The Final End Of A Serial Killer

 All good things come to an end, and so it was with the recent passing of Angela Lansbury that her signature character Jessica Fletcher must come to an end.

This includes my take on that character- where in this strange thing I call the Kendallverse, she's long since been exposed as the world's most prolific serial killer and imprisoned where she can't escape. I'm genuinely going to miss writing the old psychotic. And so here we go...

World's Most Dangerous Serial Killer Has Met Her End; World Breathes A Sigh Of Relief

Calgary, Alberta (CP) She was once a famous mystery novelist, renowned for her cozy mysteries and her English-transplant ways in a small New England town. She was known for getting involved in police investigations wherever she went, and for unmasking murderers and seeing to it that they'd get what was coming to them. But until recent years, she hid terrible secrets, secrets that have only recently come to light.

That she was a serial killer, and the most prolific serial killer the world has ever seen.

Jessica Fletcher, novelist and convicted murderer, has died while in custody at Stormhaven Women's Prison outside Calgary, serving a life sentence for multiple murders. In the years since her arrest, when her diaries were uncovered documenting thousands of murders over the years, law enforcement agencies across the world have been sorting through their own cases to determine who was wrongfully convicted and who they have to really apologize to. The true number of Fletcher's victims may, sadly, never be known. 

Prison officials confirmed her death on October 31st, near the stroke of midnight. "She was in solitary again, after somehow putting a shank in the spine of a new inmate two days earlier," a staff member speaking anonymously confirmed. "Imagine that, a woman in her nineties doing that to another woman sixty years younger. But we all knew she was dangerous. Anyway, she was heard ranting and roaring, screaming for hours on end about what she was going to do to that lawman who had brought her down. Sick, sick stuff, man. Cannibalism, torture, the whole thing. Just sick. And then nothing. The old ticker finally gave out and she was quiet. Our guys checked on her, and she was sprawled on the floor looking like she'd met her maker."

That lawman, of course, is Inspector Lars Ulrich, the legendary Mountie and world's crankiest policeman, who exposed Fletcher as a serial killer, became the object of her murderous fixation during the legal proceedings and trial, and who recaptured her after her infamous escape from prison. 

Fletcher's body has been returned to her home town of Cabot Cove, Maine, and laid to rest beside the remains of her late husband- who ironically is among the list of her victims. Residents of the small town, who had to live for decades as the murder capital, by population, of the world, don't quite know what to make of the infamy of the world's most malevolent serial killer having had been a long-time fixture of the community.

"It's a difficult time for all of us," Grady Fletcher, the dimwitted nephew of the deceased admitted. "Aunt Jessica was loved by everyone who ever met her. She was the kindest, sweetest lady you'd have ever met. I know, I know... she was convicted of multiple counts of murder, and there's all this other stuff about her that's come out, but it's all got to be a mistake. That's not the Aunt Jessica I knew."

Local doctor Lyle Tupper, son of the late sheriff Amos Tupper, was more in touch with reality. "My father would have been horrified. At least he went to his grave not knowing that this interfering dingbat writer was murdering people right under his nose and framing other people for it. If he had lived to see her arrested and exposed... well, we all know what happened to Doc Hazlitt. He had a fatal heart attack when he heard about it."

His brother Angus Tupper, now the sheriff, concurs. "I've gone through the journals. It still baffles me. A peaceful town like this. Home to pure evil. So many murders. So many lives broken by false convictions. If only we'd pieced it together sooner. But it is what it is. I know that's cold comfort to people who spent years behind bars for murders they didn't commit, framed by her. But how were we to know?"

In the end, her reign of terror is over. She can cause no further harm. Aside from the distress of seeing her name on a gravestone in the very cemetery with people whom she killed.

The last word in all of this goes to the world's crankiest lawman, who was found returning to his detachment after an epic two hundred kilometre manhunt for the notorious Maurice "Stickyfingers" Ducharme, who's facing serious criminal charges for armed robberies of trucks carrying Molson Canadian beer. Ducharme was returned to jail after jumping bail, seen being dragged by the ankle by Inspector Lars Ulrich. After disposing of the beer thief, Ulrich found reporters waiting for him. Reassured that they all knew he wasn't the other Lars Ulrich, the Inspector was willing to answer questions.

"She's dead. Good. She was a psychotic," Ulrich summed up the late Fletcher. "And she got away with a lot of things for a long time. But in the end, justice got her. And right about now it's safe to say she's roasting in hell."

"Lars! Lars! Chet Chesterson, Entertainment Tonight!" a voice called, someone rushing up to the group. The real reporters all backed away, giving the inspector some space. Ulrich locked his gaze on the newcomer, a vacant headed nitwit who, like all who had come before him, couldn't tell the difference between a Mountie in the prime of life and a deafened heavy metal drummer in the downslope of his life. "What everyone wants to know, Lars, is will Metallica contribute to the soundtrack for the inevitable Jessica Fletcher biopic?"

"I am not that Lars Ulrich," the inspector said in a quiet growling tone.

"Are you sure?"

Without warning, Ulrich sprang forward, punching Chesterson in the face, sending him flying. Chesterson got up and started running away, the Inspector hot on his heels.

The pursuit would end with Chesterson in a body cast for the next six months, groaning about how he had been beaten within an inch of his life by a heavy metal drummer.