Patricia Cornwell delves into the Jack the Ripper case. There's probably not many adults in this world who don't know the name of the serial killer who murdered women in the White Chapel District in London.
She claims to have identified who The Ripper was. I believe her insight and knowledge of the murders, papers, and other evidence during the killings is very well portrayed in her book. I'm not entirely convinced the true killer is identified, but of all the evidence and other books I've read about Jack the Ripper, I believe her investigation of the crimes to be the most accurately portrayed on the subject. Even if you believe or don't believe Cornwell identified who Jack the Ripper is, this book is a great read.

I cannot claim to be a Ripperologist, but I have read a fair number of books about the Ripper murders and none so arrogant and uninformative as this. Before I say any more, let me just say that I enjoy Patricia Cornwell's novels, she's a good writer, so I am simply unable to decide what on earth made her write this. In the beginning of this book, the author states that she became interested in the Ripper murders on a visit to London and was soon convinced that the artist Walter Sickert was responsible. Having decided on this, she then claims to have solved the murders and sets about, rather unconvincingly, attempting to convince us that this is the case.

Alarm bells began to ring when Cornwell states with utter conviction that the Ripper's first victim was Martha Tabram - a fact hotly disputed amongst those who have investigated the Ripper murders. Her total and utter conviction that she is right in everything is rather concerning. She has a rather naive view of Victorian London, is quite insulting about the people who lived there (they may have been poverty stricken, drunk, uneducated, illiterate etc, but no person deserves to be described as "rubbish") and discusses in great depth the way postmortems would currently be carried out now, which is interesting but ultimately irrelevant, as the murders happened so long ago. Bodies found in dark alleyways in the middle of the night and carted off to the nearest poorhouse or shed to be examined are obviously not going to be subject to the same scrutiny or scientific testing they would be now.

Now we come on the subject of Sickert - the man Cornwell says categorically was the Ripper. Her evidence is very flimsy. Many of the Ripper letters were written on paper that can be traced to him - if we accept this it says he may have written some letters to the press or police, but the writers of the letters was not necessarily the murderer. Again and again she makes assumptions - about his health, his childhood, his marriage, his whereabouts, his love of disguises and rented rooms where he could work in private, the fact he may or may not have defaced a visitors book at a guest house... Sickert may have been a very odd man - he certainly had an obsession with Jack the Ripper, he claimed to stay in a room the Ripper lived in, he was compulsive, a news addict, a prolific writer, he liked his models to be extremely unnattractive and was certainly attracted to the underlife of the city. Does this him a murderer? I would have preferred to have read a balanced account - this was not it and I remain unconvinced of Cornwell's arguments.

Uno de los mejores libros de asesinatos que he leído. Las ilustraciones te ayudan a meterte en la historia de cerca.

This book has a lot of low ratings but I find Ms. Cromwell’s opinion on the murderer very compelling. She is passionate in her research and truly believes in what she is doing. The case against Walter Sickert is damning. I think he would have at least been brought in for questioning today. BUT unless some miraculous DNA is found, we can never know for sure…

Penso ci voglia una buona dose di spregiudicatezza ad affrontare un'argomento che sfugge e si dilegua nell'oscurità del tempo proprio come il protagonista faceva dopo i suoi "lavori".
Una ricerca monumentale e minuziosa grazie alla conservazione dei documenti, "in un modo che oggi è sempre meno possibile a causa della rapida scomparsa a cui le belle arti dello scriver lettere e tenere diari paiono destinate".
Il lettore che volesse prendere tutto alla lettera, fare il San Tommaso, si perde molto del fascino velato delle notti nebbiose della Londra ottocentesca. Facendo volare un po' la fantasia tutto migliora, infatti quale storia possiamo dire sia certamente vera? Alessandro Magno fece veramente quel che ci è stato riportato o fece esattamente il contrario? ... Basta crederci in fondo e la storia si fa vera. La prova del DNA non serve, questa è un ipotesi, vera o falsa, non importa, quel che è fondamentale è essere entrati in quei vicoli, solo per un attimo, e aver respirato l'acre odore del fumo mescolato alla nebbia, aver provato un brivido di freddo umido ed aver percepito col pensiero una realtà di miserie, sacrifici ed enormi privazioni.

