionally damaged and poor kids to supply their membership with fodder. 

The real "Peter Pan/Hook" incidents, if that's what's really occurring, evidence themselves in a series of relatively unexplained child deaths and near deaths. As I wrote in 2010, "These have been lexilinked by twilight names (Montana, Aquan, Imhotep; Chatham-Chatham), bizarre pedophilia hints (under investigation), and the common factor that the children were found hanged, often on a coat hook, often in bathrooms." These include cloakrooms at schools and youth areas in churches/libraries (where children should feel the safest).

Now word comes of a death which may be another record of one of these "hook" deaths, from Louisiana. In a spooky shadow of True Detective, the show's locale is Louisiana, and via other details for those who view the program.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune published the following on February 22 (updated February 24), 2014:

A sixth grader from St. Jean Vianney Catholic School in East Baton Rouge Parish has died by suicide.
The student, Ethan Rider, was found unconscious in a bathroom at the school on Thursday [Feb 20] and taken to a local hospital, and died early Saturday [Feb 22] morning, according to statements on the school’s website. The coroner’s office confirmed Friday [Feb 21], before Ethan passed away, that it was an apparent suicide.

Reports from locals indicate that the possible hanging was in the school bathroom.

Baton Rouge-Lafayette overlaps with the True Detective film sites. No need to go over the significance of the Fayette Factor. As to Baton Rouge, the Choctaw/Itta Homma name comes from the "red stick" placed at the border between two rival tribal groups.

Ethan, from the Hebrew, means "solid, enduring." Rider generally is referenced as "horseman" (in the Year of the Horse, it should be pointed out).

His middle name, Zane, means "gift from God." Our sincere condolences to the family.

Ethan Zane Rider's school was named for St. Jean Vianney (May 8, 1786 - August 4, 1859), who first established a school, and went on to be known for his priestly and pastoral work in his parish. All visages of him are rather bizarre because apparently the only know representation of St. Jean Vianney is from his death mask.

Who knows what or if any of this means anything? But the data is there. It should not be ignored.

"The tendency that I point out is that of so often rejecting both data and an explanation, simply because one rejects the explanation." ~ Charles Fort

Let me list some of the "hook" deaths, chronologically, which I first mentioned in 2010: 

1. Montana Lance, 9 - Stewart's Creek Elementary School, The Colony, Texas; January 21, 2010; allegedly hanged himself in bathroom; deceased.

2. Unnamed youth ~ Kanpur (old English Cawnpore), India; February 20, 2009; hanged from the hook of the toilet in a train; deceased.

3. Unnamed girl ~ South Side Chicago, Illinois; February 20, 2009; hanged on a clothes hook in home closet; deceased.
4. Unnamed boy ~ Chatham, Illinois; February 4, 2009; hanged by hook; deceased.
5. Aquan Lewis ~ Evanston, Illinois; February 3, 2009; hanged on a school bathroom hook; deceased.
6. Tevin Park-Flowers (a twin) ~ Austin, Texas; January 30, 2008; hanged by a hook in a gymnasium bathroom; pants were down at his ankles; deceased.
7. Unnamed boy ~ New Bedford, Massachusetts; January 30, 2008; found alive, hanging on a hook in a children's room of the New Bedford Public Library; man arrested, charged with child molestation and rape.
8. Unnamed child ~ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; April 27, 2005; near death, found hanging on a hook in a school coatroom closet.
9. Imhotep Lubin ~ Brooklyn, New York; 2004; found alive hanging by his belt from a hook in a school closet; teacher arrested.
10. Unnamed child ~ Chatham, Ontario; 1998; hanged from a hook in school bathroom; deceased.

Is there a Peter Pan cult working underground? We need a few good true detectives.

I, again, share this comment on my original work:

As for the Peter Pan connection, study the symbolism of Peter Pan as 'the boy who wouldn't grow up' and his gang of 'lost boys' who were 'forgotten by their parents'. The hooks were these tragic children were found hanging from, a reference to Peter Pan's arch nemesis Captain Hook.
J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, lets him say this about death: "To die will be an awfully big adventure". One author, Kevin Orlin Johnson, has argued that the Pan stories are in the German-English tradition of the Totenkindergeschichte, the "tales of dead children".
And then there is Peter Pan's mythical realm Neverland, the name also given to Michael Jackson's ranch which, as some allege, is a place where one of the darkest kinds of violence against children was been performed. ~ Theo Paijmans.

