I decided to read Patricia Cornwell's book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed because I have an interest in Walter Sickert. I continued to read the book, despite the fact that it was by far the most absurd book I've ever read, because I assumed at the turn of every page that it couldn't get any sillier. At some point, I thought, Cornwell would have to present solid evidence that connected Walter Sickert to the Ripper murders. After all, you can't go around accusing people of murder left, right and centre when you have no proof, can you? Apparently, you can.

According to Ms Cornwell, she began to wonder about Walter Sickert being Jack the Ripper when she was flipping through a book of his art and came across his 1887 painting of Ada Lundberg performing at the Marylebone Music Hall. When Cornwell looked at that painting, she didn’t see a performer singing for an audience, she saw a woman screaming as menacing men looked on. ‘I am sure there are artistic explanations for all of Sickert’s works,’ Cornwell writes, ‘but what I see when I look at them is morbidity, violence, and a hatred of women.’

Well, you can find all sorts of things in paintings, if you're determined to see them, and Ms Cornwell certainly was determined. A good researcher examines the information available and uses it to form a theory; Cornwell, on the other hand, proceeded from the firm conviction that Sickert was her man and set about constructing an argument that would produce her desired conclusion.

To be fair, Ms Cornwell is not the first person to construct a ridiculous theory regarding the true identity of Jack the Ripper that involves Walter Sickert. It was in the 1970s that his name was first linked with that of the famous Whitechapel murderer, and I’ll now attempt to give a brief synopsis of how that came about.

In the late 1960s, a fellow by the name of Joseph Gorman turned up claiming to be Walter Sickert’s illegitimate grandson. He then amended his story and claimed that Sickert was not his grandfather, he was in actual fact his father; his grandfather, he claimed at that point, was the eldest son of Edward VII, Prince Albert Victor. Gorman adopted a new name, HRH Joseph Sickert, to go with his imaginatively fabricated identity. He claimed that his grandmother, a shop girl by the name of Annie Crook, had married Prince Albert Victor in secret and had given birth to a daughter, Alice (Joseph Sickert’s mother). Mary Jane Kelly, a friend of Crook’s, knew about this marriage, as did several of her prostitute pals and was set to blackmail the British government. To avert a scandal that might have brought down the British monarchy, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, persuaded the Royal Physician, Sir William Gull, to go off on a murder spree with two fellow Freemasons and do away with the troublesome women. Little Alice Crook, having been spirited away to France, later became Walter Sickert’s mistress. Walter Sickert knew the truth behind the Ripper murders, Joseph Sickert claimed, but had not been involved in them. Joseph Sickert, who later claimed that he regularly had tea with the Queen, had a furtive imagination.

Stephen Knight, author of Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (published in 1978) went further and, based on Joseph Sickert’s claims about the masonic Ripper plot, concluded that Walter Sickert must have been a co-conspirator in it. In the same year, Joseph Sickert, whilst maintaining that he was the illegitimate son of Walter Sickert and the grandson of Prince Albert Victor, told the Sunday Times that the story about the Ripper conspiracy had in fact been a hoax. This didn’t prevent Jean Overton Fuller from publishing a book in 1990 which claimed that Walter Sickert was the actual perpetrator of the crimes, rather than a co-conspirator. Nor did it prevent Melvyn Fairclough from regurgitating Joseph Sickert’s masonic-royal-Ripper plot nonsense one year later.

But let's be clear about this, during Sickert’s lifetime he was never a suspect in the Ripper murders. Were it not for HRH Joseph Sickert’s absurd conspiracy claims, which he later admitted were a fabrication, nobody would ever have suggested Walter Sickert as a possible Ripper suspect.

Anyway, getting back to Cornwell's theory (though she considers it to be a matter of fact). Having decided that the Ripper was a sexually dysfunctional psychopath with a severe hatred of women, Cornwell's mind was made up from the outset that Sickert was an impotent woman-hater. According to Cornwell, 'Sickert was dependent on women and loathed them’. But Sickert did not hate women; at times he liked them rather too much. He was never faithful to his first wife, Ellen. Regarding Sickert's marriage to Ellen, Cornwell claims that 'it is possible the brotherly and sisterly couple never undressed in front of each other or attempted sex'. Based on what evidence?