Riporto una frase del testo secondo me significativa per la lettura: Una forma non dovrebbe avere linee perché la natura non ne ha, e le forme si rivelano come colori, sfumature e dal modo in cui la luce le tiene unite.

Warning: There may be spoilers in this review. (This is an identical copy of a review I left at Amazon.)

So after reading two books back-to-back about Jack the Ripper (The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Phillip Sugden and Jack the Ripper, the Simple Truth by Bruce Paley), I decided to purchase this book (Kindle edition).

Oh, boy. Where to begin? I'm not a professional investigator (and neither is Ms. Cornwell, apparently), but I do know that you don't create a theory first, then hastily add supposition on top of it to try to create facts. Facts need to speak for themselves, and the facts in this book do not add up to Walter Sickert = Jack the Ripper.

For starters, she presents evidence in the form of letters from Sickert's wife Ellen, as well as others, that Sickert was in France while several of the murders were commited in the fall of 1888. Then she follows up this seeming exoneration with the observation that even though Sickert might not have been in London "...there is nothing on record to prove he wasn't." Huh? Either he was, or he wasn't. His family and friends, and even himself, wrote letters from France during several of the murders. Unless he was wily enough to hop over to London, commit the murders, and run back to France before anyone noticed him missing, this evidence alone seems to exonerate him immediately.

Not for Ms. Cornwell. She's got her man, and she's going to make sure you believe it, too, facts or no facts. In another part of the book, she points out that the police in London found various bloody knives laying about the streets and under various shrubberies. In a part of town where many made a living as butchers, fish porters, and other laborers who routinely used knives in their line of work, it's not hard to imagine a lost knife here and there. These men carried their knives with them during the day. It's not inconceivable that one would encounter a lost bloody knife now and then. What is harder to imagine is that they all came from Walter Sickert.

When mentioning these many knives found around London, Ms. Cornwell also states that a knife was found few days after Elizabeth Stride's murder near a laundry "with a blunted tip...and was wrapped in a bloody white handkerchief...tied in place with string." It was described as the sort of knife a baker or chef might use. Ms. Cornwell then states "Sickert was an excellent cook and often dressed as a chef to entertain his friends." Well, then, case closed! Hang 'em high, Ms. Cornwell! (This was my favorite part of the book, by the way.)

I could go on, but there is one more thing that I found a bit offensive. Two of the victim's names are misspelled. The names Martha Tabram (Ms. Cornwell spells it "Tabran") and Catherine Eddowes (Cornwell spells it Eddows) are misspelled throughout the book. If it had just happened once or twice, I'd call it bad editing. However, it happens every time they're mentioned. It may just be the Kindle version that has these errors, and it may not be the fault of Ms. Cornwell's, but she would have been served better by having a competent editor. If this book was written to give the victims peace and dignity, it would be more dignified to bother to spell their names correctly.

All in all, not worth the money or time to read. Quite frankly, I've slogged through about 60% of the book, and I'm not sure I'm going to bother finishing. I've got better things to read with my time.

What a sheer piece of crap. Whilst trying to make this a showing of all her pseudo forensic expertise, Patricia Cornwell shows us something completely different. She shows us her penchant for manhating. She operates in double speak whilst using bits and pieces of things that maybe, might have, could have happened. with enough disclaimers thrown in to admit that she hasn't really the foggiest notion of who Jack the Ripper was. That doesn't stop her from besmirching the name of the great artist Walter Sickert. Right on the cover she emphatically states Case Closed. The last line in the book also says she "solved" the case of Jack the Ripper.
One thing she does prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Based on the fringe knowledge that she acquired as a crime reporter and being around professionals who actually did solve crimes, she tries much sleight of hand to bend evidence to meet her narrative. She dazzles us with words, and processes that exist in today's Medical Examiner's Offices, and Forensic Pathology Labs. She bloviates on how they may have been used, if only they had existed in the late 1800's. Fortunately for me, I worked in The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office for a number of years, and I was able to see right through her charade. I have rubbed elbows with the great Dr. Clyde Snow, and watched him make a collection of dry bones speak whilst chain smoking Pall Malls. That in no way makes me capable of running out and solving century old crimes, and neither is she.
Patricia would have been better served by writing this one as a novel instead of insulting us with "case closed" tripe.