J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, technically at 4 ft 10 in tall (question sources that promote an over five ft height), was a dwarf (which had a psychological impact on him). His child molestation-oriented letters and writings have often been overlooked, hidden, and suppressed. The overt story of Peter Pan gives clear hints of the deeper disturbing nature of the author and his followers.

The "Peter Pan" name has sinister links to a modern subculture of child maltreatment and sexual abuse in this country.

Oh, one more creepy factoid: Richard Ramirez was called the "Night Stalker," and an avowed Satanist. On August 18, 1985, moving his serial killing from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Ramirez entered the home of Peter Pan, aged sixty-six, and killed the sleeping man with a gunshot to his temple from a .25 caliber handgun. Pan's wife, Barbara, 62, was beaten and sexually violated before being shot in the head and left for dead. At the crime scene Ramirez used lipstick to scrawl a pentagram and the phrase "Jack the Knife" on the bedroom wall.

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Bloody Valentine's Day?

It is a full moon on February 14, 2014, from Albania to Sochi, from Alaska to Xinjiang. May everyone be safe on this Bloody Friday.

I have low expectations for humans on February 14th. The love and romance associated with Valentine's Day seem to turn into killings of different varieties. It is as if, of all the days during the year, this one brings forth the most tension for a few individuals.

Extend this to what has been occurring with homicidal-suicidal feelings recently, and the outcomes are tragic. School shootings, domestic violence in murder-suicide clusters, workplace violence, and more. Are mall shootings, church killings, terrorist attacks, and new domestic murder-suicides in our near future? Does Valentine's Day have an international reach? Will violence visit global locations on February 14th?

On February 14, 2008, six people were dead due to a Northern Illinois University shooting, including the gunman. There were 22 casualties in all.

Yesterday, I received a call from a reporter based in Montreal for the Globe and Mail newspaper. He discussed with me, as he described them, "a recent series of multiple murders involving rage-filled men killing their lovers or ex-lovers and their loved-ones. Three cases involving a total of about 10 deaths, in the space of about 2 weeks." 

I pointed out that Valentine's Day could be a day to watch out for and warn about in his article. Unfortunately, the reporter Les Perreaux felt the story won't get published until the weekend due to the fact there just had been a new murder-suicide, on Thursday, February 13th.

This topic hits close to home for me, and I've always acknowledged that. 

My book, The Copycat Effect, is dedicated to my maternal grandmother (pictured above), who died in a Valentine's Day murder-suicide.

I penned that dedication this way:

For Nellie Gray,

The grandmother I never knew,
as she was killed during a murder-suicide
on Valentine’s Day, 1940.

In my book I wrote an entire section entitled the "Significant of Dates," and began with one special example, St. Valentine's Day. I reprint below what you will find in my book about February 14th, from pages 246-247:

Dates are important, anniversary events especially so. Suicides, murder-suicides, murders tend to clump around dates of loss for at-risk victims.

One such date is one that most people assume should be associated with happy feelings, but it is not. That is Valentine’s Day. For many people, it’s a day that speaks more to emptiness and loss than to joy and love.

One cultural event seems to point to this feeling: the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” of February 14, 1929, in Chicago. On this day the alleged henchman of gangster “Scarface” Al Capone murdered seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran gang in a North Clark Street garage. Colorful names, a memorable day, the windy city, a grand crime, and huge headlines have made this event enormously “infamous” in history. Books and movies have fueled the copycat effect of this date.

A year after “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Ben Hecht...authoredScarface(1930), which was made into a Howard Hughes produced, Howard Hawks directed movie (1932) about the North Clark Street killings. Hughes supposedly asked that Scarfacebe "realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible." Censors blocked Scarfacefor two years before Hawks got it to theaters.

How does culture make a 1929 event into currency for a future generation? Through the movies and other media, of course. Some Like It Hot(1959) had Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis playing two Chicago musicians who witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and are forced to cross-dress as women in order to hide from Al Capone. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre(1967) starring Jason Robards portrays the event in docudrama style.

But beyond fiction, real murders and murder-suicides have also been linked to the specific Valentine’s Day 1929 gangland murders. The gangland and other ripples from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre certainly demonstrate an awareness of the twilight language of the event.

