Word: slasher
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...Harvard has its very own slasher...
...Slasher. The word evokes images of the nineteenth-century mass murderer Jack the Ripper, sporting a shiny silver knife and a bloodthirsty eye. Stories of the legendary killer still linger into the late decades of the twentieth century, pervading dime store novels and Grade-B horror movies...
...nearly as spine-chilling as the mythical picture of Jack the Ripper lurking around the corner. Our venerable University's alleged slasher was a quiet middle-aged man, living at home in Arlington with his aging mother, secluded from his neighbors, seemingly without friends. His victims weren't wide-eyed lasses or unsuspecting orphans. They were books...
Johnson is right. In the Womack case, even though police had suspected the slasher was a University employee, it took nearly four years and $50,000 in expensive security surveillance equipment--not to mention the loss of millions of dollars of valuable books--before the suspect was apprehended. And while the police were able to retrieve some of the stolen books and manuscripts from Womack's house, they will never be able to retrieve the thousands of pages already destroyed at this man's hands...
Slashing as a crime is so glamorous, so easily sensationalized. Perhaps the timid Womack, if he is indeed guilty of what he has been accused, wanted to find an easier way to obtain the exciting title of "slasher." At least a way that wouldn't involve killing people...