This book was awful. The theory that Cornwell puts forward that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper is based purely on guesswork and supposition. Nothing of what’s touted as “evidence” bears any resemblance to that. The book is misleading in that the author puts forward pages of what one can construe as research, but then just ends with a guess. For example, there is a section that talks about how several Ripper letters include Punch and Judy-like figures and “I am reasonably certain Walter Sickert would have been familiar with… Punch and Judy scripts.” Huh? Ugh. The book notes that both the Ripper and Sickert were prolific letter writers. Both made drawings of women. Thus the author felt comfortable concluding one chapter with “Walter Sickert was a murderer unlike any other.” No he wasn’t. Avoid this book.

Please send me a message if you can recommend a really good book about Jack the Ripper.

I thought this book and the research that went into it was both fascinating and convincing. The objections of other critics struck me as childish: some complain that it is boring (plowing through circumstantial and direct evidence CAN be boring, ask any detective) and others pouted about having a "great" artist framed as a killer. I got the distinct impression many who slammed the book did not read all of it.

Cornwell is a very good writer. I felt she carefully balanced her presentation of the necessary information in order to present and ultimately make her case. The title expresses what the author clearly felt once immersed in her research: if you consider all this evidence, the case is truly closed. How much more evidence can anyone want?

I was glued to the pages and sorry when it came to an end. Had no idea artist Walter Sickert was so dark, so messed up, and so "good" at what he did.

I also loved the history of London's Scotland Yard. Fascinating. A five star addition to my bookshelf!

one only needs to look at Knight and his 1976 book on Jack the Ripper
and this one 25 years later

you'll see how there's a lot of old wine in new bottles here.

She gets three stars for it being her fave pet theory
though she pushes it hard

but negative 100 stars for it just being a revision and improvement (?) on the older theories

I still wonder if there's a special place in hell for three types of people

a. those who say Case Closed with Jack the Ripper
b. those who say Case Closed with JFK/Oswald/Mafia/CIA/Willoughby/Hunt/Dulles/Hoover
c. those who say Case Closed with the Zodiac Killer
d.. those who say Case Closed with the Helter Skelter/Manson/The Process

One might say that someone is a complete bozo for closing the books on a huge complex case, like they 'trisected the angle' in the world of crank Geometry math circles for hundreds of years....

but since i don't like the label that someone could be a bozo, i just won't say it.....

---

Amazone

Well, Maybe...
8/10

I've read a lot by Cornwell and I admire her research and enthusiasm for this subject as well as her other books. This book particularly delights in uncovering and revealing many details that, if previously known, were not widely known.

She makes a strong, circumstantial case that Sickert was in fact Jack the Ripper but I don't feel it reaches the level of a case that would win in court.

There is way too much assumption and pushing the circumstances toward a pre-conceived end.

We'll never know for sure who was Jack the Ripper. But because of that fact, this book has merits and certainly provides a lot of entertainment. It is an engaging revisiting of a subject that still fascinates. Cornwell adds to and doesn't detract from that fascination.

On the other hand, Cornwell is certain she has the offender and she tries so earnestly to persuade the reader. I followed and I could see it with some straining of incredulity but in the end I just can't buy it.

I have to go forward still wondering who was Jack the Ripper and what were his motives.

Avid One

---

WORK OF FICTION, MASQUERADING AS TRUE CRIME

I READ THIS BOOK. DO I BELIEVE MS. CORNWELL'S THEORY?
ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I HAVE FOUND I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE. I THINK AS A FICTION WRITER TAKING ON A TRUE SERIAL MURDER CASE IS LAUGHABLE.

MS. CORNWELL SEEMED TO HAVE CHOSEN HER "KILLER" AND BUILT HER CASE AROUND HIM.

WHERE ARE THE HEADLINES?
PATRICIA CORNWELL SOLVES THE JACK THE RIPPER CASE.

THIS IS JUST ANOTHER WORK OF FICTION WRITTEN WITH THE ARROGANCE OF A FICTION WRITER WHO SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.

BUT HEY! SELLS BOOKS MAKES MONEY AND I AM SURE SHE HAS SOME BELIEVERS OUT THERE. SADLY.