The individual most often identified as the organizer of the Moran gang killings was Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of Capone's most trusted men. McGurn (whose real name was James DeMora), an expert with the Tommy gun who had an “eye for the ladies,” especially for blonde women, was killed on the eve of Valentine’s Day, 1936. A nickel was put in McGurn's right hand and, next to his body the killers left a humorous valentine card.

Sometimes personal histories reinforce the negative Valentine’s Day link. My grandmother was killed by her second husband on Valentine’s Day, 1940, in Illinois, in a murder-suicide, as my future mother, a 12 old girl, looked on in horror. The copycat effect sometimes hits close to home.

During the 1980s, St. Valentine’s Day was a focus of teen suicide clusters around the United States, and many families felt the impact of the day.

Earlier in the book, I described a teen suicide cluster in Peekskill, New York. I mentioned on February 4, 1984, Robert DeLaValliere, 13, hanged himself in Depew Park, and then I wrote:

Did another teen then imitate DeLaValliere? Ten days after his suicide, 14‑year‑old Justin Spoonhour picked a tree in back of his home and hanged himself. Spoonhour lived in Putnam Valley, five miles north of where DeLaValliere died. His mother graphically described in a People magazine article how she found her boy. "I turned my light on and saw Justin hanging from a tree,” she wrote. "His eyes and mouth were open, and his tongue was swollen and protruding." As we have noted, this was Valentine’s Day in Peekskill.

Elsewhere in The Copycat Effect, Valentine's Day figures as a touchstone for understanding the context of violence in which we find ourselves. I noted:

In 2002, National Review online editor Jonah Goldberg, a conservative, commented on liberal Senator Patrick Moynihan’s 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” to make some points about the media’s normalizing of terrorism. Goldberg’s and Moynihan’s insights apply here, in understanding how the media makes “celebrities” of events, which then serve as cultural icons that are held up for emulation by followers. In this way, copycats are produced. Calling the essay “one of the most influential articles of the last decade,” Goldberg notes that “Moynihan argued that deviancy - crime, mental illness, out-of-wedlock births, etc. -- had become so rampant, had so thoroughly soaked into the culture, that we simply had to redefine the abnormal as normal to cope.”

“Moynihan's most famous example was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre,” noted Goldberg. “That event was a major turning point in American history, credited with helping to convince Americans to abandon prohibition…The actual details? Four gangsters murdered seven gangsters. In the early 1990s, Moynihan noted, Los Angeles suffered from the equivalent of one St. Valentine's Day Massacre every weekend. And, of course, we can say much the same about suicide bombings in Israel.”

The above passages are from my 2004 book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines, a work the American media does not wish you to buy or read. In Canada, intriguingly, they are more open to research findings and the lessons learned.

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Banana With A Gun

What was a banana doing carrying an AK-47 on February 11, 2014, in Beaumont, Texas?

It turns out the 18-year-old dressed in the suit was a promotion for Derek Poe’s Golden Triangle tactical gun store in that town.

Derek Poe, owner of Golden Triangle Tactical gun shop, said the stunt was part of the store's grand opening after moving locations. 

Poe said this idea was to attract customers to the store.

Law enforcement officers detained the banana/adolescent and released the following statement on their website;

“The rifle had a drum magazine attached with at least a 50-round capacity. Officers were able to determine that the young man was attempting to soliciting business for a local tactical and security store.”

They continued “officers cited the eighteen-year-old Beaumont man for violation of a city ordinance that prohibits soliciting in and alongside roadways.”

A Beaumont police spokesperson said officers temporarily detained the 18-year-old and found he had the rifle with a drum magazine attached with at least a 50-round capacity.

WSBT reports the guy had the gun slung across his back with the barrel pointed down while he held a sign that pointed to the store. Poe said he was only trying let people know his shop had moved to a new location and get a little attention.

A Beaumont man was cited by police after riling up motorists by standing at an intersection carrying an AK-47 while dressed as a banana.

Beaumont is a French locational name from any of the five places in Normandy so called, deriving from the Old French "beu," fair, lovely, with "mont," a hill.

