Easter Ripper

**“***You can't kill me... I'm the EASTER RIPPER!***”**
— **The Easter Ripper, following his "revival"**

## Tom Smith

**Thomas "Tom" Smith**, better known as the **Easter Ripper**, is the main antagonist in *Murder House* and its novelization of the same name.

## Description

### Appearance

The Easter Ripper, real name Tom Smith, is an adult Caucasian male of unspecified age, and weight. He is around 5'10" He has short brown hair and wears a purple sweater with several colorful patterns on it, blue jeans with a black leather belt, and brown shoes. During his murderous rampage, he wears a worn-out purple Easter bunny suit with a yellow ribbon. His weapon of choice is a large sickle. His mask has traces of dried blood stains around the mouth from several murders, as well as completely blackened eyes.

He seems to possess inhuman strength and durability as he was able to withstand gunshots and lift humans with one arm and kill them by hugging and squeezing them as seen in some death cutscenes.

### History

Not much is revealed about Tom's early life. What is known is that Tom grew up together with his brother Anthony in a large house in the backcountry of Monroe County, Michigan, near the city of Monroe. Tom refers to himself as a "Mama's boy" in one of his lines, implying an overly deep or strained relationship with his mother, not too dissimilar from the Night Shift Abductor or Larry.

In late March of 1979, Tom took a seasonal position as an Easter Bunny at a Monroe mall. Taking advantage of his proximity to the younger visitors, donning the costume, he would abduct pre-pubescent children, some as young as toddlers, each Easter and take them to his childhood home, where he would imprison them inside a secret basement section for several weeks, continually abusing them for sadistic and pedophilic gratification. This included starvation, exposure to the elements, bondage, rape, S&M play, medieval torture, and cruel practical jokes, such as hiding sharp objects inside their limited food rations, which consisted solely out of chocolate eggs, laced with sedatives to render the kids easier to deal with. Once he's had enough of them, he would release the children into his greenhouse and force them on a deadly Easter egg hunt, during which he stalked and ultimately murdered them, later burying the bodies beneath the building.

Sometime in late April, 1983, one of Tom's would-be victims, Randy Martinez, escaped and exposed him to the authorities, but instead of him being arrested, Anthony, the legal owner of the house, made a false confession to save his brother's life. Anthony was found guilty of eleven counts of child murder and after spending two years on death row, executed by the electric chair.

Initially, Tom heeded Anthony's sacrifice and refrained from killing during the next Easter Season, although maintaining his job at the local city mall. By 1985, however, he found himself unable to keep his murderous urges in check, Anthony's wrongful execution presumably being the trigger. The Easter Ripper reawakened, he started back where he left off and continued kidnapping children at the mall.

## *Murder House*

One night during the same year's Easter, the Easter Ripper discovered 8-year old Justin, a boy with whom he had a picture taken just a few hours earlier, strolling around the plaza, hopelessly lost, and when the boy reaches the secluded staff-only area, he gives chase. Justin is either immediately seized and dragged away by the Easter Ripper for grisly intentions, or briefly eludes capture by hiding in a stall in the adjacent restroom, then warning a janitor about the danger, who is seemingly killed after leaving Justin alone in a locked office room to verify his claims, shortly after being found by the Easter Ripper and abducted.

In 1988, Tom returned to his former residence, now known to locals as the "Murder House" and generally thought to be abandoned, to find Jerry, a real estate agent who had put the property on sale, who had shortly before made a deal with a local news crew to shoot a haunted house story about the legend. Provided with the perfect opportunity, Tom murdered the agent, placed his body in a bathtub in a locked room, inserting an Easter egg with the Justice tarot into his mouth, and later joined the TV crew on May 1st, masquerading as a cameraman, planning to slaughter them one by one as revenge for attempting to further defile Anthony's name. After filming a couple of sequences for the documentary, Tom excused himself for a toilet break, at which point he locked the front gate and destroyed the news van, leaving behind a message for the crew, in which he announced the Easter Ripper's return and the commencement of his notorious egg hunt. He then shuts off the power, in the process being startled by the unknowing crew's intern, Emma, whom he distracts by handing her a key and asking her to check if it's for any of the exits.

Once again costumed, he begins to pick off the crew in horrendous ways, starting with on-site reporter Dana. He unsuccessfully tries to ambush her in the living room, then sneaks up behind her while she is fleeing, grabbing her by the head before chopping off her right arm and decapitating her, later leaving an Easter egg with the Death tarot in her mouth. Finding Gary standing in a doorway with his back turned, Tom cuts him in half and disembowls him, later strining him up on a chain link and placing an Easter Egg with easter egg with the Hanged Man tarot in his cut-open stomach. In a fake-out, Tom stages a video clip of himself filming one of the rooms, then pretends to be attacked by screaming and dropping the camera and walking into frame as the Easter Ripper, hiding an Easter egg with the Fool tarot in a nearby piano. Finally, Tom had his last to-be victim, Emma, participate in his deadly game, stalking her around the house while she collected Easter eggs from dead bodies, which were embossed with Tarot card images, thematically referencing the demise and negative qualities of their "holders".