'Sickert was born,' Cornwell asserts, 'with a deformity of his penis requiring operations when he was a toddler that would have left him disfigured if not mutilated'. She goes on to suggest that he may not have had much of a penis at all and it was 'quite possible that he had to squat like a woman to urinate'. Sickert did undergo an operation when he was an infant; that much is true. He was treated for an anal fistula at St. Mark's Hospital. Cornwell herself admits that Sickert's doctor's specialities 'were the treatment of rectal and venereal diseases,' and that 'no search of his published writings or other literature unearthed any mention of his treating so-called fistulas of the penis.’ Nonetheless, she concludes that it was Sickert's penis that was the problem. Why? Because Jack the Ripper had to be impotent, so Sickert had to be impotent, and an anal fistula does not produce impotency! If it looks like an apple and tastes like an apple, but Cornwell wants an orange... it's an orange.

I shall now provide you with a sampling of the nonsense that passes for 'evidence' in the mind of Patricia Cornwell:

1. Martha Tabran was seen with a soldier before her murder. The murderer of Martha Tabran was therefore Walter Sickert dressed up as a soldier. ‘Walter Sickert was familiar with uniforms,' Cornwell explains, and as a boy he 'frequently sketched men in uniforms and armor’. Heavens to Betsy, a male child who draws soldiers... a sure sign of early-onset homicidal psychopathy.

2. Jack the Ripper liked to call people fools in his letters; Walter Sickert called people fools.

3. A witness saw a man with a black Gladstone bag after Elizabeth Stride was murdered; Sickert had a Gladstone bag.

4. During the Ripper murders, bloody knives started turning up all over the place. A coconut dealer by the name of Thomas Coram was leaving a friend’s house in Whitechapel when he noticed a knife at the bottom of steps leading into a laundry. The knife was later described by a local constable as the sort a baker or chef might use. ‘Sickert was an excellent cook,' Cornwell writes, 'and often dressed as a chef to entertain his friends’.

5. (And this is my personal favourite) One of the Ripper letters included the address ‘Punch & Judy St.’; Cornwell points out: 'Sickert would have been familiar with Punch and Judy'.

Cornwell, unlike most Ripperologists and the police who investigated the Ripper murders, believes that most of the Ripper letters sent to police and the local press (from all over the place, with several posted on the same day from distant locations) came from Jack the Ripper himself. The letters are central to her claim that Sickert was the Ripper. The fact that the handwriting of the numerous Ripper letters doesn't resemble Sickert's does nothing to deter Cornwell from asserting that he did write them; the difference in handwriting simply proves that he was an incredibly devious little psychopath. She points out that Sickert could even write backwards. So could Leonardo da Vinci, but I don't think she's about to pin the murders on him (though we shouldn't rule that out entirely). For that matter, I can write backwards; do I need an alibi?

As for the doodles on the Ripper letters, Cornwell claims that most, if not all, were penned by a skilled artist, namely Walter sickert. Anna Gruetzner Robins, author of Walter Sickert: Drawings, supports this claim, though she doesn't believe that Sickert was the actual Ripper. Matthew Sturgiss, author of Walter Sickert: A Life, remains unconvinced about the claims of Cornwell and Robins. Sickert expert Wendy Baron has also dismissed the claims, having found nothing in the doodles to suggest that Sickert was the person responsible for them. But even if it were proved that Sickert was responsible for some of the letters (and that's a big if), it would simply show that he was a Ripper letter hoaxer. That is a far cry from being a slayer of East End prostitutes.

Several Ripper letters mentioned horse racing and gave the police betting tips. 'Sickert painted pictures of horse racing', Cornwell points out, 'and was quite knowledgeable about the sport. 'While I have no evidence that Sickert bet on horse races,' she goes on, 'I don’t have any fact to say he didn’t.’ According to Cornwell's logic, the absence of proof passes for proof in itself. When trying to determine if the artist was in London at the time of a particular murder, she points out that she has no proof that he was not in London. Well, there’s no proof that I wasn’t in Madagascar yesterday evening; I guess I must have been there.