The Golden Triangle is an area of Southeast Texas between the cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange. The "golden" refers to the wealth that came from the Spindletop oil strike in Beaumont in 1901. More recently from the many gas flares that are located at all of the local oil refineries, which creates a rough triangular shape around the area when viewed from nighttime aircraft. The term more generally refers now to the entire Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange metropolitan area, forming the triangle.

The name "Golden Triangle" also reminds one of the "The Golden Triangle," which is one of Asia's two main opium-producing areas. It is an area of around 367,000 square miles that overlaps the mountains of three countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent, it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1920s. Most of the world's heroin came from the Golden Triangle until the early 21st century when Afghanistan became the world's largest producer.

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Kroger Shooting

SM Smithfield recently left a comment tied to a January 27th school shooting near the Phoenix High School: "The Phoenix is the city symbol for Atlanta. And Lawrenceville is very much part of Atlanta."

Today, February 10, 2014, a new incident occurred in Lawrenceville:

Police are investigating a reported shooting inside a Gwinnett County Kroger, authorities said.
Witnesses told Channel 2 Gwinnett Bureau Chief Tony Thomas they heard gunshots inside the store on Grayson Highway in Lawrenceville.
Lawrenceville Police said two people have been transported to the hospital and two people have been taken into custody.
A police spokesman said there may have been an altercation before the shooting.
News Chopper 2 showed a large police presence and crime tape in the parking lot in front of the store entrance.
Kroger issued a statement on Monday afternoon.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families. No Kroger associates were injured. We are working closely with the Lawrenceville police department and providing information to assist with their investigation. Our store has been evacuated and will reopen at a later date." Source.

This appears to not be a shooting spree or mass shooting, but the result of a fight between two groups of people. Details will be forthcoming.

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Darkness At Sakhalin: Another Russian Mass Shooting

First a school, and now a cathedral.

A mere six days ago, Moscow suffered a rare (for Russia) school shooting. On February 3, at the Moscow School #263, a student killed a teacher and police officer.

Now from the eastern Russian island of Sakhalin comes news of a gunman opening fire inside a cathedral, killing a nun and a churchgoer. Six other people were wounded in the incident - most shot in the legs and were not critically hurt.

The suspect is said to be a employee, 24, at a private security firm and was a security guard at the church. He was detained at the scene in the main city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Marina Petrovskaya ‏tweets me: "They told that he had Nazi symbols on [his] clothing."
Media accounts were quick to point out that there was no apparent link to the Winter Olympics taking place in Sochi about 4,700 miles (7,500 km) to the west.

The Investigative Committee - Russia's main federal investigating authority - said psychiatrists would try to determine the suspect's mental condition. Reuters quoted the regional leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Tikhon, as saying a prayer service would be held at the cathedral later on Sunday.

The name of the island has an intriguing translation. The Russian name Saharin has the spelling Saghalien in historical texts. The European names derive from misinterpretation of a Manchu name sahaliyan ula angga hada ("peak/craggy rock at the mouth of the Amur River"). Sahaliyan, the word that has been borrowed in the form of "Sakhalin", means "black" in Manchu and is the proper Manchu name of the Amur River (sahaliyan ula, literally means "Black River").

Among the indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Ainu on the southern half, the Oroks in the central region and the Nivkhs on the northern part. Despite a long history tied to Asian roots - Chinese and Japanese - in August 1945, according to Yalta Conference agreements, the Soviet Union took over the control of Sakhalin. This Russian presence continues today.

Recent history has seen Sakhalin drawn into international conflicts, from the rivalry between Japan and Russia, over which country should have the most influence on this island and others, to an incident in 1983.

On September 1, 1983, the Korean Air Flight 007, a South Korean civilian airliner, flew over Sakhalin and was shot down by the Soviet Union, just west of Sakhalin Island, near the smaller Moneron Island; the Soviet Union claimed it was a spy plane. All 269 passengers and crew died, including a U.S. Congressman, Larry McDonald.

It has not been lost on synchromystic researchers that the flight was numbered...007.

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More Hidden Hand: Allan Pinkerton and Lafayette Baker

Recognize this logo? This Masonic appearing business symbol has an intriguing history.

It happens to be the original company insignia for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Pinkerton is on the left in the "Tent Picture."

Pinkerton is on the right, seated, in this one.

From Wyoming's Outlaw Trail (Arcadia, 2013) by Mac Blewer.