Pamela

---

Long winded, disorganized and tedious

I managed to finish this book eventually, but it was through gritted teeth. If Patricia Cornwell has worked in the field of criminal investigation as she suggests, I would have significant concerns about her objectivity.

She paints a picture of Sickert which may or may not be accurate. She builds a case purely on a mountain of circumstantial evidence and hearsay. If I were a member of a jury and she were the counsel for the prosecution I would be less than impressed by the arguments advanced or by the totally random manner in which her "facts" are presented.

The "evidence" advanced always tantalizes, but somehow never quite closes the argument.

Its always along the lines of - his wife's theatre company visited these Northern towns and these murders occurred in these same towns; or Sickert could have caught a train to the North of England, murdered someone and been back in London in time to go the theatre; or the stationery used by Sickert was the same brand as that used in Ripper letters.

When I saw an exhibition of Sickert's art many years ago in Liverpool - long before I read this book, I found his paintings dreary and depressing and not at all uplifting like Renoir or other impressionists.

Clearly his Ripper type paintings could suggest a warped mind and possibly misogynistic tendencies, however maybe he was fascinated by the Whitechapel murders and used them simply as subject matter.

Obviously it is very difficult to apply modern investigative and forensic techniques to a case that has grown so cold.

However, it is unacceptable for Cornwell to act as judge and jury on a long dead man on the basis of such a ragbag of snippets and assumptions.

Looks like a case of an author doing what any good author does - lay out the basic premise and plot of a novel and then mould the rest of the events of the story to conform to this framework.

In this case Sickert it guilty, and so all the evidence must be crafted to point to this conclusion.

Don't waste your time and money on this lightweight effort.

Gordon M. Crawford

---

Still open

One of the most insidious phrases in the English language is:
"It's obvious that..."
Nasty little phrase.

It's usually used to cover weak logic, but it convinces people because of the implication that whoever says it is more knowledgeable than the listener.

So imagine an entire book based on that phrase.

Unfortunately, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed is one such book. Bestselling mystery writer Patricia Cornwell tried her hand at unravelling the century-old mystery of who Jack the Ripper REALLY was.

Too bad her book is a steaming pile of... well, you get the idea.

In her investigations, Cornwell primarily focused on Walter Richard Sickert, a British impressionist, actor, and pal of Oscar Wilde.

While Sickert was open about his interest in the serial killings, Cornwell delves into the bizarre to reveal what she clearly sees as irrefutable proof of his double identity.

Makes you wonder what the poor guy did to tick her off.

Perhaps the problem is Cornwell's fiction, her imagination is way too active. She seems to be treating the Jack the Ripper case not as a true event with hard facts, but as something that can be spun into a semi-fictional narrative, with clues that no jury would vote for.

It would make for a good detective novel, but not a serious cold case investigation.

Watermarks, coincidental poses, perceived signs in his paintings, hoax letters and mitochondrial DNA are all touched on, but Cornwell never actually produces any hard evidence, in other words, evidence that would make a jury sit up and listen.

At best, the evidence is circumstantial.

For example, Ms. Cornwell has no actual proof that any of the letters that were tested were even from Jack the Ripper, or that the mitochondrial DNA was from Sickert.

However, this doesn't stop her from asserting that both are the case.

And her leaps of logic are almost impossible to swallow, unless you have a festering hatred for Sickert.

For example, his apparent fascination with the crime makes him clearly guilty in Cornwell's book, despite the fact that many others, also presumably innocent, were similarly fascinated by the crime.

The big difference is that we know of Sickert, whereas we do not know of Robbie the night porter.

Cornwell also tends to damn without reason, exhibiting an almost shocking smugness.

Sickert is proclaimed a cunning 'psychopath', and her disdain for certain parts of London is obvious. Worst of all is Cornwell portraying the cops of the time as inept losers who could not find their own backsides with a map.

The 'dumb cops, smart li'l me' tactic works in fiction, but it is absurd in the real world.

And finally, what did Sickert do to earn Cornwell's wrath?

In her eyes, he is a cunning psycho, a woman-hater, a eunuch, a 'slob', a master of disguise, a predator, and a guy who was obviously insane because he liked to take nighttime walks.

Every small facet of his personality is twisted into a sign of predatory madness.
If liking nighttime walks shows that you're a deranged killer, then chain me up.