In actual fact, Walter Sickert was abroad for most of the late summer of 1888, when Jack the Ripper was murdering prostitutes in London. Two days before the murder of Annie Chapman, Sickert's mother wrote to a friend that she and her family (including Walter) were all having a happy time in France. Whilst Cornwell does refer to Sickert's mother's letter, and to a letter written by Sickert's wife, Ellen, about him being in France with 'his people', which Cornwell incorrectly assumes are his arty friends in Dieppe rather than his family, she dismisses the importance of such evidence of his absence from London. After all, even if he had been in France, he could have hopped on a steamer to scoot across the English Channel, then caught an express train to London in order to do away with an East End tart (presumably because a French tart wouldn't do) before dashing back to France in time for dinner without anyone noticing he'd gone. I imagine he managed to fit in posting several Ripper letters from Liverpool, London and Lille (in northern France) while he was at it.

Having gone to great trouble to demonstrate that Sickert was a crazed killer who couldn't even holiday in France without rushing back to the East End to assassinate a prostitute, how does she explain the fact that the Ripper murders came to an abrupt end following the slaying of Mary Jane Kelly on 9th November 1888, even though Sickert lived for another fifty-four years? What did he do, take up fishing or stamp collecting to fill his time? Well, apparently he didn't stop murdering people... he went on going. Sickert wasn't just Jack the Ripper, he was responsible for the Thames Torso Murders of 1887-89 too, and he committed the Camden Town Murder in 1907. He may even have murdered a widow named Madame Francois at Pont-à-Mousson, in north-eastern France, in 1889, and another French woman in the same area. He was a busy fellow.

Ms Cornwell provides no evidence that links Walter Sickert to the Whitechapel murders. She seems to believe that by her simply asserting that he was guilty we'll all be daft enough to believe her. In places, the book seems to be more about her than Sickert or Jack the Ripper anyway. About a quarter of the way through the book she writes: ‘I had been a police reporter for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina and was no coward when it came to dashing off to crime scenes.’ Then she tells us that she had a moment of enlightenment (something I strongly doubt) whilst in Aspen with her family, in a condo at the base of Ajax Mountain. In what way are these details, or reminiscences of her days working in the medical examiner’s office, relevant to the Whitechapel murders? There's a lot that seems to be there just to fill the book out. Chapter Thirteen gives a history of the British coroner from the reign of Richard I. And what’s the point of giving the reader an explanation of how the Ripper murders would have been investigated in present day Virginia? Do I need to know that ‘the US has never had a national standard of death investigation’?

This may be the longest book review I will ever write. But a short one just wouldn't have done justice to the astounding absurdity of this book.

Cornwall’s foray into her version of non-fiction is an entertaining read, but objective investigation it is not.

Even in recounting the, largely undisputed, facts of the canonical five murders, the author commits the cardinal sin of ignoring evidence that doesn’t support her theory, while manipulating and over-emphasising scraps of information or conjecture that do. She also crosses the line into personal judgment, going so far as to describe one hapless victim as “belong[ing] in a dustbin”!

When it comes to the artist Walter Sickert, her favoured suspect, her case is vaguely circumstantial at best. She may arguably have established the possibility that he wrote a few of the hundreds of (mostly hoax) “Ripper letters”. He may also have had a certain preoccupation with the Whitechapel series of murders and the later Camden Town murder, but that proves nothing at all. There’s not a scerrick of direct physical evidence against Sickert, or any other suspect to my knowledge. Yet there are at least a dozen others who present a more likely psychological and logistical fit for the crimes than Sickert.

For a more objective (factual) overview of the murders and the more likely suspects, I’d recommend Philip Sugden’s The Complete History of Jack the Ripper or Donald Rumbelow’s The Complete Jack the Ripper.

first of all, this is the most ambitious book title I've ever experienced.

second of all, I cannot believe what a huge percentage of this is spent talking about Walter Sickert's (allegedly) deformed penis!!!!!!!!!! so much!!!!!!!!

finally, I simply do not care who was Jack the Ripper, not even if he had a normal penis

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers...

Conspiracy theorists will not be convinced by Patricia Cornwell that the Jack the Ripper case is, indeed, closed by her recent research. Although Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed presents a lot of compelling circumstantial evidence in favor of identifying a famous English artist with the psychopathic serial killer, she admits that her suspect’s self-imposed cremation has eliminated the capacity for making a definitive DNA match. Using the purported “Jack the Ripper” letters, the inspiration for the intriguing graphic novel and film, From Hell, she manages to tie stationers’ watermarks, paper provenance, and DNA evidence together enough to eliminate one popular suspect (an Oxford-educated medical man) and suggest a probable (but not conclusive) link with her suspect. She discounts the theory that I always held most interesting that the crown prince was involved with the crimes, pointing out the prince’s poor health and the lack of evidence for his alleged sexual profligacy.

