Online Bookstore: Putnam Pub Group Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed Book

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"When you go after the King, you'd better bring him down." Cornwell's book is probative, not conclusive. Interesting, not compelling. Contrary to her statement, "He is caught," he is not caught. Cornwell ignores Occam's razor at her peril.

The bibliography contains neither Stephen Knight's work, Jack the Ripper; the Final Solution, 1976, nor Colin Wilson's A Casebook of Murder, 1969. Knight's book became problematic -- Freemasonry, Gull, grapes, etc., but Knight did bring Walter Sickert into play. Knight was disturbed by Sickert's paintings and felt Sickert may have been the murderer. (Knight also claims his primary source was Joseph Sickert, Walter's illegitimate son. Joseph Sickert recanted his story, but did Joseph state he was not related to Sickert?)

Wilson concluded that Ripper was not a renowned Londoner and his identity may, alas, be known only to history.

Footnotes. You read a sentence like, "Nothing mattered to Sickert unless it somehow affected Sickert." Source? Sickert's nephew, John Lessore? (Lessore thought the idea that Sickert is the Ripper was "rubbish.") "The anticipated connubial bliss of the flamboyant artistic genius . . . James McNeill Whistler must have been disconcerting to his former errand boy-apprentice [Sickert.]" Source?

"One might almost have called [Sickert] pretty, except for his mouth, which could narrow into a hard, cruel line." We see Sickert photos and you could look at one and, yes, "a hard, cruel line." You could then look at that same photo and, no, that's not a hard, cruel line. (Are there photos of Sickert smiling? They are not in this book.)

Other authors have read things into Sickert's paintings; Rorschach revisited? Sickert's piece, "Ennui" -- there is a painting on the wall behind the two subjects and Cornwell says if you look closely at the background painting-within-a-painting, you'll see a man coming up behind the woman there. You see no such thing. You need to get on-line, copy "Ennui" into photosuite -- increase contrast until an image of a man's head appears behind the woman. The problem is the "figure" isn't rendered in the same style as the rest of the painting.

In another drawing, we're told it's "a man stabbing a woman to death." Find a knife in the man's hand. (The piece is from Oswald Sickert's collection. Oswald was Walter Sickert's father.) Alongside the knife-attack sketch, a drawing of "a brute lunging for a woman." It looks more like a woman being solicitous of a chap who has fallen into a pal's arms. (Again, from Oswald's collection.)

Take "Persuasion," from Walter Sickert's collection. Is the chap whispering sweet-somethings to a scantily clad woman? She's alive and likes what she's hearing. (Cornwell ties this painting to a murder in Camden Town, 1907, and Walter Sickert.)

Joseph Sickert is problematic to Cornwell. If Walter Sickert did father a child, then he wasn't rendered impotent as a result of surgery for hypospadias (a penile fistula.) If Sickert was potent, then Whistler's marriage and happiness may have been of no import to Sickert. This is important. (Some of Sickert's contemporaries describe him as a ladies' man, a flirt, not afraid of a good time.)

Sickert may have had complications with a fistula in ano. His surgeon, Alfred Cooper, specialized in anal fistulas. There were qualified penile surgeons in London and the Sickert family had the means to send Walter to the best specialist.

There is no DNA evidence, and Sickert was cremated. (Cornwell may write a sequel if more evidence appears. But every time pieces of Ripper evidence are "declassified," released, whole pieces "grow legs.") Cornwell found some "egg white," but not the "egg yolk."

She found mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) traces in an etching on a Ripper letter and matches between an allegedly authentic Ripper letter and letters handled by Sickert. (Cornwell sets herself apart from Ripperologists concluding Sickert wrote virtually all the letters. Most experts believe only a handful were written by the killer.)

Remember, with respect to Ripper DNA and mtDNA evidence, the potential for degradation, 1888 forward: the paper itself, London weather, re-handling of the letters by too many people, repeated sealing, unsealing, continual packing, unpacking of the evidence. Can DNA stand up to these insults over the years?

Here mtDNA is close, but no cigar. In fact, ". . . the maternal inheritance pattern of mtDNA might also be considered problematic. Because all individuals in a maternal lineage share the same mtDNA sequence, mtDNA cannot be considered a unique identifier . . . apparently unrelated individuals might share an unknown maternal relative at some distant point in the past."

With an mtDNA match, one can only conclude that Sickert -- along with one percent of the London population, 1888, some 40,000 people -- can not be eliminated from consideration as mailing the letter. If you prove conclusively that Sickert handled a letter, via mtDNA or what remains of fingerprints, that doesn't make him a serial killer. Would Sickert, the prankster, send a hoax letter to The Yard?

Much is made of A. Pirie & Sons' watermarks on some of the correspondence. Two are highlighted by Cornwell -- the Ripper's letter to Dr. Openshaw, and a letter from Sickert to Whistler. Remarkable until it's discovered that Pirie stationery blanketed London, 1888.

Mary Kelly's body was discovered November 9, 1888. Cornwell pins the Kelly murder on Sickert, but Peter Corris writes in the Sydney Morning Herald last year, " . . . he (Sickert) was having dinner with Oscar Wilde in the Cadogan Hotel" the night of the slaying.

Is Colin Wilson right? The Ripper swallowed whole by the London fog?

Hung jury.

It doesn't quite live up to its promise. While Cornwell makes a very interesting case against her suspect, in a modern court she could maybe get an arrest warrant but would by no means be assured a conviction. I concede that given the gap of time and the lack of DNA evidence from her long-since cremated suspect, perhaps no one could do better - but where in the beginning of the book she seems to acknowledge those shortcomings, by the end of the book she is speaking to the reader as though the case is closed, when all she has done is given you (however compelling) circumstantial evidence. She also blatantly refuses to address the cases against several other suspects that have persisted through time, but with a case as lacking in "the smoking gun" as hers is, she would have been more persuasive if she'd spent more time examining how she ruled out these other men.

Be forewarned that there are a lot of gruesome and graphic details which - while facinating and certainly not gratuitous - are tough to read. Not more gory than one of her Scarpetta novels, just perhaps more difficult to stomach because they aren't fictional.

Still, despite these reservations, I would say that anyone who has a deep interest in Jack the Ripper shouldn't neglect this book - some of the theories and factual details presented are very persuasive, and coupled with other sources of information I'd think this book would have a useful place in any study of that subject.