While Patricia Cornwell, who destroyed at least one Sickert painting in her quest, is a passable fiction writer, her real-life investigations are nothing short of demented.

Case Closed? I think not.
E. A. Solinas

---

Case Closed? Emphatically NO!

The Whitechapel murders committed by Jack the Ripper in the autumn of 1888 have fascinated and repelled ever since. To the point now where it ranks with the Marie Celeste and The Bermuda triangle as one of the worlds most perplexing mysteries.

According to the blurb, "Patricia Cornwell has applied the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation to the extant material".

'An excellent idea' you might think, and you'd be right. But there are so many things wrong with this book that I hardly know where to start.

Ms Cornwell takes as her hypothesis that the Impressionist artist Walter Richard Sickert was in fact the notorious serial killer who has become the stuff of modern nightmares and goes all out to prove it.

As part of her evidence she presents Sickert's 'Camden Town Murders' series of paintings, not as the artist exploring his obsession with the murder of a prostitute in Camden, around the corner from where Sickert was living at the time, but with the artist recalling (or perhaps gloating?) about the Ripper murders some twenty years earlier and maybe his part in them

She compares facial mutilation inflicted on Jack the Ripper's fourth victim, Catherine Eddows with the play of the light on the face of the woman in one of Sickert's paintings and uses this to claim that Sickert was drawing from memory.

Well, I'm sorry Ms Cornwell, that horse just won't run!
Your hypothesis falls down in several crucial areas,

- The Psycho-Sexual Serial Killers is indeed 'Mr Nobody', excessively so!

Killing is their only expressive outlet. Aesthetic young artists don't tend to turn to butchery in order to satisfy their needs in this regard, their art more than fulfills this.

- Sickert's use of prostitutes as models is also held up to scrutiny, but this was normal for artists of the impressionist school.

Degas, Renoir, Manet and many of Sickert's contempories used prostitutes as models and not only them. Raphael painted his Madonna's from the prostitutes of Rome and the faces of Botticelli's angels are those of the rent boys of Quattro cento Florence.

- Ms Cornwell claims to have found DNA from one of the Ripper letters that can be matched to Sickert.

But this sample was taken from a "Possible" Ripper letter, (opinion on its authenticity is divided) and not from the genuine articles in the black museum, which have been heat sealed, thus destroying any possibility (with current technology anyway) of obtaining a sample.

Considering Sickert's prolific letter writing and collection of pseudonyms the possibility of him having written a hoax letter at the time can not be ruled out

- The artist's alleged hatred of women is shown up in a letter he wrote to Jacques-Emile Blanche when he was painting nudes in Venice at the beginning of the twentieth century.

"From 9 to 4, it is an uninterrupted joy, caused by these pretty, little, obliging models who laugh and un-embarrassedly be themselves while posing like angels. They are glad to be there, and are not in a hurry."

This doesn't sound like a serial killer describing the objects of his desires, but rather like a normal man having fun.

- Ms Cornwell's assertion that Sickert was infertile is all but destroyed by the fact that Sickert almost certainly fathered a child by Mme. Augustine Villain a fishmonger he lived with during his time in Neuville.

- MS Cornwell states in this book that Sickert's paintings are clearly of the Ripper murders, but as with everything else, people see what they want to see. "Wolf Vanderlinden" in his excellent essay put this very well.

"In The Camden Town Murder, also titled What Shall We Do For the Rent? (circa 1908). The painting is of a man sitting on the edge of a bed, eyes downcast. Behind him lies a naked woman. With the title The Camden Town Murder, the woman is obviously dead and the man is either her killer, filled with remorse, or her lover who has found the body and who sits in stunned mourning. Change to the alternate title - What Shall We Do For the Rent? - and now the picture is totally different. The man sits on the bed feeling the weight of his financial problems while his wife or girlfriend lies next to him, her hand gently resting on his knee, offering him some small, tender support"

- Ms Cornwell states that Walter Sickert always drew from life, things he'd seen and in that she'd absolutely right.

Walter Sickert only painted subjects that he had seen or had seen photographs of, a subtle but significant difference. Photographs of Jack the Ripper's last two victims were published in France as far back as 1899 in a book about the crimes of Joseph Vacher, the so-called French Ripper.