As an addendum to the Hidden Hand Name Game, I post the following response of Jim Brandon (Weird America, Rebirth of Pan) to my earlier photographic essay.

Brandon writes:

Hi, LorenAnother great dot-connector....  The arcana of the misnamed Civil War (it wasn’t a struggle for control of a government, since the South only wanted to split) continue to fascinate.  Was the tent picture's Allan Pinkerton a Mason? As a Mason, his loyalties could have been to maybe the Lodge No. 0,
the Mother Lodge of Scotland (some say the world), at Kilwinning a few
miles south.  His choice of an emblem for his busy detective agency was evocative: ye olde all-seeing eye:

See the older logo at top.

The modern logo of the Pinkerton Security Service, the forerunner of the US Secret Service, is a stylized "all-seeing eye."

From Wyoming's Outlaw Trail (Arcadia, 2013) by Mac Blewer.

But it was after Pinkerton's sudden and inadequately explained fall from grace that the story gets name-gamey, since he was replaced by none other than Lafayette C. “Lafe” Baker.  His Wikipedia biography, by the way, has a detail that I wasn’t aware of: a fairly recent investigation has found that Lafe was almost certainly poisoned with arsenic, with a War Department employee (and brother-in-law!) the likely culprit....

 Lafayette Baker, not surprisingly, shows his Masonic Brotherhood the hidden hand sign.

And on and on downhill with a tailwind to the great coup-de-théâtre of the century, the Lincoln hit.  Baker obviously knew much of the back-story, or maybe too much, and hence the arsenic.  Somebody some day should get out and reprint those classics of revisionism, Why the Civil War?, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? et al by Otto Eisenschiml.  Clint Eastwood should make a sequel to [Robert Redford's] The Conspirator with the rest of the story.

Once again you do great work. ~ Jim

The Pinkertons' origins are definitely Masonic.

According to various sources,

"In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton met Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in a local Masonic Hall and formed the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency."

Recluse comments that the Pinkerton "Agency played a key role in destroying the Molly Maguires, who had their origins in an older secret society. He was also deeply involved in the pursuit of Jesse James, who was, of course, reputed to have been both a Mason and a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle."

The Masonic All-Seeing Eye, in evidence in their official documents and artifacts, is also to be found on the back of the United States of America's dollar bill.

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Hidden Hand Name Game: Columbia, Tecumseh, Lincoln, Lafayette, Washington and More

What's the synchromystic common denominator here?

Why do a limited number of names seem to be linked to a majority of workplace violent events, school shootings, and suicide cases?

What is the common thread running through these lexilinks?

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834 - 1904), top photograph, was taken around 1880, by photographer Napoleon Sarony, Charles Scribner's Sons Art Reference Dept. records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Bartholdi was a Freemason and the designer and sculptor of the Statue of Liberty in New York City's harbor. The Statue of Liberty is a representation of the Goddess Columbia. It is reportedly coded with secret society meanings and occult symbolism. Bartholdi was one of the early members of Lodge Alsace-Lorraine, Paris (Oct. 14, 1875), which was composed of prominent intellectuals, writers and government representatives.  

The Bartholdi image and others in this essay, with the concealed hand in the coat, demonstrate the "Sign of the Master of the Second Veil," (7th Degree Mason) from Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor, 1866.

Here are a few other examples of individuals - with the same pose - who have lexilinks to the name game (e.g. Columbia, Columbus, Lincoln, Tecumseh, and yes, Fayette). Infrequently, some of these events are bundled into what has been called the "Curse of Tippecanoe," or what Gary Cohen called the "Curse of Tecumseh." These are names we have discussed here at Twilight Language.

John Wilkes Booth (1838 - 1865) was a Freemason and an American stage actor who headed the plot to attempt to kidnap and then assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. JWB was the younger brother of Edwin Booth, also a Freemason and stage actor. According to some sources, because of Wilkes' notoriety, the Freemasons have quietly removed his name from their membership records.

Edwin Booth (1833 - 1893), Freemason, Shakespearean actor, was the older brother of American stage actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth. Edwin was initiated in the New York Lodge No. 330 on September 11, 1857. Edwin once declared, "...to be Worshipful Master and to throw my whole soul in that work, with the candidate for my audience, and the lodge for my stage, would be greater personal distinction than to receive the plaudits of the people in the theaters of the world."