### End and demise

After Emma collects all 4 Easter eggs and escapes into the greenhouse, The Easter Ripper appears before her and reveals the truth to her: he was Tom, the cameraman. He reveals that he killed the news crew to avenge his brother Anthony, who took his place as the killer and was executed instead, before attacking her. Emma manages to defeat him by shooting him multiple times with a single-barreled shotgun. When Emma goes for the door, Tom reappears, heavily bleeding, declaring that he cannot be killed, but before he can descend upon Emma, the ground starts shaking and all of his murder victims start rising from the dirt and ashes. While Emma runs and manages to escape, the same cannot be said for Tom. The children swarm him, shoving him to the floor before tearing him apart and devouring him. As Emma escapes, a bright light appears in the greenhouse before the game ends.

### Reveal (Extended ending)

After Emma escapes from the greenhouse, the director says cut, revealing all this to be a part of the film. Sarah, Emma's actress, complains to the director that the twist ending didn't make any sense, noting that Tom was shorter than the actor who had actually played the Easter Ripper for most of the movie, Nick, who apparently bailed on them two days before the shoot ended. Nick was apparently unpopular and seen as creepy by staff member Emily, who noted that he never actually talked while on set. The actor that played Tom, Devante', could be seen inside the greenhouse with zombie kid actors. If Sarah, Emma's actress, talks to him, Devante' will say how he can't wait to take off the suit he's been wearing. Several more can be found in the living room area of the house, where Sarah notices that a few of the costumes are missing. He later appears inside the house where others are partying. When asked by Sarah, Gary's actor, Dan, denies that the filming site was the location of a string of actual murders, waving it off as simply a rumor. As Sarah drives home, the camera slowly moves to the trunk of the car, revealing the unmoving, bloodied Easter Ripper stowed away inside.

## Quotes

* *"Looks like we're here."*

* *"Don't ask me, I'm just the camera guy."*

* *"Wow, this is a cool house."*

* *"Great timing. I'm going to use the restroom."*

* *"It looks like we're stuck here. All the doors are locked. Look, I found a key, but can't figure out what it opens."*

* *"That's right, it was quiet innocent Tom. Harmless walk all over him Tom. Mama's boy Tom. Well, I did it! I killed them all!"*

* *"To avenge my brother. Anthony wasn't the Easter Ripper, I was! He turned himself in to save me. I thought I could control the urge to kill but its back, and now I'm going to kill you!"*

* *"No, get away from me. You can't do this. I killed you!"*

## In-game

### Prologue

The Easter Ripper can be seen in the distance, peeking behind corners or over ledges before disappearing, most prominently when Justin enters the gazebo. He then actively appears at the end of the corridor and charges at Justin, forcing him to retreat into the bathroom. If he captures Justin, a cutscene will play of the Easter Ripper grabbing the kid and dragging him away, ending the prologue prematurely. If Justin hides in one of the bathroom stalls in time, Easter Ripper will enter and check three random stalls before leaving. After Justin alerts Janitor Jack in the staff room and is locked inside the office by the latter, the lights will go out. During this time, the Ripper kills the custodian while he's looking for a phone, takes his keys, unlocks the break room and captures Justin.

### House

Just like before, the Easter Ripper will appear momentarily in the hallways when Emma exits rooms or enters another area, moving off-screen in the blink of an eye. Shortly after blocking all the exits and killing the other crew members, he begins his hunt, wandering the house looking for Emma. If he spots her, he will chase after her and attack with his large sickle. He can be avoided by running away or fought back against with the fire poker and the gun. After taking a certain amount of damage, the Easter Ripper will run away and come back after a certain amount of time. Emma is able to hide in wardrobes and under tables. If the Easter Ripper spots the player hiding, he will pull them out. If Emma is hit too many times, one of three cutscenes will play of the killer brutally slaughtering Emma:

1. Emma tries to run away, but the Easter Ripper bear-hugs her with all of his strength, crushing her ribs and killing her instantly.
2. Easter Ripper cuts Emma's face off with the sickle. Emma drops on the floor covering her face, thrashing and rolling around in agony, while her face can be seen lying on the ground next to her.
3. Easter Ripper grabs Emma by the neck, lifts her up and starts smashing her head against the ground.

## Murder House: The Book

Tom, both as himself and the Easter Ripper, is is given more characterization and has more scenes, either interacting with other characters or standalone. Overall, it serves to give Tom's twisted motives and make him a fleshed-out, more visibly malicious villain.