At that time Sickert was living in France and was fluent in the French language. Is it unreasonable to assume that Sickert, a true crime buff from his boyhood could have owned or seen a copy of that book in the 6 years between it's publication and the painting of the first of the "Camden Town Murders" series that Ms Cornwell bases so much of her theory on?

I suppose that the central problem with this book is that the author has made up her mind before she boots up her word processor and spends the book trying to convince the reader that she's right rather than weighing up the evidence and exploring any possible alternatives.

Jay

I really don't think this book "proves" anything. It almost seems like the author decided she had found her man and then had to rush around forming a thesis to support it. So if you want to know who JtR was, I don't think this is the book to read.

BUT if you want to know about this period of history, you should definitely read it! I've seen pictures of JtR and his victims and almost always the women look rather glamorous. They look frightened at the vicious monster who is holding them, but they are well put together and dressed nicely. In real life, these "Unfortunates" had wretched lives. As Cornwell explains it, your choices were extremely limited if you were a woman and not born rich. If a man didn't marry you & take care of you, you were in trouble. Or, if you found yourself liking "drink", you would get no help from anyone and would be left to fend for yourself. Not surprisingly, many women turned to prostitution. The customary manner was for the woman to face the wall while the man lifted their skirts and had sex with them from behind. It was quick, dirty and didn't pay very well. In many cases, the woman either used the pennies to buy a bed for the night or to keep drinking.

London itself was filthy and smoggy. If there were lights, they were gas lights which are smelly and nasty; otherwise, it was dark and dingy. Even the "morgue" was a filthy shack with an old table covered in dried blood.

While there were police officers who walked a beat, other city services seemed to be non-existent. Even the police didn't have much beyond a lamp to help them see.

Poor people were left to rent beds by the night and kept warm by wearing all of the clothing they owned. I can't recall mention of baths or places to bathe, so let your imagination fill in the rest.

So it is for this reason that I found this book utterly fascinating. I started skipping the JtR arguments and just reading about the "Unfortunates" and their sad lives. I'm smart enough to know that being a hooker isn't all Pretty Woman and fancy hotels, but I had never stopped to realize how awful these women's lives really were. They were filthy, missing teeth, illiterate and lived absolutely depressing lives where they had to let strange men have sex with them for a few pennies. And then they got massacred (sometimes beyond recognition) by JtR. I can only hope that they found a sweet afterlife where they could find some joy.

First and foremost, the Case of Jack the Ripper is still open. This was an interesting account of a very interesting theory, depicting how with a lot of speculation one man could be the Ripper. A lot of frustration towards this book comes from her confidence and almost egotistical "I know who the killer is" attitude -- when as a reader you find out quickly she is simply "speculating" who the killer may have been. With many ideas beginning with, "one can only imagine he..." or "he may have..." At the 3/4 mark through the book, I would have had a different attitude had she published this as an "idea" or a "theory" and not "the truth."

To solve a 100+ year old mystery there has to be something new, something "wow!" that was never noticed before - where this is simply a string of assumptions and speculations.

About a third of the way through this book, I became annoyed with Cornwell's arrogance and numerous unnesseracy rants. She is obviously annoyed by the lack of documentation with the murders, as anyone looking for sound evidence would be - but she shows little to no understanding that this was the 1880s and the foresic science we have today did not exist.

Her several rants about how the murder cases would be handled today are not only irrelevant to her theory, but made an impression that she is trying to prove her knowledge of forensic science through the story.

The book overall is very disorganized, going from murder to rant back to murder to letters, without any really transitions. And I still haven't figured out how she mentions "the killer's" death then in the next chapter starts talking about his first marriage. And ultimately, ends the book with the death of his last wife, who only appeared in the story in the last chapter, and which added no evidance, no insight to the suppossed killer or to The Ripper himself.

This is 300+ pages of speculations, and overall the story provides a theory of the Ripper, and an idea of how investigative work has evolved over the last 120 years.

Overall - I have to say that it is amazing that after 120 years Jack the Ripper is still destroying the lifes of those that cross his path. Cornwell may still all her organs, but she has lost her reputation on what appears to have become an obession with Jack. This was my first, and will be my last Cornwell book.