According to some conspiracy sites, these photos show "Abraham Lincoln surrounded by Freemasons who were plotting his death a few weeks before he would be shot by John Wilkes Booth."

But actually, this is "The Tent Picture" of Allan Pinkerton, outside his quarters, after the Battle of Antietam, in October 1862, with President Lincoln and General John McClernand, a former Chicago attorney. In letters from William Pinkerton, who accompanied his father during the Civil War as a 16-year-old cadet, he recalled that a portrait of the president alone had been planned, but Lincoln had ushered his two Chicago friends into the picture.

James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881) was a 14° Freemason and 20th President of the United States. His presidency ended with his assassination. He was initiated into Magnolia Lodge No. 20 of Columbus, Ohio, November 22, 1861. The third degree was conferred to him by Columbus Lodge No. 30, November 22, 1864. Garfield received the 4-14° ASSR (Southern Jurisdiction) on January 2, 1872 from Albert Pike, in Washington D.C. At his funeral, nearly all the officers of the Grand Commandery of Ohio, 14 commanderies of that state, and 8 commanderies from adjacent jurisdictions were present and participated in the funeral cortege.

William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 - 1891), one of Lincoln's generals, was allegedly a brutal American Civil War Union commander. His war polices of "scorched earth" against the South earned him the reputation, according to some authors, as the first "modern general." His burning of Atlanta is well-known. The name "Tecumseh" has been a hidden moniker linking some of 2014's school shootings.

Another famed general is shown here in the painting, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, by Jacques-Louis David, 1812.

Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was 5 feet, 7 inches, which was normal for his time, but the British newspaper cartoonists had him shown as much smaller for political reasons. His famous "hidden hand" images were a broadcast signal of his links to the Freemasonry Brotherhood.

Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), a 33° Freemason and French military officer, was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a leader of the Garde Nationale during the bloody French Revolution. Lafayette was also made an honorary Grand Commander of Supreme Council of New York. More than 75 Masonic bodies in the U.S. have been named after him, including 39 lodges, 18 chapters, 4 councils, 4 commanderies, and 7 Scottish rite bodies. See also the Fayette Factor.

George Washington (1722-1799), a Freemason, whose membership is well-known and celebrated.

Sources: 1, 2, and 3.

For More Hidden Hand Name Game, click here.

See also

Tecumseh Name Game Surfaces In Mass Shootings

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Two Washington Workplace Shootings In 2 Days

Vancouver, Washington State, is located across the river from Portland, Oregon. In two days, two workplace shootings have occurred.

The first shooting happened on Monday, February 3, 2014, when a paint company driver fatally shot a company manager and then killed himself at a Vancouver business park.

Police found the manager, Ryan E. Momeny, 45, lying dead in front of the Benjamin Moore Paint distribution center, authorities said. Robert R. Brown, 64, a company driver, was found inside a vehicle in the parking lot, dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Vancouver police said.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, February 4th, a 46-year-old woman was taken into custody after the shooting of a 45-year-old man. She also was injured.

Tuesday's shooting happened just before 4 p.m. at the Center for Community Health on the Department of Veterans Affairs campus, Neiman said.

A spokesman for the VA Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, said the man is a VA employee of the regional Veterans Integrated Service Network, a network of medical centers, vet centers and outpatient clinics. Spokesman Daniel Herrigstad described the man's injuries as "non-life-threatening."

Vancouver shares its name with the larger city of Vancouver located 305 miles (491 km) north in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Both cities were named in honor of sea captain George Vancouver, although the Canadian city was incorporated 29 years after the incorporation of Vancouver, Washington. This occurred more than 60 years after the name Vancouver was first used in reference to the historic Fort Vancouver trading post on the Columbia River. City officials have periodically suggested changing the U.S. city's name to Fort Vancouver, Vancouver USA, or even Old Vancouver to reduce confusion with its northern neighbor. Many Pacific Northwest residents distinguish between the two cities by referring to the Canadian city as "Vancouver, B.C." and the United States one as "Vancouver, Washington," or "Vancouver USA." Local nicknames include: "Vantucky" (though the nickname is often used as a derogatory term)" and "The 'Couv(e)". In 2013, the nickname "Vansterdam" surfaced as a result of the legalization of marijuana in the state of Washington. This name is a clear reference to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. (Source)

Statue at top: George Vancouver, found at King's Lynn, Norfolk, Great Britain. 