* While it was ambiguous whether he had any contact with his colleagues before being send to film the documentary, Tom is shown to be a full-time employee of Channel 9.
* At work, Tom and Emma were evidently on friendly terms being the closest to eachother in age and being unhappy with the way the station was being run. Emma did note, however, that no matter how much they spoke, Tom would hardly ever talk about any interests outside of work and generally appeared lacking in personality.
* It is made obvious around halfway through the novel that Tom was the Easter Ripper, rather than being the last minute twist.
* Tom's past is further explored, through narrated flashbacks and Tom's own testimony. It is shown that he was a born with anti-social tendencies, which were only enforced by his mother, who exhibited favoritism for him and spoiled him for his whole life. Whenever "something bad happened", she would hold his brother Anthony accountable, beating him as punishment. It is implied that Tom drew great enjoyment from seeing his brother being punished in his stead and that his torture of children was him trying to replicate these acts for his own sadistic pleasure. Anthony would grew up to become deeply subservient to his mother and by extension his brother. Tom exploited this since childhood and would pass blame onto Anthony for his own misdoings, including his serial murders as an adult by convincing his brother to take the fall for him like he always had.
* Tom mentions his mother early on and is said to have been taking care of her at their old home. It is later revealed that she had been dead for some time and was buried along with the children in the greenhouse and rises as one of the zombies to kill him in the end, implying that Tom secretly murdered her at some point, likely to keep her old age pension for himself.
* The final fight between Tom and Emma is significantly more drawn out, with Emma being marginally less surprised at the revelation and openly deriding Tom for having no deeper aspirations for life other than murder and calls him a "loser" and a "nerd" for thinking that being a psychopath somehow makes him special.
* TBA

## Victims

* At least eleven children, including:
	+ Mildred Armstrong (kidnapped March 30th, 1981)
	+ Daniel Gray (kidnapped April 6th, 1982)
	+ Helen (kidnapped April 14th, 1982)
	+ Molly (kidnapped April 14th, 1982)
	+ Gracie (kidnapped sometime during Easter Season, 1983)
* Randy Martínez (kidnapped April 20th, 1983, survived)
* Janitor Jack (presumably, determinant)
* Justin (kidnapped during Easter Season, 1985)
* Jerry
* Dana
* Gary
* Emma (attempted, survived)