Despite my love of conspiracy theories, my shelves have a dearth of so-called “true crime” books. It seems like there needs to be some historical hook (JFK assassination, Capote’s In Cold Blood murders in the mid-20th century, the deaths of Richard III’s nephews, etc.) to pull me in. I wonder if the prime suspect in Cornwell’s book was correct when he wrote: “Do you suppose that we only find anything that is past so touching and interesting is because it is so much further from the grave?” (p. 334) I don’t know whether that is confirmed by the fact that I even find books, movies, antiques, and events “further” from my birth to be touching and interesting since I like architecture, vehicle designs, entertainment and events from the ‘30s and ‘40s so much. The only reason I wouldn’t gladly travel back in time is because I don’t want to live without either air conditioning or my computer(s).

Cornwell’s primary suspect would not have been my choice. Even as she presents solid circumstantial evidence, she is experienced enough as an expert witness to know what a good defense attorney would do to that evidence. Even so, she advocates so plausibly and overwhelmingly probably for the suspect’s guilt that she might even have been able to get past those slippery defenses anyway. Perhaps, some of the best parts of the book are where she compares what is currently done in forensic investigation to what wasn’t even performed adequately in terms of the late 19th and early 20th century investigations. In many cases, she excuses the doctors based on changes in technology, but she is also careful to show where they failed to pursue even the most obvious of clues. And she is even more critical of the police who, for convenience sake or to avert panic, handily dismissed Ripper evidence (such as the letters) as the work of crackpots despite the similarities in comments, caricatures, paper (and watermarks), and arrogance. Add the accuracy of the predictions of then future crimes and one wonders why the police didn’t get closer to the solution.

From my perspective, Cornwell’s conclusion points to that class consciousness which was particularly deadly in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The primary suspect is a gentleman and, as such, would not have been considered very closely by the police. Read the “profiles” for which they were looking and they were inevitably 180 degrees from Cornwell’s very viable suspect. This is stimulating reading for people like me. Maybe simply because it is “further from the grave.”

Like many people, I love a good mystery. And it doesn't come more mysterious than the case of Jack the Ripper - a series of truly gruesome murders, which went unsolved and over 125 years later still really gets under people. So I was really eager to read a book which claims to have discovered the truth. Having typed that though, I sat on this book for a few years - unread - and by the time I got round to it, I felt very skeptical. Now I've read it, I'm quite swayed to her way of thinking but also slightly confused. The sad truth is no one is ever going to be able to announce 100%, no doubts whatsoever who Jack the Ripper was, (unless of course there is a genuine written confession hidden away somewhere).

This is my first book by Patricia Cornwell (and I think my first Ripper book too). I must say, she certainly is a very through researcher. I'm quite impressed at the variety of sources she uncovered and the wealth of primary sources she tapped into (letters and diaries etc). According to her, she could only scratch the surface, as there were many gaps in these, where things have been destroyed, lost or hidden. So she has constructed/filled in gaps, using what she read and then making her own assumptions (reading between the lines), then presenting it as fact. I guess you have to when tracing a story so old. So I don't know how accurate everything is regarding Sickert's thoughts, motivations and relationships etc actually were (I know she has read the letters and stuff). But then again, this book goes a lot deeper into things than just the known ripper murders. She presents a good case for more murders that were most likely linked/done by same killer - which the coppers at the time also considered and 'investigated' at the time. It's all so frustrating the lack of forensic knowledge/investigation at the time (when such things were only just slowly beginning). But if They had had such knowledge and equipment then, old Jack would have never have got away with it... Anyone see why I'm a bit confused? I guess that exactly how the author felt whilst researching and writing this book! I do get her logic though as to why it was most likely Sickert and not any of the more famous suspects. There was just so much to wade through in this book, it was so through, I got a bit lost. It's so frustrating not knowing! I'm going to have to look out for more books about this now...