Statue directly above: George Vancouver, found at Vancouver, Washington, USA. Corner of 6th and Esther Steets, across from Esther Short Park.

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Moscow School Shooting

Headlines are using the phrase "hostage situation," but this event is a "school shooting," which had as a component the taking of hostages. 

As I've noted before, in one of first modern school shootings, the Moses Lake, Washington State incident, on Groundhog’s Day, 1996, Barry Loukaitis, 14, took his classroom hostage, killed two students and his algebra teacher.

Students of Moscow School #263 leave the building escorted by police on February 3, 2014 after an armed student took more than 20 teenagers hostage (Photo Credit: Dmitry Serebryakov)

CNN is reporting:

A Moscow high school student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and held about 20 other pupils hostage in a classroom Monday before he was disarmed and detained, Russian authorities said, just days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics.
In a rare school shooting in Russia, the attacker entered his school in northern Moscow with a rifle and held students and a teacher hostage in a biology classroom, the Investigative Committee of Russia said.
The incident, at School No. 263, happened around noon local time when the armed student forced his way past a security guard, who raised an alarm.
"On his way to the class the shooter injured one of the teachers who died later," said the committee, Russia's federal intelligence agency. "The police officers arrived to the school. When they entered the building the shooter opened a gun fire, injured one and killed another."
All of the hostages were released and the gunman was detained, it added.
State media said there were about 20 students in the classroom.
The incident comes as Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympic Games, due to start in Sochi this week.

AFP said:

Witnesses said the suspect -- described as a 'straight-A' pupil named Sergei Gordeyev -- charged into the school wielding two rifles and ordered a security guard to lead him to a specific classroom in the two-story building on the northern outskirts of Moscow.

Russia 24 said the student is said to have had an issue with a geography teacher. This was not the teacher who was shot or who was among the hostages.

CNN also noted:

The media outlets said the student had a small-bore rifle and a hunting carbine, which were registered under his father's name.
They reported he is said to have fired 11 times. His father called him and spoke to him for 15 minutes to try to convince him to release his hostages. The father then went to the school and talked to the student in the classroom. Only then did he agree to release his hostages, state media said.
CNN could not immediately independently verify this.

The hostage scenario is infrequently a part of American school shootings, and is part of the Stephen King book Rage.

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Magnolia's Philip Seymour Hoffman Found Dead

A talented actor who has appeared in several Fortean films has died. A star in many films, including Magnolia, The Master, and Hunger Games, Philip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead. (See more on the twilight language of The Master here.)

One of the actual film prop frogs from Magnolia, 

at the International Cryptozoology Museum.

The Wall Street Journal has posted:

Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead Sunday afternoon in his New York City apartment, a law-enforcement official said. The New York Police Department is investigating, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to determine exact cause of death. The official said Mr. Hoffman, 46 years old, was found dead at his apartment at 35 Bethune St. in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Mr. Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 2005 film, "Capote."

The meaning of Bethune is "House of God."
The New York Post noted:

Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead of an apparent drug overdose — in the bathroom with a hypodermic needle still in his arm — inside a Greenwich Village home on Sunday morning, cops said.

Wikipedia's early life information details the following:

Hoffman was born in Fairport, New York. His mother, Marilyn O'Connor (née Loucks), who was born in Waterloo, New York, is a family court judge, lawyer, and civil rights activist. His father, Gordon Stowell Hoffman, is a former Xerox executive. He had two sisters, Jill and Emily, and a brother, Gordy Hoffman, who scripted the 2002 film Love Liza, in which Philip starred. He had German, English, Irish, Dutch, and remote Polish, ancestry. His father was Protestant and his mother Catholic; Hoffman was not raised with a deep commitment to any denomination. Hoffman's parents divorced when he was nine years old.
Hoffman attended the 1984 Theater School at the New York State Summer School of the Arts. After graduating from Fairport High School, Hoffman attended the Circle in the Square Theatre's summer program, continuing his acting training with the acting teacher Alan Langdon. He received a BFA in drama in 1989 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU, he was a founding member of the theater company the Bullstoi Ensemble with actor Steven Schub and director Bennett Miller. Soon after graduating, he went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and remained sober until May 2013, when he entered a detox facility after briefly relapsing.

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