## Trivia

* The Easter Ripper, along with the Night Shift Abductor, made a cameo appearance in the Haunted PS1 game's *EEK3 2020 Virtual Show Floor*. He can be found at Hell Burger, in his default pose seen during the loading screens.
* The in-game model of Easter Ripper was created by **Fleshsqueeze,** who also created other character models for Puppet Combo's games.
* There are a few hints in the game that point to Tom being the Easter Ripper before the reveal.
	1. Although not incriminating Tom directly, Dana mentions that the Easter Ripper's execution took place in 1985, the same year in which Justin was kidnapped in the prologue. Logically then, Anthony Smith. the man executed for the Easter Ripper's crimes, couldn't have been the same killer seen, opening up the possibilty of either a copycat or a wrongful execution, with the real Easter Ripper still active.
	2. Tom is the only one who is not unsettled by the house's decrepitude and sinister atmosphere, only making note of it when prompted.
	3. He disappears shortly before some pivotal points, such as the destruction of the van and the power outage. Emma even catches him off-guard in the basement prior to the latter, near to where the fuse box is located, claiming that he was going to look for an exit in the cellar of all places.
	4. Finally, while three of the eggs where stuffed into the corpses of his victims, the fourth one is found in a piano near where Tom was supposedly killed on video, with no trace of his body or any blood to be found in the room, a notable change in the Easter Ripper's typical M.O.
* Besides the previously mentioned inconsistency done for foreshadowing, there are some unexplained continuity errors about the timeline of the Easter Ripper killings.
	+ Dana's report in 1988 mentions that the Easter Ripper began his murders eight years ago, later clarifying it was in March of 1979, making it closer to nine years. She also says that Anthony Smith was arrested in 1985 and mentions twice that he was executed that same year, after victim Randy Martinez escaped. Martinez's missing poster, however, shows that he was kidnapped in 1983, and part of the Easter Ripper's M.O. was killing all his captives in an Easter Egg hunt the same year, making it unlikely that Martinez was spared from this over a period of two years. Additionally, Dana erroneously says that at the time of filming Smith's execution had been two years ago, which would have been 1986.
	+ There was initially more confusion to the timeline, as the title screens in earlier releases of *Murder House* also wrongly listed the prologue as taking place in 1986 (a leftover from a beta promo shot seen below) and the main game in 1987, before this was corrected in updated versions with both the in-game dates and the menu selection reading 1985 and 1988, as it said in the report and the date on the video camera, respectively.
* Tom appears to be largely based on serial killers John Wayne Gacy, Albert Fish, and H. H. Holmes. All three were known to have killed children and were executed for their crimes.
	+ Like Gacy, Smith was a sex offender with interest in both sexes, buried the bodies of his victims on his property, and moonlighted as a children's entertainer on the side.
	+ Fish and Smith were both child molesters, specifically pedophiles without preference, who exclusively targeted children, although Smith also killed adults during the events of *Murder House*, and tortured them prior to or during their murders. One of Fish's confirmed victims, Gracie Budd, also shares her first name with one of Smith's victims.
	+ Both Holmes and Smith owned a multi-story human habitation building with secret mechanisms and hidden spaces in the rooms, as well as intricate torture chambers beneath them, killing their victims in said structure through various means, although the supposed dungeons are typically thought to have been invented by the media in Holmes' case. The title "*Murder House*" likely takes inspiration from Holmes' "*Murder Hotel/Castle*".
	+ Smith's torture methods are also similar to those of David Parker Ray, a serial killer who tortured his victims in acts inspired by his experiences in the underground BDSM scene.
* One victim's notes mentions that shouting and crying belonging to grown-ups could be regularly heard through the walls, describing them as "really sad". The child theorizes that the Easter Ripper had adult captives as well. Another possibility is that they might have been Tom and Anthony's voices, indicating that the Smith brothers argued a lot, conceivably over the former's crimes. It remains unknown to what extent Anthony was aware of Tom's activities prior to Randy's escape.
* Tom's tarot, the Fool, is known to have no specific interpretation, similar to how Tom is initially shown as a flat character with little personality. Some given attributes of the Fool include ignorance, hopeless optimism, naivety and inattentiveness, which contribute to Tom's apparent death when the Easter Ripper sneaks up behind him while he carelessly wanders the house. However, the Fool can also be seen as dangerously manic, delirious, and ever-present, which apply to the Easter Ripper, who kills for no reasonable motive and often seems to be unkillable. Literally, the Fool can also mean that the tarot itself was meant to fool Emma, and by extension the player, into thinking Tom was dead, as well as an unlikely candidate for being the Easter Ripper. The inverse of the card notably signifies the wish to move on, but being held back by yourself, similar to how the Easter Ripper made a genuine attempt at stopping his murders, only to fall back into his habits due to his impulses.
* He is the only confirmed child predator out of all Puppet Combo villains.
* The Zombie Child uses a model previously seen in *Nun Massacre*.
* He and the Night Ripper are the only known killers with a confirmed survivor that isn't the protagonist.
* Tom's cameraman model is noticeably shorter than his Easter Ripper one.
* It's not clarified whether Tom only recently joined the Channel 9 News crew by pretending to be freelance cameraman or if this had actually been his actual primary occupation outside of his mall job,
* He is one of the killers with unspecified links to the CFV, as he owns a CFV labeled cassette.
* In the beta version of the game, the Easter Ripper had a different bunny suit. This one was much more simply designed, white in color and significantly taller and noticeably slimmer than the final version.
	+ He also wielded an axe instead of a sickle.
	+ Additionally, a beta promo shot shows the Easter Ripper posing with a girl using Christine Wilbur's model.
* In the alternate ending, Tom is shown to have been played by an in-universe version of Devante' Johnson. The original portrayer, Nick, is said to have disappeared without notice, but the final scene, in which Sarah drives home, a person wearing the blood splattered Easter Ripper costume is seen motionless in the trunk of her car. This either implies that the killer was real and most likely Nick, now hiding away to ambush her later, or that Sarah had murdered Nick and was going to dump his still dressed-up body away from the filming location.
	+ The ending leaves the authenticity of the Easter Ripper's story unclear, as well as the identity of the "killer" in the trunk of Sarah's car. It is possible that the unmoving figure is just the empty costume taken by Sarah for an unknown reason, or that the story of the Easter Ripper, whether a real event, an urban legend, as claimed by Gary's actor Dan, or a fabrication for the movie, spawned a copycat killer, either part of the crew (such as Nick, as mentioned above) or someone else entirely.
	+ Humorously, Devante', who is African American in real life, appears as Caucasian, since he also physically portrays Tom.

* The Easter Ripper is similar to William Afton from the *Five Nights at Freddy's* series, both are serial killers who wear bunny costumes who target young children.
* In real life, Michigan is a state without capital punishment, which has been banned since 1963. It is however possible that Anthony was charged and sentenced to death on a federal level.

## Gallery

### Gameplay

Tom as he appears as a cameraman.Easter Ripper revealing his true identity to Emma.Game over cutscene #1Beta Easter RipperBeta Easter Ripper with an axe
### Promotional material

Easter Ripper on the Murder House VHS coverEaster Ripper on the Steam bannerEaster Ripper in Masters of Indie Horror Bundle.
## References

1. ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CNLBy0jHCSI/