I am constantly supprised by the range of Cornwell's writing. I am a loyal fan of her books and this one took me by surprise. It has been on my to read book shelf for a while as I pursue my own writing career. I finally read it and was shocked as to why no one else had put this together. I think she really found the real idenity of Jack The Ripper, so many years after the crimes occured. My hat is off to Cornwell for her research and writing skills. While many may still disagree with her conclusions, no one can fault her for the research and dedication to writing that she has done.

Finally I found out who Jack the Ripper was! For the longest time I thought if I ever wanted to know the true identity of Jack the Ripper I would have to go under cover as a man and join the Freemasons to learn all their secrets, since I heard on the Jack the Ripper tour I went on in like 1999 that the only people who really know who Jack the Ripper was are the Freemasons. Needless to say, reading this book has proved a lot easier than my previous plan. Thanks Patricia Cornwell!

Cornwell is somewhat of a "guilty pleasure" for me as a number of the Scarpetta novels really got me hooked and "Hornet's Nest" and "Southern Cross" are better still. The Jack the Ripper case is of course both horrifying and fascinating and I picked up the books with some high hopes. Unfortunately, none were met. Cornwell goes about her task the "wrong way": after introducing "her" killer, she dedicates the book to nag us into believing what she believes, and not successfully either. The basic premises for the case feels shaky at best and then there are substantial leaps of faith involved in linking the "evidence". There are probably a lot better books about the case to choose instead of this one.

3.5, maybe 4. If read as fiction and not fact, I can say I like it. But it's written as fact, as Jack has been caught and here's the reasons why. Well, plausible reason, maybe. While I do see the "facts" as being a possible connection, there really is no way of knowing for sure. To say it's all true, but say maybe or possibly, just doesn't seem right to me. Plus there seems to be a lot of filler about the author's life and connections that I just don't see how it pertains to what's supposed to be about Jack. Like I said, reading it as fiction, I did enjoy it.

Patricia Cornwell apresenta na obra “Jack, o Estripador – Retrato de um Assassino”, o que eu considero ser apenas “mais uma” teoria acerca da identidade de Jack, o Estripador.
Não apreciei a estrutura narrativa do livro que pretende ser um “documento” em que se deslinda a identidade do homem que cometeu a série de assassínios brutais no East End de Londres (e possivelmente noutros locais) a partir de 1888… As ideias, os factos, as asserções por vezes não têm grande ligação entre si, sendo introduzidos um pouco ao acaso (ou pelo menos assim parece…).
Este deveria ser um livro com um ritmo bem mais cadenciado do que aquele com que me deparei e deveria apresentar novos dados absolutamente convincentes que provocassem no leitor a desconfortável sensação de que um mistério com mais de 100 anos tinha finalmente sido desvendado contudo, na minha opinião, o ritmo é irregular e a autora faz demasiadas suposições, utiliza demasiadas vezes a expressão “não sei” o que me parece uma clara inconsistência para quem afirma no fim da obra “… ele foi apanhado.”.
É certo que são revelados alguns interessantes dados “físicos” relativos, por exemplo, às marcas de água dos papéis de carta utilizados pelo estripador nas cartas enviadas à polícia e jornais que, por coincidência ou não, correspondem aos utilizados pelo pintor Walter Richard Sickert, o Jack, o Estripador de Patricia Cornwell. Mas depois há tantas suposições, tantas conjecturas, tantas hipóteses sem base suficientemente sólida que não consegui “agarrar” esta teoria.
Já tive acesso a várias teorias a respeito da identidade de Jack, o Estripador e esta revelou-se como apenas mais uma que, muito honestamente, não me convenceu.

I admit to having a great interest in the Jack the Ripper case and have for many years. I was interested to see what Cornwell could come up with as to who could have done the killing. I was thoroughly disappointed with this book. It was basically filled with Cornwell's guesses that she put out as facts. What really set me off was that part of the book where she was walking down the street with her editor (I think) and says, "I know who did it." From then on, I had a feeling I wasn't going to enjoy this book so much. I did try to keep an open mind, which is more than I can say for her. She fixated on Walter Seikert and never let go. She just made all these facts from his life just fall inter her theory. It was shoddy investigative work and an example of what not to do in an investigation. I wouldn't suggest anyone to read this book.

I tend to read a lot of Ripper books. I must have been a victim